A sermon by Dr. Green on Hebrews 10:5-17. To be preached on Sunday, December 20th at 11:00 a.m.
Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, “Sacrifices and offerings thou hast not desired, but a body hast thou prepared for me; 6 in burnt offerings and sin offerings thou hast taken no pleasure. 7 Then I said, ‘Lo, I have come to do thy will, O God,’ as it is written of me in the roll of the book.” 8 When he said above, “Thou hast neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), 9 then he added, “Lo, I have come to do thy will.” He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. 10 And by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. 11 Every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 then to wait until his enemies should be made a stool for his feet. 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified . 15 And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying, 16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,” 17 then he adds, “I will remember their sins and their misdeeds no more.”
Hebrews 10: 5-17
On Thursday night I went with John and Brandi Rights to the Bethesda Center for the Homeless. For those of you who don’t know, our Elders have been going to the center the 3rd Thursday of each month since March. Many other members of the congregation have accompanied us. God willing, it is a commitment that we hope t continue into and throughout 2010, and it is an experience that you can share.
The program we participate in is called “The Three D’s,” meaning “Dessert,” “Devotions,” and “Dialogue.” On Thursday, Brandi Rights took charge of the Dessert, and John Rights and I shared the Devotions. First, I gave a little talk, and John played his guitar and led the singing. I told John that I would sing and he could talk, but he refused the opportunity. Then, to finish our time together, John handled the Dialogue, in which he asked the residents for prayer requests, and then led us in a time of prayer.
I marveled to hear the prayer requests made by the residents of Bethesda Center.
One resident asked prayer for our President and the Government of the United States.
Another resident ask prayer for his family from whom he was estranged.
A third resident asked prayer for Tiger Woods. I am serious. When last I heard, Tiger was wintering a publicity storm in his 22 million dollar yacht, and a man at the homeless shelter was concerned for Tiger. That is Christian charity!
Another resident asked prayer for those who were separated from their families this Christmas, including, “those who are in prison,” and “those who are at war.” We certainly value those who are at war, because they are in harms way for us. Jesus taught his disciples to place value upon “those who are in prison,” saying, that “when we remember them, we remember him.” (Matthew 25:31-46)
Finally, a resident who led us in prayer asked that Christians everywhere might do God’s will. He said that doing God’s will might be the perfect Christmas gift that we could all give to God.
His prayer impressed me. It has been said that life is God’s gift to us, and that what we do with our lives is our gift to God. This is especially true of Jesus. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that the entirety of the life and ministry and death and triumph of Jesus is summed up in a single statement, “Lo, I have come to do thy will, O God.”
Now I want to look at just two things in this sermon. 1) How Jesus did the will of God, and 2) How we do the will of God.
I
In the context of the 10th chapter of the book of Hebrews, Jesus did God’s will when he by-passed the temple ritual of sacrifice, and burnt offerings, and sin offerings, in which God takes no real pleasure, and proved himself obedient to God by offering up himself as a sacrifice to God. This means that the death of Jesus on the cross replaced for all time the old sacrificial system of the Jews. The author of the Epistle continues:
Every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. 12 But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, 13 then to wait until his enemies should be made a stool for his feet. 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified . 15 And the Holy Spirit also bears witness to us; for after saying, 16 “This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,” 17 then he adds, “I will remember their sins and their misdeeds no more.”
Now two things are going on here. The first thing that interests us is the fact that when we receive the forgiveness that God offers us in Jesus Christ, then God “remembers our sins and misdeeds no more.” That means we are justified. You remember the explanation of the old country preacher, “When I accept the forgiveness that God offers us in Jesus Christ then it is ‘just as if I’d’ never sinned. “ This does not mean that we forget our sins. We are likely to remember them, and to remember the people that we have hurt by them. It does not mean that other people will forget our sins. We may still have to answer to them in the court of human opinion, or in a court of law. Not all are as gracious as God. Yet, once we have accepted the sacrifice of Christ, we ourselves must remember our sins like they happened to someone else, and this for two reasons. First, because Jesus “offered a single sacrifice for sin.” In the old sacrificial system the priest laid his hands upon a beast and the sins of the individual were imputed to the beast. Jesus took our sins upon himself and offered himself as a sacrifice for our sin. The apostle is saying the same thing in 1st Peter 2:24 where we read that , “he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree.” Second, because when we confess our sins, and receive God’s forgiveness for them, “God remembers our sins and misdeeds no more.” Or as St. Paul says in 2nd Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ he (or she) is a new creation, the old passed away, behold, the new has come.”
