Act Honorably In All Things

Alpha & Omega Ministries iconAlpha & Omega Ministries

5 views

Comments are disabled.

00:00
Well, it is almost with a level of sorrow that I say, turn with me for the final time to the book of Hebrews.
00:15
Book of Hebrews, chapter 13, the
00:21
Lord giving direction. We will complete our, I don't know if I should call an 80 -sermon series over 6 years a survey.
00:29
I think most people would consider that somewhat of an understatement. Then again, you will notice that at the end of the chapter, the writer himself says in verse 22, for I have written to you briefly.
00:42
And so what the writer himself identifies as a brief exhortation, we have managed to stretch out to a 6 -year study, but still, if you were to sit down with this book, you could read it in a very short period of time.
00:58
So, I would imagine from his perspective, it was brief. But we come to the end of our study of Hebrews.
01:07
Now you might say, well, we still have a few verses to do. Yes, we have verses 18, 19, 20, and 21.
01:14
You may recall, I doubt most of you will, but we briefly touched on the final three verses, specifically beginning in verse 22,
01:25
I appeal to you brothers, bear with my word of exhortation, for I have written to you briefly. You should know that our brother
01:30
Timothy has been released, with whom I shall see you if he comes soon. Greet all your leaders and all the saints.
01:35
Those who come from Italy, send you greetings. Grace be with all of you. We touched on that very briefly only in the context of our consideration of the authorship of the book of Hebrews and the dating of the book of Hebrews.
01:50
And that was a long time ago, I realize that. But it is interesting to note that whoever the author is, they are related in some fashion to Timothy, in the sense that they are traveling companions with Timothy.
02:07
That obviously leaves open someone such as the Apostle Paul, it leaves open
02:13
Luke as the translator of Paul, it leaves open Apollos, it leaves open all sorts of folks as to these particular words.
02:22
They are tantalizing in their information, but they do not tell us anything more than this individual had some type of relationship to those who come from Italy.
02:34
Does that mean that it was written in Italy or that the individual himself had communion with, was traveling with people from Italy?
02:44
These are things we simply cannot know for certain. But I have made the assertion.
02:51
I think it is a pretty much incontrovertible assertion that this book bears all the signs of being written before the destruction of the temple.
02:59
I think many of the statements we have looked at would have been altered and changed had it been written in that period, in the aftermath of the destruction of the nation and the destruction of that city.
03:13
In fact, the entire purpose of writing the epistle would not have existed.
03:20
There would not be anything to go back to because there was not any temple left. There were not any sacrifices left, etc.,
03:26
etc. So, it seems very, very clear that we have a very early period here.
03:31
Of course, Timothy is flourishing in the early 50s. And so, once again,
03:38
I would say that this is probably a mid -50s epistle in that time period and we already looked at that.
03:46
So, we will, in essence, be treating the benediction of verses 20 and 21 as the conclusion of our study.
03:54
But before we get there, we want to have covered everything. And so, we'll begin with verse 18.
04:01
Pray for us, for we are sure that we have a clear conscience, desiring to act honorably in all things.
04:06
I urge you the more earnestly to do this in order that I may be restored to you the sooner. Now may the God of peace, who brought again from the dead our
04:13
Lord Jesus, the great Shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do
04:20
His will, working in us that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ to whom be glory for ever and ever.
04:28
Amen. And so, we have, after the exhortation to obey those who have the rulership over you, to submit to them, to make their job of looking over your souls, one that is one of joy rather than one that is one of sorrow, we then have the exhortation, pray for us, for we are sure that we have a clear conscience, desiring to act honorably in all things.
04:54
Now you would think, pray for us, that we might have a clear conscience would be a little bit easier to understand, but that's not really the point, because when he says, pray for us, he says in verse 19,
05:06
I urge you the more earnestly to do this. What is the do this? To pray for us, in order that I may be restored to you the sooner.
