Exploring My Strange Bible - Book of Hebrews Part 6 - Let Us Draw Near

Episode Date: January 8, 2018

The second half of Hebrews Chapter 10 is one of the stiffest and most challenging warnings that the pastor who wrote the letter gave to this early Christian community. Why doe the author get so intense? Why does this pastor really want the people in this early church community to examine their very motives for following Jesus? What’s up with these challenges? Why is there risk involved in the adventure of following Jesus? More in this episode…

All right, well, in this episode, we're going to continue the series we've been doing exploring the New Testament letter to the Hebrews. These were lectures and teachings I gave a number of years ago when I served as a pastor at Door of Hope Church. And in this teaching, we're going to explore Hebrews chapter 10, the second half of the chapter, which is one of the stiffest and most challenging warnings the pastor who wrote the letter gives to this early Christian community. The letter to the Hebrews is known for having some of the most kind of intimidating challenges, pastoral challenges and calls to examine yourself and your faith and your life, and this is one of them. And so we're just going to go right towards it. Why does the author get so intense?

Why does this pastor really want the people in this early church community to examine their very motives for following Jesus and examining their hearts as to whether they're actually loyal to him and showing faith towards him? So what's up with these kinds of challenges? If the gospel is the good news of God's grace, shouldn't that be good news? Why is it that there has to be this kind of intimidating, really intense, what some people might hear as bad news, that the stakes are high and that there's

real risk involved in this adventure of following Jesus? So how do we move towards this? We're just going to go right into it in Hebrews chapter 10. And as I explored these, these are called the warning passages in Hebrews. Personally, I was both deeply challenged, but also found myself with a renewed sense of God's grace and covenant promises to me and to our world. So I hope that's what you can discover here too. So let's dive in. Hebrews chapter 10, and we'll learn together. Today's an important kind of transition in our moving through the book of Hebrews.

The passage we're looking at today is the last half of chapter 10. It starts in verse 19 and goes towards the end. And this section of Hebrews, I kind of think of it as like the hinge. I think of Hebrews as like a big swinging door. And this passage we're in today is like the hinge on which the great door swings. And so for like the last six weeks, starting when we jumped into chapter five, the author introduced us to this whole area of exploring the character and the ministry of Jesus.

Jesus as our priest, as our high priest. Jesus as the sacrifice, the sacrificial lamb. Jesus is the one who goes into the holy space and inaugurates the new covenant and so on. It's all priestly stuff going on here. And he's going to bring that to a close in the text we're at today. And it's sort of like we're saying, if in fact Jesus has done this for us, if he's our priest, if he's our stand-in, right? We explored this. If he is the one who comes to do for us what we can't do for ourselves,

we're too broken, we're too compromised as human beings to get ourselves out of the mess that we're in, together and before God. If Jesus is, in fact, the priest and the offering, he's the one who makes the offering and he is the offering himself. And in his death, he absorbs the evil and the sin and the debt and just the mess that we all heap up throughout our lives and that we make in our world. If that's really what he's done for us, how then should we respond? Should we live? The door is going to swing. What Jesus has done, who he is, what's an appropriate response to this reality of Jesus? And the passage that we're looking at today is the hinge, moving us from understanding who Jesus is to what we ought to

be doing about it. That's the passage we're looking at today. And before we dive in, there's a number of pieces going on here, and I kind of want to bring some clarity and give us some handles first that'll kind of help us give us categories as we go through. So I want to help us get a handle on this hinge text. I want to show you a picture of a guy that is seemingly unrelated to Hebrews 10, and he probably never knew that he would be brought up in a sermon about Hebrews 10, but whatever. He's been dead for a long time, so he can't do anything about it. So his name's Edward Jenner right there. I just got the wall of fan right there, so I don't know if that was funny or not. I thought it was funny. So Edward Jenner, right there. He's, I just got the wall of fan right there.

So I don't know if that was funny or not. I thought it was funny. So Edward Jenner, Edward Jenner. He was a British doctor and surgeon. He lived obviously late 17, early 1800s. Anyone heard of Edward Jenner before? There was one, hey, all right. You should get a lollipop or something.

