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Fall Asleep to the Book of Hebrews _ The Letter Written for Anyone Who Is Tired of Holding On · truthunedited

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  Speaker 1: There is a letter that was written for people who
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  Speaker 1: were about to walk away. Not people who had never believed,
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  Speaker 1: not strangers to faith, but men and women who had
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  Speaker 1: staked everything on Jesus of Nazareth, who had stepped out
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  Speaker 1: of their synagogues, endured the loss of reputation and security,
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  Speaker 1: and paid a real price for what they believed. And
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  Speaker 1: now years later, the pressure was rising again. Old voices
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  Speaker 1: were returning, old arguments were resurfacing, and the question that
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  Speaker 1: had once whispered at the edge of their minds was
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  Speaker 1: beginning to speak more boldly. Was He really enough? Was
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  Speaker 1: Jesus truly greater than the angels through whom the law
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  Speaker 1: was given, greater than Moses the servant who spoke with
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  Speaker 1: God face to face, greater than the entire system of
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  Speaker 1: priesthood and sacrifice that had shaped their world for centuries.
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  Speaker 1: Or had they misunderstood everything? The letter we call Hebrews
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  Speaker 1: was written into that silence, into that day, into that exhaustion.
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  Speaker 1: As I read this letter, I find myself thinking about
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  Speaker 1: those first believers standing at the edge of giving up,
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  Speaker 1: and I wonder how many of us tonight feel closer
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  Speaker 1: to that edge than we would like to admit. Not
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  Speaker 1: ready to abandon faith, but tired, worn down, quietly asking
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  Speaker 1: whether holding on is still worth it. This letter was
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  Speaker 1: written for them, and in a very real sense, it
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  Speaker 1: was written for you too. Tonight we will walk through
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  Speaker 1: it slowly, from the angels who stand before the throne
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  Speaker 1: of God, to a mysterious priest king who appears briefly
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  Speaker 1: in Genesis and disappears just as quickly, to a long
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  Speaker 1: line of men and women who held tightly to promises
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  Speaker 1: they never saw fulfilled in their lifetime. You do not
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  Speaker 1: need to watch, You only need to listen. Close your eyes,
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  Speaker 1: let the weight of the day begin to loosen its grip,
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  Speaker 1: Let your breathings low, and let this letter speak the
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  Speaker 1: way it was always meant to be heard, not as
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  Speaker 1: a distant theological argument, but as a living word of
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  Speaker 1: hope for anyone who is tired to night and wondering
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  Speaker 1: if holding on still matters. The door it points to
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  Speaker 1: is still open, and to night we will rest near
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  Speaker 1: it together. Chapter one, The Sun above all Angels. Before
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  Speaker 1: we can understand what Hebrews is arguing, we need to
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  Speaker 1: understand what it was arguing against. In the world of
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  Speaker 1: first century Judaism, angels were not simply the gentle winged
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  Speaker 1: figures painted on cathedral ceilings. They were cosmic powers, real, terrifying,
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  Speaker 1: glorious beings who stood in the presence of the Living
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  Speaker 1: God and carried out his commands across the created order.
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  Speaker 1: And more than that, Jewish tradition held something specific about
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  Speaker 1: how the Law had been given at Sinai. The apostle
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  Speaker 1: Paul referenced it in his letter to the Galatians. The
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  Speaker 1: Jewish historian Josephus recorded it as a settled belief among
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  Speaker 1: his people. The Law, the most sacred thing Israel had
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  Speaker 1: ever received, had been delivered not directly, but through angels.
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  Speaker 1: They were the mediators of the covenant at the Mountain
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  Speaker 1: of Fire. This means that when someone in the first
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  Speaker 1: century claimed that Jesus of Nazareth, a carpenter from Galilee
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  Speaker 1: who had been crucified like a criminal, was greater than
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  Speaker 1: the angels, they were not making a small or comfortable claim.
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  Speaker 1: They were making the most radical claim imaginable. And the
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  Speaker 1: author of Hebrews does not ease into it. He opens
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  Speaker 1: with it. The very first sentence of this letter is
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  Speaker 1: a declaration so dense, so layered, that scholars have spent centuries,
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  Speaker 1: unpacking what it contains in many and various ways. God
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  Speaker 1: spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but
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  Speaker 1: in these last days he has spoken to us by
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  Speaker 1: his son. Notice what is happening here. The author is
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  Speaker 1: not saying that Jesus was a better prophet than those
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  Speaker 1: who came before. He is saying that the entire history
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  Speaker 1: of divine communication, every vision, every dream, every burning bush,
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  Speaker 1: every still small voice in the wilderness was partial, incomplete,
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  Speaker 1: a series of installments building toward a final word, and
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  Speaker 1: the Sun is that final word. But then the author
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  Speaker 1: does something that would have stopped every Jewish reader cold.
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  Speaker 1: He begins to list what this sun actually is. He
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  Speaker 1: is the heir of all things. He is the one
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  Speaker 1: through whom God made the universe. He is the radiance
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  Speaker 1: of God's glory, not a reflection of it, not a
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  Speaker 1: representation of it from a distance, but the radiance itself,
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  Speaker 1: the way light pours from the sun and cannot be
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  Speaker 1: separated from its source. He is the exact imprint of
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  Speaker 1: God's nature. He upholds the entire universe by the word
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  Speaker 1: of His power. These are not modest claims. In any
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  Speaker 1: other context, they would have been called blasphemy. And then
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  Speaker 1: the author makes his turn after making purification for sins,
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  Speaker 1: he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty
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  Speaker 1: on high. Sat down. That phrase would have meant something
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  Speaker 1: very specific to any one who knew the temple in Jerusalem.
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  Speaker 1: In the temple there were no chairs. The priests never sat.
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  Speaker 1: They stood day after day, year after year, offering sacrifices
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  Speaker 1: that had to be repeated because the work was never finished.
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  Speaker 1: You cannot sit down when the work is not done.
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  Speaker 1: The Sun sat down because his work was, But the
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  Speaker 1: Author is not finished. He now turns to the question.
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  Speaker 1: His readers would immediately be asking, Fine, you say he
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  Speaker 1: is the son of God, exalted above all things, But
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  Speaker 1: what about the angels? What about Michael, who leads the
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  Speaker 1: armies of heaven. What about Gabriel, who delivers the words
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  Speaker 1: of God himself? What about these beings of pure fire
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  Speaker 1: and light who stand before the divine throne. Are you
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  Speaker 1: really saying this man from Galilee is above them? The
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  Speaker 1: author answers by doing something remarkable. He does not invent
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  Speaker 1: a new argument. He goes to the scriptures his readers
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  Speaker 1: already believed, and he shows them that those scriptures had
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  Speaker 1: already made this argument long before Jesus was born. He
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  Speaker 1: lines up seven quotations from the Old Testament. Seven In
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  Speaker 1: Jewish tradition, seven is the number of completeness. This is
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  Speaker 1: not a selective reading. This is a full case. The first,
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  Speaker 1: for to which of the angels did God ever say
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  Speaker 1: you are my son? To day I have begotten you?
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  Speaker 1: The answer is none. God never called an angel his son.
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  Speaker 1: He called Israel his firstborn son as a nation. He
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  Speaker 1: called David his son as a king. But the intimate
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  Speaker 1: singular language of divine sonship was never spoken to any angel.
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  Speaker 1: The second strikes deeper, I will be to him a father,
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  Speaker 1: and he shall be to me a son. This language
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  Speaker 1: of covenant fatherhood, where an inheritance passes and a name
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  Speaker 1: is carried forward, was never offered to any member of
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  Speaker 1: the angelic host. The third moves from intimacy to worship,
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  Speaker 1: and again. When he brings the first born into the world,
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  Speaker 1: he says, let all God's angels worship him. Let that
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  Speaker 1: land for a moment. The angels are commanded to worship
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  Speaker 1: the sun. Angels worship, they do not receive worship. The
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  Speaker 1: entire architecture of heaven is oriented around the throne of God,
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  Speaker 1: and every angelic being exists to glorify the one who
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  Speaker 1: sits upon it. For an angel to worship the Son
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  Speaker 1: is to say without ambiguity, that the Son shall in
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  Speaker 1: the divine throne. The fourth quotation describes the angels themselves.
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  Speaker 1: He makes his angels winds, and his ministers a flame
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  Speaker 1: of fire. Angels are created. They are instruments, powerful and holy. Yes,
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  Speaker 1: but they are made things, sent to carry out the
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  Speaker 1: will of the one who made them. The fifth is
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  Speaker 1: perhaps the most stunning. It is addressed directly to the Sun,
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  Speaker 1: your throne, O, God is forever and ever. The scepter
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  Speaker 1: of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. The author
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  Speaker 1: of Hebrews quotes a psalm that uses the word God
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  Speaker 1: and applies it directly to the Sun, not your representative,
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  Speaker 1: not your highest servant, God. And then in the same
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  Speaker 1: breath the psalm continues, you have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore, God,
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  Speaker 1: your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness.
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  Speaker 1: Beyond your compatisons. The Son is called God, and yet
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  Speaker 1: the Son has a God who anoints him. The author
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  Speaker 1: holds both truths side by side without flinching. The Son
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  Speaker 1: is fully divine and genuinely distinct from the Father. He
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  Speaker 1: does not explain this tension with a philosophical formula. He
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  Speaker 1: simply places both realities before the reader and trusts them
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  Speaker 1: to sit with the mystery. This is not careless thinking.
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  Speaker 1: This is ancient Israel's way of pointing at something that
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  Speaker 1: exceeds what language can fully contain. The sixth and seventh
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  Speaker 1: quotations shift from identity to permanence. The author quotes a
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  Speaker 1: psalm that speaks to the Sun about the eternal nature
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  Speaker 1: of his existence. In the beginning, Lord, you laid the
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  Speaker 1: foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work
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  Speaker 1: of your hands. They will perish, but you remain. They
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  Speaker 1: will all wear out like a garment, like a robe.
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  Speaker 1: You will roll them up like a garment. They will
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  Speaker 1: be changed, but you are the same, and your years
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  Speaker 1: will have no end. Creation will age. Creation will be
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  Speaker 1: folded up like old clothing and set aside. The entire
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  Speaker 1: physical universe, in all its vastness and beauty, belongs to
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  Speaker 1: the category of the temporary. The Sun does not. And finally,
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  Speaker 1: the seventh quotation closes the case with a question for
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  Speaker 1: to which of the angels, has he ever said, sit
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  Speaker 1: at my right hand until I make your enemies your
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  Speaker 1: footstool Again, The answer is none. No angel has ever
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  Speaker 1: been invited to sit at the right hand of God.
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  Speaker 1: No angel shares the throne. No angel rules. They serve,
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  Speaker 1: and that word serve is precisely the word the author
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  Speaker 1: uses to describe their role. They are ministering spirits, sent
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  Speaker 1: out to serve for the sake of those who are
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  Speaker 1: to inherit salvation. Here is the hierarchy that the first
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  Speaker 1: chapter of Hebrews establishes. At the top the Sun, the
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  Speaker 1: one who is called God, the one whose throne is eternal,
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  Speaker 1: the one who sat down because his work is finished.
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  Speaker 1: At the right hand of the Majesty on high. Below him,
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  Speaker 1: the angels, holy, powerful, glorious, but servants sent to minister
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  Speaker 1: to those who are being saved, and the ones being saved,
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  Speaker 1: the tired and doubting and suffering people who first received
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  Speaker 1: this letter. They are the ones the angels are sent
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  Speaker 1: to serve. In other words, if you are wondering whether
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  Speaker 1: following Jesus was the wrong choice, consider this. The beings
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  Speaker 1: you thought were above him are sent by God to
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  Speaker 1: take care of you. But this raises the question that
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  Speaker 1: anyone hearing this argument would immediately ask. If he is
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  Speaker 1: truly above the angels, If he is truly the radiance
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  Speaker 1: of God's glory and the exact day imprint of his nature,
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  Speaker 1: then why did he come to Earth the way he did?
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  Speaker 1: Why not in fire the way the angels appear in scripture?
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  Speaker 1: Why not with the thunder and lightning of Sinai. Why
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  Speaker 1: did he come as an infant, grow up as a carpenter,
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  Speaker 1: and die the death that Rome reserved for criminals. If
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  Speaker 1: he is above all of this, why did he step
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  Speaker 1: into the middle of all of this? That is the
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  Speaker 1: question the second chapter is waiting to answer, and the answer,
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  Speaker 1: when it comes is not what anyone would have expected.
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  Speaker 1: Chapter two, The God who Learned to Suffer. There is
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  Speaker 1: a question that has haunted thoughtful people across every generation.
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  Speaker 1: If God is all powerful, if he can speak galaxies
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  Speaker 1: into existence and hold the fabric of the universe together
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  Speaker 1: by the word of his mouth, then why did he
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  Speaker 1: not simply forgive sin by declaration? Why not announce from
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  Speaker 1: the height of heaven that the debt was canceled? Why
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  Speaker 1: the incarnation? Why the manger and the carpenter's shop and
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  Speaker 1: the dusty roads of Galilee. Why the agony in the
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  Speaker 1: garden and the nails of the cross? Why did the sun,
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  Speaker 1: who sits above the angels have to come down at all?
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  Speaker 1: The second chapter of Hebrews walks straight into that question,
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  Speaker 1: and the answer it gives is one of the most searching,
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  Speaker 1: most quietly devastating things in all of Scripture. He came
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  Speaker 1: down because there was no other way to be the
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  Speaker 1: kind of savior we actually needed. But before the author
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  Speaker 1: gets there, he pauses to issue a warning. It is
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  Speaker 1: the first of several in this letter moments where the
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  Speaker 1: theological argument stops and the author looks directly at his
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  Speaker 1: readers and says, do you understand what is at stake here?
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  Speaker 1: The warning is simple. If the message delivered by angels
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  Speaker 1: was reliable, and he assumes his readers accept that it was,
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  Speaker 1: and if every violation of that message carried consequences, and
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  Speaker 1: it did, then how shall we escape if we neglect
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  Speaker 1: a salvation that is so much greater. Notice the word neglect,
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  Speaker 1: not reject, not attack, not deliberately abandon, neglect. The author
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  Speaker 1: is describing people who do not dramatically turn away from faith.
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  Speaker 1: They simply stop paying attention to it. They allow the
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  Speaker 1: pressures of daily life, the voices of doubt, the slow
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  Speaker 1: weariness of suffering, to crowd out the one thing that matters.
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  Speaker 1: They do not slam the door. They drift, And the
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  Speaker 1: author says, the greater the salvation, the greater the danger
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  Speaker 1: in drifting from it. This is the pastoral heartbeat of
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  Speaker 1: the entire letter. It is not written to heretics. It
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  Speaker 1: is written to the exhausted, to people who are still
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  Speaker 1: in the room but edging toward the exit. And the
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  Speaker 1: author wants them to underst stand, not with fear, but
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  Speaker 1: with clarity, that what they are considering walking away from
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  Speaker 1: is not small. It is the greatest thing in the world.
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  Speaker 1: And then, having issued the warning, he turns back to
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  Speaker 1: the argument. And here is where everything shifts. He quotes
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  Speaker 1: from the Eighth Psalm, a poem that has always been
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  Speaker 1: read as a meditation on the smallness of humanity. When
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  Speaker 1: I look at your heavens, the Psalmist writes, the work
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  Speaker 1: of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you
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  Speaker 1: have set in place. What is man that you are
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  Speaker 1: mindful of him? It is a question born from humility,
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  Speaker 1: the feeling every human being knows when standing under a
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  Speaker 1: night sky and feeling the overwhelming vastness of creation pressing
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  Speaker 1: down on the smallness of the self. But then the
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  Speaker 1: Psalm takes a turn. And this turn is what the
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  Speaker 1: author of Hebrews seizes upon. Yet you have made him
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  Speaker 1: a little lower than the angels, and you have crowned
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  Speaker 1: him with glory and honor. You have given him dominion
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  Speaker 1: over the works of your hands. This was the original design.
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  Speaker 1: Humanity made a little lower than the angels in the
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  Speaker 1: order of creation. Yes, but crowned, crowned with glory, crowned
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  Speaker 1: with honor, given dominion, the image of a king in miniature,
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  Speaker 1: ruling a kingdom on behalf of the high king. And
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  Speaker 1: then the author says something that stops the reader cold.
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  Speaker 1: At present, we do not yet see everything in subjection
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  Speaker 1: to him, we do not yet see it. Look around.
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  Speaker 1: Is humanity crowned with glory and honor? Is their dignity
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  Speaker 1: and beauty and peace? Or is there violence and shame
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  Speaker 1: and death? The psalm describes a destiny that has not
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  Speaker 1: yet been realized. The crown is there in the design,
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  Speaker 1: but something went wrong. And then, and this is the
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  Speaker 1: moment where the entire argument pivots. The author says, but
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  Speaker 1: we see him. We see Jesus crowned with glory and
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  Speaker 1: honor because of the suffering of death, so that by
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  Speaker 1: the grace of God he might taste death for every one.
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  Speaker 1: The Psalm described a human destiny that humanity could not
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  Speaker 1: reach on its own. So the son became human. He
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  Speaker 1: stepped into the very nature that was supposed to bear
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  Speaker 1: the crown but had fallen short. He lived the life
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  Speaker 1: that humanity was designed to live, perfectly, all the way
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  Speaker 1: to the end, even through death, and in doing so,
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  Speaker 1: he wore the crown that was always meant for us.
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  Speaker 1: This is not simply a legal transaction. The author is
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  Speaker 1: describing something far more intimate than a debt paid from
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  Speaker 1: a safe distance. He uses a specific word that would
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  Speaker 1: have resonated deeply. He calls Jesus the pioneer of our salvation.
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  Speaker 1: The archer goes, the one who goes first, the one
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  Speaker 1: who blazes the trail, Not a distant benefactor writing a
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  Speaker 1: check to cover some one else's problem, but a forerunner
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  Speaker 1: who steps into the wilderness ahead of every one else
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  Speaker 1: and says, follow me, I know the way through. But
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  Speaker 1: why could this work only be done in a human body,
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  Speaker 1: why not in the form of an angel. The author
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  Speaker 1: gives the answer in one of the most quietly beautiful
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  Speaker 1: passages in the entire New Testament. Since the children share
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  Speaker 1: in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the
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  Speaker 1: same things, so that through death he might destroy the
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  Speaker 1: one who has the power of death and deliver all
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  Speaker 1: those who, through fear of death, were subject to life
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  Speaker 1: long slavery. The children share in flesh and blood. That
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  Speaker 1: phrase carries the weight of a family relationship. These are
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  Speaker 1: not strangers. He is saving that they are his. And
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  Speaker 1: because they are flesh and blood, he became flesh and blood,
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  Speaker 1: not to condescend to them, not to disguise himself among them,
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  Speaker 1: but to stand with them in the same vulnerability, under
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  Speaker 1: the same mortality, feeling the same cold, and the same hunger,
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  Speaker 1: and the same grief. And here the author gives the
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  Speaker 1: logic that changes everything. He did not come to help angels,
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  Speaker 1: for surely it is not angels that he helps, but
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  Speaker 1: he helps the offspring of Abraham. The angels did not
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  Speaker 1: need a savior. They were not subject to the fear
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  Speaker 1: of death. They did not know what it was to
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  Speaker 1: weep at a grave or wake in the dark, wondering
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  Speaker 1: if the morning would bring relief. But human beings did
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  Speaker 1: human beings do? And so he came to where the
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  Speaker 1: humans were. He did not reach down from a safe distance.
