Hebrews 6:4-12

⁴ For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, ⁵ and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, ⁶ and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. ⁷ For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. ⁸ But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned. ⁹ Though we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things—things that belong to salvation. ¹⁰ For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do. ¹¹ And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end, ¹² so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

There is a quote that has stayed with me ever since I first heard it some years back. Samuel Beckett attributes it to St. Augustine but there is definitely some question of whether or not it was Augustine who actually said it. There is some evidence it was actually said by Robert Greene. Regardless, the statement had a profound impact on Beckett, and I can see why. Speaking of Jesus and the two criminals between whom He was crucified, Augustine/Greene said:

Do not despair: one of the thieves was saved.

Do not presume: one of the thieves was damned.

I would like to take that fascinating statement—whoever said it!—and use it as a spectrum to help us understand what is happening in Hebrews 6:4-12. The spectrum of, on the one hand, a flippant and arrogant presumption of salvation regardless of the evidence or lack thereof of our lives, and, on the other hand, a kind of crippling despair that wonders whether or not our good God will actually save us in the end.

This text is one of the most difficult in all of scripture. That is no exaggeration!

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Matthew 16

²⁴ Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. ²⁵ For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. ²⁶ For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? ²⁷ For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. ²⁸ Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”

We could learn a good bit from the old Scottish preacher Job McNeill. Listen:

Near the end of the nineteenth century, McNeill was scheduled to preach at a large evangelistic service in the English Midlands.  His father died a few days before this scheduled event and the funeral was planned for the very day of the revival services.

Those planning the services naturally assumed that McNeill would be unable to come speak to them since his father’s funeral would be that day.  McNeill himself actually considered not going to the services.  He contemplated sending a message informing the organizers of the revival that he would not be present.  But he did not send that message.  Listen to what Job McNeill said: “But I dared not send it, for this same Jesus stood by me, and seemed to say, ‘Now, look, I have you.  You go and preach the gospel to those people.  Whether would you rather bury the dead or raise the dead?’  And I went to preach.”[1]

Now I ask you: what makes a man behave like this? What makes a man skip his own father’s funeral to go preach instead? Did Job McNeill misunderstand what it means to be a son? I think not. Instead I think that Job McNeill understood what it means to be a disciple.

Matthew 16 concludes with Jesus defining the nature of the discipleship. We would do well to listen closely.

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Hebrews 5:11-6:3

¹¹ About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. ¹² For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, ¹³ for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. ¹⁴ But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

¹ Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, ² and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. ³ And this we will do if God permits.

I have two older brothers, David and Condy. David is a couple of years older than Condy. My parents have long told the story of when they brought baby Condy home from the hospital.  David, his toddler older brother, was as fascinated by Condy as he was concerned about him. One morning my mother got up to get Condy out of his crib. When she looked in the crib she suddenly stopped and stared in disbelief. There in the crib lay baby Condy on his back. His eyes were wide open…but his eyes were all of his face that my mother could see! This was because the rest of his face was covered by a large biscuit leftover from the night before. There it was, the biscuit, balanced perfectly on Condy’s face who lay there, not crying or moving, staring up at my mother over the edge. She quickly removed the biscuit and then picked him up only to find my oldest brother David standing there. David explained that he had grown concerned about Condy in the night. Specifically he was concerned that Condy go hungry. So David had gotten out of bed in the night, gone into the kitchen, found a biscuit from dinner from the night before and then positioned it oh-so-carefully on Condy’s face.

I love that story. I love thinking about what that must have looked like! The charm of that story resides in a brother’s love for his younger brother. The humor of it resides in the fact that there is no conceivable way that baby Condy could have eaten that biscuit!

Little infants cannot eat big biscuits. Rather, they need milk. And yet, little babies should grow up to be able to eat biscuits…and even steak! A baby who can only stomach milk is cute. A grown person who will only drink milk and refuses to eat is a real and dangerous problem. This is the pint that the writer of Hebrews will make to his listeners at the end of Hebrews 5 and the beginning of Hebrews 6: we must move past spiritual milk to spiritual substance. We must grow. We must cut our spiritual teeth. Otherwise, we will forever be stymied in our growth and effectiveness for Jesus.

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I thought I might archive my notes and scribbles from the annual NAPS meeting I attended last week. I suspect anybody foolish enough to glance at these will find them largely illegible. Ha! Regardless:

Notes from NAPS 2022

Program Guide pdf

Hebrews 5:1-10

¹ For every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins. ² He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness. ³ Because of this he is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people. ⁴ And no one takes this honor for himself, but only when called by God, just as Aaron was. ⁵ So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him, “You are my Son, today I have begotten you”; ⁶ as he says also in another place, “You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” ⁷ In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. ⁸ Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. ⁹ And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, ¹⁰ being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.