05:13
The author has been detained, undoubtedly, by the Roman authorities, or the
05:20
Roman authorities acting on behalf of the Jewish authorities, as we see with the
05:26
Apostle Paul, whatever it might be, but the exhortation is to pray for us, and that prayer is that they might continue in having ministry, and be restored to the fellowship, and the author can say, we are sure that we have a clear conscience, desiring to act honorably in all things.
05:48
Now, let me tell you something, to be able to say that with integrity, we,
05:54
I think, in our society, are somewhat jaded, especially at this time in the political cycle, because I don't know if you've noticed, but if you stop at a stoplight or stop sign right now, those things have sprouted up on every corner now.
06:15
Those signs with names that generally don't mean anything to most of us, and with the little, even shorter than a tweet, sayings on them, if you can actually ring meaning out of the
06:31
English language all the way down to about five words, that's what you're stuck with in these political signs that are on the street corners, and then you have the 15 second and 30 second commercials on radio, on television, and the fact of the matter is, we all look at those things, and we don't believe a word they're saying.
06:55
The vast majority of us have gotten to the point where we would not buy a used car if the individuals for whom we vote to sit in public office any longer, to be lied to by governmental officials is just the way things are, it's just how the system, broken as it is, works, and so when we hear people talking about having a clear conscience and desiring to act honorably in all things, we hear that all the time.
07:25
Most transparent administration ever, and integrity in governments, and all the rest of that stuff, and it's very easy to then transfer that into the quote -unquote religious realm because do we not hear about charlatans every single day?
07:45
We hear about people who utilize their position of religious authority over others to enrich themselves and to engage in all sorts of horrific behaviors, and so it's really easy to read something like this and just sort of move by it with haste, not really thinking about how rare it is for someone to be able to say these words, but here you have individuals who truly say we are sure that we have a clear conscience.
08:15
Now, what would be one of the ways that you would have a clear conscience? Well, I would submit to you that one of the greatest ways to have a clear conscience is, first of all, as we have in the
08:26
Christian ministry, a recognition that every person who stands before the people of God is a redeemed sinner and is a person who, in leading the prayers of repentance, is engaging in repentance himself, we all recognize that all of our leaders stumble and fall, and they are imperfect, and that's why their authority is primarily vested in the message that they present, not in some kind of personal capacity and personal special holiness that elevates them above and gives them a spirituality that nobody else has.
09:08
That's why we don't have Christian priests and archbishops and cardinals and popes and all the rest of these things.
09:19
We recognize that those are later additions that have nothing to do with the teaching of the
09:24
New Testament itself, and so we recognize that we do not elevate leaders who we were just told in the preceding verse to obey and submit to, but we obey and submit to them as they fulfill their calling to watch over our souls and to present to us the
09:42
Word of God. But we also recognize, as we read these words, that there is a necessity on the part of those who stand before the people of God to do as Paul did.
09:59
When Paul said, I am innocent of the blood of all men, why could he say that?
10:05
Why could he say that? Well, one thing's for certain, the author of this epistle has said some very difficult things in the course of this written sermon.
10:19
Clearly, the author of this epistle has not been trying to garner the approval of people by tickling and itching their ears, by telling them the things they want to hear.
10:33
Instead, he has been very straightforward. He has delivered the truth of God, even when it would be unpopular to do so.
10:43
Paul could say he was innocent of the blood of all men because he had not failed to declare the whole counsel of God to them.
10:54
And I would submit to you that one of the greatest evidences of a ministry that is blessed by God and a person who is worthy of being listened to, is that that person will not shrink back from telling you the things you need to hear.
11:14
And once again, as we even look at just the text of Scripture that we read this evening as a part of our regular
11:22
Old Testament reading, that's not the kind of thing that people in our society want to hear anymore.
11:30
They don't want to hear about a time when God struck down over 14 ,000 people.
11:37
I'll never worship a God like that. Well, then you'll never worship God. Because that's what
11:43
He did. And if you don't understand the holiness that was
11:48
His demonstrating that, if you don't understand how He was working the lives of Moses and Aaron and causing them to be intercessors and conforming them to function the way that He would have them to function.
