Category: Sermon Supplements

If you haven’t been in Tulsa the weekly forecast for the past two weeks is illustrated by the single picture above.  I would love to visit Seattle and visit Mars Hill Church.  I was curious about the weather as well, now I think I know what it’s like.  When I walked out yesterday afternoon I was struck by something alien.  What is this strange warmth tickling my skin?   What are these colors?  Why is quiet peace after the storm somehow more quite than the peace that preceded it?  How is it that the bird’s songs seem sweeter?  Do they sense the same things I do?

Hebrews is a category five hurricane for your soul.  As it sweeps by it devastates the landscape.  False hopes, strengths, and idols are decimated.  False professors flee before it.  Only those left tethered to the one true Anchor are left, and they are better for it.

I have found some of the deepest most abiding comfort in this precious book.  It is true comfort.  It is not built on the illusory; it is anchored in the deepest of realities, God Himself.  I am so glad that peace does not come quickly or easily in this book.  I am thankful for the storm and all it brought down.  The storm was a mercy.

The same storm that wrecked my false securities also stirred the seas of God’s grace and peace and now they come crashing thunderously upon me.  They are deep waves, mighty waves, surging waves.  The Son is brighter now.  Songs of praise spring forth spontaneously.  The peace is deafening.  Grace is crashing in.

When some things are abused you throw them away. Toys and socks work that way. I am in dire need of some new socks right now.  A couple of pairs have holes in the heel and many of them have holes which my long toe (my long toe is not my big toe) loves to play peek-a-boo out of.  My big toenail grows radically more than my other toe nails.  Apparently I don’t clip it often enough and then cuts though my socks? My toenail neglect is sock abuse.

Anyway, just because socks are abused you don’t find people running around saying that socks are inherently evil or faulty. You may throw a pair of socks away, but not socks altogether. Authority can be, and is often abused, but that is no reason to throw it out. In our society sex is equally abused, why aren’t we so passionate to ban sex?  Toys are abused by children, should we ban toys?

God gives leaders to his church. All their authority is a derived authority, not intrinsic to themselves. Obey and submit to them for your own souls.  Find elders who are faithful to God’s Word and then be faithful to those elders. Put yourself in a position where your relationship to your elder will be a reflection of your relationship to God.

If you have authority issues with your elder most of the time I would advise one of two actions:

1. Repent.  If you believe your elder is faithful to the Word of God, your issues with him are issues with God.
2. Move.  If your elder is not faithful to God’s word find one who is and for the benefit of your soul and his joy in ministry submit to him in the Lord.

Vintage does not mean dead, novel does.  Coca-Cola is classic, it is vintage; that is it is old, but has enduring value.  It has not aged.  Crystal Pepsi was novel and it died.  Novel often means faddish.

Jesus is vintage.  He is ancient, eternal, and immutable.  He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.  This does not limit our exploration of the divine; rather it speaks to the infiniteness of that which is explored.  What must the magnitude of Jesus’ glory be if he is immutable, yet never monotonous or boring?

The dead teachers of the past heralded this Jesus (Hebrews 13:7).  In contrast the false teachers so perverted and distorted Him that their teaching was strange, and diverse (Hebrews 13:9).

The vintage Jesus will live on and prevail, for He is the living one.  The pseudo-novel Jesus will die, for He does not exist.

Spiritually, regarding Jesus, I hope to see you all driving a red ’52 Chevy rather than a modern hybrid with GPS, DVD player, and seat warmers.  Don’t fall prey to the new – it is faddish, it will die, and you will find the quality exceptionally less.

Don’t divorce the ethics of Hebrews 13:1-6 from the theology that has preceded it.  Orthodoxy fuels orthopraxy.  Orthopraxy flows from orthodoxy.  If my actions are not done in faith, they are sin (Romans 14:23).  Belief in the name of God’s Son Jesus Christ and love for our brother come to us as a singular command (1 John 3:23).  I can gauge if I truly get doctrine by looking for the practical fruit of love for my brothers and hospitality toward strangers.  I can know if I have the proper motivations in loving my fellow man by seeking out the theological underpinnings that motivate it.