I don't know. I don't have one. So I guess you don't get one, but You should get a lollipop or something. I don't know. I don't have one. So I guess you don't get one, but you should get one. So he's, yeah, he was a very prominent British surgeon and doctor. He kind of what he's most known for, his legacy to medical history and so on, is that he innovated the vaccine for the smallpox virus. So smallpox, you may, you know, it was declared eradicated in 1979, so probably most of us has not had it or don't really know anybody who's had it.

It was a deadly form of something more similar that's more still widespread now, like the chickenpox or something like that. So you get the blisters and the skin rash and so on, but it was accompanied by deadly fever. And so children, elderly, it was often a death sentence if you get smallpox. In the last decades of the 1700s, when Jenner started working on a solution to it or finding a vaccine to it. Smallpox claimed about half a million people's lives in Western Europe in those late decades of the 1700s. And so Jenner made it his mission to find a solution to this. And so he started going down a trail of research that was kind of well known that people who

grew up on dairy farms or worked around cows constantly would get a form of the pox, not smallpox. It was a different form, less intense. They got it from the cows. It was called cowpox. Clever. So cowpox. And cowpox, the same thing, rash, fever,

blisters on your skin, that kind of thing, but it was way less deadly. People hardly ever died of cowpox. And so what they noticed was people who lived and worked on dairy farms had cowpox, after that experience, were immune to the smallpox virus. And so Jenner kind of started following this line of research. And so he began to ask, what if we were to inject different forms of the cowpox virus into perfectly healthy people, but who don't live and work around cows? And maybe they too could become immune to the smallpox virus. And so the first person who ever got like a cow disease injected into them, it was an eight-year-old boy. It was the son of Edward

Jenner's gardener, for goodness sakes. So I don't know how he got permission for that. I don't know, good figure. He lost a bet or something. But there you go. So he injected cowpox into this eight-year-old boy. He got terribly sick, of course. Cowpox is no picnic. But he got better after that, and he never got the smallpox. And Edward Jenner began to test it more widely and so on, and he struck gold. This was a solution to the smallpox epidemic. And so he published his results, published his research, and he began to administer what we now, it's a really familiar, common practice now, like vaccines, immunization and so on. And so, but this was a newer concept.

And if you think about it, this was actually very counterintuitive for many people in 1700s Western Europe. You inject a cow disease into your body, and this is a good thing. This is a good thing. It will make you better to get sick from a cow disease. Like, that's very counterintuitive. And so what's happened is fascinating, is that when Jenner began to publish his results and began to mass-produce, you know,

cowpox vaccines and spread them and so on, there was huge backlash in Western European culture. And people began to write terrible things about him or pretended that he was part of a conspiracy to like poison the whole populace and so on. It's because it's very hard to understand this idea. You need to get very sick so that you can be healthy with a cow disease for all of us.

What on earth? And so they formed a coalition against Jenner called the Anti-Vaccine Society. And they would like spread, well, you'll see. So they would say things about him. So they published this cartoon among their literature. And this is a cartoon about Jenner. And you can see, I don't know if you can read the little thing down here. It's called The Cowpox or the Wonderful Effects of the New Inoculation, printed by the publication of the Anti-Vaccine

Society. And so here's Jenner administering the cowpox vaccine. And then on the right here are all the people that he's given it to. And what's happening to them? Right, they're sprouting mutant cows out of their skin. That's what's happening, right? So what are they trying to do here? Obviously, obviously, they're trying to scare people.

People misunderstood what Jenner was doing. It didn't make sense. It's not intuitive. A cow disease into my body to make me better? That makes no sense at all. And people were afraid and terribly scared, terribly scared about this remedy, this thing that can actually make them better and help them. And so the tragic irony is that smallpox was not declared eradicated from the planet until

like 30 years ago. It took 200 years for this disease to be eradicated, even though the remedy already existed. Anybody? Anybody? Come on. And so what's left for people who reject the very thing that is designed to help them and to save them? Well, if they reject, if they mock, if they want nothing to do with it, then there's consequences. There's consequences.