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  Speaker 1: He stepped in. He put on flesh, He breathed the
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  Speaker 1: same air, he walked on the same ground. He felt
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  Speaker 1: the pull of fatigue at the end of a long day.
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  Speaker 1: Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in
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  Speaker 1: every respect, so that he might become a merciful and
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  Speaker 1: faithful high priest in the service of God, to make
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  Speaker 1: propitiation for the sins of the people. A merciful and
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  Speaker 1: faithful high priest. This is the first time in Hebrews
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  Speaker 1: that the title appears, and it will become the central
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  Speaker 1: theme of everything that follows. But notice what qualifies him,
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  Speaker 1: For it not his power, not his divinity alone, not
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  Speaker 1: the fact that he sits above the angels. What qualifies
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  Speaker 1: him is that he became like us in every respect.
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  Speaker 1: And then the author adds one more line, a line
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  Speaker 1: that has carried more people through more dark nights than
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  Speaker 1: perhaps any other verse in this letter. For because he
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  Speaker 1: himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help
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  Speaker 1: those who are being tempted. He is able to help.
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  Speaker 1: Not from a position of untouched omnipotence looking down at
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  Speaker 1: suffering he has never fully understood, but from the inside,
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  Speaker 1: from the same place of hunger and thirst and grief
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  Speaker 1: and temptation and pain. He has been here, he knows.
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  Speaker 1: And that knowledge, the knowledge that the one who holds
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: the universe together has also sat in the darkness that
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: you are sitting in right now, is not a small thing.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: It is the author is suggesting, the most important thing,
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: because you do not need a high priest who is
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: merely powerful. Power without understanding, can save a body without
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: ever reaching a soul. What you need, what every human
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: being in every generation has always needed, is someone who
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: is both able to help and who knows from the
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: inside what helping actually requires. The Sun above all angels
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: could have remained above all angels, he had every right to,
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: but he did not. He came down, He put on flesh,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: he suffered, He learned obedience through the things he endured,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: and he tasted death for everyone, not because he had to,
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: but because the children needed him to. And now, having
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: suffered and died and been raised and seated at the
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: right hand of the majesty on high. He stands as
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: the one thing no angel has ever been, nor ever
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: could be, A high priest who has been where you are.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: This is the foundation on which everything else in Hebrews
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: is built. Before the author can show us the New Covenant,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: before he can explain the mystery of Melchizedek, before he
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: can take us into the Holy of Holies, he needs
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: us to understand who it is that walks us there.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: Not a distant God issuing decrees from a throne of fire,
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: a brother, a pioneer, a high priest made like us
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: in every respect. As the night settles around you and
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: the weight of the day begins to lift, let that
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: truth find its place before you sleep. You are not
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: approaching a god who does not understand you. Are approaching
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: one who has been exactly where you are tonight, and
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: who chose to go there for you. Breathe slowly, Let
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: them settle. We are going deeper now. Chapter three greater
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: than Moses. If the first chapter of Hebrews made a
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: bold claim that Jesus is above the angels, the third
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: chapter makes a claim that would have felt to the
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: original readers even more personal, even more dangerous, because the
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: author is about to say that Jesus is greater than Moses.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: To understand why this is so significant, you need to
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: understand what Moses meant to the people of Israel. He
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: was not simply a historical figure. He was not simply
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: the man who received the Ten Commandments on a mountain.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: He was the architect of an entire civilization, the liberator
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: who had walked into the most powerful empire on earth
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: and walked out with a nation of slaves behind him,
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: The man who had stood at the edge of the
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: sea and stretched out his hand, the one who had
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: climbed into the cloud on Mount Sinai and spoke with
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: the Living God as a man speaks with a friend.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: He was the mediator of the Covenant, the one through
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: whom the entire structure of Jewish religious life had come
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: into being. Every scroll read in every synagogue traced its
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: authority back to Moses. To say that anyone was greater
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: than Moses was not a theological abstraction. It was a
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: challenge to the entire foundation of Jewish identity. And the
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: author of Hebrews makes this challenge without hesitation. But notice
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: what he does not do. He does not diminish Moses.
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: To make the argument easier, he does the opposite. He
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: acknowledges the full extraordinary greatness of Moses before saying a
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: single word about Jesus. He was faithful in all God's house.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: In all God's house, the author is drawing from the
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Book of Numbers, where God himself speaks about Moses and
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: says that he speaks with him mouth to mouth, clearly
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: and not in riddles, and that Moses see the form
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: of the Lord. This is the most intimate description of
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: divine communication given to any human being in the entire
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: Hebrew Scriptures, and the author of Hebrews quotes it without qualification.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: Moses was faithful in all God's house. The author is
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: not trying to tear Moses down. He has too much
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: respect for his readers to do that. He knows that
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: if he undercuts Moses, he loses the argument before it begins. Instead,
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: he lets Moses stand at his full height, and then
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: he shows where the ceiling is. The distinction he draws
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: is architectural, simple and devastating at the same time. Moses
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: was faithful in God's house as a servant. Jesus is
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: faithful over God's house as a son a servant and
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: a son, both inside the house, both faithful, both essential
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: to the life of the household, but they do not
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: hold the same position. The servant carries out the orders
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: of the master, the sun carries the master's name, and
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: one day the sun carries the inheritance, and the author
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: goes one step further. Moses was faithful as a servant,
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: testifying to the things that were to be spoken later,
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: the things that were to be spoken later. This phrase
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: changes the entire frame everything Moses did, every law he wrote,
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: every sacrifice he instituted, every instruction he gave for the
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: construction of the tabernacle was testimony. It was pointing forward,
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: a long, elaborate, carefully designed series of signs pointing towards
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: something that had not yet arrived. Moses was not the destination.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: Moses was the signpost, and now the one the signs
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: were pointing to is come. This is not an argument
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: that diminishes Moses. If anything, it elevates him in a
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: different way. The great T'i, his servant in the history
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: of Israel, was great, not merely because of what he
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: accomplished in his own right, but because of what he
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: faithfully pointed toward his faithfulness was not wasted. Every word
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: he wrote, every command he delivered, every ritual he established,
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: all of it was preparation for the one who would follow.
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: But then the author does something that shifts the mood
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: of the chapter entirely. He stops building his theological argument
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: and turns to look at his readers directly, and what
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: he sees concerns him. Therefore, Holy brothers, you who share
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, consider him. The word
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: in the original language suggests careful, sustained attention, not a glance,
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: not a passing thought before moving on to the next worry,
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: A long, deliberate look, the kind of looking you do
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: when you are trying to understand something that mattter deeply.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: The author is concerned that his readers have stopped looking.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: That the pressure of persecution, the whisper of doubt, the
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: appeal of returning to the familiar structures of the old Covenant,
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: all of it has drawn their eyes away from the
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: one they started with. He wants them to look again,
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: and then he brings up a story that every Jewish
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: reader would have known by heart, the story of the
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: Wilderness generation to day. If you hear his voice, do
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion on the
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: day of testing in the wilderness, where your fathers put
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: me to the test and saw my works for forty years,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: the Rebellion, the testing in the wilderness. These words point
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: to one of the most haunting episodes in the entire
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Hebrew Bible. The generation that had been rescued from Egypt,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: who had seen the plagues, who had walked through the
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: parted sea on dry ground, who had eaten bread that
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: fell from the sky and drunk water that poured from
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: a rock. That same generation had, in the end failed
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: to enter the promised land, not because God changed his mind,
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: not because the obstacles were truly too great, but because
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: they did not believe. At the very edge of the inheritance,
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: with the Jordan River in front of them and the
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: land of promise just beyond, they looked at the obstacles
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: and decided that God was not enough. They turned back
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: in their hearts. They said, in the hearing of the
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: one who had carried them through every impossible mile of desert,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: we cannot it is too hard. We do not trust
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: that you will do what you promised. And God said
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: very well, you will not see it. That generation wandered
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: in the desert for forty years until every adult who
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: had refused to believe had died their children crossed the Jordan.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: Their children received the inheritance, but the ones who had
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: been rescued from Egypt, who had seen every miracle and
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: received provision, who had started the journey, they did not
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: finish it. The author does not tell this story to
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: condemn his readers. He tells it as a warning, a
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: mirror held up to the present moment, because the people
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: he is writing to are at their own Jordan river.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: an evil, unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: the living God. An unbelieving heart, not a dramatic, sudden apostasy,
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: something much more ordinary and much more dangerous. A heart
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: that slowly, day by day allows doubt to harden into conclusion,
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: that stops considering Jesus, stops holding the gaze, and begins
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: to look back at what was left behind. He calls
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: this hardening, the same word used to describe what happened
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: to Pharaoh in Egypt, a gradual, incremental stiffening of the
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: heart against the voice of God until the voice can
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: no longer be heard at all. And the remedy he
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: offers is not simply personal discipline or private devotion. It
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: is community exhort one another every day, as long as
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: it is called today, that none of you may be
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: hardened by the deceitfulness of sin, every day, not once
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: a week, not at annual gatherings, every day, because the
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: hardening does not happen all at once. It happens in
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: the ordinary moments, in the days when nothing dramatic is occurring,
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: and the voice of doubt has all the time it
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: needs to work quietly on the heart. The community of
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: faith in the Letter to the Hebrews is not optional.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: It is the very mechanism by which the heart is
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: kept soft. You need people around you who will speak
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: into your today, who will call you back to what
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: you believe on the days when you have almost forgotten it.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: And then the author closes the chapter with a sentence
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: that carries both warning and invitation inside the same breath.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: We share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: confidence firm to the end. If a small word, but
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: the author is not using it to introduce anxiety. He
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: is using it to describe the nature of the journey.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: He has never promised that following Jesus would be easy.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: What he has said, with the Wilderness Generation standing behind
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: the words like a long shadow, is that the ones
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: who finish are the ones who do not stop. The
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: door to the rest God promised is still open, the
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: invitation is still standing. But the next chapter will show
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: us something even larger. It will show us that what
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: the Wilderness Generation failed to enter was always bigger than
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: a piece of land in the ancient Near East, and
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: that what is waiting on the other side of believing
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: is bigger than any of them imagined. Chapter four, The
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: rest that still remains. There is a word in the
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: Letter to the Hebrews that appears more than almost any
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: other rest. It is a word we understand instinctively. Every
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: human being alive knows what it means to be tired.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: Not just physically tired, though that too, but tired in
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: the deeper sense. Tired of striving, tired of carrying things
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: that never seemed to get lighter, tired of the distance
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: between where you are and where you hoped you would
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: be by now. The ancient Israelites understood this kind of
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: tiredness they had lived it in the most literal sense imaginable,
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: four hundred years of slavery in Egypt, four hundred years
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: of bricks and quotas and the rod of the overseer,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: and then when they were finally free, forty years of
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: wandering in a desert, a whole generation rescued from one
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: form of exhaustion, only to spend the rest of their
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: lives in another. The promised land was supposed to be
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: the rest. That was how Moses had described it. That
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: was the word God had used when he spoke of
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: what was waiting on the other side of the Jordan.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Not simply territory, not simply safety. Rest. But that generation
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: never got there. And so the question the author of
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: Hebrews is now asking, quietly and carefully, with the precision
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: of some one who has thought about this for a
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: very long time, is this what happened to the rest?
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: Did it disappear when they failed to enter? Was it canceled?
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: Was the promise revoked because the generation it was given
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: to did not believe? The Author's answer is one of
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: the most quietly astonishing things in this entire letter. No,
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: the rest is still there. It has always been there,
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: and it has always been bigger than a piece of
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: land in the ancient Near East. He begins to build
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: his case by going back further than Moses, further than
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: the Exodus, further than the Covenant with Abraham. He goes
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: all the way back to the beginning, to the seventh
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: day of creation, when God finished the work he had
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: been doing and rested the rest of God. Not rest
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: because he was tired, not rest because he had exhausted
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: his resources, but rest in the sense of completion, the deep,
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: settled satisfaction of a work that is finished and good,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: the kind of rest that follows when everything that was
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: supposed to happen has happened, and you can stand back
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: and say it is very good. That rest, the author argues,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: has been present since the foundation of the world. It
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: was not created for the Wilderness generation. It was not
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: invented by Moses. It preceded the Law, preceded the Covenant
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: with Israel, preceded Abraham himself. It has been there since
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: the beginning, like a room that was always prepared, waiting
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: for some one to walk through the door. And then
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: he points to something remindable centuries after the Wilderness generation
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: had died, long after Joshua had led the children into
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: the land and the tribes had received their territories, a
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: psalm was written, a psalm that contained these words, to day,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: to day? The author asks, why would David write that word?
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: If the rest had already been received, Joshua had brought
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: the people in the land, had been distributed the promise
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: by every outward measure had been fulfilled. So why in
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: the time of David, centuries after Joshua, does the Holy
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: Spirit still say to day? Because what Joshua gave them
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: was not the final rest. It was a sign of it,
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: a shadow of it, a down payment towards something that
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: the land itself, as beautiful and as sacred as it was,
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: could not fully deliver. A land can give you safety,
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: It can give you stability, It can give you a home.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: But it cannot quiet the restlessness that runs deeper than geography.
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: It cannot still the anxiety of a soul that knows
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: it is not yet fully where it was made to be.
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: It cannot resolve the distance between a human heart and
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: the God it was created to know that rest, the
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: rest the land was always pointing toward is still available,
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: so there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God.
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: Sabbath rest, the Hebrew word means to cease, to stop,
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: to put down, to let go of the work of
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: your hands, and simply be and in the rhythm of creation.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: The seventh Day was not simply a day of inactivity.
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: It was a day of completeness, a day when the
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: work was done and could be enjoyed rather than added to.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: The author is saying that this kind of rest, a ceasing,
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: a completion, a settled peace, is something God has been
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: inviting human beings into since the very beginning, and that
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: it is entered not by working harder, not by achieving more,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: not by performing the right rituals with enough precision, but
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: by faith. Let us therefore, strive to enter that rest.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: The phrase is almost paradoxical, strive to rest, make every
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: effort to cease striving. It sounds like a contradiction, but
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: what the author means is this. The obstacle to rest
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: is not laziness, It is unbelief. The Wilderness generation did
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: not fail to enter because they did not try hard enough.
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: They failed because they did not trust the one who
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: was leading them. The striving the author calls for is
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: the sustained daily choice to trust, to keep believing even
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: when the evidence is hard to read, to keep holding
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: the gaze on Jesus, even when everything around you is
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: arguing for despair. That is the fight of faith, and
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: it is a real fight. Any One who has tried
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: to believe in the darkness knows this. And then the
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: author inserts a verse that seems at first to interrupt
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: the flow. But nothing in Hebrews is accidental. For the
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: Word of God is living and active, sharper than any
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: two edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: to the eyes of Him, to whom we must give account.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: Why here, Why this in the middle of a meditation
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: on rest, Because you cannot enter the rest while you
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: are hiding. The rest of God is not available to
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: the person who is performing before him, who is presenting
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: a curated version of themselves, the way the Wilderness Generation
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: performed their religious duties while their hearts were far from trust.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: The living word of God cut through that. It goes
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: beneath the surface presentation, beneath the religious routine, beneath the
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: carefully maintained exterior, and it sees what is actually there,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: the thoughts, the intentions, the real condition of the heart.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: This is not described as a threat. It is described
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: as the reality that makes rest possible. Because the rest
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: you enter with God is not a rest you earn
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: by appearing to be something you are not. It is
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: a rest you receive by being fully known. Every fear,
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: every doubt, every failure, every secret exhaustion you have carried
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: so long you cannot remember what it felt like not
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: to carry it fully known and still held. You cannot
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: rest in the arms of some one you are pretending
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: with the Word of God strips away the pretending, and
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: what is found underneath. When the pretending falls away is
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: not condemnation. The author is about to say something that
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: changes everything. Since then we have a great high priest
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: Let us hold fast our confession. Hold fast, do not
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: let go when everything in you wants to release your grip.
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: When the doubt is loud, and the exhaustion is real,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: and the promised rest still feels very far away. Hold on,
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: and then the verse that generations of suffering, doubting, exhausted
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: human beings have returned to in their darkest moments. For
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: we do not have a high priest who is unable
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: Unable to sympathize. The Greek word means literally unable to
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: feel along with. The author is assuring his readers and
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: assuring us to night that the one who holds the
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: universe together is not city unmoved by what happens down here.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: He has felt it. Whatever you are carrying to night,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: the grief, the fear, the loneliness, the temptation, the sense
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: that you are failing at things that matter, He has
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: felt the weight of it, not from a distance, not theoretically,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: in his body and his soul, in the same fragile
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: human nature that you carry in every respect, tempted as
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: we are every respect, and yet without sin, which means
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: he did not collapse under the weight. He felt everything
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: you feel, and he held, which means he knows both
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: the weight and the way through. Let us, then, with confidence,
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: draw near to the throne of Grace, that we may
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: In time of need, not in time of sufficient preparation,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: not when you have gotten everything in order, Not when
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: the doubts are resolved and the prayers are more consistent
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: and the faith feels stronger. In time of need, which
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: is to say, now exactly as you are, in the
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: middle of whatever tonight looks like for you. The rest
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: of God is not a reward for the people who
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: finally get everything right. It is a gift offered to
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: the people who are willing to stop pretending they can
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: find it somewhere else and come to the only one
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: who has ever actually had it to give. The door
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: is still open, the rest is still there, and the
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: one who invites you in has been exactly where you
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: are tonight and chose to go there so that you
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: would know the invitation is real. Come and rest. Chapter five,
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: The High Priest who learned obedience. Every institution of human
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: civilization has a figure at its center whose role is
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: to stand between the people and the powers they cannot approach.
