A Spiritual Foundation for A Spiritual Home
Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 29 viewsNotes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
Good morning! Have you ever thought about just throwing up your hands, giving up, and hitting the reset button on life? How’s that for an inspirational sermon opener? There are times and situations that make us want to revert to some past stage of life, to remember the good old days and do whatever you can to get back there. The pandemic and the restrictions that have come along with it make this temptation more and more real. Across the country, divorce during the pandemic has increased. Church attendance has dropped. People have quit their jobs left and right. With lots of extra time to ourselves, people have been examining their lives and think they’ve made a major mistake somewhere. Trying times do this. It was no different in the times of the early church. Facing persecution, an early Christian parish made up of mainly Jewish believers found themselves wondering if they should walk back this recognition of Jesus as the messiah and go back to a non-Christian Jewish form of worship. So the author of the Book of Hebrews saw this happening and had to say something.
We have to assume he was qualified to do so. There’s a little piece from the ordination vows I took that I’d like to read. It’s a question the bishop asked. He said:
Will you be ready, with all faithful diligence, to banish and drive away from the Body of Christ all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God’s Word; and to use both public and private admonitions and exhortations, to the weak as well as the strong within your charge, as need shall require and occasion shall be given?
I answered, “I will, the Lord being my helper.”
I bring this up, because sometimes a pastor or priest needs to use the authority he was given to say hard things in love. And that’s what the author of Hebrews is doing.
Paul does it too in his 1st letter to Timothy. I want to look there because I think it helps give a good illustration of a pastoral warning of a real danger, one that bears some similarity to our passage from Hebrews this morning. He warns that some people will depart from the faith. He says:
1 Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by devoting themselves to deceitful spirits and teachings of demons, 2 through the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared,
The church addressed in the Book of Hebrews was in precisely this kind of danger. Whispers of demons like, “Was Jesus really the messiah?” “How can followers of the messiah face trials like what we’re facing?” “Wasn’t everything so much more convenient before following Jesus?” Those whispers from demons into the ears of those Jewish believers hit our ears today, don’t they?
There is no shortage of people claiming to be a source of truth today. Social media and cable news has made the truth murky and difficult to find. Truth is on a big platform, and it is crowded. There’s a whole rainbow of lies surrounding the truth. As Paul says, “the insincerity of liars whose consciences are seared” is at work to knock us off course.
So the Book of Hebrews, Paul’s letter to Timothy, and the ACNA ordination vows show us what’s on the line and what needs to be done when lies and false teaching threaten to make their way into the church. And I bring this up for this reason: our Hebrews passage has some tough words, and they need to be said, for the good of the church.
The author of Hebrews wants to go on to teach the rich truths about Christ’s priesthood, but he says they aren’t ready to hear it. Look at chapter 5, verse 11:
11 About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. 12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, 13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. 14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.
Ouch! That one hits our spiritual pride, doesn’t it? I mean, if we have humility enough to examine ourselves in light of these words. Have we become dull of hearing? Have we listened to the cacophony of lies and half truths to the point of not being able to hear the melody of God’s truth? Have we set aside the ability to discern righteousness in order to focus on scoring political points?
People who claim to be the source of truth, who would set themselves beside or even above Jesus as the source of truth, are going after your attention, money and allegiance. I want us to consider, this morning, who is your source of truth? Who is the lone voice of truth these days, when everyone else is conspiring to captivate your attention and your money and your allegiance? Who alone has the strength of character to speak the truth in these trying times? Who is the truth? If your answer wasn’t the Sunday school answer of “Jesus,” it might be time to go back to Sunday school. Have you heard and read so much news that you’ve become dull of hearing? Is film really truth, as the bumper sticker says. Perhaps we need to turn it off in order to attune our ears to the real truth. Do you find yourself not knowing what to believe? When was the last time you opened your Bible?
Our souls are full of static. We need to tune the signal. We are ready for milk, but we should be moving on to solid food.