How many of us have ears? You should listen to the story of Edward Jenner. There are a great many things here that help us get into the world of Hebrews. Hebrews chapter 10. Hebrews chapter 10. Why don't we? Verse 19. therefore brothers since we have confidence to enter

the holy places by the blood of Jesus by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain that is through his flesh and since we have a great high priest

over the house of God okay stop real quick here. So this is a terrible place to stop. I realize that. Mid-sentence, bad grammar to stop in the middle. But I just want to want to help us see something. What's he doing right here? He's saying, since, since, since. He's building on a whole body of things that you already know. If you've been following through this series so far on Hebrews or reading through it and so on, what he just said in those two verses, verses 19 and 20,

there's nothing new there. There's no news for you there. Everything he said here, he's already said in chapters 5 through 10. Chapters 5 through 10 is establishing the fact that Jesus is our great high priest, that Jesus is the priest making an offering, and that paradoxically he is himself the offering. And so just like Israel's priests could on one day of the year go into the holiest, most sacred space behind the curtain in the temple

to go into the personal presence of the holy, just creator God. And the whole exposition of the meaning of the cross is that by his blood, by the death of Jesus, he's taken that sin and selfishness and evil into himself on the cross, and he opens the curtain of the most holy space so that who gets to go in? So that those who extend their hands and grab a hold of Jesus and faith and trust can waltz in to the holiest space, waltz into the presence of God. Now you already know this if you read chapters 5 through 10.

There's no news here. So we're coming on the hinge here. He says, since we developed all of that in chapters 5 through 10, how should we respond? And that's an issue in the rest of the book. It's challenge. You're like, wait, I thought the book of Hebrews has been very challenging already. Well, it's going to get more challenging, because that's what the last four chapters of the book are designed to do. How then should we live in light of this priest and what he's done for us? And so since we have this high priest, since he's done this, he has three statements, three responses right here.

Verse 22, 23, 24. Look, they all begin with the words, let us. Let's unpack these real quick. What's a proper response to the fact that a remedy has been made available to diseased, broken, compromised humans. What's a proper response? Verse 22. Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. There's a whole

bunch of cool things going on here. This phrase, draw near, if you've read the Old Testament scriptures at any length, like you read the book of Psalms, when the people of Israel were summoned to worship at the temple, the phrase that they use, let us draw near. This is relational language about coming into the personal, intimate presence of the one true God. And so the irony, of course, the shocking news, it's not so shocking to us, I don't hope, but to first century Jewish, people would be shocking that the curtain and the temple in Jerusalem are now dispensable, and that Jesus has, in fact, opened up to any who trust in him to waltz right in to God's personal presence. Individually, corporately, just come on in.

He says, let us draw near. And we do that by venturing in faith on the death and the resurrection of Jesus for us. Look at the language he uses here. As we draw near, our hearts are sprinkled clean, our bodies washed with pure water. Here he's alluding to baptism, Christian baptism, which is the ancient sacred symbol, this experience in giving my allegiance to Jesus, I get dunked in the water, right? And is this some sort of magic ritual or something like that?

No, no, no. The early Christians were very clear. The New Testament's very clear. This is a sacred, symbolic experience of being washed with water. And what is that symbol pointing to? It's pointing to the reality that my heart has been cleansed through the blood of Jesus. It's been sprinkled.

Your heart's been sprinkled. And again, this is language of like the animal sacrifice and so on. So like the priest would slaughter an animal and sprinkle blood on stuff, and then it's declared clean. So I don't know if you like that idea of like you get sprinkled with blood,

but that's the imagery here. It's pronounced clean. That's what baptism points to. He says, remember your baptism. It points to you, this public confession of faith that by trusting in Jesus, I recognize, even though I don't feel like my heart's very clean, It's declared clean because of the death of Jesus for me. And what that experience does is it opens up this reality of drawing near. One of my absolute highlight of my life right now is when I get home at the end of the day, and I get home, and I start calling my little son's name. He's just turned one, little Roman. And he can't, he's taking his first steps,

but he crawls by a little spider. He's so great. He's so quick too. He's super agile. And so I get home, I start calling his name and I just hear this little, can you hear that? I don't know. I guess that doesn't work.