* * *

I am extremely romantic one night.  I have sent her away for a spa treatment all day (she loves the spa).  Surprisingly I pick her up at the spa with a gift she has been hinting at (no flowers, she hates it when I buy flowers).  I take her to her favorite restaurant, she can tell all my attention is on her, I have eyes for no other, no one else exists.  We go for a walk in the park afterwards.  Everything is perfect… I am saying the most poetic of compliments.  I am sincere, I am in love, yet she is repulsed.  Whenever I begin talk of her naturally curly hair (it’s straight), and her blue eyes (they are brown) the evening changes its hue.  All my right doing, however sincere, has been undone by wrong knowing.  When I call my precious Bethany by a foreign name, the name of an ex, all is lost.  Light has turned to darkness.

Orthopraxy is essential.  So is the orthodoxy it must flow from (Hebrews 11:6).

What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.  – A.W. Tozer

You reach for the porcelain collectible for the third time, sure you’ve been warned, but you have called her bluff up to this point.  She is speaking, telling you not to, but you know she hasn’t quite reached that tone yet.  You know that tone that says a beating is imminent.

Have we grown up any?  Do we respond to the gospel with a “…huh?”  Not an inquisitive huh, but a non-interested huh.

In our text we are told that we must listen, because God will speak.  The speaking that God is doing now is different from the speaking that He will do then.  If you are privileged to hear the gospel of Jesus, the revelation of the Son, by the Son (Hebrews 1:1-3), God is speaking to you.  It is the greatest good news in the world; He is speaking to you kindly.  His speaking then, when all is shaken will be different. 

Do not listen to the repeated offers of the gospel, in which God as it were lays the key to His heavenly city before you, do not listen to them in the same way you listen to your mother’s threats.  To respond casually or flippantly to this gospel, is to call more than Mt. Sinai down upon your head.  Every time the gospel is preached you are either softened or hardened.  As the Puritans said, “the same sun that melts the ice hardens the clay.”  Perhaps God’s judgment upon you for a habitual pattern of shirking the gospel is to expose you to more of it, such that your quilt is increased.  Ease and comfort in sin is the scariest state to find oneself in.  We see this kind of terrifying judgment in Romans 1:18-32.

Every time God’s word is preached the gospel should be preached.  Therefore every time God’s word is preached there should be a serious and solemn examination of our hearts.  Are we listening?  Remember the Pharisees heard and taught the Scriptures every Sabbath, yet they were completely ignorant of Jesus.

Jesus did not mute the holiness and righteousness of God that speaks in wrath against our sin.  No rather God’s testimony against sin was amplified as Jesus hung on the cross in our stead.  If you stand outside of Christ this wrath burns against you still.  If you spurn the blood of Jesus, it burns against you more (Hebrews 2:1-4; 10:28-29)

As wise old Uncle Ben said to Peter, “with great power comes great responsibility”.  The gospel is the power of God unto salvation.  With greater revelation, greater glory, greater power comes greater responsibility on our part.

“Today if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”

“For our God is a consuming fire.”

Father,

            Holy and loving,

Grant us in our consideration of your courageous Son,

            Sustaining grace to realize that the hostile hand of sinners,

            Is also Your helpful hand of discipline.

May we not seek the false remedy of alleviating our suffering by attenuating Your sovereignty.

            May we agonize, struggle, and bleed to keep this faith.

            May Your words come to our minds and hearts as light in dark times.

                        Grant us a sanctified memory, so that we may not forget Your words.

Teach us to esteem, value, even treasure Your discipline as it cries out to us that we are:

            Loved,

            Received,

            Delighted in,

            Not a bastard.

May we know that Your discipline does not come to us as a penalty, but for our purity.

            We are corrected,

            We are prevented,

            And we are educated,

            But the wrath and penalty due for our sins has been born, for hell hung on the cross in our stead.

May we be infected with a childlike awe to look just like our Daddy,

            And may that desire make the bitter medicine of discipline sweet to our souls,

            The unpleasant bud of pain, tolerated in hopes of the beautiful bloom of:

                        Your holiness,

                        And the peaceful fruit of righteousness

May the truth of Your loving, fatherly, perfect discipline propel us to run, strive, and encourage one another.

            We move in hope, only because we know You are moving.

Father,

            Holy and loving,

We plead this with earnest tears, for:

            The consequences are so severe if we respond with bitterness to your loving discipline.

            Our ecstasy is the vision of You, in all Your glory.

            Without holiness we will not see this, it is the stamp of our sonship.

            God put this stamp on our souls.

May we not like Esau count corn flakes more than the Christ of the Cross and all He purchased for us.

In the name of Your perfect Son, Jesus, 

            I, Your lesser son, adopted and unworthy, pray, amen.