Literature is replete with examples of broken, flawed priests, pastors, and ministers. A few examples come to mind. Think of Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory. Set in 1930s Mexico and the brutal persecution of the Catholic Church there, the story is about a deeply flawed unnamed priest that Graham calls a whisky priest because of his alcoholism. Even so, this priest is paradoxically the only priest who has not sold out and capitulated and taken a wife in order to avoid persecution. He is deeply flawed yet also struggling to be faithful. I think of Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence, which was influenced, as it turns out, by Greene and The Power and the Glory. There, a Portuguese Jesuit missionary priest is brutalized and persecuted alongside Japanese Christians in that country, finally officially renouncing his faith and yet seeking to hold on to the vestiges of it until the end. I think of Preacher Casey in The Grapes of Wrath who tells Tom Joad about how his hypocritical womanizing after preaching Jesus finally led him to conclude that sin does not even exist. And I think of America’s most notorious literary example of a deeply flawed, hypocritical preacher, Elmer Gantry, whose name has become a byword for all charlatan preachers.

And this barely scratches the surface. Time and time again one can find in our books and movies and television shows depictions of deeply broken priests and pastors. And these depictions inevitably demonstrate two very important truths: (1) human ministers are imperfect and (2) our hearts yearn for a perfect high priest. In fact, our very outrage at imperfect and hypocritical ministers reveals our great desire for and expectation of a high priest who is not imperfect and hypocritical. We grieve and rage over fallen ministers because we know our souls need a minister who is not fallen, who is not a hypocrite, who is not a charlatan.

And it is at this point that Hebrews 5 speaks deeply to our souls, for Hebrews 5 tells us that while, yes, earthly ministers are imperfect, we do have a perfect minister, a perfect priest, who has accomplished for us what no merely earthly priest could.

Theologian James Leo Garrett points out that “numerous theologians have utilized as an organizing pattern the ‘threefold office’ (munus triplex) of Christ, namely, as Prophet, Priest, and King. The concept of the threefold office is traceable to Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 263-c.339), but the Protestant Reformers made its usage commonplace.”[1] Today we are going to begin unpacking the second element of the munus triplex: Christ the Priest.

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Hebrews 4:14-16

¹⁴ Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. ¹⁵ For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. ¹⁶ Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

A July 10, 1920 New York Times headline cannot help but grab the attention. It reads, “PARES OFF HIS FLESH, GRAFTS IT ON WIFE; Chicago surgeon Avert Amputation of His Bride’s Leg by heroic Operation. TAKES NO ANESTHETIC Former Captain Overseas Shaves Off Cuticle with Razor—“Took Nerve,” He Admits.”

What on earth? Jimmy Draper explains:

            The story of Dr. Orlando P. Scott may help us to see how our Lord enters into our suffering. In the year 1919, he was the doctor on duty in a hospital where his wife was a patient. She had been involved in a tragic accident. While he was the only available physician, she needed immediate skin grafting to save her life. Without anesthesia, he stood and cut flesh from his own body to graft it into the body of his wife. He did so without noticeable pain because he was under an anesthesia from above. He was under the power of love, and he suffered with her as he operated under the anesthesia of love.[1]

It is a fascinating and arresting story. Think of the dynamics at work here: a person in authority is moved by deep love and compassion to heal somebody at their point of greatest need and brokenness through an act of painful self-sacrificial love.

There is something very gospel about that, is there not?

Theodore of Cyr, the 5^th century theologian and bishop of Cyr, wrote of our text:

The believers at that time were subjected to constant billowing by trials; so he consoles them by bringing out that our high priest not only knows as God the weakness of our nature but also as man had experience of our sufferings, remaining unfamiliar with sin alone. Understanding this weakness of ours, he is saying, he both extends us appropriate help and when judging us he will take our weakness into account in delivering sentence.[2]

Let us dive into this profound and beautiful truth of the love of God in Christ.

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Hebrews 4:12-11

¹² For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. ¹³ And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

In 1970 the late Russian dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn delivered his lecture after winning the Nobel Prize in literature. Near the end of the lecture Solzhenitsyn said, “And the simple step of a simple courageous man is not to partake in falsehood, not to support false actions!” He the approached the conclusion of his lecture by quoting a Russian proverb: “One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.”[1]

That is a fascinating statement, isn’t it? “One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world.”

Indeed, words of truth have weight. But the two verses we are about to consider are going to say more than this. They are going to say not only that words have weight, but that the Word, the word of God, actually has life…and power…and can dismantle…and can search…and can heal.

It is important that we not detach these two amazing verses from the wider context of Hebrews. We have seen, especially in chapters 3 and 4, repeated warnings against ignoring the word of God. We have been told that those Israelites who ignored the word of God in the wilderness fell under judgment. We have been told that those who did not cling to the word in the land of promise fell under judgment. And we have been cautioned again and again and again not to harden our hearts, not to commit the same mistake, but rather to hear and listen and receive what God is saying so that we can live and have life!

So these two verses follow with utter consistency from what precedes them: we must understand that the word of God is not like human words. The word of God is not some passive thing we can take or leave. Rather, it is living, it is life.

We dare not turn from the word!

Grant Osborne, like many others, has argued that the “word” in our text is referring to the scriptures in particular.

