“Before Abraham was…” (John 8:48-59)

For those of you who are old enough to have watched the Seinfeld show on tv, you may recall an episode from twenty-five years ago entitled “The Comeback”. It all revolved around a conversation in the opening scene between George Costanza and a co-worker named Reilly. The two are taking a snack break at a business meeting, when Reilly observes that George is gobbling down considerably more than his fair share of a shrimp cocktail. This prompts Reilly to remark, “Hey George, the ocean called; they’re running out of shrimp.”

The result is that for much of the remaining half hour of the programme we see George making a succession of desperate attempts to come up with an equally witty comeback. But the outcome of all his efforts is a series of rejoinders that range from the pathetic to the positively offensive.

This morning’s verses from John come at the end of a series of exchanges between Jesus and some of the Pharisees. You can detect their hostility right from the very beginning. In verse 12 Jesus has just made one of his seven great amazing “I am” proclamations: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

Coming from anyone else, this would seem to be an outrageously egotistical claim to make. And so, understandably, it prompts a contrary response from the Pharisees in the following verse: “You are bearing witness about yourself; your testimony is not true.” And so the debate begins, back and forth, going on and on through the following thirty-five verses, and taking us right up to this morning’s passage.

This time it is the Pharisees’ turn to fire the opening volley. And it is a zinger: “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?”

To understand the depth of this insult, take a moment and if you can, think way back to chapter 4, to Jesus’ conversation with a Samaritan woman. You may recall how Jews and Samaritans regarded one another with hostility. In fact they had been engaged in an ongoing feud that had lasted for centuries. The result was that to call another person a Samaritan was to class them with the lowest of the low, someone you would not trust to let out of your sight for even a fraction of a second. Then, as though that insult were not enough, the Pharisees added another: “You have a demon.” It was as if to say that Jesus was not only a sad specimen of humanity, but that he was positively evil.

However, it is already clear that the Pharisees’ argument is weak. As Bishop J.C. Ryle observed 150 years ago, “To lose temper, and call names, is a common sign of a defeated cause.”[1] But once again Jesus was ready with an answer for them: “I do not have a demon, but I honour my Father, and you dishonour me…”

Jesus and the Father (48-51)

Now these words of Jesus may not stand out for us as being especially remarkable. As Christians we are accustomed to addressing God as “our Father”. It’s what Jesus has taught us to do. But I can only imagine that for the Pharisees Jesus’ referring to God as “my Father” would have more than raised a few eyebrows.

In the Old Testament there are fewer than half a dozen passages where God is referred to as “Father”. Yet here was Jesus speaking of the ineffable God, the God who thundered from the top of Mount Sinai, the God who was so holy that his name could never be pronounced by human lips—here was Jesus referring to the all-powerful Lord of all as “my Father”.

One of the images that the gospels give us of Jesus is of his intimate relationship with God the Father. We witness it most especially on the eve of his crucifixion. In what is commonly referred to as his high priestly prayer, John tells us “Jesus lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, ‘Father…, glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you…’” (John 17:1). As he kneels in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus pleads, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me” (Luke 22:42). And hours later, as he hangs from the cross, Jesus cries out on behalf of his executioners, “Father, forgive them…” (Luke 23:34).

Everywhere in the gospels we see that Jesus enjoyed a unique intimacy with the Father. And while this may have angered the Pharisees, the whole purpose of Jesus’ coming was that you and I might share in that relationship through faith.

It would not be going too far to say that this is the whole aim that John had in mind when he took the effort to write his gospel. In the opening verses we find him writing, “To all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God…” (John 1:12). Then, in his first epistle he rejoices, “See what glorious love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are!” (1 John 3:1).

In Mark’s gospel (14:36) we learn that the expression that Jesus used to address his Father was the intimate word “Abba”. I had a first-hand experience of what that word means when we were renting a lakeside cottage one summer. The family next to us were from Israel and I remember one day hearing their little daughter running up from the beach to her dad, excitedly shouting, “Abba! Abba!”

And this is the relationship with God into which Jesus invites you and me today as we open our lives to him in faith. However, let me make it clear that this is not a relationship of crass familiarity. Rather, it is one of childlike trust, respect and obedience to an all-wise and all-powerful Father—one we know who desires only our good.