So it's just a little pitter patter of like, cause he's on all fours. So it's all four, like this. And he just comes, you know what I mean? It's just one of thoseitter-patter of like, because he's on all fours. So it's all four, like this. And he just comes. You know what I mean? It's just one of those moments where you're just like, this is what life's about right here. And, you know, and so I take him up. He comes right into my arms.

He draws near. That's the idea. And I want him to draw near. And this is the language underneath what the author of Hebrews is saying. In the cross, God's, he's taken care of what separated us, and his arms are extended to us in the cross. The remedy is made available. Now, of course, the remedy doesn't do you any good if you just sit on the couch. Well, you have to get up and engage.

You have to respond and come into the arms that are extended. The cross are the outstretched arms of God. That's what the cross is. Beckoning us to come near. But you have to personally engage and experience it, or else it does you no good. It does you no good. That's the first proper response.

What's the second? It's bound up with it. Verse 23. He says, Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering because the one who promised is faithful. We need to hold fast to the confession. Now, the word confession in English, I don't know what you think of when you hear it. I think most of us think confession, I'm saying I'm sorry for something, right? That's what we think of when we hear the word confession. That's not what it means

here. It means like an acknowledgement of our hope. This is kind of a common phrase in the New Testament, the confession of our faith. It means I acknowledge the content of what I believe and what I'm trusting in. And so the confession of our hope is like the truth and the story of the gospel. It's the story of the scriptures that reveal what God is up to in the world. It reveals who we are and who God is and what he's doing and what he's up to in Jesus and so on. That's the confession of our hope. And he says you have to hold fast to it. A proper response is to draw near personally into God's presence and then hold fast to the story of how God has redeemed and rescued our world and those who turn to him in faith. You need to hold on to

it because that's keeping your faith in that story, growing in my knowledge of my confession of hope, growing my understanding of the gospel and in the story of the scriptures, that's what's going to constantly remind myself and help me draw near to God personally on a regular basis. These two feed into each other here. And I think, obviously, the reason he has to tell us to hold on, hold fast to the confession is because it's slippery and it's hard to hold on to. Anybody? I don't know. Anybody? Yeah? It's hard. And it's hard for lots of different reasons. I mean, particularly, I mean, the gospel is strange. I don't know if this has struck you recently, you know. But you, so a Jewish prophet, 2,000 years ago, he claims to be the Messiah, the Son of God, but yet he addresses God as his Father, yet he claims to be one with God. Actually,

the Creator God become human, and then he's executed by the Romans. And then somehow this has everything to do with everybody who's ever lived. Come on. That's weird. That's weird. That's not intuitive. I would have never thought it would work out that way. That's as counterintuitive as saying you need to inject cow disease into your body to get better. You know what I'm saying? What? It doesn't make any sense at all. But then truth is actually stranger than fiction in this case. And so holding fast to the confession of the gospel, it's this surprising story of God's grace and how he has accomplished redemption in our world, and you have to hold on to it. It's the means by which we draw near personally into God's intimate presence, growing in my knowledge and understanding of the gospel, helping me understand it's not like

myths and fairy tales. These are events that happen in real places and real people in real times, and this is of cosmic significance. Hold on. Hold on. That's a proper response. What Jesus has done for us, draw near and hold fast. That's a proper response. It's bound up with the third response here, verse 24.

He says, And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and to good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but rather encouraging each other, and all the more as we see the day drawing near. We intentionally meet together to consider how we can provoke each other, stir each other up, to live out our allegiance to Jesus. That's what he's getting at here. It's not just going to happen that you hold fast to the gospel and draw near automatically.