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: On their own. The diplomat who walks into the room
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: where war can be ended or continued. The physician who
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: enters the place where disease has gone beyond what ordinary
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: people can manage alone. The advocate who applies a law
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: too complex for those who need its protection to navigate
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: by themselves. But in the ancient world, in the world
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: this letter was written into, no such figure was more important,
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: more carefully defined, or more utterly necessary than the High Priest.
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: The role had been established at Sinai. Aaron, the brother
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: of Moses, was the first to hold it, and the
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: requirements for the position were extraordinarily precise, not because God
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: is bureaucratic, but because what the high priest was asked
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: to do was so sacred, so laden with consequence, that
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: every detail of his preparation mattered. He was the one
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: who went in once a year, only once. On the
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: day of Atonement, the High Priest entered the innermost chamber
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: of them sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, the place where
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: the ark of the Covenant rested beneath the outstretched wings
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: of the golden Cherubim, the place where the presence of
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: the living God dwelled in a way that existed nowhere
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: else on earth. No one else could enter. The ordinary
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: priests served in the outer courts, the levites carried out
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: their duties in the surrounding areas, but only the High
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: priest crossed the final threshold. Here I want to mention
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: something that comes not from Scripture itself, but from ancient
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: Jewish tradition outside the Bible. Some traditional accounts describe the
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: high priest wearing a rope around his ankle, so that
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: if he died inside, his body could be retrieved without
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: any one else having to enter. Scripture does not record
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: this detail, and historians debate whether it was practiced. But
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: whether or not the tradition is historically accurate, it points
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: to a truth that Scripture does make clear. The pro
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: wach to the presence of a holy God was not casual,
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: It was not safe. It was the most serious thing
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: a human being could do. And into that space with blood,
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: the high priest went into the second section. Only the
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: high priest goes, and he but once a year, and
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: not without blood, which he offers for himself and for
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: the unintentional sins of the people. The author now turns
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: to the two qualifications that every legitimate high priest had
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: to possess the first. He had to be chosen from
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: among men, selected from humanity, not an angel, not a
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: being from another order of existence, a man who knew
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: from the inside what it was to be the people
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: he was representing. This was not an accident of the design.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: It was the entire point. A representative who had never
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: experienced what the people experienced could not truly stand in
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: their place. He could speak on their behalf, but he
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: could not speak from their behalf. The second qualification was
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: more surprising. The High Priest was required to deal gently
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: with the ignorant and wayward, and the reason given is striking,
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: since he himself is beset with weakness. The High Priest
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: was not chosen because he was perfect. He was chosen
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: from among imperfect men, precisely because his own imperfection equipped
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: him to handle the imperfection of others without contempt. He
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: had stood where they stood, he had felt what they felt,
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: and so when he carried their sins to the altar,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: he was not a stranger to the burden. In fact,
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: the author notes, the high Priest was required to offer
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: sacrifice for his own sins first before he could make
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: atonement for the sins of the people. He was not
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: above needing forgiveness. He was simply the one chosen to
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: make the offering. And then the third requirement, which the
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: author treats as foundational to everything else. No one takes
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: this honor for himself, but only when called by God,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: just as Aaron was the high Priesthood was not something
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: you applied for, not something you achieved through religious merit
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: or family ambition. It was a calling, a divine appointment.
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: Aaron did not choose the role. God chose him. And
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: now the author makes the claim his readers would have
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: found most provocative. So also Christ did not exalt himself
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: to be made a high priest, but was appointed by
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: Him who said to him, you are my son. To
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: day I have begotten you. Jesus of Nazareth was not
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: a Levite. He was from the tribe of Judah, a
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: tribe that had no connection to the priestly line whatsoever.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: By every conventional standard of the day, he had no
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: right to serve as a priest at all. But the
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: author is not appealing to the conventional standard. He is
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: appealing to a higher one. The authority of Jesus as
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: high priest comes not from human lineage, but from divine appointment.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: Just as Aaron was called, Jesus was called, and the
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: one who called him is the one whose word carries
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: the weight of the universe. But then the author does
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: something unexpected. Having established the divine calling of Jesus, he
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: turns to describe something that happened during the earthly life
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: of Jesus, something raw, something that the casual observer might
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: have seen as evidence against his greatness rather than for it.
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: and supplications with loud crying and tears to him who
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: was able to save him from death, and he was
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: heard because of his reverence loud crying and tears. Most
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: scholars believe this is a reference to Gathsemone, the garden
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: outside Jerusalem, where Jesus, the night before his crucifixion, fell
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: on his face and prayed with an anguish so intense
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: that the gospel accounts describe his sweat falling like drops
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: of blood. Father, if it is possible, let this cup
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: pass from me. This is not the image of a
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: divine figure above the reach of human pain. This is
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: a man on the ground in the dark crying out
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: to God with everything he has, asking if there is
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: another way. Although he was a son, he learned obedience
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: through what he suffered, learned obedience. This phrase has troubled
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: theologians for centuries. How can the eternal son of God
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: learn anything? The author is not speaking about the acquisition
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: of information. He is speaking about something different and deeper,
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: the forging of character through experience. There is a kind
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: of knowledge that can only be gained by going through something,
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: not reading about it, not observing it from safety, but
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: entering into it fully and coming out the other side.
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: Obedience that has never been tested is not the same
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: as obedience that has been tested and held. And Jesus
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: fully human in the garden, fully experiencing the weight of
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: what lay ahead, learned in the most costly way possible,
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: what it means to choose the will of God over
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: the desperate desire to be spared. He knew what was coming,
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: He felt the full weight of knowing, and he said
• 51:22
  Speaker 1: yes anyway, and being made perfect through that suffering. Not
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: perfect in the sense of becoming morally complete, for he
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: was already without sin, but perfect in the sense of
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: being fully equipped and fully qualified for the role he
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: was called to fill. He became the source of eternal
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: salvation to all who obey him. The source, not a contributor,
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: not a facilitator, the source, the origin, the fountain from
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: which everything else flows. And he is designated by God
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. There it
• 51:59
  Speaker 1: is the name that will occupy the central section of
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: this letter, the figure who has been hovering at the
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: edges of the argument since the beginning, the mysterious priest King,
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: who appears in the oldest pages of the Hebrew scriptures
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: and then vanishes, leaving behind a mystery that the author
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: has been carefully patiently building toward. But before he opens
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: that door, he stops. He turns from the argument and
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: addresses his readers directly, and what he says is among
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: the most pointed things in the entire letter. About this,
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: we have much to say, and it is hard to explain,
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: since you have become dull of hearing, dull of hearing,
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: not ignorant, not uninstructed. They have been taught, they have heard,
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: they have received the basic truths of the faith. But
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: somewhere along the way, through the pressure of persecution, through
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: the temptation to drift through the slow erosion of attention
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: that happens when faith is hard and life is relentless.
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: They have grown dull. For though by this time you
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: again the basic principles of the oracles of God. By
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: this time, the author is marking time. There was a
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: point when they were new in the faith and needed
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: the basics. That point has passed. They should have grown,
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: they should have moved from receiving teaching to giving it,
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: but they have not. They have stayed in the same place.
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: Solid food is for the mature, for those who have
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: good from evil. There is a kindness beneath the sharpness.
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: Here the author is not condemning his readers for being
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: where they are. He is calling them forward. He is
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: saying there is more. There is a depth to this
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: faith that you have not yet entered. The Melchizedic passage,
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: the deep exploration of the eternal priesthood, is precisely that
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: solid food. It is not entry level material. It is
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: theology for those who are willing to go further in.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: And the author is about to take his readers there
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: to adore in the Hebrew scriptures that has been standing
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: barely open since the days of Genesis, and what is
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: behind it will change the way they see everything. But
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: to night is also a night for rest, for settling,
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: for letting what has already been said find its way
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: into the places where it is needed. You are approaching
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: a throne of grace, not a throne of judgment, not
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: a court room where the evidence against you is being compiled,
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: a throne of grace, where mercy is given freely and
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: help arrives exactly in time. The high Priest who stands
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: before that throne has cried out in the dark, just
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: as you have. He has felt the weight of what
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: lies ahead and asked for another way. He has suffered,
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: He has learned obedience through what he endured, and he
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: is not distant from you tonight. He is the source
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: of eternal salvation for those who keep coming, not for
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: those who have everything figured out, for those who keep trusting,
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: keep holding on, keep coming back to the throne, even
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: on the nights when coming back feels like the hardest
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: thing in the world. Come the throne is open, and
• 55:26
  Speaker 1: the one who stands there knows your Name, Chapter six,
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: The anchor that holds. There are moments in a life
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: of faith, when the ground shifts beneath you. Not the dramatic,
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: sudden collapses. Those are terrible, but at least they announce themselves.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: What the author of Hebrews is writing about is something slower,
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: something quieter, the kind of shifting that happens over months
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: and years, when the prayers begin to feel like they
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: are going nowhere, when the promise is that once seemed
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: so clear begin to seem distant and uncertain, when the
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: cost of following keeps rising and the visible returns keep diminishing.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: And in those seasons, a question rises from somewhere deep inside,
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: a question that feels almost too dangerous to speak aloud.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: What if I made a mistake? What if all of this,
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: the sacrifice, the suffering, the years of holding on, was
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: built on something that is not as solid as I believed.
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: The author of Hebrews knows this question. He is writing
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: to people who are living inside it, and in the
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: sixth chapter he addresses it with a combination of sobering
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: warning and breath taking hope, held together in attention so
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: precise that you have to read slowly to catch both.
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: He begins with an exhortation, Therefore, let us leave the
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity. Leave
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: the elementary things, move forward ward, do not stay camped.
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: At the beginning, he lists the foundational teachings repentance from
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: dead works, faith toward God, instruction about baptisms and the
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: eternal judgment. These are the first things, the entry points,
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: and the author says these are not the destination, they
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: are the foundation. And a foundation is not where you live,
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: it is what you build on God permitting, He says,
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: we will move on. But then he stops because before
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: he can take his readers deeper, he needs to say
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: something heavy, something he introduces with unusual carefulness, as if
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: handling something sharp, for it is impossible in the case
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: the heavenly gift and have shared in the Holy Spirit,
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: and have tasted the goodness of the Word of God
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: and the powers of the age to come, and then
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: have fallen away to restore them again to repentance. These
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: are among the most debated verses in the entire New Testament.
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: Honest scholars and faithful theologians have wrestled with them for centuries,
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: and I want to be straightforward with you about what
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: that means. There are serious Bible believing people who read
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: this passage differently from one another. Some understand it as
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: describing genuine believers who fall away permanently. Others understand it
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: as a hypothetical warning, or as describing people who appeared
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: to believe but never truly did. Knight Psalms does not
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: think it is our place to close that debate for you.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: What we can say is this, the author is clearly
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: describing something severe, something he wants his readers to take
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: with full seriousness. The key to understanding the passage is
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: in the phrase that follows. Since they are crucifying once
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: again the Son of God to their own harm and
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: holding him up to contempt, the author is not describing
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: ordinary struggle with sin. He is not describing doubt or
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: spiritual exhaustion, or the kind of stumbling that marks every
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: honest life of faith. He is describing a specific, deliberate
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: public act, the act of renouncing Christ and returning to
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: the Old Covenant system, which in the theology of that
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: system would require a new sacrifice for sin, and the
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: author says there is no new sacrifice coming. Christ made
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: the one sacrifice. If that is treated as insufficient, as contemptible,
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: as something to be publicly rejected and walked away from,
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: then the only mechanism by which forgiveness is available has
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: been rejected along with it. This is a warning for
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: the person who is considering a final, deliberate, public abandonment
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: of Christ. It is not a warning for the one
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: who is struggling. It is not a word for the
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: doubter who is barely holding on to night and wondering
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: if they can keep going. The author knows the difference
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: between the person who is fighting to stay and the
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: person who is planning to go, and he addresses them differently.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: This passage is for the latter. The warning is real,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: and it is placed here. The author believes out of love,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: because he wants his readers to understand before they take
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: a step, they cannot undo what it is they would
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: be walking away from. And then, having said the hardest thing,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: the author turns immediately in the very next breath, though
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: we speak in this way, yet in your case, beloved,
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: we feel sure of better things, things that belong to
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: salvation beloved. It is the only time in the entire
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: Letter to the Hebrews that the author uses this word,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: and he places it here right after the most severe
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: warning in the book, as if to make absolutely certain
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: that the warning is not misread as rejection. I am
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: speaking hard truths to you because I love you, because
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: I believe better things of you, because I know you
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: are not the ones who will go through that door.
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: For God is not unjust so as to overlook your
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: work and the love that you have shown for His
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: name in serving the saints, as you still do. God
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: has not forgotten every act of faithfulness, every hour of service,
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: every sacrifice made in the name of Love, every day
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: lived in the direction of Christ, even when it costs something.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: God has seen it all. None of it has been lost,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: none of it has slipped through some crack in the
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: divine memory. He sees it, He holds it, he counts it.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: And we desire each one of you to show the
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: same earnestness, to have the full assurance of hope until
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: the end, so that you may not be sluggish but
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: imitators of those who through faith patience inherit the promises,
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: full assurance of hope. This is what the author wants
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: for his readers, not anxious, precarious, barely holding on religion,
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: full assurance, the settled confidence of a person who knows
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: who they belonged to and is not afraid to rest
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: in that knowledge. And then the author takes his readers
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: somewhere deeply comforting. He tells them the story of Abraham.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: When God made a promise to Abraham. Since he had
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: surely I will bless you and multiply you. God swore
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: by himself there was nothing greater to swear by, And
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: he made a promise to a man who was old,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: whose wife was barren, who had no son and no heir,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: and no visible mechanism by which the promise could be kept,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: a man who had to wait long years of silence
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: and uncertainty before the promised son was born. And Abraham
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: endured and thus obtained the promise. He did not see
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: it quickly, he did not receive it without suffering the
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: gap between the word God spoke and the day it
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: became visible. But he held on, and the promise came so.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: When God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: guaranteed it with an oath two unchangeable things, the promise
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: and the oath in which it is impossible for God
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: to lie. God does not simply give his word and
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: walk away. He binds himself to it. He places his
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: own character on the line. What he has promised will happen.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: Because he is incapable of the alternative. We who have
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: to the hope set before us, we who have fled
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: for refuge. The image is of a person running from
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: danger toward a place of safety. In the ancient world,
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: certain cities were designated as places of refuge, where some
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: one pursued could run and be protected. The author is saying,
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: you fled, You ran to Christ. You sought refuge in
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: the Gospel, and what you ran to is solid. It
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: is not shifting. It is not built on something that
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: might give way when the pressure increases. We have this
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: an anchor of the soul. The image is both nautical
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: and priestly. In the Mediterranean world of the first century,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: an anchor was the one thing that kept a ship
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: from being destroyed when the storm came. It held when
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: nothing else could. It reached down into the sea floor,
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: invisible and unfelt in calm weather, but absolutely essential the
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: moment the waves began, and the author says, the hope
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: we have in Christ is that anchor. When the storm comes,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: and it will come, there is something holding you, something
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: that reaches not into the sea floor of this world,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: but into Heaven itself, into the very holy of holies,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: into the presence of God. Because the one who entered
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: there as our forerunner, Jesus, the high Priest after the
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: order of Melchizedek, is already there. He has gone before,
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: he has passed through. And the anchor of our hope
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: is attached not to anything in this world, but to
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: the throne of Heaven itself. You may not feel it
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: in the calm seasons, you may forget it is there
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: when the waters are smooth. But when the storm comes,
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: and it comes for every life, in one form or another,
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: you will feel the anchor hold and it will hold
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: not because of who you are, not because your faith
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: is strong enough, or consistent enough, or worthy enough, not
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: because you have earned the right to be held, but
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: because the one who holds you swore by himself that
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: he would. And it is impossible for God to lie.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 1: Chapter seven, The Mystery of Melchizedek. There are moments in
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: scripture where the author plants a name, moves on without explanation,
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: and trusts that anyone paying close attention will notice that
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: something extraordinary has just been placed before them. Genesis fourteen
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: is one of those moments. The story has been moving quickly. Abram,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: who has not yet been renamed Abraham by God, has
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: just returned from a military rescue mission. His nephew Lot
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: had been captured by a coalition of kings who had
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: raided the region around Sodom and Gomorrah. Abram, with three
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: hundred and eighteen trained men from his household, had pursued them,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: defeated them, and brought back the captives and the plunder.
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: He is returning home. The king of Sodom comes out
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: to meet him, and then, without any introduction, without any preparation,
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: without any genealogy or back story, another king appears, and Melchizedek,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: king of Salem, brought out bread and wine. He was
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: priest of God most High. And he blessed him and said,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: blessed be Abram by God most High, possessor of heaven
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 1: and Earth. And blessed be God most High, who has
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: delivered your enemies into your hand. And Abram gave him
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: a tenth of everything. That is all two verses and
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: a fraction the entire recorded appearance of Melchizedek in the
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 1: Book of Genesis. And then he is gone. He has
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: no father listed, no mother, no ancestry, and no descendants,
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 1: no record of his birth, and no record of his death.
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: He simply appears, priest of God Most High, king of Salem,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: bread and wine in his hands, blesses the father of
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: the Hebrew nation, receives a tithe from him, and disappears
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: back into the silence of history. For over a thousand years,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: this passage sat in the Hebrew scriptures, largely unexplained. It
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: was mysterious scholars noted it. The community of the Dead
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: Sea Scrolls, known as the Esnes, developed their own traditions
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: around the figure, though those traditions go beyond what scripture
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: tells us, But no one had fully opened the door
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: that Genesis fourteen had left Ajar until the author of
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: hebrews this Melchizedek, king of Salem, Priest of the Most
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: High God, met Abraham, returning from the slaughter of the kings,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: and blessed him, and Abraham apportioned to him a tenth
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: part of everything. He begins with the names, and in
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: the ancient world, names were not merely labels. They carried
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: meaning that their original hearers would have recognized immediately Melchizedek.
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: In Hebrew, Melki means king and Zedek means righteousness. His
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: name means king of righteousness. Salem, the city of which
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: he is king, the same city that will eventually become Jerusalem.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: And the word Salem comes from the Hebrew Shalom, which
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: means peace. He is King of Salem, king of Peace,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: king of righteousness, king of peace. The author lets those
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: names rest in the air for a moment before continuing,
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: because those two titles will be applied later in this
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: very letter to the one who is greater than Melchizedek,
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: the one who is the fulfillment of everything this mysterious
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: figure prefigured. He is without father or mother or genealogy,
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: having neither beginning of days nor end of life. Now,
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: I want to be careful here about what the author
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: is and is not saying. He is not claiming that
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: Melchizedek had no literal parents, or that he literally never died.