11:59
If you don't see all of that, then you're making a God in your own image. Stop saying that you're trying to worship
12:06
God because you're not. You want to worship a God who looks like you and acts like you.
12:12
That's not the God of the Bible. That's not the God Jesus presented to us. And so, the author can say, we have a clear conscience because the author has delivered the message with clarity and forthrightness and has not sought to sugarcoat it, has not sought to get people to like him because of the way that he presents things, desiring to act honorably in all things, is the next phrase.
12:48
And certainly, well, I tell you, I hope I get to the benediction tonight. Maybe we'll be finishing up next week,
12:55
I don't know. But I'll try to be brief. There's just so much to be said here, folks, because, once again, if you're sitting in this place, it's because you already recognize there's a lot of places you could be sitting that would not address these issues tonight, that would seek to make you feel warm and fuzzy as you walk out the back door, maybe especially as the plate is being passed.
13:22
But that's not what we do here because there are times when the Word of God doesn't make you feel warm and fuzzy.
13:29
It exposes you and convicts you and makes you face difficult and hard things.
13:36
And one of those difficult and hard things is the fact that we live in a day where many people who call themselves
13:42
Christians have decided that, well, you know what, the worship of God needs to be defined by our culture today.
13:52
And so we are going to entertain and we are going to stroke the emotions and we are going to minimize certain terms and certain concepts.
14:08
I have sat in classes where I've had people teaching other people that what we need to do to be successful today is there are certain words that we avoid because they just don't meet the needs of our society.
14:23
Words like sin and wrath and judgment and repentance. And I submit to you that to act honorably in all things includes honoring
14:35
God and His Gospel and the proclamation of His truth. Yes, it means acting honorably in dealing with the finances of the church.
14:47
We all have that business meeting every year. Oh, how exciting it is. You can pretty much predict exactly how it's going to go.
14:58
And we sit up there and we go through all the numbers and it's real exciting. But you know, we're awfully transparent.
15:05
It's so clear and oh, how many times there has been scandal brought upon the church because those things weren't transparent and because people were profiting off of the
15:16
Gospel in an improper way. But to have a clear conscience, desiring to act honorably in all things, fundamentally means that these servants of Christ were focused upon the one mission that was theirs.
15:33
And that was the clear and inalterable proclamation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
15:38
And they were giving their lives to that end. And no one could charge them with anything else.
15:46
And how much more clear would be the testimony of the church in this land if that could be said of all those churches that name the name of Christ?
15:56
And yet we know that that is not the case. And so the author has given his exhortations.
16:04
They have been broad, they have touched on many, many aspects of our lives.
16:11
But he finally begins to draw to a conclusion this last portion of this beautiful text.
16:21
And it's interesting that many people will memorize verses 20 and 21 because it makes for a great benediction.
16:27
It is a benediction. It's meant to be a statement of blessing upon the people of God.
16:33
It's perfect to use in that way. But I think it may lose some of its amazing scope and power when you don't see it as coming at the end of what we have now spent six years studying together.
16:54
Think of the themes that the author draws together in these words as we consider them for the last time together.
17:02
Now, may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with every good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.
17:19
Amen. Now, as you consider these words, you hear echoes of some of the main themes that we've already seen.
17:29
We see, for example, the resurrection and we see the
17:36
Father primarily described as the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus.
17:43
And so you have the resurrection. You have that great act that is enunciated in the text.
17:50
And that's how Jesus comes to be in the presence of the Father, to be our intercessor. We have the blood of the eternal covenant.
17:59
And we have already seen the presentation of the blood by the high priest in the holy place.
18:07
He is the high priest. He is also the sacrifice. It is his own blood that he presents. It has so much greater efficacy than the blood of goats and bulls.
18:18
But here it's called the eternal covenant. It takes us back into eternity itself, into that recognition that Father, Son, and Spirit covenanted together to bring about this very result, the eternal covenant of redemption itself.