You need spaces and times and patterns and rhythms in our lives where we come together, because there's a million other stories out there of like how to make things right in the world or how to make your life better. And the gospel is in competition with all of those. And so prioritizing the coming together with other people around this story, this confession of our hope, and allowing it to challenge us, challenge how we live, how we behave, and the choices that we make. That's what he's getting at here. That's a proper response to who Jesus is and what Jesus has done. Do you see how all three of these, they're kind of like a little three-sided diamond or something. I don't,

diamonds have a lot more sides than three, don't they? That's bad. I just thought that went up. So they have like a million, what, a hundred or whatever. So I don't know, but think of like a three-sided gem or something like that, right? And so each one of these is letting us into the same reality at the center, which is here's Jesus at the center. Here are these ways that you hold on to him. You draw near personal practices of coming into the presence of the living God. Anywhere you are, anytime, anyplace, the curtains open because of Jesus. Holding fast to our confession of faith, learning, growing in my knowledge of the gospel and of the scriptures, and doing it together as we gather and challenge each other to follow Jesus more consistently.

Do you see how all these work together here? This is the proper response to who our priest is and what our priest has done for us. I will say, verse 24, this is a shameless plug here, but this is one of our core values, one of our pillars here at Door of Hope. Our second pillar is life together, following Jesus in community. We believe firmly that the New Testament is very clear. There are no free agents in the kingdom of God. To be someone who's drawing near and holding fast is to be someone who's vitally plugged into a local community of believers. I'm engaging intentionally and so on. And so, you know, the large gathering can accomplish this to some degree, especially if you're an extrovert.

But just so you know, we have like our home groups, our home communities. What do we call them? Community groups. That's what we call them here. So they took a break for the summer. They're going to be starting up again in just one more month. And it's more groups than we've ever had before, so we're trying to keep it organized or whatever. But you're going to be hearing more about that in the weeks to come. It's gathering in homes during the week all around the city. Come around the scriptures. Come around a meal, prayer, and encouragement to each other.

It's just one way. It's about intentional gathering. It's not just like hanging out with your friends who are also Christians and that counts. That's good to hang out with your friends who are also Christians. But do you see anything like random here about this response in verse 24? This is very intentional, coming together for the purpose of growing, challenging each other. That's what we need to be doing here as a community, a community of Jesus. So all of these three, this is who Jesus is, this is our response.

Let us draw near, let us hold fast, let's keep gathering together so we can challenge each other to follow Jesus. Now, as we move on through the rest of the passage, the story of Edward Jenner, it opened up this tragedy, didn't it? The remedy has been researched, accomplished, it's made public, but there are some, there are always some,

who mock and who reject and who don't respond. He calls them to respond because it's not a natural inclination, but when there would be some who won't respond, who might even antagonize. That's what happened in the story of Edward Jenner. That's what was happening in this church community. All throughout the sermon, this written sermon that is Hebrews,

we've come across these passages where he stops what he's doing and he just addresses because he knows these people. He knows them closely. He knows they're all over the map spiritually and that some are on the verge of walking away from Jesus altogether. And so he doesn't pull any punches. He just moves right towards people in that scenario. Let's keep reading. Verse 26. He says, for if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth,

there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but rather a fearful expectation of judgment and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. How you guys doing? How many of you liked the first paragraph better? Yeah, wow. Wow, that's intense. That's intense. What's happening here? So he's obviously moved into very strong warning language. We've come across these already, but this is, I think, the harshest and most intense. And these verses have been terribly misunderstood throughout the history of the church. If you were just to take what we just read, verse 26 and 27, if you were just to kind of pluck them out of here and just put them on a page and just give somebody that page and say, and what if that were all we had in the New Testament? That wouldn't be very good news.

And you would read these and you would say, okay, I guess I've come to the knowledge of the truth, but if I sin deliberately, Jesus is done with me and I'm toast. Right? I mean, tell me I'm wrong. This is what the verses seem to say right here. But we don't just have these two verses. We have the whole of chapter 10,

and we have the whole of the letter of Hebrews, and we have the whole Bible, which put this very strong warning into its proper setting here. Remember the preacher, the pastor, who wrote this sermon is Jewish. The audience is Jewish. They're all Jewish Christians,

and they have just the Old Testament scriptures just on the top, right off the top of their head. And you should immediately, when you hear this phrase, sinning deliberately, oh yeah, right? Numbers 15. That's what you were all thinking. Numbers 15. Yeah. He's drawing language from a key passage in the Torah of Moses in the Old Testament scriptures. And this is the Old Testament scriptures. This is the passage right here. This is the language about intentional or deliberate sin. Numbers 15. If a person sins unintentionally, that person must bring a year-old female goat for a sin offering, and the priest is to make atonement before the Lord for the one who erred by sinning unintentionally and when atonement has been made that person will be forgiven so someone there's 613 commands in the