Jesus and Abraham (52-56)

But back to the dispute between Jesus and his detractors. It was time for them to launch another volley. “Are you greater than our father Abraham?” they ask. Their challenge was an accusation that Jesus either suffered from a delusional sense of grandeur or that he was deliberately lying. And I cannot imagine that they were ready for his reply: “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day.”

What was Jesus talking about when he made this claim? There are at least three possible answers. And for each of them we need to go all the way back to the Book of Genesis. The first comes in chapter 12. Abraham was still living in the city of Ur at the time, in what is now modern-day Iraq. It was there that the Lord met with him and told him to go to a land that he would reveal to him. “I will make of you a great nation … and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:1-3).

Now the first half of that promise had long been fulfilled. The nation of Israel had existed in one form or another for more than a thousand years. But it was in Jesus that the second half of that promise would become a reality, that not just a single nation, but all the families of the earth would be blessed—and you and I this morning are the fruit of that. And there are peoples we have never heard of in in every corner of the world who are still finding that blessing that God promised to Abraham and that comes to us through Jesus.

The second incident that Jesus may have been referring to comes in Genesis 17. By this time Abraham had reached the ripe old age of ninety-nine and his wife Sarai was not far behind him. They had long given up on any hope of having a child. Yet God promised once again that he would give them a son. These were his words in reference to Sarah: “I will bless her, and she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.” (Genesis 17:16). Abraham’s response was to fall facedown with laughter. And I can only imagine that tears of wonderment and joy must have streamed down into his beard, as he contemplated the God of wonders who is always faithful to his promises. And once again that promise found its fulfilment in Jesus.

The third incident comes in the chapter that follows, in the dramatic account of the near sacrifice of the son whom Sarah had borne. God comes to him once again and commands him, “Abraham! Take your son, your only son Isaac whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you”. I’m sure we’re all familiar with how the story proceeds. At the last minute, with his knife raised, Abraham hears a voice telling him to stop. As he looks up he glimpses a ram caught in a thicket and he knows that the Lord has provided a sacrifice. And Abraham called the place where it all happened, “The Lord will provide.” (Genesis 22:1-14)

More than a thousand years later another sacrifice would take place on that same mountain and it would be another Lamb of God’s providing, another substitute, who with outstretched arms would offer life, and salvation for all people. “Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad.”

Jesus the I AM (57-59)

Now you might think that this would have stopped the Pharisees. But they were determined to win the debate. “You are not yet fifty years old,” they retorted, “and have you seen Abraham?” To which Jesus replied with what has to be one of the most astounding claims in all of Scripture: “Before Abraham was, I am.”

Now I suspect that most of you are familiar with what are called the seven “I am” sayings of Jesus that are all found in John’s gospel:

•  “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35)

•  “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)

•  “I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved.” (John 10:9)

•  “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep… I know my own and my own know me…” (John 10:11,14)

•  “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though they die, yet shall they live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” (John 11:25-26)

•  “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6)

•  “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5)

Each one is in itself a remarkable statement. And we have encountered a couple of them already as we have been making our way through the Gospel of John. But in this morning’s reading we come across an eighth: “Before Abraham was, I am.”

To my mind this is the most astounding of Jesus’ claims in all the gospel. Notice that Jesus does not say, “Before Abraham was, I was,” but, “Before Abraham was, I am.” To understand this fully we need to go back to the Old Testament again, this time to the story of Moses in Exodus 3. Moses was tending his father-in-law’s sheep far out in the wilderness when he spotted a bush in flames (something that should send chills down our spines in Nova Scotia right now!). But when he looked, he could see that although the bush was on fire, it was not being consumed. Then, as he got closer, he could hear a voice calling to him out of the flames: “Moses, Moses…”

We don’t have time to go through the whole story right now, but the upshot was that Moses was hearing none other than the voice of God. This was the almighty creator of heaven and earth, calling him to lead his people out of their centuries-long slavery in Egypt. When Moses asked how he was to explain this to them, he was told, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’ … This is my name for ever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.” (Exodus 3:15).

The Pharisees caught the allusion in a snap. No more clever comebacks now! The time for civilized debate was over. And they began to pick up rocks to stone Jesus to death.

But there is another reaction they could have had. It is the reaction of Thomas seeing Jesus after his resurrection and exclaiming, “My Lord and my God!” And it will be the chorus of thousands upon ten thousands who will gather around his throne and cry aloud,

Worthy is the Lamb who was slain,
to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might
and honour and glory and blessing! (Revelation 5:12)

And by God’s grace you and I will be among them.