18:33
And then, just as we have seen in the rest of the epistle, that great theological truth then becomes the foundation for the everyday living out of the
18:43
Christian life, the glory of God, equipping you with every good thing that you may do his will.
18:50
We certainly heard that kind of language from the apostle Paul, where we are thoroughly equipped by the word of God to do what
18:57
God asks us to do, to accomplish his purpose in our lives. Working in us that which is pleasing his sight.
19:05
This is really, really Pauline language at this point, because the idea of the word of God working in us, the
19:14
Spirit of God working in us, that ongoing presence of the Spirit in our lives that is rooting us and grounding us and causing us to grow and then resulting in the bringing forth of fruit.
19:27
We've heard all of that before. That which is pleasing in his sight. Again, Paul talks about the fact that I may be pleasing, that we may be pleasing in God's sight, that God may be pleased in us through Jesus Christ.
19:39
We see all of these categories, but you'll notice that I skipped over one.
19:47
I skipped over one. Because I had never thought about what
19:52
I encountered as I was preparing for this evening. You've heard, like I said, you've heard this benediction used.
20:02
But it had never struck me as odd that this phrase occurs in it.
20:08
Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep.
20:17
Remember how many times the writer referred to Jesus as shepherd and us as sheep?
20:23
No, you don't. Because he never did. It's the only place it appears in the book of Hebrews.
20:32
Shepherd, sheep, only place. You didn't notice it because it fits so well with what we already know.
20:41
But what do we already know? Where does that come from? That's John. That's John chapter 10.
20:49
Especially, particularly, I am the good shepherd and the sheep of God. But wait a minute.
20:57
Think with me for a moment. We've already established this is well pre -70, right?
21:04
This is written before the destruction of the temple. And the vast majority of scholarship, the vast majority of conservative scholarship would date the
21:14
Gospel of John after that time. There are some, just a few, that might put
21:20
John pre -70. But the vast majority would put him much later. So all of a sudden we have this phraseology, the great shepherd of the sheep, just pops in and we don't notice it because we are hearing it with completed canon of the
21:45
New Testament ears. So where does it come from? I would actually agree that John has not written his
21:54
Gospel when these words are written. I would agree with that. So where does it come from?
22:00
Well, the easy answer is, well, you know, it's all inspired. So God, I understand that.
22:09
But the terminology, let's put it this way. If you're going to use something as a benediction, you're not going to stick stuff in the benediction that is not easily understood and familiar to the people that you want to hear the benediction and benefit from the benediction.
22:29
I mean, think of any benediction you've ever heard. Do you stick stuff in there that no one understands what in the world it's talking about?
22:36
Do you stick stuff in there that you have to stop and go, OK, let me explain what I'm saying? No, benedictions to function well need to be understood by the people to whom you're announcing them.
22:49
And so this idea of Jesus as the great shepherd of the sheep is taken as a given by the author, is something that he recognizes his audience is already fully conversant with and it's going to communicate to them exactly what he wants it to communicate to them.
23:09
And he doesn't have to have already explained all of this to them.
23:16
So what does any of this mean? Why some of you are sitting here going, OK, what's the point?
23:22
He'll get there eventually. Sometimes he's a little roundabout and it takes him a little while. But he's leading up to something here,
23:28
I can tell. And he thinks it's important. I'm not sure if I'm going to think it's important, but let's find out.
23:34
Well, for me, one of the things that's important here is you need to understand that in modern scholarship, when you quote from the
23:44
Gospel of John, a lot of modern scholars like sort of go, yeah, that's there.
23:55
But, you know, the idea that John's really historically relevant, that this really has anything to do with what
24:04
Jesus ever said, you know, this is John's contemplation on what
24:11
Jesus meant. If you really want Jesus, you take Matthew, Mark and Luke, pretty much just Mark, really.
24:19
But John, and yet the shepherd and the sheep, that's
24:25
John. That's central to John. And here it is decades before John.
24:34
And it's not the author making this up. It's the author recognizing that it's already the common possession of all the people.