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: He is making a point about what the text of
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: scripture records. In a culture where genealogy was everything, where
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: your ancestry determined your identity and your religious role, the
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: Genesis account gives Melchizedek none of that. There is no lineage,
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: no birth date, no death date. And in a text
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: as meticulously constructed as the Hebrew scriptures, where genealogies are
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: recorded with extraordinary care, that silence is not an oversight.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: It is a statement. Melchizedek stands outside the system of
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: genealogical qualification. He holds the priesthood not because of who
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: his father was, but because of who he is. And
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: in the structure of his appearance in Genesis, with no
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: record of birth and no record of death, appearing and
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: disappearing as if from and into eternity, he resembles, the
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: author says, the Son of God. Resembling the Son of God,
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: he continues as a priest forever. This is not the
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: author claiming that Melchizedek is divine or that he is
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: the pre incarnate cres Christ. He is making a typological argument,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: the kind that runs through the entire letter. Melchizedek is
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: a type a shadow, an advanced sketch drawn in the
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: early pages of history to mark the outline of something
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: that had not yet fully arrived. And now the author
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: presses the argument to its decisive point. See how great
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: this man was, to whom Abraham the Patriarch gave a
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: tenth of the spoils. Abraham the Patriarch, the man from
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: whom all of Israel descended, the one who received the
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: covenant promises, the land, the nation, the blessing that would
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: extend to all the families of the earth. In the
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: theology of Israel, there was no figure more central, more sacred,
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: more foundational. And Abraham gave Melchizedek a tenth of everything.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: In the ancient world, and in the specific structure of
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: Israelite law, the tithe was given upward. The lesser gave
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: to the greater, The people gave to the priests, the
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: priests gave to God. The direction of the tithe was
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: a declaration of hierarchy. Abraham, the father of the nation,
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: the recipient of the covenant, gave a tithe to Melchizedek,
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: which means, by the logic of that transaction, Melchizedek was
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: greater than Abraham. And here the argument becomes almost geometrically precise.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: One might even say that Levi himself, who receives tithes,
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: paid tithes through Abraham, for he was still in the
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: loins of his ancestor when Melchizedek met him. Levi was
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: the ancestor of the priestly tribe. The levitical priests, the
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: ones who operated the entire sacrificial system of Israel, who
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: received tithes from the people, who made atonement year after year.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: All of them descended from Levi, and Levi descended from Abraham,
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: which means that when Abraham stood before Melchizedek and gave
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: him a tenth of everything, Levi was there too, carried
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: in the biology of his ancestor, in the lineage that
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: had not yet been born. And through Abraham, Levi and
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: all the priests who would come from him acknowledged the
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: superiority of a priesthood that preceded and superseded their own Now,
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: if perfection had been attainable through the levitical priesthood under
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 1: which the people received the law, what further need would
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: there have been for another priest to arise after the
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: Order of Melchizedek rather than one named after the Order
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: of Aaron. This is the argument from necessity. If the
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: system had worked, if the levitical priesthood had been sufficient
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: to bring people into full, complete, permanent relationship with God,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: there would have been no need for anything else. The
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: system would have done its job, and that would have
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: been that. But something else was predicted a thousand years
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: after Abraham, centuries after Moses, after the priesthood of Aaron
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: had been operating for generations, after the temple had been built,
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: and the sacrificial system had been running its annual cycles.
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: After all of that, a psalm was written, and in
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: that psalm God spoke directly to the King of Israel
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: and said something that should have raised a thousand questions.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: You are a priest forever after the Order of Melchizedek.
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: Psalm one hundred and ten, written by David, acknowledged by
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: every Jewish scholar as sacred Scripture, and the author of
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 1: Hebrews looks at that psalm and asks a question that
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: once you hear it, you cannot unhear. Why if the
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: levitical system was enough, why did God through David announce
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: another priesthood. Why centuries into the operation of the Aaronic system,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: does God declare that there will be a different kind
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: of priest after, a completely different order, one that is
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: not based on genealogy, but on an an oath, one
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: that is not temporary but forever. The only answer is
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 1: that he knew the levitical system was not the final word,
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: not because it failed in what it was designed to do,
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: but because what it was designed to do was always preparatory,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: always pointing forward, always incomplete by intention. For when there
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: change in the law as well. The priesthood and the
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 1: law are bound together. You cannot change one without affecting
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: the other. And if a new priesthood has been announced,
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: one after the order of Melchizedeic rather than aaron, then
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: something about the entire structure of the Covenant has shifted
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: at its foundation. And Jesus, born of the tribe of Judah,
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: from which Moses said nothing about priests, from which no
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: levitical priest had ever come. Jesus holds his priesthood not
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: because of his genealogy, but because of something else, entirely
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: the power of an indestructible life. Indestructible the Greek word
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: is a catalitan, a life that cannot be dissolved, cannot
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: be destroyed, cannot be terminated. The levitical priests died one
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: generation after another. They died, and each time one died,
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: another had to be appointed and consecrated and set to work,
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: because the work was never finished, and the priest who
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: was doing it was always mortal. But the one who
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: holds the priesthood after the order of Melchizedek lives. He
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: holds it permanently. He does not hand it off. He
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: does not retire, he does not die and leave the
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: position vacant. Consequently, he is able to save to the
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: he always lives, to make intercession for them to the uttermost.
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: This phrase reaches in two directions at once. It means
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: to the fullest extent, completely totally lacking nothing, but it
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: also means to the final end, all the way to
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: the finish line, through every season, past every obstacle, to
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: the very last moment of the very last day. He
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: is able to save you completely. And he is able
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: to save you all the way to the end, not
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: because the work keeps needing to be done again, but
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: because he is always there, always living, always interceding, standing
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: before the throne of God as your representative, your advocate,
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: your eternal high priest, making the case on your behalf,
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: not with the blood of animals that have to be
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: offered again and again, but with his own blood, offered
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: once and never needing to be repeated. For it was
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 1: indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest,
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: wholly innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: He has no need like those high priests to offer
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: sacrifices daily, first for his own sins and then for
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: those of the people, since he did this once for
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: all when he offered up himself once for all. The
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 1: levitical high priest had to offer for himself before he
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: could offer for the people, because he too was a
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: sinner who needed atonement. And even after making that offering,
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: the work was not permanent. Next year, he would do
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: it again, and the year after that, and every year
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: until he died, and his son took his place and
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: continued the cycle. Jesus offered himself, not an animal, not
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: a substitute, at one remove himself, his own life, given
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: as the offering that ends all offerings. And he did
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: it once once in the entire history of the universe,
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: because once was enough, because the life that was offered
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: was of infinite worth, sufficient to cover every sin of
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: every person who would ever come to God through him.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: The Law appoints men in their weakness as high priests,
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: but the word of the Oath, which came later than
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: the law, appoints a son who has been made perfect forever.
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: The mystery of Melchizedek turns out not to have been
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: a mystery at all. It was a marker, a sign
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: planted in the earliest pages of scripture, thousands of years
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: before the event. It pointed toward, saying, clearly to any
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: one willing to look, there is a priesthood coming that
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: will be unlike anything you have seen. It will not
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: be based on genealogy, it will not be temporary, it
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: will not require repetition. It will be eternal and royal
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 1: and fully effective. It has been coming since the days
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: of Abraham, and it has arrived. So as you lie
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 1: down to night, with the quiet settling around you and
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: the weight of the day beginning to release, let this
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: truth be the last thing your mind holds before sleep comes.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: You are not left to find your own way to God.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: You are not dependent on a priest who might fail
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: or sin or die and leave the roll unfilled. You
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: are not hoping that next year's sacrifice will be sufficient.
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 1: You have a high priest who is already there, who
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: is always there, who lives indestructibly and permanently and eternally
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: to make intercession for you. He knows your name, he
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 1: knows your need. He holds your case before the throne,
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: not with trembling hands, but with the quiet confidence of
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: one who knows that his offering was accepted, his work
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 1: was finished, and his intercession will never be refused. The
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 1: mystery has been opened. The door is not just a jar.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: It is wide, and the one who stands at it
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 1: will never leave his post. Let your breathing slow. The
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 1: one who intercedes for you is not sleeping. You can
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: Chapter eight, The Better Covenant. There is a pattern that
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: runs through the entire letter of the Hebrews, a pattern
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: so consistent that once you see it, you cannot stop
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: seeing it. Better a better hope, a better covenant, a
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: better sacrifice, a better country, a better resurrection. The word
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: appears again and again, like a river finding its course
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: through the same valley, always moving in the same direction,
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: always toward Christ, always measuring the distance between what came
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: before and what has now arrived. And in the eighth
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: chapter the author brings the pattern to its most direct
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: and deliberate expression. Now, the point in what we are
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: saying is this, we have such a high priest, one
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: who is seated at the right hand of the throne
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 1: of the Majesty in Heaven, a minister in the holy places,
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man,
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: the true tent. Those two words contain everything that the
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: eighth chapter is about. The tabernacle that Moses built in
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: the wilderness, the elaborate, carefully constructed sanctuary, with its outer
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: courts and inner chambers, and the Holy of Holies at
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: its center. That tabernacle was not the original. It was
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: a copy, a carefully crafted reproduction of something that existed elsewhere,
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 1: the original is in heaven. When Moses was on Mount
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 1: Sinai receiving the instructions for the Tabernacle, God said something
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: that would have been easy to read past. See that
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: you make everything according to the patten that was shown
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: you on the mountain. The pattern not an innovation, not
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: a design that Moses invented and God approved, a pattern
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: that already existed that Moses was shown on the mountain
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: and then commanded to reproduce as faithfully as possible in
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: earthly materials, which means that every piece of furniture in
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: the Tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant with its golden cherubim,
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: the table of showbread, the golden lamp stand, the altar
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: of incense, the veil that separated the Holy Place from
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: the Holy of Holies, all of it was an earthly
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: version of something heavenly, a shadow of a reality that
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: existed in another dimension entirely, and the priests who served
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: in the earthly tabernacle were serving a copy of the
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 1: heavenly reality, not the reality itself, but Jesus, the high Priest,
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: who has passed through the heavens, who is seated at
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: the right hand of the throne he serves in the original,
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: in the true tent, in the place that the earthly
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: sanctuary was always pointing toward. If he were on earth,
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: he would not be a priest at all. Since there
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: are priests who offer gifts according to the law. They
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things. On earth,
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: there were already priests, there was already a system. Jesus
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: did not come to add another levitical priest to the
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: existing structure. He came to fulfill what the structure was
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: always pointing at, and to minutes in the place the
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: structure was always pointing toward. But as it is, Christ
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: than the old as the covenant he mediates is better
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: since it is enacted on better promises, a better ministry,
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: a better covenant, better promises. And here the author turns
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: to make his case for the new Covenant, and he
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: does it not by inventing an argument, but by going
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: directly to the Hebrew scriptures themselves, by quoting from the
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: prophet Jeremiah, by showing that God himself, speaking through his prophet,
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: centuries before Christ was born, had already announced that the
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 1: first covenant was not permanent. For if that first covenant
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: look for a second. Think about that for a moment.
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: If the Mosaic Covenant, the Law given at Sinai, the
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: priesthood of Aaron, the entire structure of Israelite religion had
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: been insufficient to accomplish what God ultimately intended, there would
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: have been no need for anything else, no need for
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: God to say through Jeremiah that a new covenant was coming.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: But he did say it. He said it clearly centuries
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: into the operation of the Mosaic system, when the temple
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: was standing and the priests were serving, and the sacrifices
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: were being offered, God spoke through Jeremiah and announced that
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: a day was coming when he would make a new
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: covenant with the House of Israel and the House of Judah.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: For he finds fault with them when he says, behold,
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: establish a new covenant with the House of Israel and
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: with the House of Judah. He finds fault not with
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: the law itself. The author has been careful throughout this
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: letter to honor the Law as genuinely from God, genuinely holy,
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: genuinely good within its purpose. The fault is not with
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: the desire. The fault is with the material it had
• 1:26:03
  Speaker 1: to work with. Not like the covenant that I made
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: with their fathers on the day when I took them
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: by the hand to bring them out of the land
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant,
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: The first Covenant was conditional on human faithfulness, and human
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: faithfulness failed. The history of Israel was not a story
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: of steady obedience and growing closeness to God. It was
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: a story of cycles covenant faithfulness for a season, drift, apostasy, judgment, repentance, restoration, covenant, again,
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: over and over. The pattern was relentless, and it was
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: relentless because the mechanism of the covenant, written on stone
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: tablets and enforced by external commands requiring human effort to maintain,
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: could not change the heart that kept failing. You can
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: write the law on stone, but stone does not love,
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 1: stone does not desire, stone does not choose. And then,
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: in one of the most beautiful passages in all of
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: the prophets, God announces what he is going to do differently.
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: For this is the covenant that I will make with
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: the House of Israel after those days, declares the Lord,
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: I will put my laws into their minds and write
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: them on their hearts. On their hearts, not on tablets
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: of stone sitting in an ark in the Holy of Holies,
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: accessible only through the mediation of a priest, not in
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: a scroll that has to be carried and read and
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: taught and interpreted by specialists. In the hearts of the
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: people themselves, in the very interior of the person, the
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: place where desire is formed and choices are made, and
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: the direction of a life is set. The new Covenant
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 1: does not simply give better commands. It changes the person
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: and receiving the commands. It does not just tell you
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: what to do, It makes you want to do it.
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: It reaches into the place where the old Covenant could
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: never reach, the inner life of the human being. And
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: it works from the inside out rather than from the
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: outside in. And I will be their God, and they
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: shall be my people. And they shall not teach each
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying know
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 1: the Lord, For they shall all know me from the
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 1: least of them to the greatest, shall all know me.
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 1: The Old Covenant required instruction in the knowledge of God,
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: because that knowledge was not innate. You had to be
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 1: taught who God was. You had to learn it, receive
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 1: it from teachers, grow into it over years of religious
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: education and ritual participation, and even then the knowledge could
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: be lost, generations could drift into ignorance. The New Covenant
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 1: promises something different, not the elimination of teaching. The New
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 1: Testament is full of teaching, but the transformation of the
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: relationship between the believer and the knowledge of God. The
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: spirit of God dwelling within, illuminating, guiding, drawing the heart
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: toward the one it was made to know. Not a
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: distant God learned about from scrolls, but a present God
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: known from within. For I will be merciful toward their iniquities,
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: and I will remember their sins no more, remember their
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: sins no more. This is the promise on which everything
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: else rests, because no amount of interior transformation, no degree
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: of spiritual growth, no deepening of the knowledge of God,
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: would be enough. If the debt of the past were
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: still standing, if the sins of a lifetime were still
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: on the record, unpaid and unresolved. Even the most beautiful
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: promises about the future would be shadowed by the weight
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: of what came before. But God said, I will remember
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: them no more. Not that he forgets in the sense
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: of a failure of divine memory, but that he chooses,
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: on the basis of the sacrifice that the new Covenant
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: is founded on, to treat those sins as if they
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: had never existed, to no longer count them, to no
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: longer hold them, to set them aside, permanently, decisively, and
• 1:30:23
  Speaker 1: without reversal. In speaking of a new covenant, he makes
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 1: growing old is ready to vanish away. The author wrote
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: those words at a moment in history when the temple
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: was still standing in Jerusalem, the sacrifices were still being offered,
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 1: the priests were still serving, and the author was already
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: saying it is obsolete. The new Covenant has been inaugurated,
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: the old system is already fading. Within a generation of
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: those words being written, the Roman army would march on
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: Jerusalem in the year seventy of the Common Era, just
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 1: decades after this letter was composed. The temple would be
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: destroyed the sacrificial system would cease, the levitical priesthood would
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: have no place to serve. The old covenant did not
• 1:31:15
  Speaker 1: simply become theologically superseded. It became practically impossible to maintain.
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: The building it depended on was gone. But the new covenant,
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: written on hearts, sealed with the blood of Christ, administered
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 1: by a high priest who needs no temple because he
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: ministers in the true tent in Heaven, continued uninterrupted, unaffected
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: by the destruction of any earthly structure, because it was
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 1: never dependent on an earthly structure. It was always dependent
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: on Him. And as the night wraps around you and
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: the world outside grows quiet, let this be what you
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 1: carry into sleep. You do not need a building to
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: reach him. You do not need a priest to go
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: between you. You do not need a ritual to make
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: yourself acceptable. The covenant is written on your heart. The
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: knowledge of Him is accessible from within. And your sins,
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 1: the ones you carry into this night, the ones you
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: have never fully been able to set down. He has
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 1: said that he will remember them no more. That is
• 1:32:20
  Speaker 1: the better covenant, and it belongs to every one who
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: comes to God through the one who mediates it let
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: that promise settle now, your sins are not what define
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: you to night. The Covenant does, and the Covenant holds
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: Chapter nine, the Blood that speaks. There is a room
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: in the ancient world that almost no one ever entered.
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: A room that stood at the center of the most
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: sacred building on earth, the dwelling place of the God
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: who had spoken to Moses from a burning bush, who
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: had parted the sea, who had spoken in thunder and fire,
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: from the summit of Sinai, the Holy of Holies, a
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: cube of space separated from the rest of the sanctuary
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: by a thick, heavy veil woven from blue and purple
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: and scarlet thread and fine linen. Jewish sources outside the Bible,
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 1: writing about the Temple in Jerusalem, described this curtain as
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: extraordinarily massive, so heavy that it required many priests to move.
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 1: Scripture itself does not give us these numbers, but the
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 1: accounts agree on one thing. This was not a curtain
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: that accidentally blew aside in the wind. It was a deliberate, permanent,
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: architectural declaration. The presence of the living God was not
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: casually accessible, and once a year, only once one man
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: crossed that threshold. The High priest would enter on the
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: day of atonement Yom Kipur. He had spent the previous
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: week in careful ritual preparation. On the day itself, he
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: would bathe, dress in simple white linen rather than his
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 1: ornate priestly garments, offer a bull for his own sins first,
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: then enter the Holy of Holies with a censer of
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: incense to fill the space with fragrant smoke. Then return
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: with the blood of the bull and sprinkle it before
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: the mercy seat. Scripture in Leviticus sixteen is precise about
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 1: what happened. The blood was sprinkled once before the mercy seat,
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: which faced eastward, and seven times on the mercy seat itself.
• 1:34:30
  Speaker 1: This direction and number were not arbitrary, They were the
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: choreography of atonement given by God, and followed exactly. Then
• 1:34:40
  Speaker 1: the High Priest would go out, offer the goat for
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 1: the sins of the people, take its blood into the
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: Holy of Holies and repeat the sprinkling. Then come back out.
• 1:34:51
  Speaker 1: Then take the live goat, the scapegoat, and lay his
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 1: hands on its head, confessing the sins of all Israel
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 1: over it, and send it into the wilder. And then
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: he would come back out. The people waited outside in
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: a state of suspended anxiety because the ritual was serious.