Torah of Moses somebody breaks command number 473 whatever but they didn't realize it they didn't know they didn't mean to something is there a means of forgiveness for them? Answer. Yes. Yes. Right there. There it is. So it's an animal sacrifice that provides atonement, which means the covering over of

sin. The animal, his death covers over my offense and so on. It dies in my place. I receive forgiveness and grace. It's good news. It's unintentional sin. I receive forgiveness and grace. It's good news.

It's an unintentional sin. But anyone who sins defiantly, and literally the Hebrew here is with a raised fist. It's this. It's this. You know what I'm saying? It's intentional, willful, purposeful defiance. Anyone who sins defiantly,

whether native-born or foreigner, they blaspheme the Lord and they must be cut off from the people of Israel, because they have despised the Lord's word and broken his commands. They must surely be cut off. Their guilt remains on them. Okay, how do you feel about this? This is pretty stringent. Pretty stringent. Now, this deliberate, this is the language that the author is referring to and using here, this defiant, defiant sin. For someone who doesn't want to be forgiven, I'm going to do exactly what I want to do.

I know it's exactly the opposite of what God told us to do. I don't care. In fact, that's why I'm going to do it. Defiant, with a raised fist against God. For somebody who doesn't want forgiveness, what means of forgiveness is available to them? You know what I'm saying? That's what he's doing here.

For someone who doesn't want the remedy, the very thing designed to help them and save them, if that's the thing that they reject, what remains for them? Now, you might look at this and you say, okay, anyone who sins deliberately or intentionally, and you're thinking about your own life, and you're like, yeah, that's like most of the sin that I do.

You know what I'm saying? So I guess, I don't know, I'm in a world of hurt or something like that. So there was a category of sacrifice for intentional sin, but you recognize it, and then you feel guilt. You feel remorse. This is Leviticus chapter 6. Maybe some of you read it this morning. So Leviticus 6, you feel remorse. You're confronted. You humble yourself. You make right with the person that you wronged, and there's a sacrifice available for you. But for defiant, I don't want forgiveness. I don't, it's defiant sin. What sacrifice is there? And look at what he's going to do right

here. Go back to Hebrews chapter 10. He says, verse 28, anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. Numbers 15, there it was. You guys saw it. We all read it here together. The law of Moses was established on the sacrifice of animals. animals. Verse 29, so how much more worse punishment do you think will be deserved by one who has spurned the Son of God? Some of your translations might have trampled on the Son of God. That's literally what the word used here. You stop intentionally trampling the Son of God. used here is you step intentionally trampling the Son of God by one who has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, by one who has outraged or insulted, some of your translations might have insulted the spirit of grace. Grace is the very thing God is trying to give, but for someone who doesn't want grace, what remains, right? That's what he's getting at here.

For someone who is, like, not just indifferent to Jesus, but opposed, is rejecting the gospel. He says, what? That's the remedy. So if they don't want the remedy, there's what remains, there's no sacrifice for sins that remains. So many people have read the verses in this chapter and they begin to worry and get super scared because they begin to think, well, I've sinned deliberately before, you know? And it's just, that's not what the author's referring to.

The author's not referring to the journey of following Jesus that involves just people who fail like us. It's just part of the deal. We journey. I try and follow Jesus. It's difficult. Can I get an amen? It's hard.

It's hard. I'm going to fail. That's the point of the cross, so that my failures don't bury me, but my failures were buried with Christ and raised from the dead with him. My sins aren't raised from the dead. I'm raised from the dead, right? That's how the story goes.