24:43
Because he puts it into a benediction. And he doesn't even have to give second thought to them understanding what it's saying.
24:52
What does that show me? It shows me that the very core of the proclamation we find in John was already the common possession of the people before John puts it down.
25:04
It's already there. It's already something that the Christian people understood. Jesus is the great shepherd of the sheep.
25:12
The author doesn't have to explain it because it's already the possession of God's people. And so I think that's highly significant.
25:21
And I think it also reminds us that even when we're accustomed to hearing something, we need to try to hear it in the context in which it was originally written.
25:32
I'm not saying that it's wrong to care with an entire New Testament mind.
25:39
But even then, sometimes I think we miss some significant evidences of the consistency and even the history of the
25:50
New Testament text if we don't take the time to step back and go, hey, where did that phraseology come from?
25:58
I mean, covenant and blood and all the rest. That's, we've been reading that for a long time now.
26:05
But where did that come from? Oh, it's already the common possession of the people of God. And so that struck me.
26:13
That struck me as I read through this. And so once again, just a few thoughts on this benediction.
26:21
The God of peace. God of peace. Where have we heard that language before?
26:27
Romans 5, 1. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
26:33
Lord Jesus Christ. Peace, especially in the book of Hebrews, the
26:39
Hebrew background to that, shalom. There is no shalom in Israel right now, not just because Israel is receiving rocket fire from Hamas and is returning that fire with fighters and so on and so forth.
26:55
That's easy to see that there is no shalom right now. But the day before that started, there still wasn't any shalom in Israel because there were armies and there were rockets and there were walls and there were tensions.
27:10
Shalom is a positive wellness of relationship. And so to describe
27:16
God as the God of peace is both a factual statement that He is the one who establishes peace between us and Him.
27:25
We do not establish it. He does not simply make a way possible and then we do it. He is the one who establishes peace and He has done that in and through Jesus Christ in Him alone.
27:36
So much for the pluralism of the world today. It also has eschatological elements to it in that we recognize there continues to be conflict in the world.
27:47
There continues to be those final peace has not been brought into existence yet, but God will bring that into existence in the future.
27:58
So it's the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus. Here the
28:04
Father in particular, His role in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
28:09
He is the one who has received the sacrifice and He demonstrates His acceptance of the sacrifice by raising
28:16
Jesus Christ from the dead who is described as the great shepherd of the sheep, the people of God.
28:23
He is our great shepherd. He knows us. He calls us by name. All of those truths of John chapter 10 brought into our thinking here in one very brief reference to Jesus as the great shepherd of the sheep who has been brought back to life by the
28:39
Father. And He does so by the blood of the eternal covenant.
28:45
That eternal covenant, Father, Son, and Spirit. The very thing that the apostate in chapter 10, remember the great wrath of God that comes upon the person who knowing what
29:03
Christ has done would turn his back and go back to the old sacrifices and hence say that the blood of Jesus Christ was no more special than that bull, than that goat, that calf that has been sacrificed.
29:20
Instead, the blood of the eternal covenant, which means, unlike a person
29:25
I debated a few weeks ago who thinks the cross was a contingency plan, that God didn't know whether He was going to have to do this or not, that the blood of the eternal covenant means that it was
29:36
God's purpose. It was the triune God's purpose from the very beginning itself to bring about the conclusion of all things by wrapping all things up in Jesus Christ.
29:51
This was His intention from the beginning. That God of peace, the desire is that He equip you with everything good that you may do
30:02
His will. That doesn't necessarily mean physical things. If there is a need for it,
30:07
God can certainly provide it. But the point is the equipping of you in such a way that you would be able to do
30:15
His will. Sometimes that will includes suffering. Sometimes that will includes what we're seeing in our brothers and sisters in the expulsion of Christianity from Iraq and the suffering that has been theirs.
30:33
If it is God's will, He will provide the grace and the strength to even endure that and to do
30:40
His will. Working in us that which is pleasing in His sight. It must be.