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: Scripture does not tell us that a high priest ever
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: died inside the Holy of Holies, but the very structure
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: of the day, the layers of preparation, the offering for
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: his own sin before he could represent the people, all
• 1:35:22
  Speaker 1: of it makes clear that approaching the presence of a
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 1: holy God was not taken lightly. When the high Priest emerged,
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 1: when he walked back through the curtain and into the
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: light and the waiting crowd, there was relief. The offering
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: had been made for one more year. The relationship between
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 1: God and Israel had been maintained, but only for one
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: more year. And this is the point the author now presses.
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 1: The Holy Spirit is indicating this that the way into
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: the holy places is not yet opened. As long as
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: the first section is still standing, as long as the
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 1: old covenant system was in operation, the way into the
• 1:36:02
  Speaker 1: true presence of God had not yet been fully opened.
• 1:36:05
  Speaker 1: The veil was still there. Ordinary people still could not
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 1: enter the Holy of Holies. The annual ritual maintained the
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: relationship from a distance, but it did not close the distance.
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 1: Gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: of the worshiper, but deal only with food and drink
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 1: and various washings. Regulations for the body imposed until the
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: time of Reformation cannot perfect the conscience of the worshiper.
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: This is the limitation the author has been building toward.
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 1: The Old Covenant system could regulate behavior, It could maintain
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: the external relationship between God and Israel through the annual
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: ritual of Atonement, but it could not reach the conscience.
• 1:36:49
  Speaker 1: It could not go deep enough to deal with the
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: guilt that sits not in the hands or the outward actions,
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: but in the interior of the person, the place where
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: the knowledge of wrong lives long after the external act
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: is over. You can wash a body, you cannot wash
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: a memory. You can perform a ritual, you cannot perform
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: away the weight of a guilty conscience. The Old Covenant
• 1:37:12
  Speaker 1: was always pointing toward the moment when something could reach
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: that deep. But when Christ appeared as a high priest
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: of the good things that have come, then through the
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: greater and more perfect tent not made with hands that
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 1: is not of this creation, he entered once for all
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: into the holy places, not by means of the blood
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: of goats and calves, but by means of his own blood,
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: thus securing an eternal redemption once for all. The phrase
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: changes everything. The levitical High priest entered the Holy of
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: Holies once a year. Christ entered once once in the
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: entire history of the universe, and never needs to enter again.
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: The levitical high priest entered with blood that was not
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 1: his own. Christ entered with his own blood. The levitical
• 1:38:00
  Speaker 1: high priest secured atonement for one year. Christ secured an
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 1: eternal redemption eternal, not annual, not renewable, not subject to
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 1: revision or repetition, eternal, extending backward and forward through all
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: of time, covering every sin of every person who comes
• 1:38:21
  Speaker 1: to God through him. For if the blood of goats
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: and bulls and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: ashes of a heifer sanctify for the purification of the flesh,
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: how much more will the blood of Christ, who through
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: the eternal Spirit, offered himself without blemish to God, purify
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: our conscience from dead works to serve the living God,
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: purify our conscience. There it is the thing the Old
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: Covenant could not reach. The place where the guilt lives,
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 1: the interior room of the human soul, where the record
• 1:38:54
  Speaker 1: of failure sits, accumulated over a lifetime, resistant to every
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: external ritual designed to clean it up. The Blood of
• 1:39:03
  Speaker 1: Christ reaches there not symbolically, not as a comforting metaphor.
• 1:39:08
  Speaker 1: The author is making a claim about something that actually happens,
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 1: a real cleansing of the actual conscience of the actual
• 1:39:16
  Speaker 1: person who comes to God through the offering of Christ,
• 1:39:19
  Speaker 1: the guilt that the old Covenant could only cover temporarily
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 1: and externally. The Blood of Christ actually removes, purifies, wipes clean,
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 1: so that we can serve the living God, not from
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: a position of ongoing debt and anxiety and the constant
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: fear that we have not done enough, but from the
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 1: freedom of a conscience that has been genuinely cleared. Therefore,
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: he is the mediator of a new Covenant, so that
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance,
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: since a death has occurred that redeems them from the
• 1:39:54
  Speaker 1: transgressions committed under the first Covenant. The promised eternal inheritance,
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: for where a will is involved, the death of the
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 1: one who made it must be established a will does
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: not benefit its recipients while the person who made it
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 1: is still living. The inheritance is locked until the one
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: who wrote the will has died. Only then does it
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: become available to the heirs. God made promises to his people,
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: promises of inheritance, of rest, of a new covenant written
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: on their hearts of sins remembered no more. But those
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: promises required a death to unlock them. Not the death
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 1: of God, but the death of the one who stood
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: as the mediator of the covenant, the one whose blood
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 1: ratified it and whose sacrifice made it operative. Thus it
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 1: was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: be purified with these rites. But the heavenly things themselves
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 1: with better sacrifices than these. The copies were purified with blood.
• 1:40:55
  Speaker 1: The originals, the true heavenly sanctuary, the true mercy see,
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: the true Holy of holies, were purified with better sacrifices,
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: with the one sacrifice that was not a copy or
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: a symbol or a temporary measure, with the sacrifice of Christ.
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: For Christ has entered not into holy places made with hands,
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 1: which are copies of the true things, but into Heaven itself.
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 1: Now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf,
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: now to appear present tense, not past present. He is
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: there now, in the presence of God on your behalf.
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 1: As you breathe in the quiet of this night, as
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: the world you cannot control continues to turn, as the
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 1: fears you carry, and the grief you hold, and the
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 1: uncertainty that sits at the edges of your thoughts remains unresolved,
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 1: He is there in the presence of God on your
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: behalf right now. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly,
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 1: as the high priest enters the holy places every year,
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: with blood not his own. But as it is, he
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: has appeared once for all at the end of the ages,
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, once
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 1: for all, at the end of the ages, to put
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: away sin, not to cover it, not to defer it,
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: not to manage it. Until next year, to put it away.
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: And just as it is appointed for man to die once,
• 1:42:27
  Speaker 1: and after that comes judgment, so Christ, having been offered
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: once to bear the sins of many, will appear a
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: second time, not to deal with sin, for that has
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: been dealt with, but to save those who are eagerly
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: waiting for him not to deal with sin. That work
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: is done. When he comes again, and the author is
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: clear that he will come again, it will not be
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: to repeat the offering. It will not be to make
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 1: another payment on a debt that keeps accumulating. The debt
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 1: has been paid, the record has been cleared, the sins
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 1: have been put away. He will come to bring his
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: people home to the inheritance that has been prepared since
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: the foundation of the world. The curtain that separated the
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple tore
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: from top to bottom on the day that Jesus died,
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: not from the bottom up, as a person would tear
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: it from the top down, from heaven toward Earth, as
• 1:43:25
  Speaker 1: if God himself reached down and opened what had always
• 1:43:29
  Speaker 1: been his intention to open. The way in is no
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: longer closed. The distance has been crossed, the blood has
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 1: been offered once eternally effectively, and the presence of God
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: is no longer behind a curtain. It is available to
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: you to night exactly as you are, not because you
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: have prepared enough, or understood enough, or prayed enough, but
• 1:43:54
  Speaker 1: because the high Priest, who needed no animal and no
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: annual repetition, has entered on your beds, and he has
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: not come out. He is there, still appearing in the
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: presence of God for you, holding the door open, waiting
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: for you to come. Come then, not with trembling fear
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: that the offering might not be enough. It is enough.
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: It was enough the first time, and it always will be.
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: The door is open. He is there. That is enough
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: for tonight. Rest now chapter ten, Once and it is enough.
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 1: There is a surgeon who performs the same operation every day,
• 1:44:39
  Speaker 1: not because he enjoys repetition, not because the procedure is simple,
• 1:44:44
  Speaker 1: but because the first operation never fully worked. The wound
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: keeps reopening, the problem keeps returning, and so he returns
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: to the operating room again and again because the work
• 1:44:56
  Speaker 1: is never quite finished. Now imagine a different surgeon, one
• 1:45:00
  Speaker 1: who performs the operation once and the patient never needs
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: to return. The wound closes permanently, the condition is resolved,
• 1:45:11
  Speaker 1: the healing is complete. The difference between those two surgeons
• 1:45:15
  Speaker 1: is the difference between the old covenant and the new
• 1:45:19
  Speaker 1: and the author of Hebrews in the tenth chapter makes
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: this argument with a precision that leaves no room for misunderstanding.
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: For since the law has but a shadow of the
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: good things to come instead of the true form of
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 1: these realities. It can never, by the same sacrifices that
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw
• 1:45:40
  Speaker 1: near a shadow. The author has used this word before,
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 1: but here he presses it to its full weight. A
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: shadow is real, It is caused by something. It has
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: a shape, It moves in response to the thing casting it.
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: But a shadow is not the thing itself. You cannot
• 1:46:00
  Speaker 1: read a book by its shadow. You cannot embrace a
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 1: person by touching their shadow. The shadow points toward the substance,
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: but it is not the substance. The Law, with all
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: its sacrifices and rituals and elaborate system of atonement, was
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: a shadow, a God given shadow, carefully designed, precisely calibrated
• 1:46:22
  Speaker 1: to point toward the reality it prefigured. But it was
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 1: never the thing itself, and the proof of that is
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 1: written into the very structure of the system. Otherwise would
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 1: they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshippers,
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 1: of sins. This is the argument the author has been
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: building toward for nine chapters. If the sacrifices had actually worked.
• 1:46:49
  Speaker 1: If they had genuinely resolved the problem of sin at
• 1:46:52
  Speaker 1: its route in the conscience of the worshiper, they would
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: have stopped. You do not keep treating a disease that
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 1: has been cured. You do not keep paying a debt
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 1: that has been settled. But the sacrifices did not stop.
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: Year after year, generation after generation. The cycle continued because
• 1:47:12
  Speaker 1: the work was never done. But in these sacrifices there
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: is a reminder of sins every year. For it is
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 1: impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 1: away sins. Impossible, not unlikely, not insufficient, impossible. The blood
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: of animals, no matter how many, no matter how precisely offered,
• 1:47:35
  Speaker 1: no matter how faithfully the ritual was performed, could not
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: reach the place where the problem actually lived. It could
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: maintain an external relationship between a holy God and a
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 1: sinful people. It could cover sins temporarily buying time, sustaining
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 1: the covenant through another year, but it could not go
• 1:47:55
  Speaker 1: deep enough to actually remove the guilt. The system was
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: always an I owe you a place, holler, a sign
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 1: saying the real payment is coming, but it is not
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: here yet. And then the author does something unexpected he
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 1: goes to the psalms, specifically to the fortieth Psalm attributed
• 1:48:15
  Speaker 1: to David, and he imagines Christ speaking those words as
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: he enters the world. Consequently, when Christ came into the world,
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 1: he said, sacrifices and offerings you have not desired. But
• 1:48:27
  Speaker 1: a body have you prepared for me? In burnt offerings
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: and sin offerings, you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, behold,
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 1: I have come to do your will, O God, as
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: it is written of me in the scroll of the book,
• 1:48:41
  Speaker 1: A body have you prepared for me? The incarnation itself
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: is framed as an act of willing, purposeful entry. The
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: son of God coming into the world speaks as one
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: who understands the situation completely. He knows that the sacrifices
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: and offerings have not given God what he ultimately did desires.
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: God does not take pleasure in the endless repetition of
• 1:49:04
  Speaker 1: rituals that cannot solve the problem they address. What God
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 1: desires is obedience, a will aligned with his own, a
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 1: heart that chooses freely and fully to do what is right,
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 1: not because external law demands it, but because the interior
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 1: life of the person has been formed in the direction
• 1:49:24
  Speaker 1: of God's own character. And so the Sun comes not
• 1:49:28
  Speaker 1: merely to offer another sacrifice in the existing system, but
• 1:49:32
  Speaker 1: to be the sacrifice that ends the system by fulfilling
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: from the inside what the system could only point toward
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: from the outside. Behold, I have come to do your will.
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 1: This is the obedience the old Covenant could never produce
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: in the people it governed. They had the law written
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 1: on stone, they had the commands laid out with extraordinary clarity,
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 1: but they could not consistently and finally do what the
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 1: law required. Because the law could not change the heart
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: that kept failing to keep it. Christ came and did
• 1:50:05
  Speaker 1: what no one else had ever done. He kept the
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: will of God perfectly, not because it was easy, but
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: because he chose it every day, in every situation, through
• 1:50:16
  Speaker 1: temptation and suffering and the full weight of human experience.
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 1: He chose the will of God all the way to
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: the end. When he said in Gathsemone, not my will
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: but yours, he was not saying something he had not
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 1: been saying his entire life. He was saying it in
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 1: the most difficult circumstances imaginable. And he said it, and
• 1:50:39
  Speaker 1: by that will we have been sanctified through the offering
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: of the body of Jesus Christ, once for all, once
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 1: for all. Every priest stands daily at his service, offering
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 1: repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.
• 1:50:55
  Speaker 1: But when Christ had offered for all time a single
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: of God. He sat down. The priests stood every day
• 1:51:07
  Speaker 1: offering the same sacrifices, standing because the work was never finished.
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: There was always another offering to make, another sin, to cover,
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: another year, to begin again. Christ sat down not because
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: he was tired, but because the work was finished, the
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: debt was paid, The sacrifice had been made that required
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 1: no repetition, no revision, no improvement. He sat down in
• 1:51:34
  Speaker 1: the posture of completion, the posture of a craftsman who
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: has set down his tools, because everything that needed to
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: be made has been made, waiting from that time until
• 1:51:44
  Speaker 1: his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet.
• 1:51:47
  Speaker 1: For by a single offering he has perfected for all time.
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: Those who are being sanctified, perfected for all time, not
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 1: perfected in the sense of moral completion. The people who
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: come to God through Christ are still growing, still being formed,
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 1: still working out their salvation day by day, but perfected
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: in the sense of standing before God in a position
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: that requires no further payment, no additional sacrifice, no ongoing
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 1: ritual to maintain. The offering has been made, the debt
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: is settled, the record is clear, and then the Holy
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: Spirit also bears witness for after saying, this is the
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: covenant that I will make with them after those days,
• 1:52:30
  Speaker 1: declares the Lord, I will put my laws on their
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: hearts and write them on their minds. Then he adds,
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 1: I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: any offering for sin, no longer any offering for sin.
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 1: The system of sacrifice has reached its conclusion, not because
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: God changed his mind about the seriousness of sin, but
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: because the sin has been dealt with complet delely. Finally,
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 1: the forgiveness that the old covenant could only point toward
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: has now actually arrived. And when something is completely paid,
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: there is nothing left to pay. Therefore, brothers, since we
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 1: have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 1: of Jesus, by the new and living way that he
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh,
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: and since we have a great priest over the House
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: of God, let us draw near. Draw near, after nine
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: and a half chapters of argument, after the angels and
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: Moses and Melchizedek, and the Old Covenant, and the Holy
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: of Holies and the blood of goats and calves, after
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: all of that. The conclusion is not a complex religious procedure.
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: It is not an elaborate set of requirements to be
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: met before access is granted. It is two words, draw
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 1: near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith,
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 1: with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, and
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 1: our bodies washed with pure water. A true heart not
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: a perfect performance, not a flawlessly maintained religious record, A
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: true heart one that is not pretending, not performing, not
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 1: presenting a curated version of itself before God, but coming
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: honestly and openly, exactly as it is. Full assurance of faith,
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: not trembling uncertainty about whether the offering is enough, not
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 1: anxious wondering whether one more sacrifice needs to be made
• 1:54:33
  Speaker 1: before access is permitted. Full assurance, the quiet confidence of
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 1: a person who knows that the one who opened the
• 1:54:41
  Speaker 1: way did so permanently, and that the door he opened
• 1:54:45
  Speaker 1: has not closed. Let us hold fast the confession of
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: our hope without wavering, For he who promised is faithful,
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 1: he who promised is faithful. This is the bedrock when
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: the assurance wavers, when the doubt rises and the confidence fades,
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 1: and the question returns. It is not your faith that
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 1: ultimately holds you. It is the faithfulness of the one
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 1: who made the promise. And his faithfulness does not depend
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 1: on the consistency of yours. And let us consider how
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 1: to stir up one another to love and good works,
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 1: not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some,
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: but encouraging one another. And all the more as you
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 1: see the day drawing near, all the more as you
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 1: see the day drawing near, the author sees something on
• 1:55:31
  Speaker 1: the horizon. A day is coming, the return of Christ,
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: the completion of all things. And as that day approaches,
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 1: the need for mutual encouragement does not decrease. It increases.
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 1: Because the closer you get to the finish line, the
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 1: harder the enemy fights, because the weariness of the long
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: race accumulates, because the temptation to slow down is strongest
• 1:55:56
  Speaker 1: precisely when you are closest to the end. Do not
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: st now that we are not of those who shrink
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: and preserve their souls, not of those who shrink back.
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 1: The author speaks this not as a wish, but as
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: a declaration of identity. This is who you are, This
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: is what you do. You do not shrink back, You
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: hold on, You endure, you run the race. Because the
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 1: one who promised is faithful, because the offering has been
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: made and will not need to be made again, because
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 1: the High Priest is seated, finished and effective and eternal
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 1: at the right hand of God once and it is enough.
• 1:56:43
  Speaker 1: Chapter eleven, The Cloud of Witnesses. Every person who has
• 1:56:48
  Speaker 1: ever tried to believe in something they cannot see has
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: felt it. The gap, the distance between the promise and
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: the fulfillment, the space between the word God spoke and
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 1: the moment when that word becomes visible reality, the long,
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: uncertain middle where faith is not a feeling but a choice,
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: not a certainty but a commitment, not something you have
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 1: but something you do. The author of Hebrews knows this
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: gap intimately. He has been writing to people who are
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: living in it, and so he opens the eleventh chapter
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: with the most famous definition of faith in all of Scripture,
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: And then he takes his readers on a journey through
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 1: the lives of men and women who lived that definition,
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 1: who held on through circumstances so difficult, so prolonged, so
• 1:57:35
  Speaker 1: apparently contrary to the promises they had been given, that
• 1:57:38
  Speaker 1: their stories read less like religious inspiration and more like
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: something closer to the bone. Faith is the substance of
• 1:57:46
  Speaker 1: things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Two phrases,
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 1: two tensions held together without resolution. The substance of things
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: hoped for, not the things themselves, not the fulfillment, not
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 1: the answer, not the moment when the promise becomes visible,
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: but something real that hope produces in the present, a quality,
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: a weight, something that exists before the thing hoped for
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: has arrived, as if hope, when it is genuinely placed
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: in the right object, generates something tangible in the interior
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: of the person who holds it. The evidence of things
• 1:58:25
  Speaker 1: not seen. Evidence is a legal term. It is what
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: you bring into a court room to prove something that
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: happened when no one could directly observe it. The author
• 1:58:35
  Speaker 1: is saying that genuine faith, faith in the promises of
• 1:58:38
  Speaker 1: God constitutes a kind of evidence. Not faith in the
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 1: sense of wishing something were true, but faith in the
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 1: sense of a reasoned, considered staked commitment to the reliability
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 1: of the one who made the promise. For by it
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: the people of old received their commendation. The people of old,
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: the ancient ones. They are not the illogical abstractions. They
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: are people who lived and breathed and suffered and hoped
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 1: and held on, and their stories are the evidence the
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: author now presents. By faith, we understand that the universe
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 1: was created by the Word of God, so that what
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 1: is seen was made from things that are not visible.