These verses provide proper closure to this first major section of the letter, for throughout the letter thus far, the author’s narration has centered on Old Testament citations that provide the background for his argumentation. He wants the readers to realize what this signifies, for it is the word of God, and not just human thoughts, that have been quoted.[2]

Yes, all of the verses that the writer has appealed to cement the point: God has spoken in His word and we must heed what he has said there. Let us consider carefully what our text says about the word of God.

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Hebrews 3:7-19

⁷ Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice, ⁸ do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, on the day of testing in the wilderness, ⁹ where your fathers put me to the test and saw my works for forty years. ¹⁰ Therefore I was provoked with that generation, and said, ‘They always go astray in their heart; they have not known my ways.’ ¹¹ As I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter my rest.’” ¹² Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. ¹³ But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. ¹⁴ For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. ¹⁵ As it is said, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.” ¹⁶ For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? ¹⁷ And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? ¹⁸ And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? ¹⁹ So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief.

A few years back Penguin publishers published Cory Arcangel’s book, Working on My Novel. The book is simply a collection of tweets from various people that include the phrase “working on my novel” (with, oddly enough, drawings of kettles interspersed throughout). Arcangel, the compiler, said of the book that it

is about the act of creation and the gap between the different ways we express ourselves today. Exploring the extremes of making art, from satisfaction and even euphoria to those days or nights when nothing will come, it’s the story of what it means to be a creative person, and why we keep on trying.

But Dan Piepenbring, a reviewer for The Paris Review, calls it instead “a sad monument to distraction.” Piepenbring continues:

Arcangel suggests there’s something inherently ennobling in trying to write, but his book is an aggregate of delusion, narcissism, procrastination, boredom, self-congratulation, confusion—every stumbling block, in other words, between here and art. Working captures the worrisome extent to which creative writing has been synonymized with therapy; nearly everyone quoted in it pursues novel writing as a kind of exercise regimen. (“I love my mind,” writes one aspirant novelist…)

The reviewer then makes a devastating observation about these tweets:

But failure is seldom on the minds of these writers, except insofar as it stands, temporarily, between them and inevitable success. As of now, there are 675 of those would-be writers featured on the Twitter version of Working, and yet a rudimentary search shows that the word fail has been deployed exactly zero times. What prevails instead is a kind of Pollyannaish resilience…[1]

In other words the collection of distracted tweets reveals a kind of optimistic naivete on the parts of those who tweeted that there would in fact be time to finish their novels, that there is nothing a bit pitiful about so many comments about doing something one could not be actively doing while commenting on it, and that there was no worse-case scenario where their delays and distractions could result in the, to them, unthinkable: failure.

The scriptures take a decidedly more realistic view. They discourage us from speaking much of tomorrow or of later. They encourage us to make the most important decision—the decision to come to God—now. And they paint a rather chilling picture of the terrible consequences of waiting too long. The latter half of Hebrews 3 paints just such a picture, though, as we will see, the picture it paints is supported by numerous other texts.

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Matthew 16

¹³ Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” ¹⁴ And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” ¹⁵ He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” ¹⁶ Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” ¹⁷ And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. ¹⁸ And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. ¹⁹ I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” ²⁰ Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ. ²¹ From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. ²² And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” ²³ But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

Michael Card once wrote a song about Simon Peter that I find beautiful and moving. Here is how the song begins:

You bore the burden of a name
Along a road that would lead to the cross
Bold and broken, upside-down
A light for the least and the lost

He called you the rock, the foundation
Of a temple formed from God’s love
His robe of forgiveness wrapping you up
Meant trusting in Him was enough

His love called you out on the water
And held you when you were alone
For you were the rock that was
Broken by love, forever the fragile stone

I like that a lot. The image of Peter as “the fragile stone” is a good one, and an accurate one. Card is drawing from our passage by using this image. In Matthew 16 Peter demonstrates that he is (a) a rock, a stone and also (b) that he is a fragile stone.

What I would like to do is focus on Jesus’ two responses to two things Peter says to Him in back-to-back episodes here in Matthew 16. In the first episode, Peter says something correct about the person of Jesus and is blessed. In the second Peter says something wrong about the work of Jesus and is condemned. Consider:

Episode #1

¹³ Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” ¹⁴ And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” ¹⁵ He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” ¹⁶ Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” ¹⁷ And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. ¹⁸ And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. ¹⁹ I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” ²⁰ Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one that he was the Christ.

Here, Peter correctly proclaims that Jesus is “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus’ response to this proclamation is one of joy. More than that, He tells Peter of the great ministry that He, Jesus, has for Peter.

Episode #2

²¹ From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. ²² And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” ²³ But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

Here, Peter attempts to dissuade Jesus from the cross, bluntly announcing that the event of the cross should not, must not, happen! Jesus’ response is one of sharp and devastating rebuke.

In the first episode Peter is in step with Jesus. In the second he is out of step with Jesus. Jesus’ response, then, is not merely to Peter but is also to all of us when we are either in step with or out of step with Jesus.

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