30:46
It must be our daily prayer. Lord, work in me that which is pleasing in Your sight.
30:53
Not which is pleasing in my sight. And really the secret, as I've said so many times before, to powerful prayer in our lives is when we align our will with God's will.
31:07
Not when we align God's will with our will. That's the huge error today that we see in so much popular
31:15
Christianity is to somehow align God's will with our will.
31:21
No. The great power of prayer is seen when our will is aligned with God's will so that what is pleasing in His sight is what is pleasing in our sight.
31:35
How backwards so many have it when they try to present the idea that what we need to do is to align
31:46
God with our desires. No, no, no. It is the destruction of our sinful desires and the growth and grace that we might understand what is pleasing in His sight.
31:59
When we then become aligned with the will of God, then we understand how it is that whatsoever we ask in prayer, believing, we shall receive.
32:10
Because what we're asking for is what is pleasing in His sight rather than what is pleasing in our sight.
32:17
And the world cannot begin to understand that. The world cannot begin to understand what that means.
32:27
And so this equipping of us is also through Jesus Christ.
32:34
No place for pluralism. It's absolutely exclusivism. This is how
32:39
God has chosen to work. This is the testimony that He has given of Himself. It is in and through Jesus, the
32:46
Messiah. Remember, that's not Jesus' last name. It is a title.
32:53
It is a description of His office. He is the Mashiach, the Messiah. And that has always, as we've pointed out so many times before, special prominence and emphasis here in the book of Hebrews.
33:05
That which is pleasing in sight through Jesus Christ to whom? Very clearly, to Jesus, the
33:12
Messiah, whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
33:18
So, all of this action that God has undertaken in our salvation, in our sanctification, in our doing that which is pleasing in God's sight, in fulfilling
33:30
His will, all through Jesus Christ is to the praise of Jesus Christ.
33:36
The praise of God. It's the same terminology, the same idea we find in Philippians 2, that when every knee bows and every tongue confesses that this is not a division of glory, to where you've got one
33:49
God over here getting glory at the expense of another. Instead, since this is all the work of the triune
33:57
God, it is simply God who is glorified. It is His glorious grace that is glorified in the entire
34:06
Gospel of Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.
34:11
We will never be able to complete, finish, exhaust the enunciation of worship and thanksgiving to God for what
34:23
He has done for us in Christ Jesus. I will never forget how many times
34:28
I've had young Mormon men out at the temple come up to me and say, so you think we're just going to be floating around on clouds plucking harps for all of eternity?
34:39
And they just can't begin to understand the idea that to be absorbed in the worship and praise of the triune
34:47
God will be the very fulfillment of our desires. We can't begin to contemplate what that's going to mean.
34:55
We can't begin to contemplate the closeness of the union of the elect with their
35:01
Savior in eternity to come. I don't think the language, any language of man could even begin to express these things.
35:12
But we are told that we will be worshiping, and we will be praising, and we will be honoring, and we will be glorifying forever and ever.
35:24
Whatever our experience of time is going to be like, whatever that means, there will be no exhaustion of the giving of thanks and praise to God, which means, despite the great treasures of the written
35:40
Word of God, I assure you, there is so much more that we will learn in His presence that right now we could not even begin to give expression.
35:53
If any of us are so foolish as to think that we've got it all figured out and that there can't be anything more, then we really, really don't understand how awesome, how beyond our finite fallen comprehension is going to be our relationship with our
36:14
God in eternity to come. And it's a relationship that Adam in the unfallen state could not have known.
36:24
The gift is greater than the trespass. Adam was a perfect creature, but he was not a redeemed creature who was united to a
36:34
Savior who had actually taken on human flesh and given his life. That demonstration of the necessity of atonement, and hence the riches of His grace and the depth of His holiness had to be illustrated, demonstrated across the
36:56
Calvary. I don't know about you, but I understand why
37:04
Paul in Romans chapter 11 just has to stop and say, Oh, the riches of the wisdom of God.