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[1]     Expository Thoughts on the Gospels, John, vol 2, 122

“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

“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

“The Lord our Dwelling Place” (Psalm 90)

Here we are, standing at the cusp of yet another year. It’s an annual opportunity to stop and think for a moment about the passage of time, and not just about time in general, but our time, the time that has flown past (for many of us all too quickly and for some not quickly enough) and the time that stretches ahead of us, for some filled with opportunities and new adventures, for others perhaps bringing a sense of apprehension about what may lie ahead. To help ourselves put all of that in perspective, I don’t think there are many more appropriate passages of Scripture than the psalm we have just read—Psalm 90.

We tend to think of the psalms as the work of King David. In fact, of the one hundred fifty psalms in the Old Testament, seventy-five are ascribed to him. However, the psalm we read together a few moments ago is unique in all the Old Testament in that it is attributed not to David but to Moses. If you turn to it in your Bible you will see it has the superscription, “A prayer of Moses the man of God”.

Some scholars question this attribution, but as I have read this psalm over and over and meditated upon it during the last couple of weeks, it makes a lot of sense. “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations…” It is not difficult for me to imagine that these are the words of a man who has spent the better part of forty years wandering through the wilderness with his people, with no home to call their own. Yet throughout that time the Lord has been with them, visibly witnessed through the cloud that led them by day and the pillar of fire at night. But he had been with them long before that, as they toiled as slaves under the searing Egyptian sun, with Joseph and Jacob and Isaac, and going back to Abraham as he answered the call to journey from the banks of the Euphrates to the land that God had said would belong to him and his descendants.

So picture Moses, if you will, late one night lying back and looking up into the clear desert sky. My son Simon and I had the opportunity to do this in Libya on the edge of the Sahara several years ago and it was a memorable experience. Gazing into a sky uncluttered by pollution and the glow of city lights, he knew that behind all those innumerable stars that paraded across night after night, mightier than the mountains that surrounded him, reaching back past the ages beyond the dawn of time, there was God. “In the beginning, God …” And in this morning’s psalm: “Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the whole world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.” 

 

God’s Eternity

If you take a few moments to go online and visit the NASA website, you can see an amazing photograph with Saturn’s rings in the foreground. Not far below them you can discern a tiny, almost insignificant, softly glowing dot. That dot is our planet earth, as seen from a distance of nearly one and a half billion kilometers[1]. The image gives us a picture of the vastness of our solar system, which itself is only a tiny dot within the Milky Way, which in turn is another tiny dot in the seeming limitlessness of the created order.

Moses certainly did not have access to any of the kinds of sophisticated astronomical data that are available to us today. But he didn’t need them in order to find himself overwhelmed by the limitlessness of God. The Bible tells us that “since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made” (Romans 1:20). And we could spend all morning just considering the wonder of God’s eternal nature. We find it sprinkled throughout the Bible, in Psalm 104, for example:

Lord my God, you are very great;
     you are clothed with splendour and majesty.
The Lord wraps himself in light as with a garment;
     he stretches out the heavens like a tent…
He makes the clouds his chariot
     and rides on the wings of the wind. (Psalm 104:1-3)

Or again, in one of the most exalted pieces of poetry in all of Scripture, from the prophet Isaiah:

Do you not know?
     Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
     Have you not understood since the earth was founded?
He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth,
     and its people are like grasshoppers.
He stretches out the heavens like a canopy,
     and spreads them out like a tent to live in…
‘To whom will you compare me?
     Or who is my equal?’ says the Holy One.
Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens:
     who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one
     and calls forth each of them by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
     not one of them is missing. (Isaiah 40:21-22,25-26)

And how about that unforgettable catalogue of questions with which the Lord peppered poor Job?