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 1: Creation itself is the first act. Pointing to this principle,
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 1: The invisible produced the visible. The unseen became seen. The
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: Word of God made something from nothing, and our understanding
• 1:59:31
  Speaker 1: of this is itself an act of faith. We were
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 1: not there. We believe it because of the one who
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 1: says it happened. And then the first name, by faith,
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 1: Able offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain,
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 1: through which he was commended as righteous. And through his faith,
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: though he died, he still speaks. Able the first person
• 1:59:56
  Speaker 1: in human history to be murdered, the first martyr. He
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: brought his offering to God, the best of his flock,
• 2:00:03
  Speaker 1: and God accepted it. His brother, Cain brought an offering too,
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: and God did not accept it. The author does not
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 1: give us a detailed theological explanation of why. He simply
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 1: says that Abel's offering was made by faith. The faith
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: was the difference. Abel approached God believing that what he
• 2:00:23
  Speaker 1: brought mattered, that the God he was approaching was real
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 1: and responsive and worth the offering, and Cain killed him
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: for it. Abel's life is the shortest in the entire
• 2:00:35
  Speaker 1: role Call of Faith. He appears for one verse, and
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: his story ends in death, not rescue, not vindication. During
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: his lifetime, not the dramatic reversal we might hope for
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: if God truly favored him, he simply died. And yet
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 1: the author says, through his faith, though he died, he
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: still speaks. Two thousand years after he Hebrews was written,
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 1: we are still hearing him by faith. Enoch was taken
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 1: up so that he should not see death, and he
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 1: was not found because God had taken him. Now before
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: he was taken, he was commended as having pleased God.
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: And without faith, it is impossible to please him. For
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: whoever would draw near to God must believe that he
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: exists and that he rewards those who seek him. Enoch
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: stands in deliberate contrast to Abel. Abel died as a
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: result of his faithfulness. Enoch did not die at all.
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: Two men of faith, two radically different outcomes, and yet
• 2:01:37
  Speaker 1: the author places them side by side without embarrassment, because
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: the point was never about the outcome. The point was
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: about the faith. What made Enoch's life remarkable was not
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: his translation into God's presence without experiencing death. What made
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: it remarkable was what preceded that He walked with God.
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 1: He pleased God, he drew near. He believed that God
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 1: was real and that seeking him was worth everything. The
• 2:02:06
  Speaker 1: reward was extraordinary, but the reward was not what made
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: his faith genuine. The faith was genuine before the reward came.
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 1: And then the third name, and the longest story by faith, Noah,
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 1: being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 1: reverent fear, constructed an ark for the saving of his household.
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 1: By this, he condemned the world and became an heir
• 2:02:32
  Speaker 1: of the righteousness that comes by faith. Events as yet unseen.
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: Noah had never seen a flood no one in his
• 2:02:40
  Speaker 1: world had. The sky was clear, the ground was dry,
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: the rivers were running normally, and God told him to
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 1: build a structure of enormous dimensions designed to float, to
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 1: save his household from a deluge that had not yet
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 1: begun and showed no signs of coming. Jewish tradition writing
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: outside of scripture suggests he spent many decades building it.
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: Whether that precise tradition is accurate or not, Scripture makes
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: clear that Noah acted on a warning over an extended
• 2:03:12
  Speaker 1: period of time, while his neighbors watched and the rain
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: did not fall. This is what faith in the Letter
• 2:03:18
  Speaker 1: to the Hebrews looks like at its most demanding. Not
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: a momentary decision, not a brief season of trust, but
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 1: years of choosing every single day to keep building because
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: God had said something was coming that no one else
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: could see. And when the flood came, every nail Noah
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: had ever driven was vindicated. But he did not live
• 2:03:40
  Speaker 1: those years of building in the light of that vindication.
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 1: He lived them in the dark by faith. By faith,
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to
• 2:03:50
  Speaker 1: a place that he was to receive as an inheritance,
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: and he went out, not knowing where he was going.
• 2:03:57
  Speaker 1: Not knowing where he was going, Abraham received a call
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 1: and obeyed it before he knew the destination, before he
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: could calculate the risks, before he could research the location
• 2:04:09
  Speaker 1: or plan the route. He packed his household and left
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 1: from Er, one of the most sophisticated cities of the
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 1: ancient world, for a destination that God had promised but
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 1: not yet named. This is the nature of the call.
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: It does not come with a detailed itinerary. It comes
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 1: with a person, a God, who has spoken and who
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: can be trusted, And it asks you to move toward
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: the voice before you can see where the voice is.
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: Leading by faith, he went to live in the land
• 2:04:39
  Speaker 1: of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: with Isaac and Jacob airs with him of the same promise,
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 1: For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations,
• 2:04:49
  Speaker 1: whose designer and builder is God. He lived in tents.
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: The man who had been promised to land spent his
• 2:04:56
  Speaker 1: entire life in tents. He never built a house. He
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 1: wandered across the very land that was supposed to be his,
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 1: a nomad in his own inheritance. Because he understood something
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 1: about what he was actually looking for. The land of
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: Canaan was not the destination. It was the sign of
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 1: the destination. He was looking forward to the city that
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 1: has foundations, the city whose designer and builder is God,
• 2:05:22
  Speaker 1: the city that the earthly land was always pointing toward.
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 1: He was a pilgrim in the place he had been promised,
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 1: because the promise was always bigger than the land. By faith,
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised? Sarah,
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 1: the woman who, when she first heard the promise that
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 1: she would bear a son in her old age, laughed
• 2:05:50
  Speaker 1: not the laughter of joy, the laughter of some one
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: for whom the idea is so absurd that it bypasses
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 1: faith entirely and lands in incredulity. She was too old,
• 2:06:01
  Speaker 1: her body was no longer capable. The biology was simply impossible,
• 2:06:07
  Speaker 1: and yet she considered him faithful who had promised. She
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 1: came round, she wrestled with it, doubted it, laughed at it,
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: and then somehow came to believe it because she knew
• 2:06:18
  Speaker 1: the one who had spoken, and the impossibility of the
• 2:06:21
  Speaker 1: thing did not ultimately outweigh the reliability of the one
• 2:06:25
  Speaker 1: who promised it, and so Isaac was born. These all
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 1: died in faith, not having received the things promised, but
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 1: having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 1: acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 1: This is the verse at the center of the entire chapter.
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 1: They died still waiting. Abraham never saw the nation that
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 1: would descend from him. He saw Isaac and through him
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 1: a grandson, but the great nation of Israel, the millions
• 2:06:56
  Speaker 1: who would bear his name. He died before any of
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: that was visible. They saw the promises from a distance.
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 1: They greeted them. The Greek word suggests the gesture of
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 1: someone waving at a ship that is still too far
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 1: out to reach. They acknowledged from the posture of a stranger,
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: someone passing through and not yet arriving. And they held
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: on anyway. They desired a better country, that is, a
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 1: heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called
• 2:07:26
  Speaker 1: their god, for he has prepared for them a city.
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 1: God is not ashamed to be called their god. After everything,
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 1: all the failure and the doubt, and the long years
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 1: of waiting, and the deaths that came before the promises
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 1: were visible, God says, I am their God. I will
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 1: not deny them. I claim them. He has prepared for
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 1: them a city. And now the pace quickens. The author
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 1: moves through name after name, story after story, building something
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: filling a room. In troducing witnesses by faith. Abraham, when
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 1: he was tested, offered up Isaac. The binding of Isaac,
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 1: the most agonizing moment in Abraham's long journey, the son
• 2:08:12
  Speaker 1: through whom the promises were supposed to come, the miracle child,
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 1: the impossible baby. God asked for him back. He considered
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 1: that God was able even to raise him from the dead.
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 1: Abraham believed in resurrection before resurrection had been demonstrated. He
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: believed that if God required the death of Isaac, then
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 1: God was capable of raising him back, because the promises
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 1: could not fail, and if they required Isaac to be alive,
• 2:08:40
  Speaker 1: then Isaac would be alive. He was wrong about the mechanism.
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 1: God provided a ram instead, but he was right about
• 2:08:48
  Speaker 1: the principle God can give life back. God is not
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 1: stopped by death. By faith, Isaac invoked future blessings on
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 1: Jacob and Esau by faith. Jacob, when dying, blessed each
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 1: of the sons of Joseph, bowing in worship over the
• 2:09:06
  Speaker 1: head of his staff. By faith, Joseph, at the end
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 1: of his life, made mention of the exodus of the
• 2:09:13
  Speaker 1: Israelites and gave directions concerning his bones. Three dying men, Isaac,
• 2:09:19
  Speaker 1: Jacob Joseph, each using their final moments to bless a
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 1: future they would not live to see, each treating the
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 1: promises of God as more real than their own impending death.
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 1: Joseph's instruction about his bones is particularly striking. He had
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 1: lived his entire adult life in Egypt, a slave turned ruler,
• 2:09:40
  Speaker 1: a prisoner turned prime minister. He insisted that when Israel
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 1: finally left Egypt, which had not yet happened and would
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 1: not happen for generations, his bones should go with them.
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 1: He wanted to be in the Promised Land, even his
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 1: bones by faith. Moses, when he was born, was hidden
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 1: for three months by his parents because they saw that
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 1: the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of
• 2:10:06
  Speaker 1: the king's edict the faith of Moses begins before Moses
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 1: himself could exercise any faith at all. With his parents,
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 1: who looked at the decree that said Hebrew boys must
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 1: be killed and chose to disobey it. They saw that
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 1: the child was beautiful, and faith gave them eyes to
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 1: see something worth protecting, worth risking everything for by faith. Moses,
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 1: when he was grown up, refused to be called the
• 2:10:32
  Speaker 1: son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with
• 2:10:36
  Speaker 1: the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 1: of sin. Moses walked away from the most powerful seat
• 2:10:43
  Speaker 1: in the ancient world, Prince of Egypt, heir to a
• 2:10:47
  Speaker 1: dynasty access to everything that human civilization could offer at
• 2:10:52
  Speaker 1: its highest level. He looked at all of it and
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 1: chose the suffering of the people he belonged to by blood,
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 1: rather than the luxury of the people he had been
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 1: adopted into. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 1: than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 1: the reward the reproach of Christ. Moses lived fifteen hundred
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 1: years before the Incarnation. He did not know the name
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 1: of Jesus, but the author is saying that the same
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 1: willingness to identify with the suffering of God's people to
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 1: bear reproach for the sake of the one who calls
• 2:11:27
  Speaker 1: was present in Moses's choice. The form was different. The
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 1: substance was the same. By faith, he left Egypt, not
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: being afraid of the anger of the king, For he
• 2:11:38
  Speaker 1: endured as seeing him who is invisible, seeing him who
• 2:11:41
  Speaker 1: is invisible. That is the discipline of faith in its
• 2:11:45
  Speaker 1: most distilled form, not the denial of what is visible.
• 2:11:49
  Speaker 1: Moses knew the king was angry, he knew the power
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 1: arrayed against him was real. But holding alongside that visible
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 1: reality another reality, one that the eye cannot see, but
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 1: that faith treats us equally even more real, the God
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 1: who is invisible, the promise that has not yet been fulfilled,
• 2:12:10
  Speaker 1: the city that still lies ahead. By faith. The people
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 1: crossed the Red Sea as on dry land. By faith.
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 1: The walls of Jericho fell down after they had been
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 1: encircled for seven days. Two of the most extraordinary miracles
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 1: in the Hebrew Bible reduced to two sentences because the
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 1: miracles are not the point, the faith is the point.
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 1: Both looked from the outside like exactly the wrong thing
• 2:12:36
  Speaker 1: to do. Both required the willingness to act on the
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 1: word of God before the result was visible. And then
• 2:12:43
  Speaker 1: a name that surprises by appearing here at all. By faith.
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 1: Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient,
• 2:12:51
  Speaker 1: because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies.
• 2:12:55
  Speaker 1: Rahab a Cannonite woman, a prostitute in the city of Jericho,
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 1: the last person any first century Jewish reader would expect
• 2:13:05
  Speaker 1: to find in a list of the heroes of faith.
• 2:13:07
  Speaker 1: She had no covenant, no law, no temple, no heritage
• 2:13:11
  Speaker 1: in the promises given to Abraham. She was, by every
• 2:13:15
  Speaker 1: measure of the will. She lived in an outsider, and
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 1: she hid the spies of Israel. She risked her life
• 2:13:22
  Speaker 1: because she had heard what God had done for his people,
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 1: and she believed it. She tied a scarlet cord in
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: her window and trusted that the God of Israel was
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 1: real and powerful enough to keep her safe when the
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: walls fell, and she was right. And the author continues,
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 1: time would fail him to tell all the stories Gideon, Barak, Samson, Yeftah, David, Samuel,
• 2:13:50
  Speaker 1: the prophets, each name carrying a story too long to
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 1: tell here, but each story made of the same substance.
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 1: Through faith. They conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 1: the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 1: the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness,
• 2:14:10
  Speaker 1: became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight, And
• 2:14:14
  Speaker 1: then the tone shifts. Some were tortured, refusing to accept
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 1: release so that they might rise again to a better life.
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 1: Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment.
• 2:14:27
  Speaker 1: They were stoned, they were sorn in two, They were
• 2:14:31
  Speaker 1: killed with the sword. They went about in skins of
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 1: sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated of whom the world
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 1: was not worthy. The author pauses over this phrase. The
• 2:14:44
  Speaker 1: people who were destitute, afflicted, wandering in sheepskins through deserts
• 2:14:48
  Speaker 1: and caves. The world that treated them this way was
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 1: not worthy of them. The hierarchy of value is not
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 1: what it appears from the outside. The world measures worth
• 2:14:59
  Speaker 1: by what app person possesses, what position they hold, what
• 2:15:03
  Speaker 1: comfort they enjoy. By those measures, these men and women
• 2:15:07
  Speaker 1: were at the bottom. They had nothing, they suffered everything.
• 2:15:12
  Speaker 1: But by the measure that matters, the measure of faithfulness,
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 1: of holding on to the promises of God, when every
• 2:15:18
  Speaker 1: visible circumstance argued against them, they were worth more than
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 1: the kingdoms that could not contain them. And all these,
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 1: though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised,
• 2:15:30
  Speaker 1: since God had provided something better for us, that apart
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 1: from us, they should not be made perfect something better
• 2:15:37
  Speaker 1: for us. The men and women of faith who lived
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 1: before Christ did not receive the fulfillment of the promises.
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 1: In their lifetimes. They lived on the other side of
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 1: the curtain from the New Covenant. They had the shadows,
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 1: not the substance, the sign not the thing signified. And
• 2:15:56
  Speaker 1: God planned it this way. He held back the fulfillment
• 2:15:59
  Speaker 1: not because He was unkind to them, but because the
• 2:16:02
  Speaker 1: fulfillment was meant to include us. They could not be
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 1: made perfect apart from us. The city they were looking
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 1: for is the same city we are looking for. The
• 2:16:12
  Speaker 1: inheritance they were promised is the same inheritance being held
• 2:16:16
  Speaker 1: for us. They ran their portion of the race and
• 2:16:19
  Speaker 1: handed the baton to those who came after. And now
• 2:16:23
  Speaker 1: the author's argument becomes clear. He has been building this room,
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 1: populating it with witness after witness, filling it with the
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 1: stories of people who held on through impossible circumstances, who
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 1: saw from a distance what they would never possess in
• 2:16:39
  Speaker 1: their lifetimes, who died still believing. Therefore, since we are
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 1: surrounded by so great, a cloud of witnesses. They are
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 1: there Abel and Enoch and Noah and Abraham and Sarah
• 2:16:51
  Speaker 1: and Moses and Rahab and the unnamed ones who were
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 1: sorn in two and wandered in sheepskins. They are there
• 2:16:59
  Speaker 1: in the stands around the track, not watching as spectators
• 2:17:04
  Speaker 1: looking for drama, but witnesses whose lives constitute evidence. People
• 2:17:10
  Speaker 1: who ran their legs of the race and prove that
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 1: it can be finished. People whose existence is proof to
• 2:17:16
  Speaker 1: anyone still on the track that the finish line is
• 2:17:19
  Speaker 1: real and the road to it is passable. You are
• 2:17:23
  Speaker 1: not running alone. You are running surrounded. And the next
• 2:17:27
  Speaker 1: chapter will tell you what to do with that. Chapter twelve.
• 2:17:33
  Speaker 1: Run the race. Therefore, it is a small word, but
• 2:17:38
  Speaker 1: in the Letter to the Hebrews it carries enormous weight.
• 2:17:42
  Speaker 1: Every time the author uses it, he is doing the
• 2:17:45
  Speaker 1: same thing. He is taking everything that has just been
• 2:17:48
  Speaker 1: said and turning it into a call to action. He
• 2:17:52
  Speaker 1: is building a bridge between what is true and what
• 2:17:54
  Speaker 1: to do about it. And here, after eleven chapters of argument,
• 2:17:59
  Speaker 1: after the Angels and Moses and Melchizedek and the Old
• 2:18:02
  Speaker 1: Covenant and the Holy of Holies and the Cloud of witnesses.
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 1: After all of that, that therefore arrives, and it arrives
• 2:18:10
  Speaker 1: in the form of an image so vivid, so physical,
• 2:18:13
  Speaker 1: so immediate that you can almost feel the ground beneath
• 2:18:17
  Speaker 1: your feet. Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great
• 2:18:21
  Speaker 1: a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 1: weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 1: run with endurance the race that is set before us.