37:12
We can only go so far. There is a wall that God has built, and part of it's just simply due to the fact that we as fallen human beings, we can only come to embrace so much.
37:28
But I know as I come to this benediction, and as I think back over the many, many, many hours of study that has been a part of this series on Hebrews, I also realize this is the first book of the
37:47
Bible that I've preached through in this church. I've preached lots of sermons, but this is the first book of the
37:54
Bible that I've actually completed. And of course, I picked just one of the easiest ones in the
38:00
New Testament. But my hope at the beginning, and my hope that I hope is fulfilled here at the end, is that in my estimation,
38:13
I've said many times, this book seems to be a closed book to many evangelicals in our land.
38:21
And we've explained why, because of it's deep debt to the Old Testament, it's assumption that every person reading it knows the
38:30
Old Testament, knows the Old Testament backgrounds, and that's just not the case. You may remember that one of the sermons we did in this series, we had to go back and just spent the whole sermon on the
38:42
Levitical offerings, so we could have the proper background to be able to understand what was being said in the book of Hebrews.
38:49
My hope is that unlike so many in our land today, now after these six years, you can also look at the book of Hebrews, and you're not afraid of it any longer.
39:05
You understand what it's intention was, and certainly for me, this study has taken this book up into the very top echelons of the books of the
39:20
New Testament, as far as my deep appreciation, especially for the fact that my hope for everyone in this congregation, is that if anyone were to come to you and ask about the atoning work of Christ, the priesthood of Christ, the necessity of Calvary, what does it mean that Christ is my intercessor as a believer?
39:46
That the first thing you'll think of is to go to Hebrews, because as far as I can see, in enunciating those issues, this is the very pinnacle of the
39:59
New Testament revelation. Oh, we see beautiful things in Romans. We see beautiful things in Acts and in Galatians, but as far as an extended argument and explication of the
40:13
Old Testament Scriptures to explain to us why was it necessary to have the cross?
40:19
What's the nature of Christ's high priestly work? Where else can we go?
40:26
And if this book remains closed in the minds of believers, how much more shallow must be the proclamation they make of the cross?
40:39
I truly hope that as we have gone through this series, you have come to love this book, to appreciate it, to understand it, but much more so to have an ever deeper understanding of the work of Jesus Christ, the union of the
40:59
Father and the Son and the Spirit in accomplishing the redemption of God's people. And the fact that the reason you can have peace with God, the reason you can call
41:08
God the God of peace, is because you know that there is one who has entered in to that holiest place, not a tabernacle made with hands, not a mere shadow of the reality, but into heaven itself and he has entered in, in your place.
41:31
That you have a firm anchor that goes within the veil, that you have an intercessor and his work has been accepted before the
41:41
Father in your place. And that and that alone is the ground of your peace with God.
41:49
If that does not cause your heart to break forth in praise, I don't know what possibly could.
41:56
We don't got a band. We don't even have a pianist tonight. The organ's been dead for decades.
42:06
So we can't get any music going to get the beat going to get you excited.
42:12
We don't do that around here. We trust that the think and the things we've just thought of will provide the greatest and long -lasting joy to the regenerate heart that anything ever could.
42:30
Let's close our time Lord. Oh great
42:38
God of peace who did indeed, by the blood of the eternal covenant, bring up again from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep, our
42:46
Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for the book of Hebrews. We thank you for our great high priest.
42:55
We thank you for a once for all sacrifice. And as you encourage the saints of old not to go back to the old ways because there was nothing to go back to.
43:06
Oh how we have been encouraged, been encouraged to recognize that just as that message was true back then, it remains true to us today.
43:19
Thank you Lord for your faithfulness over these years. We think of all the trials and tribulations we've all gone through and yet we've been able to come here and to consider these truths.
43:33
May we never stop reading, may we never stop growing in our understanding of the perfection, the saviorhood, the high priesthood, the prophethood, the godhood of our
43:46
Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. May we always consider precious this revelation may it truly conform us ever closer to the image of Jesus Christ.