Hebrews 10:19-25 Draw Near, Hold Fast, Stir Up Each Other
Hebrews 10:11-18 "Jesus Has Perfected Those Who Are Being Sanctified"
Has anyone here had the special joy of being pulled over for speeding? Yes, I’m sue you have. Maybe you were caught off guard, your mind was somewhere else and you just weren’t paying attention. It’s ok, I’m not judging you. Or maybe you knew you were going a bit faster than the posted limit and you just got busted. As the officer makes his way over to the car, you diligently put your hands on the steering wheel, hoping you remembered to put your seat belt on, and also hoping that they will be in a good mood, and praying that you might get off with a warning. But no. He’s in a bad mood. He had an argument with his wife that morning. His coffee was cold. He didn’t get to finish his donut before having to respond to a call. And he’s pretty sure the girl at the counter Was giving him the evil eye because he didn’t give her the now obligatory 20% tip for handing him his overpriced donut and coffee. And now there you are, with your silly pout trying to look all innocent and frail. It ain’t working. You find out he has you clocked at 15 over the limit. He writes you up and you get to take home a ticket and need to figure out how much this is going to hurt your pocketbook. You see, you broke the law, whether ignorantly or knowingly, you broke the law and you got caught. And now it’s time to pay the piper. Penalties are incurred for these violations. That ticket will set you back close to $100 and if you get busted in a school zone then fines can be as much a $500. Now just as with our traffic laws, God had prescribed just punishment for breaking his laws. And it is to these we will focus our attention to in CH20.
Obey the laws. Sounds simple enough, but why does it seem so hard? Why do we think that they don’t apply? Why do we think that we are more special and can exempt ourselves? We operate as if we have ‘diplomatic immunity’? Are we really above the law? We are tempted to think we can get away with it. We hear Jesus teach about the spirit of the law versus the letter of the law, yet some of us operate way outside the realm of the spirit and just disregard it altogether! Surely there are immoral laws on the books by which we are divinely instructed to not follow. It is legal to abort a baby, but that does not make it right. It is legal to divorce for any reason or no reason at all, and still that is not a law we can support. Our highest calling is to obey God rather than man, in such situations. But when God gives us his laws, his moral laws, we are told in no uncertain terms to keep his statutes, or commands. The Ten Commandments are moral laws. Yes they were given to the people of Israel, but they transcend the nation state. They are moral laws obligatory, and written on our hearts. “My son, keep my words and treasure up my commandments with you; keep my commandments and live; keep my teaching as the apple of your eye; bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart.”(Proverbs 7:1-3) We ought to study God’s law, obey them and put them into practice. Because it’s not just about writing them on the doorposts of our house, but it needs to be a heart thing. “And I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. But as for those whose heart goes after their detestable things and their abominations, I will bring their deeds upon their own heads, declares the Lord God."” (Ezekiel 11:19-21) God has given us his word, his instructions, his laws, and ours is not to question but to obey. God says plainly, keep my statutes.
I want to read an illustration I came across. “a coin dealer, John Feigenbaum, who purchased a rare 1894 dime for 1.9 million dollars in 2007. In transporting it by plane cross-country from Oakland to New York City, he carried the rare coin in his pants pocket. After he wondered if the dime might fall out of his pocket, he stuck it in his briefcase. Repeatedly through the flight, he checked the briefcase to ensure that the coin had not vanished.” This little vignette reminds me of the JRR Tolkien series of the LOTR and Hobbit. The Dark Lord Sauron created one ring to rule other rings of power. One character who came to possess this ring, Gollum, grows especially fond and attached to the ring and calls it “my precious.” Other characters in the series do the same. And when they fear they have misplaced or lost the ring they freak out, searching for it frantically, high and low to find it again. Such highly valued is the ring. I wonder if we value any possessions in such a way? I wonder if we could value holiness in that way? Do we prize our call to holiness in this way? Do we recognize that He who calls us to holiness is Holy Holy Holy? Maybe this morning we can come to appreciate and value the extraordinary call to holy obedience.