Sorry, that's a very big difference. So I'm raised from the dead with him. His death and resurrection form me. But I'm going to blow it. I'm going to fail. I'm not always going to do it perfect. That's the point of the cross, but when I'm confronted with my shortcomings

and my failures, soft heart, repentance, I confess, I draw near, I hold fast, I come together with believers, and I get up and I move forward again. Follow Jesus. That's not what the author's talking about here. He's not talking about it. He's talking about a deliberate, willful rejection of Jesus. I don't want the gospel. I

don't want it. And for someone who rejects the very thing that can save them, there's no sacrifice for sin that remains. That's what he's getting at here. It's a very sobering reality. It's very sobering. Let's keep reading. Verse 29, let's read it again. How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by one who spurned or trampled the Son of God,

profaned the blood of the covenant by which he sanctified, outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know the one who said, vengeance is mine. I will repay. And again, the Lord will judge his people. He quotes from a poem in the Torah, Deuteronomy chapter 32, where Moses, he can see that Israel is a people with hard hearts, rebellious hearts. They're going to reject the God who saved them out of Egypt.

And so he writes this poem to them, Deuteronomy 32, with precisely these words. If they reject, there will be consequences. If you reject the only thing that can save you, however, there are not going to be consequences. It's a fearful thing, verse 31. It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God I don't know this is difficult you know I'm not I can't

sugarcoat it just there it is we got to sit with these very very challenging very stern words to us we don't like to hear this and I think many of us the this language about there go my notes hope I don't need them. I haven't needed them so far, so I'm just going to tuck them in here. Awesome, thank you very much. The language, this language of judgment, fiery judgment, and so on in the Bible, I think it's difficult for many of us to swallow. But the larger context, I think it's very important, I want to pause and focus on this as we kind of bring this around,

is the language of judgment in the Bible, the language of God's wrath and God's anger. It is always rooted in something much deeper. In the Bible, God's wrath and judgment is rooted in his goodness and in his love. Now that may sound as strange as like cow disease making you healthy. You know what I'm saying? That may seem backwards to you. That's precisely what the scriptures are trying to get us to see. Because justice, making things right, is the good loving response when something is wrong. So I ride my bike here. I ride by Edwards Elementary

School on 32nd and Hawthorne. If I ride my bike by and I see a bunch of fifth graders kicking in the stomach of a first grader taking his lunch or whatever. And I just kind of respond to myself, whatever, you know, kids will be kids. And I keep going. Am I loving or am I good? Answer. That's great. And I keep going. Am I loving or am I good? Answer. That is, I'm not loving and I'm not good. If I don't get angry and do something, am I loving and am I good? No. Love and goodness intervenes in situations of evil and injustice and makes them right. And that's always what's behind the language of God's wrath and God's judgment in the Bible. And so the trick is when we read this, we kind of get offended or whatever, and we think, dang, why does God have a chip on his shoulder? We put God in the hot seat. And what the scriptures are trying to tell us is actually the exact opposite. We are the ones in

the hot seat. So how are we doing as human beings? You know what I'm saying? Like, how's the world going for us? Yeah? So does God have a right to be angry at what we have done to his world? Does God have a right to be angry at what we do to human beings made in God's image, or what we don't do for human beings made in God's image. Just look, I mean, just look, read the newspapers, look around, look at how things go in human history and in our communities here. It's bad. Is God loving or good if he just says, ah, humans are humans, you know, let them be, you know, that is not loving and that is not good. And so a core, core conviction of Christian and before that Jewish worldview is that there is coming a day when God will set things right.