Can you imagine showing up to work, opening up your lunch bag, getting out a baby bottle, microwaving it a little, testing the temperature on your wrist, and then kicking back for a swallow? “Isn’t it time to move on to something a bit more substantial?” asks the Book of Hebrews. I can only imagine the glorious revival that would hit our land if everyone unplugged their devices for the season of Advent. How much misguided suspicion would drop away for Christmas with our families? How much more love for what actually matters? Can every election really be the most important election of our lifetime? If we can’t find time for Jesus, and room for him to speak, if our view of him is stifled by voices that are paid to scare us, we might be on a milk-only diet. When the wind picks up and the waves rise around you, don’t look around and give in to fear and sink. Instead, look to Jesus and live.
But even “Look to Jesus and live” is milk. It’s a basic doctrine. Our passage is calling us to find even greater riches, a refined palate, greater strength from the less-well-known parts of the Bible. He’s getting them ready for an extended teaching on Melchizedek.
Are we going to learn anything of value about Melchizedek if our senses are too dull to hear the word “Melchizedek” without throwing up our hands at the obscurity of the reference? The reason that our most treasured doctrines are milk, is not that we’re ready to move on from them. It’s that they are foundational. But who builds just a foundation of a house? I’ve seen some impressive foundations, but foundations are meant to be built upon. If we’re going to benefit from the good news of Jesus Christ in all the ways we were intended to, we need to ask for the Holy Spirit to instill in us a new hunger for the deep things of God and a new love for his word, so that our spiritual foundation turns into a spiritual home. The alternative is that our senses will get duller and duller and we will be more and more susceptible to voices that want us to lose sight of the riches in Christ, and we’ll sink, and we’ll begin to think that the world has changed too much, that we’d made a mistake, and we need to go back to where we were before we met Christ, just as the church in the Book of Hebrews was thinking about doing. At some point, it’s quite possible that the voices that claim to be the truth are going to make you choose between them and Christ and we need to have enough discernment to choose the one who actually loves you, who proved it by dying for you, and existed as the source of truth before the foundation of the world, before the enemy of truth started crafting the first half-truths.
The writer to the Hebrews continues on. Having walked with Christ, knowing him, to walk away, is not an option. It says in verse 4:
4 For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, 5 and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, 6 and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. 7 For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. 8 But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.
This passage is not easy. It’s not John 3:16. There are quite a few scholarly books on the various views of this section of Hebrews. There’s a lot to be said here. Too much in the time we have left.
At the very least, it can be said that this warning about falling away and being unable to be restored has accomplished what it has set out to do when it has instilled how important it is not to walk away from Christ, not to be shaken by events around us. If you read these words and know that you don’t want to be in this position, you are not in this position. If you read these words and shrug and say that you can walk away from Christ because he’ll always take you back, these words are for you. Be warned: There is a risk that if you walk away from Christ, your spiritual senses will become so numb that you will never be able to value him like you once did. By walking away from Christ you will have fundamentally changed as a person in ways that you cannot imagine right now and good choices that were simple before will become complex. So there is real spiritual danger, so let’s not be tempted to walk away, to craft our own truth and take such a terrible risk.
The writer to the Hebrews doesn’t leave them there, and I don’t want to leave us there either. Look at the last section in verse 9:
9 Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things—things that belong to salvation. 10 For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do. 11 And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, 12 so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.
While there is real spiritual danger out there, we can’t become paralyzed by it either. Because if we lose hope, we will get dragged down, and won’t be able to run the race. And that’s not the point of the warning. The point is to knock us out of our rut, to see with fresh eyes that we belong with Christ, that he knows the good things we’ve done for him and his church and shown his love to the world. There are real promises in Christ that we can take part in and God wants us to have that full assurance that we are with him and he is with us. So the main thing to take away with you this morning is that God wants you to stay the course so you can be with him. It takes work. It takes your attention and your devotion. It takes discernment. But the more you can come to see Jesus as your prize, the more likely you are to attain that prize. So let us build on our foundation and discover new riches in the depth of God’s word, so we can have not just a foundation, but a home together with the Father and the Holy Spirit forever and ever. Amen.