Last week we talked about leprosy and how it was a very destructive and scary disease. There wasn’t a cure and the measures which had to be followed to protect the community were isolating and lonely. This was essentially a death sentence. It’s comparable to the diagnosis of cancer these days. Being diagnosed with cancer is scary, especially considering treatments, if there’s even an option for treatment. It spreads, takes over and without a cure or healing, the body will waste away until death claims the victim. It’s truly a sad horrible picture. And just as have that in mind when we think of disease, but even more than that, this is how we must view the nature of sin. Sin may be pleasurable for a season, but the wages of sin is death. It never turns out alright, it never satisfies. Most of us would concur. But have you thought of beyond the nature of sin to the nature of the sinner? Let me give you a phrase to think about: “God loves the sinner but hates the sin.” Anyone want to amen that? Is that a biblical view? Actually some say that quote is more attributed to Ghandi in his autobiography. So what does the Bible actually say? “The boastful shall not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. (Psalm 5:5) “The LORD tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence.” (Psalm 11:5) That doesn’t sound like “love the sinner” language. It’s important for us to grow in our understanding of God’s Holiness, His Holy character, and how offensive sin is to Him. Then these biblical statements will not seem out of place. This is why we read and study Leviticus. Just as we can look at the disease of cancer with moral outrage and righteous indignation, so think about how God views our sins. Small sins, small things we think are petty or don’t amount to much, God holds righteous indignation against. God does show his love and mercy and kindness to us in that, “but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8) But this saving love is not given for everyone. God’s love is gracious, not demanded, not owed, not merited. So when a leper was healed, it was by the grace of God, a demonstration of his kindness. And so when one was healed, there was a law for how the leper would be declared clean and allowed to re-enter into community. And this is what we are going to look at this morning.
As we have been studying Leviticus I hope it has become increasingly clear that God is holy and calls his people to be holy. This call to holiness and sanctification certainly involves how we are to worship God. But does it involve our day to day activities? Does living for God extend to what we eat or how we dress, or how we behave? Well the easy answer is yes. But why? In our midweek Bible study we have been in the book of Galatians, where Paul is defending the gospel and telling them not to return under the yoke of the law. We have been set free and are indeed free in Christ. But there are two ditches on either side of the road that we must avoid. We must avoid legalism, where you must do X in order to stay saved, and the other is antinomianism, where there is no room for God’s law. Both of these are mistakes. As we turn to our text we are going to be discussing the dietary laws God issued to the Israelites. Are we still bound by these laws? Most importantly, what is the main concept in the giving of these laws? Let’s find out.
Dangerous Jobs. Fatal Mistakes. Worker injuries. Electricians are killed when they mistakenly touch live wires. Some folks have lost limb or life while operating heavy machinery or manufacturing equipment. Doctors caring for patients on the front lines combatting disease such as Ebola, SARS, MERS and now Covid-19, have contracted the disease themselves and died. Nurses and other healthcare workers make mistakes with needles and have contracted HIV, or other infectious blood diseases. Pilots and their passengers have been killed because of mistakes or negligence. I remember watching a show about plane crashes and in this one particular crash, investigators discovered from the black box conversations that the pilot was drunk and unable to properly decipher his instrument panel and thinking the plane was about to stall put the plane into a nosedive killing everyone on board. Even Pastors have been killed. Not that our job is crazy dangerous, at least not in our part of the world. I had a co-worker whose husband was a pastor and he was killed in the baptistry; electrocuted by the microphone. Deadly mistakes happen. Some jobs are inherently more dangerous, and/or have the potential hazard of the worker getting killed. When you work in one of these jobs, you must always be on the alert, because a small mistake, error in judgment, can mean the difference between life and death. So what does that have to do with us this morning, you might ask? Let’s find out together as we turn to our text.
When you buy something new, it usually comes with an instruction manual. Although more often these days, you might find a quick setup guide and be directed to the manufacturer’s website to download an instruction manual. But the point is that when you get something new for the first time, you don’t know how to use it. maybe some things are simple plug and play devices, but you can still learn a lot of useful things and get the most out of it by referring to and reading the manual. Some things are so complicated that you run the risk of breaking the thing or not properly caring for it if you don’t read the manual. It might even save you some embarrassment. I recently saw a youtube video of a dad who sent his daughter into the auto parts store to buy some blinker fluid. And of course she returned to her dad laughing his head off. But if she had read her car manual, she would’ve known there wasn’t such a thing. But how much more should we be concerned when it comes to following the things of God? God had given us a manual for how we are to conduct our lives, and for how the church is to conduct its affairs. It’s called the Bible. And since He created us, and the church, we should follow his commands. He didn’t write suggested guidelines, as if he was giving us his personal recommendations. He has given us commandments and we are obliged to follow them. And so as we continue making our way through the book of Leviticus, God is revealing his Holy nature to us in how he has established for himself a chosen people, and following his commandments is an issue of life or death. And if it’s a matter of life and death, then we ought to pay close attention to his instructions, to his Word.