Hallelujah! What a Savior.

SERMON JUNE 28

Hebrews 1:1-3

You can watch the video at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnFwxIps1es

Patience and trust. Two areas of spiritual life that are great struggles for me. I suspect patience and trust are struggles for at least a few of you listening to me. My text comes from Hebrews 1:

“God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature,  and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high . . . .” 

Let’s look at the first clause in verse one: God, after He spoke long ago to the Fathers . . . . As I prepared for this message I thought a while about those four words:  He spoke long ago . . . .

From the perspective of the writer to the Hebrews, ‘long ago’ had been some 1400 years since Moses wrote the history of creation, the introduction of sin into humanity by Satan, of the strategic players such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the 12 tribes. It was 1400 years since Moses wrote of Israel’s slavery in Egypt, their subsequent deliverance, and, of course, God’s promise of a Messiah as early as those first three chapters of Genesis.

I need to repeat that for the emphasis it deserves. It was 1400 years before God finally fulfilled His promise to send us a Redeemer, a Savior, a Messiah. That means that for all those 1400 years generation after generation were born, lived, and died, without having seen the fulfillment of God’s promise of redemption from the grip of sin and the devil.

Think for a moment how they must have felt, being among the untold millions of men, women, and children who faithfully lifted your prayers week after week, prayers from the lips of faithful Jews who NEVER saw the fulfillment of God’s promise to establish Messiah’s kingdom.

No wonder the disciples asked Jesus just prior to the Lord’s ascension, “Lord, is it at this time You are restoring the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6)

Their waiting – indeed, OUR waiting for the return of Christ, which has now lasted two thousand years – has given skeptics ammunition to mock those of us who continue to wait for the Lord to fulfill His promise of the second Advent. St. Peter talked about mockers and skeptics in his day. Here is what he wrote:

“Know this first of all, that in the last days mockers will come with their mocking, following after their own lusts, and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation.” (2 Peter 3:3-4)

Are you tired of waiting for answers to your prayers? No surprise if you are. Our culture has conditioned us since infancy to expect quick results when we want something. In fact, in the modern church an entire false teaching has grown up around our impatience with God’s time schedule. It goes by the name of “Name it and Claim It” – or variations of that godless philosophy.  Just pray hard enough and with enough faith and you will get whatever it is you want.

But when we do not see the expected results of our prayers – how many just give up – they give up not only praying, but many even walk away from the Lord, thinking it’s all a fairy tale anyway. God, if He exists, is not listening to my prayers because He is unconcerned about my prayers.

That idea, of course, is utterly untrue.

And so, the first clause in today’s Scripture text can give us new – a better – perspective about being PATIENT about God’s timing. Here is what He tells us through the Old Testament prophet, Isaiah. His are important words with an important lesson for me and for you because they ought to remind us who WE are, and who God IS:

 

“My ways are not your ways and my thoughts are not your thoughts, For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways and my thoughts above yours.” (Isaiah 55). Listen, God could just as well have told us in that text, “My time is not YOUR time. My plans are not YOUR plans.”

Now then, in addition to patience, God teaches us something else in this first clause related to waiting. The text also teaches us about trust.

God wants His children to trust Him whose plans are bigger and grander than ours. And just as important – JUST as important – we are EACH a PART of that plan.

Trusting God is to trust Him for the long-haul. Trust in God is NOT a psychological trick we play on ourselves that gets its vigor from our emotions. Trusting God is an act of the will, an intellectual decision – not an emotional decision – it is an intellectual decision to trust the Sovereign God who spoke the universe into existence and who is so deeply connected to you and me that He knows how many hair we have on our heads.

I am the first to admit this kind of trust is far easier to say than it is to do. It was not that long ago, as some of you know, that I failed miserably to live up to what I just told you we should all do. When Nancy was in the ICU with a stroke, I melted into a puddle of fear and anxiety and dread that plagued me for weeks and weeks.

But we can trust our Father in heaven because He really and immeasurably cares for you. For you. Put your name on that statement. He profoundly loves you.

Never think your existence or your role in His grand plan for humanity is insignificant. Remember what the Lord did with a couple of fish and some bread. We are each an integral part of God’s plan for humanity in general and for specific individuals, in particular. If we are NOT integral, then we wouldn’t have been born, or placed in the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

If every sheep was not important to the Shepherd, He would not have left the 99 safe in the corral and gone looking for the one lost sheep.

Yes, YOU are important.

But – and this too is critical – just because you and I are important to God’s work, that does NOT mean our role in His plan will be easy. Or comfortable. May God help us adopt the kind of attitude of the apostle Paul. While a prisoner of Rome for his faith, Paul wrote this to the church at Philippi:

“Now I want you to know, brethren, that my circumstances have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel, so that my imprisonment in the cause of Christ has become well known throughout the whole praetorian guard and to everyone else, and that most of the brethren, trusting in the Lord because of my imprisonment, have far more courage to speak the word of God without fear. . . .

A few verses later he shares with his readers about his expectation and hope that – the end of verse 20: “Christ will even now, as always, be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. (Philippians 1:12-20)

The apostle had the same nature as any other person. He had his own set of sins, of fears, of joys, and sorrows, and frustrations. He was, at a fundamental level, just as human as you and I. But he had made a decision, an act of the will, that whatever the circumstances, he wanted Jesus to be exalted in his body – whether that meant life or death. It didn’t matter, so long as Jesus was exalted.

