The Book of Hebrews = Disciple-Encouragement Time
Disciples need to be encouraged. We have decided to follow Jesus – and that’s a good start. But then life happens, whether we’re making other plans or not. We need the encouragement of the Scriptures, the stories, the history, the doctrines, the saints, prophets, and disciples of old, and of fellow companions such as we share at KBC. How did they do, though – God’s people in former times? How did they manage to follow on, many of them? Even to their death.
In his New Testament letter to the Hebrew diaspora, Jewish Christians scattered throughout the then-known world because of persecution for their allegiance to Jesus as Messiah, the writer contrasts the perfect, full and final work of their Saviour and ours. God used to work in the past in all these wondrous and diverse ways, he begins. And then he outlines how Jesus got it done: – the Salvation of the world, the fulfillment of all the covenant promises God had made through the years with them. As Paul put it elsewhere, in Christ all the promises of God have their ‘Yes!’
(The Law, we recall, was like an X-ray machine that saw right through people, exposing sins and iniquities— all of the broken places in one’s life, relative to God’s ways, plans and purposes for humanity. But there was still a problem: the law could point out what was wrong and the way things should be, but it couldn’t bring the results, responses and healing necessary, that would put folk back into a right-side-up position with God.)
But then Jesus came, in God’s plan and in the fullness of time, to fulfill all that God through His Law demanded concerning right (and not wrong) living. Jesus, the Son of Man, and our representative, took the curse due to the sons of Adam for breaking it, and guaranteed to God’s People undeserved blessings. What a wonderful exchange, made possible by Jesus’ death. Calvary.
We read again the first 10 chapters of Hebrews and find that there’s so much there—about Jesus and with so much encouragement to trust Him, ‘o’er and o’er’. All the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him, bodily. He’s the perfect Man, the Second Adam, the only One worthy to take up the scrolls of Heaven—God’s eternal plans for this world and the next. He represents us in glory, intercedes for us, loves, cares, and died to bring us Home to God.
Jesus – greater than the angels. God didn’t entrust the Good News to them (well, apart from the messenger to Mary and angels to the shepherds. But mostly, God has given to us His people the happy task of showing and telling the Good News to our neighbours, to our world.
Jesus – greater than Moses, greater than the OT temple with all of its holiness, the holy of holies, the altar of sacrifice where people of faith found cleansing and healing. Greater than the Priests. Indeed, Jesus became both High Priest and Lamb of Sacrifice when He bore out sins in His own body on the Tree. Greater than… so much more…
The movie today is a simple reading of chapter 11 and the beginning of chapter 12 (NIV version) with a choral background — not quite angels… but I tried… :-).
I need this kind of encouragement from God’s Word, as do we all. And so we read…
And so we pray…
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