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
     Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
     Who stretched a measuring line across it?
On what were its footings set,
     or who laid its cornerstone –
while the morning stars sang together
     and all the angels shouted for joy?
Who shut up the sea behind doors
     when it burst forth from the womb, …
when I said, “This far you may come and no farther;
     here is where your proud waves halt”?
Have you ever given orders to the morning,
     or shown the dawn its place … ?
Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea
     or walked in the recesses of the deep?
Have the gates of death been shown to you?
     Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness?
Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?
     Tell me, if you know all this. (Job 38:4-18)

In Psalm 8 his consideration of God’s creative power and eternal majesty leads the psalmist to ask a question:

Lord, our Lord,
     how majestic is your name in all the earth! …
When I consider your heavens,
     the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
     which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
     human beings that you care for them? (Psalm 8:1,3-4)

And that is precisely the question that burns through the middle section of our psalm this morning.

Human Mortality

The main preoccupation of the psalm is not much with God’s eternal nature as it is with its contrast to our human mortality.

A thousand years in your sight
are like a day that has just gone by,
or like a watch in the night.
Yet you sweep people away in the sleep of death—
they are like the new grass of the morning:
In the morning it springs up new,
but by evening it is dry and withered.

But Moses was not the only one to recognize this. Poor old Job cried aloud to his friends,

My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle,
     and they come to an end without hope.
Remember, O God, that my life is but a breath… (Job 7:6-7)

And Solomon mused,

Everyone comes naked from their mother’s womb,
     and as everyone comes, so they depart.
They take nothing from their toil
     that they can carry in their hands. (Ecclesiastes 5:15)

Nearing the end of his life, the apostle Paul wrote to his young friend Timothy, “We brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it” (1 Timothy 6:7). And Jesus exemplified that truth in his parable of the rich fool. Many of you will remember his story of the man who kept having to build bigger barns to store his surplus grain. But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you” (Luke 12:13-21).

Isaac Watts put poetic expression to this morning’s psalm in the hymn we’ll be singing in a few minutes’ time:

Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
     Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
     Dies at the opening day.

Now isn’t all this a cheerful way to look ahead to the New Year? I hope I haven’t thoroughly demoralized you! But before you sink too far into depression, there’s something else we need to see in this psalm—and that is that it recognizes, indeed it laments, that none of this is the way things should be. You know those puzzles that ask you to spot what’s wrong with this picture? This psalm has something like that in it. The hints come out in verses like these: “You turn people back to dust…” “You sweep people away in the sleep of death…” “We are consumed by your anger…” “All our days pass under your wrath…”

The psalmist is painfully aware that things don’t have to be the way they are—that the power of life and death lies in God’s hands. All of this leads to the desperate cry in verse 13: “Relent, Lord, how long will it be?” The verb in Hebrew is shub. It means to turn around. It is as though God has his back towards us.

So you see there is something deep within the psalmist’s heart—something in all our hearts—that protests, that cries out this is not the way it’s supposed to be. As we read in Ecclesiastes, “He has set eternity in the human heart” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). So it is that C.S. Lewis reflected,

We are so little reconciled to time that we are even astonished at it. “How he’s grown!” we exclaim, “How time flies!” as though the universal form of our experience were again and again a novelty. It is as strange as if a fish were repeatedly surprised at the very wetness of water. And that would be strange indeed: unless of course the fish were destined to become, one day, a land animal…[2]

Eternal Habitations

Turn with me now to the second-last chapter of the Bible, where the seer John gives us a picture that is so breathtaking that it cannot be compared with the sky even on the most glorious starlit night. There, John is given a vision of the new heaven and the new earth. He looks on with awe as the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, descends from the skies, “prepared,” as he describes it, “like a bride beautifully dressed for her husband”. Then a loud voice booms from God’s throne with the words, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:1-4).

Now shift the scene to the night before his crucifixion, as Jesus gathered with his disciples in the upper room. There he gave them the promise, “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling-places. If it were not so, would I have told you that 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, so that where I am, there you may be also” (John 14:2-3).

And now in this Christmas season we remember how the Lord of time and eternity, he who has been our dwelling place throughout all generations, the eternal Word, became flesh and made his dwelling among us. “We have seen his glory,” John declares, “the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). It is in Jesus that we see life as God truly intends it to be. It is in Jesus that we find our eternal dwelling place in the heart of God.

Welcome, all wonders in one sight!
     Eternity shut in a span;
Summer in winter; day in night;
     Heaven in earth, and God in man.
Great little one, whose all-embracing birth
Lifts earth to heav’n, stoops heav’n to earth…[3]

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[1]     https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA17171

[2]     Reflections on the Psalms, 114,115

[3]     Richard Crashaw (1612-1649), “An Hymne of the Nativity”