And that will be good news for some and bad news for others. And the paradoxical good news of the gospel is that God's justice was taken out on his son for us. So that we get the remedy, Jesus takes the hit for us. That's the surprising counterintuitive remedy of the gospel. And it doesn't make sense to a lot of people. and it doesn't make sense to a lot of people. In fact, most of us and many people in our culture, we can't even get past the fact that I'm being called on the carpet and being named as someone who's broken and selfish

and helplessly compromised morally. It makes us angry. And if that's your response, I understand that, but I would just encourage you to carefully consider whether you aren't reacting like the anti-vaccine society, if you aren't reacting against the very thing that's meant to save you, the only thing that can save you. And so he gives this invitation to hold on, hold fast, draw near,

come together around this story of the remedy. He gives a stern warning of challenge, that none of us find ourselves on that slope going down towards slow rejection of the very thing that can save me. And just like every passage in Hebrews where he did a punch in the gut, he gives you a little cup of lemonade afterwards. Verse 32. to punch in the gut, he gives you a little cup of lemonade afterwards. Verse 32. He says, recall the former days when after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes you were partners with people who were treated so. You had compassion on those in prison. You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property,

knowing that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one. He's referring to an event here known in the book of Acts. Almost certainly it's what he's talking about when the Jewish communities in Rome were expelled by the Roman Emperor Claudius in AD 49. And so he's saying, recall when that happened and you guys stepped in for each other. You gave of yourself sacrificially because of the gospel, because of

your faith and your vital connection as you drew near to God and held fast to your confession and were coming together to help each other. So remember that vitality of your faith. Keep reading. Verse 35, don't throw away your confidence. It has a great reward. You have need of endurance. It's like many of us do right now. We have need of endurance. So that when you've done the will of God, you may receive what is promised. For, he turns to Isaiah and Habakkuk, yet a little while the coming one will come. He won't delay. My righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, my soul has no pleasure in him. But y'all, we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed. We are of those who have faith and preserve

their souls and preserve their lives. So it's this great summons, this encouragement at the end. And this pastor, this preacher, he knew he was addressing people all over the map spiritually. He gives this warning. And see, here's the thing. Many of us kind of read this warning. We get scared. Oh, am I in this category? Some of us, we get scared that we might be in this category of deliberate sin and destined for fire and judgment and so on. Let me just say crystal clear as I can. If you're worried or concerned that you are in this category, by the fact that you are

worried and concerned shows that you are not in this category. Does that make sense? So if you were in this category, you wouldn't be here, first of all, and you wouldn't care. You would want to be in this category. You know what I'm saying? That's the whole thing. It's the defiant fist. Raised fist.

So on. So, oh, okay. So this passage is about people who are on the road to apostasy. I don't really see myself going down that road, so that's God's words to somebody else. So, no. Now, how do you end up on this route? You end up on this route. So no.

How do you end up on this route? You end up on this route. It's always a slow process, slow trajectory where I stop holding fast to my confession. I begin to lose my grip on the gospel. I stop constantly preaching the gospel to myself every day. I stop drawing near. I give up on rhythms and patterns somehow of entering into God's presence in whatever way you experience that.

I stop gathering together. I stop intentionally being in relationships with other believers where we come together to challenge each other to grow and follow Jesus. That's how it begins. That's why he warns them of just these very things. And so, you know, this big room, we're all over the map, you know? I'm very aware every week that there may be some among us.

You wouldn't call yourself a Christian, you know? Somebody dragged you here, I'm sorry. But you're likely here because you're curious. You're interested. dragged you here, I'm sorry, you know, but you're likely here because you're curious, you're interested. And so I think this speaks a very powerful, clear word to you to entertain this idea that what if I'm actually more sick and diseased than I realized? And the remedy, it confronts me, it might kind of tick me off a little bit, but maybe it's actually the counterintuitive good news. That's the word

of Hebrews 10 to you. And for the rest of us, if you call yourself Christian, this speaks a million different words to us. How are you guys doing? It's the counterintuitive challenge of the good news about our high priest and what he's done for us. How will we respond? So in this sauna-like atmosphere, we have time to respond. And this may be the most important time of the day for us, really. This ending season of worship, we have this space every week as we gather. I mean, what we're doing right now, right? We're gathering together, holding fast to the confession. We're drawing near to God's presence. We're about to do it. And so wherever you find yourself on the map spiritually, here's a moment to do business with God and to get right,

and to get off the slope headed towards rejection. You guys, thanks for listening to Exploring My Strange Bible podcast. May God's grace and his peace be with you as you go on into your day. Thank you for listening. Thank you.