May God help us to develop over time and with practice such an attitude, that whether in health or illness, poverty or riches, loneliness or surrounded by loved ones, freedom or imprisonment, fear or security – whatever our circumstances, God has permitted them – or in some cases actually brought them to us – so that, because of our TRUST in our Father’s love for us, Jesus Christ will be lifted up by others who see how we live for Jesus, regardless of our circumstances.

Let’s go back now to the text. The writer tells us God spoke to the Fathers in many diverse ways. And Scripture certainly confirms that. God spoke through nature – the heavens declare the glory of God (Psalm 19). He spoke through shepherds and kings, priests and princes, farmers and fishermen, tax collectors, physicians and theologians. He declared His words through well-known, little-known, and unknown men and women.

But we find throughout the old and new testaments that only a few truly listened and obeyed what God spoke. Only a remnant cared enough about God’s loving embrace to follow what He told them thought the prophets. Here is only one of dozens of sad accounts recorded for us. You will find this one in 2 Chronicles 36:15-16:

“The Lord, the God of their fathers, sent word to them again and again by His messengers, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place; but they continually mocked the messengers of God, despised His words and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people, until there was no remedy.”

And so, too, as God has in these last days spoken to us in His son – only a few truly listen to Him and obey Him. If you question that, just look around. How many of your neighbors and friends and acquaintances – even among your own families – how many are clearly serving the Lord Jesus Christ in faithful obedience?

Many, even among those who warm a pew each week, many continue to travel the broad way to the wide gate that leads to destruction. Very few choose the arduous narrow road and the small gate that leads to life.

Why is it arduous? Anyone and everyone who has given more than lip service to an obedient and holy lifestyle before God knows it is much, much easier to live in sin than it is to be holy. It is much easier to find reasons to NOT obey Jesus than it is to faithfully follow Him.

And so, in these last days, God spoke His final and unalterable word to us through His Son.

Please hear this carefully. He spoke to us through Jesus Christ. Alone. God spoke and speaks through no one else. St. Peter told the religious court of his day, occupied by the theologians and clergy of his day – he told them all that there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we MUST be saved. No other name. No other savior.

And I will tell you on the on the basis of God’s word that He insists today, as He insisted in the first century, that we share with others the same message – that it is Jesus alone who is God’s final word of redemption, of salvation, of forgiveness of sins, of eternal life. It is not Buddha, or Muhammed, or Moses, or any other person in all of human history who can save us from an eternal grave. None but Jesus.

Do not ever be ashamed of that unique truth in a pluralistic world racing toward the eternal flames of the lake of fire. You and I are created by God to exalt Him, to be an integral part of God’s plan of redemption, of reconciliation for sinners who WANT to be reconciled. And your part and my part is wrapped up in the unique truth of Jesus Christ.

That is why Paul proclaimed on the streets and in the towns and villages of his own pluralistic and polytheistic culture: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek [e.g. Gentile].”  (Romans 1:16)

And HOW is that reconciliation accomplished? Most of you already know the answer to my question, but it is necessary to hear it again and again because we NEED to keep hearing it – ESPECIALLY because our culture scoffs at the idea, and even many churches have lost their first love. Martin Luther was spot on when he said: “We need to hear the gospel every day because we forget it every day.”

The text in this first chapter of Hebrews continues in verse 3, in which we are told: “When He [Jesus] made purification from sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.”

What does it mean that Jesus made purification of sins?

The Greek translated here into the English ‘purification’ carries the idea of purging, of a cleansing, the total removal of the guilt before God that accompanies our sins. That’s what Jesus meant when He said on that cross, just before He yielded up His Spirit, “It is finished.” 

Jesus paid with His life’s blood the penalty our sins deserved. He was our propitiatory sacrifice – a fancy term which means Jesus’ sacrificial death for us appeased the divine wrath of God that would have been directed at us like a laser when we stood before the Final Judge after our death.

That’s precisely what St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Christians at Rome: “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. (Romans 5:8-9)

And again the apostle tells us in his letter to the Christians at Colossae: And although you were formerly alienated and hostile in mind and engaged in evil deeds, yet He (Christ) has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through [His] death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach.” (Colossians 1:21-22)

I hope you caught that. Jesus’ death has not only reconciled those who come to Christ in faith and obedience, but His death has made you holy and blameless and beyond reproach in the eyes of God.

Oh! That is why there is no other name under all of heaven given to us whereby we MUST be saved, because only Jesus died for your sins and mine, only the sinless Son of God and Son of Man COULD die for your sins and mine.

When God says Jesus’ blood purified our sins, He meant exactly that. Jesus wiped our sins from existence itself. The penitent sinner who comes to Jesus for cleansing will have every stain, every molecule of sin erased forever.

I close with the lyrics of a hymn familiar to many. Please listen carefully to these words of truth:

Man of sorrows what a name for the Son of God, who came ruined sinners to reclaim: Hallelujah, what a Savior!  Bearing shame and scoffing rude, in my place condemned he stood, sealed my pardon with his blood: Hallelujah, what a Savior! Guilty, helpless, lost were we; blameless Lamb of God was he, sacrificed to set us free: Hallelujah, what a Savior! He was lifted up to die; "It is finished" was his cry; now in heaven exalted high: Hallelujah, what a Savior!

And so I conclude by repeating those first few verses of Hebrews chapter one:

 “God, after He spoke long ago to the fathers in the prophets in many portions and in many ways, in these last days has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high . . . .” 

Patience. Trust. And never, ever, be ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Amen