• 2:18:32
  Speaker 1: A race, not a stroll, not a leisurely walk through
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 1: a pleasant landscape, a race with all that. A race implies. Effort, commitment,
• 2:18:44
  Speaker 1: the deliberate decision to keep moving when the body wants
• 2:18:47
  Speaker 1: to stop, the awareness that there is a course marked
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 1: out and a finish line waiting at the end of it,
• 2:18:54
  Speaker 1: and around the track, filling the stands on every side,
• 2:18:57
  Speaker 1: the cloud of witnesses Able and Ena, Can, Noah and
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 1: Abraham and Sarah and Moses and Rahab and all the
• 2:19:05
  Speaker 1: unnamed ones who suffered and endured and held on. They
• 2:19:09
  Speaker 1: are there not as spectators waiting to be entertained, but
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 1: as evidence, living proof that the race can be run,
• 2:19:17
  Speaker 1: and the course can be finished, and the finish line
• 2:19:19
  Speaker 1: is real. Their presence in the stands does not make
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 1: the running easier, but it makes the running possible, because
• 2:19:27
  Speaker 1: you know, looking up at their faces, that people who
• 2:19:30
  Speaker 1: faced circumstances as hard as yours and harder did not
• 2:19:35
  Speaker 1: give up. Neither should you. But before you can run,
• 2:19:39
  Speaker 1: the author says, there are things you need to set down.
• 2:19:42
  Speaker 1: Two things specifically, and the distinction between them matters every
• 2:19:48
  Speaker 1: weight and sin which clings so closely. A weight is
• 2:19:52
  Speaker 1: not the same as a sin. The author knows this
• 2:19:56
  Speaker 1: and names them separately. There are things in a human
• 2:19:59
  Speaker 1: life that are not morally wrong, not failures of character,
• 2:20:03
  Speaker 1: not violations of any command, but that slow the runner down.
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 1: Preoccupations that are legitimate in themselves but have grown to
• 2:20:12
  Speaker 1: occupy more space than they should. Ambitions that are not
• 2:20:16
  Speaker 1: evil but have become too heavy to carry while also running,
• 2:20:19
  Speaker 1: Attachments to comfort and security, and the way things have
• 2:20:23
  Speaker 1: always been, none of them sinful, but all of them
• 2:20:27
  Speaker 1: adding weight to a race that requires lightness. The runner
• 2:20:31
  Speaker 1: who goes to the track carrying everything they own will
• 2:20:34
  Speaker 1: not finish. It is not a question of will power,
• 2:20:38
  Speaker 1: It is a question of physics. You need to put
• 2:20:41
  Speaker 1: things down. Some of what you are carrying is sin,
• 2:20:45
  Speaker 1: and that needs to be dealt with directly brought to
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 1: the throne of grace. Released. But some of what you
• 2:20:52
  Speaker 1: are carrying is simply weight. Good things that have grown heavy,
• 2:20:57
  Speaker 1: legitimate concerns that have become crushing burdens, attachments that have
• 2:21:02
  Speaker 1: quietly become chains. Both need to go not because they
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 1: are all equally wrong, but because the race requires you
• 2:21:11
  Speaker 1: free and the sin which clings so closely. The Greek
• 2:21:15
  Speaker 1: phrase suggests something that wraps itself around you, that entangles
• 2:21:20
  Speaker 1: itself in your legs as you run, that has a
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 1: quality of intimacy. The sins that are not strangers but
• 2:21:26
  Speaker 1: old companions, familiar failures, the ones you have made accommodations
• 2:21:32
  Speaker 1: for so long that you barely notice them any more
• 2:21:34
  Speaker 1: until they trip you again. The author does not name them.
• 2:21:39
  Speaker 1: He does not need to. Every person hearing these words
• 2:21:42
  Speaker 1: knows exactly which sins he is talking about. The ones
• 2:21:46
  Speaker 1: that come back, the ones you thought you had dealt with,
• 2:21:50
  Speaker 1: The ones that wait in the same place every time
• 2:21:53
  Speaker 1: and catch you the same way every time. Lay them aside,
• 2:21:57
  Speaker 1: not because laying them aside is easy, but because the
• 2:22:01
  Speaker 1: race cannot be run with them wrapped around your feet.
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 1: And then the most important sentence in the chapter looking
• 2:22:09
  Speaker 1: to Jesus, the founder and perfector of our faith. Looking
• 2:22:13
  Speaker 1: to Jesus. Everything in the race, every step, every mile,
• 2:22:19
  Speaker 1: every moment when the finish line seems impossibly far, comes
• 2:22:23
  Speaker 1: back to this. Not looking at the witnesses in the stands,
• 2:22:27
  Speaker 1: as encouraging as they are, not looking at the other
• 2:22:30
  Speaker 1: runners beside you, not looking at yourself and assessing whether
• 2:22:34
  Speaker 1: you have what it takes. Looking to Jesus. He is
• 2:22:38
  Speaker 1: the founder of the faith, the one who started it,
• 2:22:42
  Speaker 1: who made it possible, who opened the way, and he
• 2:22:46
  Speaker 1: is the perfector of it, the one who will bring
• 2:22:49
  Speaker 1: it to completion, who will not leave it unfinished, who
• 2:22:52
  Speaker 1: has the beginning and the end of the entire thing
• 2:22:55
  Speaker 1: in his hands, Who for the joy that was set
• 2:22:58
  Speaker 1: before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is
• 2:23:02
  Speaker 1: seated at the right hand of the throne of God
• 2:23:05
  Speaker 1: for the joy set before him. He ran his own race,
• 2:23:10
  Speaker 1: the hardest race in the history of the universe, the
• 2:23:13
  Speaker 1: race that went through Gethsemone and Golgatha, through the darkness
• 2:23:17
  Speaker 1: of the crucifixion and the silence of the tomb. He
• 2:23:21
  Speaker 1: ran it not because it was easy, not because he
• 2:23:24
  Speaker 1: was exempt from the weight of it, but because of
• 2:23:26
  Speaker 1: what was on the other side, the restoration of all things,
• 2:23:31
  Speaker 1: the redemption of the people. He had made, the reunion
• 2:23:35
  Speaker 1: of heaven and earth, that his death and resurrection would
• 2:23:38
  Speaker 1: make possible. He endured the cross, He despised the shame,
• 2:23:43
  Speaker 1: and he sat down. Consider him who endured from sinners
• 2:23:47
  Speaker 1: such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow
• 2:23:51
  Speaker 1: weary or fainthearted, grow weary faint hearted. These are the
• 2:23:57
  Speaker 1: two enemies of the long race. Not romatic failure, not
• 2:24:01
  Speaker 1: sudden apostasy. Weariness, the slow, cumulative exhaustion of a race
• 2:24:07
  Speaker 1: that has been going on longer than expected, in conditions
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 1: harder than anticipated. And faint heartedness, the loss of courage
• 2:24:16
  Speaker 1: that comes not from a single catastrophic blow, but from
• 2:24:20
  Speaker 1: a thousand small discouragements accumulated over time. The remedy is
• 2:24:25
  Speaker 1: not self motivation. It is not working harder or finding
• 2:24:30
  Speaker 1: some reserve of inner strength that has not yet been tapped.
• 2:24:33
  Speaker 1: The remedy is to consider him, to look at what
• 2:24:36
  Speaker 1: he endured, To hold his story alongside your own, and
• 2:24:40
  Speaker 1: let the comparison do its quiet work. Because whatever you
• 2:24:44
  Speaker 1: are carrying, whatever hostility you are facing, whatever weariness has
• 2:24:49
  Speaker 1: settled into your bones, he faced more, he endured more,
• 2:24:54
  Speaker 1: and he did not stop. In your struggle against sin,
• 2:24:58
  Speaker 1: you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.
• 2:25:01
  Speaker 1: The author is putting their suffering in perspective, not minimizing it.
• 2:25:06
  Speaker 1: The suffering is real. He has never minimized it. But
• 2:25:10
  Speaker 1: there is a scale of suffering, and the one they
• 2:25:13
  Speaker 1: are looking to as the founder and perfector of their
• 2:25:16
  Speaker 1: faith went to the very end of that scale and
• 2:25:19
  Speaker 1: came through, which means the one who is asking you
• 2:25:22
  Speaker 1: to endure knows exactly what endurance costs. And have you
• 2:25:27
  Speaker 1: forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? My son,
• 2:25:32
  Speaker 1: do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor
• 2:25:35
  Speaker 1: be weary when reproved by him, For the Lord disciplines
• 2:25:39
  Speaker 1: the one he loves and chastises every son whom he
• 2:25:43
  Speaker 1: receives discipline. The word in the original language is pidea,
• 2:25:48
  Speaker 1: the Greek word for the training and education of a child,
• 2:25:52
  Speaker 1: not punishment in the sense of retribution, not the anger
• 2:25:56
  Speaker 1: of a god who has run out of patience, but
• 2:25:59
  Speaker 1: the deliberate, purposeful, loving activity of a father who is
• 2:26:03
  Speaker 1: shaping a child. Towards something. The suffering his readers were
• 2:26:07
  Speaker 1: experiencing was not evidence that God had abandoned them. It
• 2:26:11
  Speaker 1: was not proof that their faith was misplaced or their
• 2:26:14
  Speaker 1: prayers unheard. It was, the author suggests, evidence of the opposite,
• 2:26:19
  Speaker 1: that they were being treated as sons and daughters, as
• 2:26:22
  Speaker 1: people whose formation mattered to the one forming them. It
• 2:26:26
  Speaker 1: is for discipline that you have to endure. God is
• 2:26:29
  Speaker 1: treating you as sons. For what son is there whom
• 2:26:33
  Speaker 1: his father does not discipline. A father who never disciplines
• 2:26:37
  Speaker 1: is a father who does not care what his child becomes.
• 2:26:41
  Speaker 1: The discipline is the love, not all of the love.
• 2:26:44
  Speaker 1: The love is much more than the discipline, but a
• 2:26:47
  Speaker 1: genuine expression of it. You do not invest in the
• 2:26:50
  Speaker 1: formation of someone whose future does not matter to you.
• 2:26:54
  Speaker 1: For the moment, all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant,
• 2:26:58
  Speaker 1: But later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to
• 2:27:02
  Speaker 1: those who have been trained by it. Later the fruit
• 2:27:06
  Speaker 1: comes later, not during the training. During the training it
• 2:27:10
  Speaker 1: simply hurts, but later, when the training has done its work,
• 2:27:15
  Speaker 1: when the character that was being formed has been formed,
• 2:27:18
  Speaker 1: then the fruit appears. This is the pastoral wisdom of
• 2:27:22
  Speaker 1: the author at its most direct He is not promising
• 2:27:26
  Speaker 1: that the suffering will make sense now, he is promising
• 2:27:29
  Speaker 1: that it is not wasted. Therefore, lift your drooping hands
• 2:27:33
  Speaker 1: and strengthen your weak knees, and make straight paths for
• 2:27:37
  Speaker 1: your feet, so that what is lame may not be
• 2:27:40
  Speaker 1: put out of joint, but rather be healed. Lift your
• 2:27:43
  Speaker 1: drooping hands, strengthen your weak knees. The image is of
• 2:27:48
  Speaker 1: a runner in the middle of a long race who
• 2:27:50
  Speaker 1: has begun to lose form, head dropping, arms, sagging knees,
• 2:27:56
  Speaker 1: beginning to buckle, stride shortening. Not a runner who has stopped,
• 2:28:01
  Speaker 1: but a runner who is close to stopping, a runner
• 2:28:04
  Speaker 1: who needs to be called back to form before the
• 2:28:06
  Speaker 1: loss of form becomes a collapse. The author is not
• 2:28:10
  Speaker 1: speaking to people who have given up. He is speaking
• 2:28:13
  Speaker 1: to people who are about too, and he is calling
• 2:28:16
  Speaker 1: them back, not with another chapter of doctrine, but with
• 2:28:20
  Speaker 1: a physical image. Lift your hands, strengthen your knees, fix
• 2:28:26
  Speaker 1: your path, keep running. And then the author brings his
• 2:28:30
  Speaker 1: readers to the most luminous passage in the entire letter,
• 2:28:34
  Speaker 1: a passage that gathers everything together and sets it in
• 2:28:37
  Speaker 1: its final frame. For you have not come to what
• 2:28:40
  Speaker 1: may be touched. A blazing fire, and darkness and gloom,
• 2:28:43
  Speaker 1: and a whirlwind, and the sound of a trumpet, and
• 2:28:45
  Speaker 1: a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no
• 2:28:48
  Speaker 1: more be spoken to them. Sinai, the mountain of the
• 2:28:52
  Speaker 1: Old Covenant, the mountain that burned with fire and was
• 2:28:56
  Speaker 1: wrapped in darkness and smoke. The mountain that trembled at
• 2:29:00
  Speaker 1: the voice of God, so that even Moses said, I
• 2:29:03
  Speaker 1: am trembling with fear. No one could go near it.
• 2:29:07
  Speaker 1: The command was explicit. If even an animal touches the mountain,
• 2:29:12
  Speaker 1: it must be stoned. The presence of God at Sinai
• 2:29:15
  Speaker 1: was overwhelming and terrifying, a declaration of holiness so complete
• 2:29:21
  Speaker 1: that the people begged Moses to make it stop. That mountain,
• 2:29:25
  Speaker 1: with all its fire and darkness and thunder, is not
• 2:29:28
  Speaker 1: where you have come. But you have come to Mount Zion,
• 2:29:32
  Speaker 1: and to the city of the Living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,
• 2:29:36
  Speaker 1: and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the
• 2:29:40
  Speaker 1: assembly of the first born who are enrolled in Heaven.
• 2:29:44
  Speaker 1: And to God the Judge of all, and to the
• 2:29:47
  Speaker 1: spirits of the Righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the
• 2:29:50
  Speaker 1: Mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood
• 2:29:54
  Speaker 1: that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
• 2:29:57
  Speaker 1: Read that list slowly, Let each e element land mount Zion,
• 2:30:03
  Speaker 1: Not Sinai, the mountain of fire and terror, but Zion,
• 2:30:07
  Speaker 1: the mountain of the City of God. Not the earthly Jerusalem,
• 2:30:11
  Speaker 1: but the heavenly one, the city that Abraham was looking for,
• 2:30:15
  Speaker 1: that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. Innumerable
• 2:30:21
  Speaker 1: angels in festal gathering, not the angels of Sinai delivering
• 2:30:25
  Speaker 1: the law in thunderous solemnity. Angels in celebration, as if
• 2:30:30
  Speaker 1: the whole of Heaven is gathered for the arrival of
• 2:30:33
  Speaker 1: the people who are coming home. The assembly of the
• 2:30:36
  Speaker 1: firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, the full company of
• 2:30:40
  Speaker 1: everyone who has ever belonged to Christ, whose names are
• 2:30:43
  Speaker 1: written in the register of Heaven, God, the judge of all,
• 2:30:48
  Speaker 1: the one before whom all of history will ultimately stand,
• 2:30:52
  Speaker 1: and in whose presence, the author suggests, you are standing now,
• 2:30:57
  Speaker 1: not at a distance, not through layer of mediation and ritual,
• 2:31:02
  Speaker 1: but here the spirits of the righteous made perfect, the
• 2:31:06
  Speaker 1: cloud of witnesses Able and Noah and Abraham and Sarah
• 2:31:10
  Speaker 1: and Moses and all the unnamed ones who have finished
• 2:31:14
  Speaker 1: their races and entered the city they were always looking for.
• 2:31:17
  Speaker 1: And Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, the one
• 2:31:21
  Speaker 1: who opened the way, who stands between God and the
• 2:31:24
  Speaker 1: people who could not stand in that presence on their own.
• 2:31:28
  Speaker 1: And to the sprinkled blood, that speaks a better word
• 2:31:31
  Speaker 1: than the blood of Abel. Abel's blood cried out from
• 2:31:34
  Speaker 1: the ground after he was murdered, crying out for justice,
• 2:31:39
  Speaker 1: for the account to be settled. The blood of Christ
• 2:31:42
  Speaker 1: also speaks, but it speaks a better word, not vengeance,
• 2:31:47
  Speaker 1: not the demand for a debt to be paid forgiveness, mercy.
• 2:31:53
  Speaker 1: Come in. See that you do not refuse him who
• 2:31:56
  Speaker 1: is speaking. The entire letter has been building to the moment.
• 2:32:01
  Speaker 1: See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking.
• 2:32:05
  Speaker 1: Because the voice that spoke at SINAI shook the earth,
• 2:32:08
  Speaker 1: and the one who is speaking now has promised once more,
• 2:32:12
  Speaker 1: I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.
• 2:32:15
  Speaker 1: This shaking is not described as a catastrophe. It is
• 2:32:19
  Speaker 1: described as the necessary clearing away of the temporary so
• 2:32:23
  Speaker 1: that what is permanent can be seen. Therefore, let us
• 2:32:26
  Speaker 1: be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken,
• 2:32:30
  Speaker 1: cannot be shaken. Everything that can be shaken will be
• 2:32:34
  Speaker 1: every human institution, every earthly security, every structure built on
• 2:32:41
  Speaker 1: any foundation other than the one this letter has been
• 2:32:44
  Speaker 1: pointing to for twelve chapters. All of it, in the
• 2:32:48
  Speaker 1: end will shake and fall. But the Kingdom, the city
• 2:32:52
  Speaker 1: whose designer and builder is God, the inheritance that is
• 2:32:55
  Speaker 1: imperishable and undefiled and unfading, the rest that has been
• 2:33:00
  Speaker 1: prepared since the foundation of the world. That kingdom cannot
• 2:33:03
  Speaker 1: be shaken. It does not tremble when the world trembles.
• 2:33:07
  Speaker 1: It does not move when the earth moves. It is
• 2:33:11
  Speaker 1: built on the only thing that is permanently stable, the
• 2:33:14
  Speaker 1: character and promise of the God who made it. Let
• 2:33:17
  Speaker 1: us be grateful, and through that gratitude, let us offer
• 2:33:21
  Speaker 1: to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe. Reverence and awe,
• 2:33:26
  Speaker 1: not terror, not the trembling of the people at the
• 2:33:30
  Speaker 1: foot of Sinai, begging for the voice to stop, but
• 2:33:33
  Speaker 1: the deep, settled, wonder filled recognition that the one you
• 2:33:37
  Speaker 1: are approaching is not small, that the grace you have
• 2:33:40
  Speaker 1: received is not cheap, that the kingdom you have been
• 2:33:44
  Speaker 1: given is not ordinary, for our God is a consuming fire.
• 2:33:49
  Speaker 1: The letter ends almost here. These are nearly the final
• 2:33:53
  Speaker 1: theological words before the personal greetings that close the chapter,
• 2:33:57
  Speaker 1: and the author ends with this image. Hold it together
• 2:34:00
  Speaker 1: in a single phrase, the two truths that have run
• 2:34:04
  Speaker 1: through every chapter. God is a consuming fire, the same
• 2:34:08
  Speaker 1: God who is approachable, who invites you to draw near
• 2:34:11
  Speaker 1: with confidence, who has opened the way through the blood
• 2:34:14
  Speaker 1: of Christ, who has written the New Covenant on your heart,
• 2:34:17
  Speaker 1: who remembers your sins no more, who disciplines you as
• 2:34:21
  Speaker 1: a beloved son, who has prepared a city for you.