And that brings us to the second thing at work in this passage, sanctification. Sanctification is the fraternal twin of Justification. When we accept the forgiveness offered in Christ, not only are we justified, but we are also sanctified. Now the word “sanctified” is a good word and a handy word. It expresses a lot in a little. To be sanctified means to be set free from the sin which binds and cripples us, and to be set apart for God and for God’s service.
Those who are the servants of sin walk through life as if their legs were bound together with a 12 inch chain. A man in a chain can shuffle forward, but if he is needs to run, or climb steps, he simply can’t do it. The chain weighs just a few pounds, but if he cannot break the chain it becomes a great burden that tires him so that he can do nothing. In the same way, those who are bound with the chain of sin stagger through life. They lack mobility, and they have limited choices. They made their choices, wrong choices, and now those choices are making them. They become tired with living.
God wants us to be free of the bondage of sin, that we might “run and not be weary, and walk and not faint.”
Now Christians have long debated the relationship between justification and sanctification.
Christians in the Reformed tradition believe that when we are justified we are sanctified because the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us. That means that we get credit for Christ’s character. That is what Zinzendorf was getting at when he wrote:
The Savior’s blood and righteousness,
My beauty is my glorious dress*
(*the imputed righteousness of Christ),
Thus well arrayed I need not fear,
When in His presence I appear.
Christians in the reformed tradition believe there is another dimension to sanctification. Not only is Christ’s righteousness imputed to us, it is also imparted to us by the power of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is at work in us to make us into the kind of people that God says that we already are. They say that sanctification is a life-long process. They hope it will, perhaps, be fully accomplished not long before we die. People in the Reformed tradition frequently say, “Please be patient with me, because God is not finished with me yet.”
Christians in the Catholic, Methodist and Holiness traditions believe a little differently re santification. They believe that when we accept God’s grace and are justified, the righteousness of Christ is not only imputed to us, but imparted to us by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Moreover, they believe that we can be entirely sanctified if only we give ourselves completely over to the love that has been “poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” (Romans 5) John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, said that Christian Perfection is nothing more and nothing less than Perfection in Love. Remember, Jesus said that all the law and the prophets could be summed up in two commandments: To love God with all the heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. If we could just love that truly, it would be enough.
And you might reasonably ask, “Worth, what do you believe?” Well, I would ask you to hold that question. I am still working on the answer, therefore I must say, “Please be patient with me, because God is not finished with me yet.” Yet, I would also say, “I am not yet a made Christian, but I am a Christian in the making, and there is joy and blessing and hope in the process of being made.” I am a fallible man. In our Easter Morning Liturgy I confess with Martin Luther that “I sin daily.” However, I have a hope, that from time to time, you can see that God is at work in me, just as I see that God is at work in you. In point of fact, we can mediate grace to one another.
And that brings us to the second part sanctification, “to be set apart for God’s service,” and the second part of this sermon, “How can we do the will of God?”
II
If you are not-yet-a-Christian, the initial answer to that question is easy. In John 6: 29, Jesus said, “This is the work (or will) of God. That you believe on him whom he has sent.” That is, Jesus says, believe in me. If you are not yet a Christian give yourself a real Christmas present and ask God to allow the Christ who was born in Bethlehem to be born in your own heart. You don’t have to wait until you have all the answers. There are a thousand points of question about the Christian faith, but there is only one point of decision. This point of decision is not a point of theology, it is a person. That person speaks to us through his disciples and asks, “Who do you say that I am?” If you are ready to confess him as Lord, do not delay. You might not ever have all the answers. I do not. But the one who is the answer will have you.
