Apostle and High Priest (Hebrews 3: 1-18) I We have about 2 good reasons for having church and 3 for joining one. (We have shown how church must be about Jesus. When church starts to be about people and institutional agendas, then it no longer has a legitimate spiritual reason to exist.) A Church must evangelize unbelievers with the Gospel, and build up the faith of believers. (These priorities are Biblical: from the Great Commission, and from the Fourth Chapter of Ephesians. Institutional churches are about buildings, budgets, programs, and attracting new members to finance these things. It should be possible for the institution to accomplish spiritual purposes, but all too often, spiritual work only gets done as individual church members personalize the moral imperatives of the Gospel.) B We should join a church to pool our resources, to accomplish God's purposes for Church. (If there are only two legitimate reasons to institutionalize Christianity then there is only one legitimate reason to join the institution. Groups of people, collectively, have more time and money to work with than individual Christians do. Our tithes and offerings belong to God. The churches we belong to should accept money on God's behalf and then use it for His purposes. Conversely, there is no good (spiritual) reason to be part of an institutional church where priorities and agendas are not evangelistic.) II The heavenly calling is from God: in the words of Christ: Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand. (God loves us and wants to share Heaven with us even if sin has made us unworthy of it. God provided a sacrificial atonement for our sins that does not require us to be punished for being sinners. We cannot bear that punishment ourselves, and still live. Only Jesus, the Son of God, could do that. So God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. That life begins as soon as we receive Jesus and are born again as children of God. Jesus came to deliver the Grace of God to us. All we need do is repent and believe.) A Jesus called us out of worldliness, into the Kingdom of God. (What do we suppose
Jesus meant by, Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand? Up to that time, Old Testament priests taught people to bring sacrifices to a temple, where priests interceded with God on their behalf. Repent means, think again - about how to approach God. Jesus became the once-for-all sacrifice for all sins of all sinners. Jesus, the Lamb of God, would take away the sin of the world by atoning for it with His Blood. Animal sacrifices made entry into the Kingdom of God possible, a sort of potential for the future. Faith in Jesus makes the entry happen. We can go in because we are born again as children of God.) B The Kingdom of God should exist among born-again believers. (In Luke 17:21, Jesus said, the Kingdom of God is within you. How does that happen? There are certain conditions that will prevail in the Kingdom of God: truth, righteousness, godliness, love, peace... in short, Zion, of the Old Testament. These conditions can exist among believers now, because they arise from how we live, which follows from the attitudes of our hearts. Attitudes come from thoughts and accumulations of thoughts. Let us think of attitude as a kind of picture, and character as a kind of picture frame. When we are born again, our character changes (we are new creations in Christ). The Artist (God) starts painting a new picture for the frame. The result is a new life, conformed to the image of Christ.) III A Capital-C-Church is all about Jesus, whom we confess. (Confession is a different activity from profession. Our Profession of Faith is what we have to say about the content of our thought (e.g. professional tradesmen think that they are good enough at doing their jobs that they should be paid for doing them; and we make a profession of faith because we think that some theological proposition is true). Confession is a statement about what really is true (as opposed to what we think is true). We confess to doing things we have done; or (in the context of Hebrews 3) we confess to what is true about Jesus.) A Jesus is our apostle. (The English word apostle comes from Greek root words that mean the same thing as the Latin root word for missionary -- someone who is sent, by someone else, to do something on behalf of the sender. So God sent not His Son into
the world to condemn the world, but that the world, through Him, might be saved. If God sent Jesus to do something (i.e. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor ) then Jesus is our Apostle from God, for the delivery of His Grace.) B Jesus is our high priest. (Any priest should represent men in front of God; which is why Jesus said that He was the Son of Man and that He laid down His life as a ransom for many. Also, priests represent God in front of men. So Jesus was the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His Person (Hebrews 1:3); where His glory and His Person mean the glory and person of God. Now we must conform to the image of Jesus Christ, so that we show the brightness of His glory, and the image (we can say, character ) of His person-- meaning the glory and image of Christ. There is no other way to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.) IV Christ is faithful as a Son over God's house. (The word house in verse 6 can mean several things, but all meanings are the same people. House can mean the descendants of Abraham, or the descendants of Israel, or any of these plus Gentile believers who have faith in Jesus for grace from God. All believers are members of the Body of Christ and children of God through faith in Jesus. All children of God are the spiritual house and the holy priesthood in I Peter 2:4-5. The Church must be the presence of Jesus in the world.) A Church must be about Jesus, or it is little more than a social club. (This brings us back to the only two good reasons for institutionalizing the Christian religion. Jesus came to the world to reveal the Grace of God to us; we must now go to the world and take the Gospel Message to unbelievers. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to the Church to be the teacher Who teaches us all things and calls to our remembrance all things that He said, and to be our Comforter. Now believers teach and admonish one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs (e.g. believers must help each other become better Christians). Surely there is time for eating dinner together and complaining about how badly we are treated
by unbelievers; let us remember to do these things in the name of Jesus, too.) B Believers are being built into a spiritual house (I Peter 2:1-6). (The Bible says we are living stones. None of us is that spiritual house by himself. We all need each other, to accomplish God's purpose for us all. We also must remember that we are building stones, we are not the capstone, or the cornerstone, or window decorations; and stone is a very permanent building material. Finally, it is the builder (God) Who should receive the glory and honor for the finished product, not any individual stone in one of the walls.) V The words confess, profess, testify, and witness have similar meanings. (A few moments ago we distinguished professions from confessions, because Hebrews 3:2 says that Jesus is the Apostle and High Priest whom we confess. To profess that we believe Jesus to be Christ and Lord (or that Jesus is God) is different from confessing that Jesus is our Apostle and High Priest. Any profession is an assertion of an intellectual position, and it can change, if new knowledge or some kind of adversity changes our opinions. However, the object of confession will be an unchangeable truth. In other words, we might change what we say about our religious beliefs, but we cannot change Truth about Jesus.) A A witness testifies to what he knows to be true. (We also cannot testify that something is true unless we have personal knowledge of the truth of it. In this regard, many church members confuse their witness and their testimony. We should not say that we witnessed something that we did not ( an action of the Holy Spirit, for example); or testify to the spiritual integrity of fraudulent, licentious, covetous, and materialistic institutional church leaders by supporting them with sympathetic attention, or membership and attendance, or money. That would be like lying to children about Santa Clauses and the Easter Bunny and then expecting them to believe what we say about Jesus later. Sincere believers who support institutional church agendas should not expect unbelievers to trust them any more than teenagers trust their parents who lied to them when they were gullible children. People who witness our lifestyles should see faith ful testimonies to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Let them see our good works and glorify the Father in Heaven.)
B We profess our faith that Jesus is our Christ and Lord; we confess that Jesus is our apostle and high priest. (Jesus will be our Christ and our Lord if we receive Him as such. God made Him to be both. To those who do not receive Jesus for Who and What He truly is, He will be only a good man who died a tragic death. So we testify to what we know to be true about Jesus. God also sent Jesus to deliver His love and forgiveness to us, and the sending and delivering has nothing to do with what we or anyone else believes. His intercession with God on our behalf makes Salvation possible, and the actions of His Spirit in our lives on God's behalf makes sanctificaton possible. We are told to fix our thoughts on Jesus, our Apostle and High Priest, so that we do not forget why we are members of His Body, and the living stones of His Spiritual House. Let us remember well. The integrity of our testimony depends upon the truth and faithfulness of our witness for Jesus.)