• 2:34:24
  Speaker 1: That God is also a consuming fire. He has not
• 2:34:28
  Speaker 1: become less holy because he has become more accessible. The
• 2:34:32
  Speaker 1: grace of the New Covenant is not a softening of
• 2:34:34
  Speaker 1: the divine character. It is the most dramatic expression of it,
• 2:34:39
  Speaker 1: the lengths to which a holy, consuming God will go
• 2:34:43
  Speaker 1: to bring his people home without compromising the holiness that
• 2:34:47
  Speaker 1: makes him who he is. The fire that would have
• 2:34:50
  Speaker 1: consumed you at the foot of Sinai has been met
• 2:34:53
  Speaker 1: and satisfied and turned aside by the one who stood
• 2:34:56
  Speaker 1: in your place. And now that consuming fire is the
• 2:35:00
  Speaker 1: fire of a father, purifying, refining, shaping the people He
• 2:35:05
  Speaker 1: loves into what they were made to be. You have
• 2:35:08
  Speaker 1: come to Mount Zion, not Seni, to the city of
• 2:35:13
  Speaker 1: the Living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem, to innumerable angels
• 2:35:18
  Speaker 1: in festal gathering, to the assembly of the first Born,
• 2:35:22
  Speaker 1: to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, to the
• 2:35:26
  Speaker 1: blood that speaks a better word. You are surrounded by
• 2:35:29
  Speaker 1: a cloud of witnesses who have run before you and finished.
• 2:35:32
  Speaker 1: You have a high Priest who is always there, always interceding,
• 2:35:36
  Speaker 1: who has been exactly where you are, and who holds
• 2:35:40
  Speaker 1: the door open for you to come. The race is
• 2:35:43
  Speaker 1: set before you. The finish line is real. The kingdom
• 2:35:47
  Speaker 1: cannot be shaken.
• 2:35:49
  Speaker 2: Run be still now, Let the words find their places.
• 2:35:58
  Speaker 2: Let the theology that has been building all through this
• 2:36:01
  Speaker 2: night settle from the mind into the places where it
• 2:36:04
  Speaker 2: is needed, into the places of fear, into the places
• 2:36:09
  Speaker 2: of doubt, into the places where the weariness lives and
• 2:36:12
  Speaker 2: the questions wait in the dark. You have heard something
• 2:36:16
  Speaker 2: tonight that was written for tired people. People who had
• 2:36:20
  Speaker 2: believed and suffered and held on and were wondering whether
• 2:36:23
  Speaker 2: holding on was still worth it. People standing at their
• 2:36:27
  Speaker 2: own Jordan river, feeling the pull of the familiar, the
• 2:36:30
  Speaker 2: old certainty, the old structures, the old ways of managing
• 2:36:35
  Speaker 2: the distance between themselves and God. And into that weariness,
• 2:36:39
  Speaker 2: into that doubt, into that exhaustion, this letter spoke, He
• 2:36:44
  Speaker 2: is greater, Greater than the angels who delivered the law,
• 2:36:48
  Speaker 2: Greater than Moses who received it, Greater than Aaron who
• 2:36:52
  Speaker 2: administered it, Greater than the entire system of sacrifice and
• 2:36:57
  Speaker 2: ritual that kept a nation in relationship with God for
• 2:37:00
  Speaker 2: over a thousand years. Greater not because those things were nothing,
• 2:37:06
  Speaker 2: but because they were always pointing to something, and the
• 2:37:09
  Speaker 2: something they were pointing to has arrived. So before sleep comes,
• 2:37:14
  Speaker 2: let us pray, Father, you are the designer and builder
• 2:37:18
  Speaker 2: of the city we are looking for. You are the
• 2:37:21
  Speaker 2: one who has been preparing a place since before the
• 2:37:24
  Speaker 2: foundation of the world, since before we were old enough
• 2:37:27
  Speaker 2: to know we needed it, a place where the wandering
• 2:37:30
  Speaker 2: ends and the homecoming begins, where the tents give way
• 2:37:35
  Speaker 2: to foundations, where the long journey through the wilderness finally
• 2:37:39
  Speaker 2: opens into something we do not yet have words for.
• 2:37:43
  Speaker 2: We are not there yet. We know that we are
• 2:37:46
  Speaker 2: still on the road, still in the middle of the race,
• 2:37:51
  Speaker 2: still waking up in the morning to the same unresolved questions,
• 2:37:55
  Speaker 2: the same difficult relationships, the same gap between the life
• 2:37:59
  Speaker 2: we have and the life we know we were made for.
• 2:38:02
  Speaker 2: But tonight we have been reminded of something we keep forgetting.
• 2:38:06
  Speaker 2: You are faithful. You have always been faithful. You were
• 2:38:10
  Speaker 2: faithful to Noah in the long years of building when
• 2:38:13
  Speaker 2: no rain had fallen, Faithful to Abraham in the silence
• 2:38:18
  Speaker 2: between the promise and the birth of Isaac. Faithful to
• 2:38:22
  Speaker 2: Moses in the wilderness, to David in the caves, to
• 2:38:25
  Speaker 2: the unnamed ones who wandered in sheepskins through deserts and mountains.
• 2:38:30
  Speaker 2: You did not forget a single one of them. You
• 2:38:33
  Speaker 2: enrolled their names in heaven. You prepared the city they
• 2:38:37
  Speaker 2: were looking for, and when they finished their races, you
• 2:38:41
  Speaker 2: brought them home to the inheritance that had been waiting
• 2:38:45
  Speaker 2: since before they were born. You will be faithful to
• 2:38:48
  Speaker 2: us too, Not because we deserve it, not because our
• 2:38:53
  Speaker 2: faith has been consistent enough, or our prayers frequent enough,
• 2:38:57
  Speaker 2: or our lives wholly enough, but because the covenant that
• 2:39:00
  Speaker 2: holds us is not based on our performance. It is
• 2:39:04
  Speaker 2: written on our hearts, sealed with blood. That speaks a
• 2:39:08
  Speaker 2: better word than vengeance administered by a high priest who
• 2:39:12
  Speaker 2: never leaves his post, who always lives to intercede, who
• 2:39:15
  Speaker 2: appears in your presence for us right now, in this moment,
• 2:39:19
  Speaker 2: and who will still be there when the morning comes.
• 2:39:22
  Speaker 2: I will remember their sins no more. Let those words
• 2:39:26
  Speaker 2: land wherever they need to land, to night. The sins
• 2:39:30
  Speaker 2: you have been carrying for years, the ones that come
• 2:39:34
  Speaker 2: back no matter how many times you lay them down,
• 2:39:37
  Speaker 2: the ones that feel too large to be covered, too
• 2:39:40
  Speaker 2: familiar to be forgiven, too persistent to ever really go away.
• 2:39:45
  Speaker 2: He said he will remember them no more, Not that
• 2:39:48
  Speaker 2: he forgets in the way a failing memory loses things,
• 2:39:53
  Speaker 2: but that he chooses on the basis of the offering
• 2:39:56
  Speaker 2: that was made once and will never need to be
• 2:39:58
  Speaker 2: made again, to no longer hold them against you, to
• 2:40:02
  Speaker 2: no longer count them, to close the account that was
• 2:40:06
  Speaker 2: keeping them on record. The account is closed, the record
• 2:40:10
  Speaker 2: is clear. The High Priest has sat down. You do
• 2:40:14
  Speaker 2: not need to earn your way back in tonight. You
• 2:40:18
  Speaker 2: do not need to resolve the doubt before you can pray.
• 2:40:21
  Speaker 2: You do not need to settle the question before you
• 2:40:24
  Speaker 2: can rest. The throne is a throne of grace, and
• 2:40:28
  Speaker 2: the invitation to draw near is not conditional on the
• 2:40:32
  Speaker 2: consistency of your devotion. Draw near with a true heart
• 2:40:37
  Speaker 2: exactly as you are, Lord Jesus. You are the founder
• 2:40:42
  Speaker 2: and perfector of our faith. You ran a race we
• 2:40:46
  Speaker 2: could not run. You faced a cross we could not face.
• 2:40:50
  Speaker 2: You endured the shame and the hostility and the weight
• 2:40:53
  Speaker 2: of everything that sin had ever done and everything it
• 2:40:56
  Speaker 2: ever would do, and you did not stop. You set
• 2:40:59
  Speaker 2: your face like flint and kept walking because you could
• 2:41:02
  Speaker 2: see past the cross to the joy that was waiting
• 2:41:05
  Speaker 2: on the other side. You ran for us. And now
• 2:41:09
  Speaker 2: you are seated because the work is finished, the offering
• 2:41:13
  Speaker 2: has been made, the door is open, the veil has
• 2:41:17
  Speaker 2: been torn, and you are there, appearing in the presence
• 2:41:21
  Speaker 2: of God on our behalf, making a case for us
• 2:41:24
  Speaker 2: that we could never make for ourselves. Tonight, we are tired,
• 2:41:28
  Speaker 2: some of us, more than we know how to say.
• 2:41:31
  Speaker 2: The race has been long, the weight has been heavy.
• 2:41:35
  Speaker 2: The weariness has settled into places that a good night's
• 2:41:38
  Speaker 2: sleep will not reach. We are not asking you to
• 2:41:42
  Speaker 2: make it easy. We know the race is real and
• 2:41:45
  Speaker 2: the endurance is real, and the fight of faith is
• 2:41:48
  Speaker 2: a real fight. But we are asking you to be
• 2:41:51
  Speaker 2: what this letter says. You are the high priest who
• 2:41:54
  Speaker 2: sympathizes with our weaknesses, the pioneer who has been exactly
• 2:41:59
  Speaker 2: where we are. Are the one who learned obedience through
• 2:42:02
  Speaker 2: what he suffered, and is therefore able to help those
• 2:42:06
  Speaker 2: who are being tested. Help us not just in the morning,
• 2:42:10
  Speaker 2: when the faith comes more easily, but in the night,
• 2:42:14
  Speaker 2: in the quiet, in the dark, in the spaces between sleep,
• 2:42:19
  Speaker 2: where the questions get loud and the doubts get heavy.
• 2:42:23
  Speaker 2: Be near. Not as a theological proposition, but as a presence,
• 2:42:28
  Speaker 2: Not as a doctrine to be affirmed, but as a
• 2:42:30
  Speaker 2: reality to be felt. You are the same God who
• 2:42:34
  Speaker 2: walked with Enoch in the evenings, who spoke to Abraham
• 2:42:38
  Speaker 2: outside his tent and told him to count the stars,
• 2:42:42
  Speaker 2: who appeared to Moses in a burning bush on an
• 2:42:45
  Speaker 2: ordinary afternoon in the wilderness, who came to Elijah under
• 2:42:49
  Speaker 2: a tree when he had given up and asked to die,
• 2:42:52
  Speaker 2: and did not lecture him or rebuke him, but fed
• 2:42:56
  Speaker 2: him twice, and said, the journey is too great for you.
• 2:43:01
  Speaker 2: The journey is too great for us too. We know that,
• 2:43:05
  Speaker 2: we have always known that, but we are not making
• 2:43:09
  Speaker 2: it alone. You are with us, You have promised to
• 2:43:13
  Speaker 2: be with us, and in this extraordinary letter you have
• 2:43:17
  Speaker 2: given us the evidence of your faithfulness, stretching back to
• 2:43:20
  Speaker 2: the beginning of human history, person after person, generation after generation,
• 2:43:27
  Speaker 2: each one holding on in circumstances as hard as ours
• 2:43:30
  Speaker 2: and harder, and each one finding that you were sufficient.
• 2:43:35
  Speaker 2: You are sufficient. Father. We pray now for every one
• 2:43:39
  Speaker 2: listening to night who is standing at their own Jordan river,
• 2:43:43
  Speaker 2: who have believed, really believed, and are now standing in
• 2:43:47
  Speaker 2: the middle of the gap between what they were promised
• 2:43:49
  Speaker 2: and what they can see, who are asking the question
• 2:43:53
  Speaker 2: the first readers of this letter were asking, is he
• 2:43:56
  Speaker 2: really enough? Is it worth holding on?
• 2:44:00
  Speaker 1: It is?
• 2:44:01
  Speaker 2: They will know that more fully in the morning than
• 2:44:03
  Speaker 2: they do tonight, and more fully next year than they
• 2:44:06
  Speaker 2: do now, and more fully in the moment when they
• 2:44:10
  Speaker 2: finally step across the finish line and look back at
• 2:44:13
  Speaker 2: the road they ran, and understand for the first time
• 2:44:17
  Speaker 2: with complete clarity that every step was worth it. But tonight,
• 2:44:22
  Speaker 2: in the middle of the not yet knowing, give them peace,
• 2:44:25
  Speaker 2: not the peace that comes from having all the answers,
• 2:44:29
  Speaker 2: the peace that surpasses understanding, the peace that stands God
• 2:44:34
  Speaker 2: over the heart and mind, even when the heart and
• 2:44:36
  Speaker 2: mind are full of things that peace has no business
• 2:44:39
  Speaker 2: being near. Move into the difficult places tonight, for the
• 2:44:44
  Speaker 2: ones whose marriages are hard, and whose finances are frightening,
• 2:44:47
  Speaker 2: and whose children are wandering, and whose bodies are giving way.
• 2:44:51
  Speaker 2: Move in. Be the anchor that holds when the storm comes.
• 2:44:56
  Speaker 2: Be the God who is not ashamed to be called
• 2:44:59
  Speaker 2: their God, even on the nights when they are barely
• 2:45:02
  Speaker 2: remembering to call on you at all. You enrolled their
• 2:45:05
  Speaker 2: names in heaven. You have not unenrolled them on account
• 2:45:09
  Speaker 2: of their weakness, or their doubt, or their weariness. They
• 2:45:12
  Speaker 2: are still yours and you are still theirs. As we
• 2:45:17
  Speaker 2: close to night, we hold before you the truth that
• 2:45:20
  Speaker 2: this letter has been pressing into us all through these hours.
• 2:45:24
  Speaker 2: We have not come to Sinai. We have not come
• 2:45:27
  Speaker 2: to the mountain of fire and darkness and the voice
• 2:45:31
  Speaker 2: too holy to be endured. We have come to Mount Zion,
• 2:45:35
  Speaker 2: to the city of the Living God, to innumerable angels
• 2:45:39
  Speaker 2: in festal gathering, to the assembly of the first born
• 2:45:43
  Speaker 2: enrolled in Heaven, to you, the Judge of all, to
• 2:45:47
  Speaker 2: the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus, the
• 2:45:52
  Speaker 2: mediator of a new covenant to the blood that speaks
• 2:45:55
  Speaker 2: a better word. We are inside, We are enrolled. We
• 2:46:00
  Speaker 2: are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses who have run
• 2:46:03
  Speaker 2: before us and finished. We are receiving a kingdom that
• 2:46:07
  Speaker 2: cannot be shaken. Let that be the last thing we
• 2:46:11
  Speaker 2: hold before sleep comes. Not the news, not the worry,
• 2:46:16
  Speaker 2: not the unresolved question, or the looming deadline, or the
• 2:46:20
  Speaker 2: fear that has been running underneath everything all day. This
• 2:46:25
  Speaker 2: a kingdom that cannot be shaken, And a God who
• 2:46:28
  Speaker 2: swore by himself, because there was nothing greater to swear by,
• 2:46:33
  Speaker 2: that he would bless his people and not revoke the blessing.
• 2:46:37
  Speaker 2: A God who is not unjust so as to overlook
• 2:46:40
  Speaker 2: our work and the love we have shown for his name,
• 2:46:43
  Speaker 2: A God who has prepared for every one who seeks
• 2:46:47
  Speaker 2: the heavenly homeland a city. The city is there, the
• 2:46:52
  Speaker 2: race is real. The cloud of witnesses is in the stands,
• 2:46:56
  Speaker 2: And the high Priest who opened the way is still
• 2:47:00
  Speaker 2: the right hand of the Majesty in heaven, always living,
• 2:47:05
  Speaker 2: always interceding, appearing in the presence of God. For you,
• 2:47:10
  Speaker 2: you are not alone tonight. You are not forgotten. You
• 2:47:14
  Speaker 2: are not beyond the reach of the love that tore
• 2:47:16
  Speaker 2: the curtain open, the love that sent a forerunner into
• 2:47:20
  Speaker 2: the Holy of Holies to make a way that his
• 2:47:22
  Speaker 2: own blood would keep permanently open. The love that looks
• 2:47:26
  Speaker 2: at you tonight in your weariness and your questions, and
• 2:47:31
  Speaker 2: says the same thing it has always said. Draw near.
• 2:47:35
  Speaker 2: The door is open, the offering is sufficient. The blood
• 2:47:40
  Speaker 2: speaks a better word, and I will remember your sins
• 2:47:44
  Speaker 2: no more. Rest. Now, let the anchor hold. Let the
• 2:47:49
  Speaker 2: weight of all the things you cannot fix or control
• 2:47:52
  Speaker 2: or resolve drift a little further from the shore of
• 2:47:55
  Speaker 2: your thoughts. They will still be there in the morning,
• 2:47:59
  Speaker 2: And in the morning, rested, you will be better equipped
• 2:48:02
  Speaker 2: to carry what the day brings. But to night is
• 2:48:05
  Speaker 2: for rest, the kind of rest that has been available
• 2:48:09
  Speaker 2: since the seventh day of creation, when God finished his
• 2:48:12
  Speaker 2: work and was satisfied, and the rest of completion settled
• 2:48:16
  Speaker 2: over everything he had made. That rest is still available.
• 2:48:21
  Speaker 2: It is always available, and it is offered to night
• 2:48:24
  Speaker 2: to every one who is willing to stop striving and
• 2:48:27
  Speaker 2: simply receive it. You have a high priest who is seated.
• 2:48:32
  Speaker 2: The work is finished the sacrifice has been made, the
• 2:48:36
  Speaker 2: New Covenant is in effect. The kingdom cannot be shaken.
• 2:48:41
  Speaker 2: So close your eyes and let the God who holds
• 2:48:44
  Speaker 2: the stars, who commands the angels, who calls you his child,
• 2:48:49
  Speaker 2: and who has enrolled your name in heaven hold you
• 2:48:51
  Speaker 2: to until the morning comes. Good night, And may the
• 2:48:56
  Speaker 2: peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard your heart
• 2:49:01
  Speaker 2: and your mind in Christ Jesus Amen.