If you are a Christian, the answer is simple, too. Those of us who have become Christians and followers of Jesus must be willing to follow him where he leads. In Psalm 32, we read about God’s promise to a penitent sinner. God says:
“I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you. 9 Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, else it will not keep with you.”
What does that mean. It means that when we fail to pay attention to God’s direction, we invariably hurt ourselves, and God has to reign us in. Thankfully, it also means that God is watching over us, to direct our paths. When we follow where he leads we discover with the author of Psalm 25 that “All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness, for those who keep his covenant and his testimonies.” (Psalms 25:10) There are thousands of ways of doing God’s will in the world, and God is willing and eager to help you discover the path that he has prepared just for you. God has a plan for us, a plan for good and not for evil, to give us a future and a hope. Jesus, “Seek first God’s rule and God’s righteousness, and everything else that you need will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33)
Now let’s ask a more specific question: What is God will for his people in the week before Christmas 2009?
1. It is certainly God’s will that we remember our families. We spend time with what and with whom we love. Christmas is a wonderful opportunity to spend time with our families. That does not mean that we have to exchange expensive gifts. Elayne and I quit buying one another Christmas gifts years ago. It does mean that we exchange words, and those words ought to be about appreciation and acceptance. There is a line in a story by Willa Cather about a young couple falling in love. She says, “They had spent all their small change and the only thing they had left is gold.” We have spent small change too long. Let’s spend a little gold.
2. We can remember our friends. Some will do this by sending cards, or Christmas letters. Elayne and I stopped sending Christmas Cards early in our ministry when we realized that our circle of friends had grown too large to reach out to all of you. I am humbled when I receive a card from you, but if I stopped to send all of you a card, I would not have time to do any of the things that you pay me to do. Thankfully, we can also remember our friends in prayer. I promise to each of you that I will pause on Christmas Morning to pray for each of you. One Christmas Elayne and I went to New York to celebrate our wedding anniversary which is the day after Christmas. Mid-morning of the first day, we found ourselves in St. Patrick’s. We decided to light candles. We lit one for each of our families. We lit one for each of our children—we did not yet have in-laws or grandchildren. Then we lit one for each of the three churches we have served. Seven candles for seven dollars, and it was a glorious site that still warms my memory.
3. We can remember our enemies. Jesus said that we ought to pray for those who despitefully use us. When we hold a grudge we hurt only ourselves. It gets in the way of God grace to us. Remember the Lord’s prayer, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The forgiven forgive, else we are not truly the forgiven.
4. Finally, we can remember those who have less. This is only right. In 2nd Corinthians chapter 9, St. Paul wrote:
8 And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that you may always have enough of everything and may provide in abundance for every good work.
Let me tell you a secret about the poor, the hungry and the homeless. There are exceptions but, they do not want to drag us down to their level. They just want a chance of raising up to a better situation in life. I once saw a worker arrive at a homeless center directly from the opening of an Art Exhibition. She was dressed to the 9’s. I later found out she used to be a buyer for exclusive stores in Manhattan. She was quite a contrast to the residents of the center, but they did not seem to mind. Perhaps because they know that she cares. She has them in her heart.
It is not yet Christmas. There are way that all of us can help. We can give to Sunnyside Ministry and to Crisis Control, we will be taking a offering for them at our 4:00 p.m. Lovefeast. We can volunteer with the Elders at the Bethesda Center or with the Discipleship Class at Samaritan Inn. We can work at Sunnyside Ministry as many do. We can sponsor a child through World Vision. We can go online, search for “The Heifer Project,” and buy a goat, or a chicken, or a milk cow for a village in Africa.
The man at the Bethesda center suggested that it would be a wonderful Christmas present if we all simply did God’s will. People talk a lot about discovering God’s will. The truth is, we know a lot about God’s will. We bump into it each time we take up a Bible, or walk down a street. We know, too, that the hard part is just doing it. I know that some of us are afraid of setting precedents with random acts of kindness, but we may just set a precedent that we really, deeply enjoy. What do we really want for Christmas, if not a closer, deeper relationship with God that issues in a more satisfying life? And how can we achieve that? The incarnate Christ achieved it. “Lo, I have come to do your will O God.”
Finis