Hebrews Overview - Jesus is Superior - Hebrews 13
Today Pastor Gene wraps up our Hebrews series as we overview Hebrews and look at the fact that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
Sermon Transcript
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morning welcome how you doing did you survive the holidays i guess so you're here and you're quiet about it so all right if you're new here my name is gene i serve here at c3 church as your lead pastor i have a question for you did you get what you wanted for christmas or did you have to do what i was talking about on christmas eve did you have to get something for someone else that was really for yourself how many dads out there bought a ps5 for the kids did you text some of the things that are on their way to your friends remember the screenshot technique i told you about or what about suggestive gifts perhaps someone got their spouse a treadmill how did that work out for you oh all right somebody left new year's resolutions we're at that time now where we're making our resolutions what we're going to do next year what we're going to accomplish what about this year's resolutions did you accomplish it or should we just do it again this year this coming year just make it the same one put it on auto repeat what if got another idea we picked a resolution for someone else like this might work like with your friends right you know like we could pick a resolution for each other that's okay but i don't think it would work with your spouse too well right honey i think you should resolve to lose 20 pounds how would that work out for you today we find ourselves at the end of the year and at the end of our hebrews series so as we reflect on the year let's not do that today not 20 20. we'll do that next year maybe let's reflect on our hebrew series chapter 13 what have we learned well we learned that hebrews is a book of the bible in the new testament which talks a lot about the old testament we used it kind of like a lens by which to look at the old testament through good way to do it you can think of the new testament kind of as a commentary on the old tells us a lot about it expands on a bunch of points we saw that in bible study we also learned that there is no such thing as a new testament christian or hear anyone say that i'm a new testament christian right can't be because one-third of the new testament is actually old testament either direct quotation or paraphrase we see this a lot in hebrews so if you want to make the case for that use hebrews click seems like half of it is either talking about the old testament or direct quotations i tried to take you there whenever we saw them especially again in the bible study talked about the author a lot of people talk a lot about who wrote hebrews i told you don't waste your time the holy spirit wrote it all right so yes we have a human author holding the pen and we even see that sometimes they add a lot of personality to it especially paul first corinthians 7 he even states his opinions about things so yeah there's a human author that gives it flavor but these are divinely inspired writings so it actually kind of doesn't matter and it's best not to speculate or get stuck on it too much i gave you the illustration the chinese proverb it's like a finger pointing to the moon if you focus on the finger you miss the moon and all its heavenly glory so that's what i am that is what all pastors are we're just doing this don't focus on me too much get to the point so it is this way with the human authors of the bible it doesn't really matter he can use a donkey to deliver a message no jokes about me we it's okay we have to get better at saying i don't know when we don't know when we're not certain about something there's what we know there's gospel but there's a lot of things we just don't know and we need to move on or else we risk losing the point entirely the situation so these books are letters of the bible in the new testament they have a lot of great theology but there's usually a situation that prompts the writing there's a reason the author decided to sit down and pen this here we probably have jewish christians so what do i mean by that i mean that in the beginning this way was not yet called christianity it's seen as a jewish sect of the nazarenes jesus of nazareth so it's very jewish thing jesus is the jewish messiah you see it's not until acts chapter 10 where peter gets the revelation and realizes oh we've got to invite the gentiles that are non-jewish people into this way later called christianity in acts chapter 11. very jewish thing so what's happening is they're experiencing persecution from their own people by their own people we see this in acts chapter 17 thessalonica right they don't want to accept jesus as the messiah a lot of them were expecting like a warrior king type of messiah like david and they definitely don't want to accept jesus as god himself god in the flesh it's a problem and so they start beating people up beating these christians up here's what's happening if you're in that position you might think this is too much trouble i'm just going to go back to judaism just erase the jesus guy and then just go back so the overall theme here is that jesus is superior to all those things that's really what it is that's what the book of hebrews is jesus is completely superior the fulfillment of all of these things in judaism so chapter one jesus is superior to the prophets to the angels he is god furthermore he's the son of god we have god the father god the son chapter 2 chapter 3 jesus is superior to moses by extension aaron we'll get to the priesthood chapter 4 jesus is superior to joshua we talked about that in bible study same name in the greek kind of funny jesus and jesus or joshua and joshua kind of interesting chapters five through seven jesus is superior to the priesthood and melchizedek this mysterious eternal high priest that abraham tithes to in genesis 14. jesus is the mediator of a new and better covenant he's better than the law of moses and so you must live by faith chapter 11 chapter 12 you must accept the discipline of the lord in this suffering that you're experiencing and then today we arrive in chapter 13 where we see that jesus christ is the same yesterday today and forever let's zoom in a little bit chapter 1 we saw that jesus is god with skin on i made a little joke but here's the serious part hebrews 1 7 regarding the angels he says he sends his angels like the winds his servants like flames of fire but to the sun he says your throne o god this is the father calling the son god endures forever and ever you rule with the scepter of justice you love justice and hate evil therefore oh god your god has anointed you pouring out the oil of joy on you more than anyone else in this we see clearly that jesus is god and that jesus is the superior son he's better than the angels now sometimes angels were called sons of god we're going to see this next year when we get into our series the rest of the story genesis chapter 6 it kind of is what sparks the flood even if you've never read the bible before you've probably heard the flood account knowing all the little animals and stuff heather's gonna ruin that story for you correct everything about it people get the numbers wrong we're not there yet anyway these angels are called sons of god and they intermix with the daughters of men god does not like that at all i was listening to the song in the fire it's kind of talking about daniel you might know that story too right in the furnace his friends get thrown into the furnace there's three of them but nebuchadnezzar sees another one in there in the fire it's kind of interesting a little side point for you bible nerds out there parts of daniel are in aramaic so it's hard to explain i'm not going to bother this morning but in your version when nebuchadnezzar notices that they're not burning up he makes the comment there's another one in there it looks like a god or an angel versions do different things with it and the aramaic it looks like a son of the gods it's a christophany a prefigure of christ really cool kind of interesting but jesus is better than the angels he's better than them or those sons of god i took you to philippians chapter two we did this really important i told you they're my favorite passages of scripture i don't have like a life verse i don't do that i'm not into that kind of thing sorry i'll ruin that for some people but i have whole sections of scripture that i like and i like a part of philippians because it talks about the nature of jesus christ like a gospel poem some scholars call it the carmen christie in chapter 2. it tells us who jesus is paul says well you know follow my example he's about to talk about timothy and epaphroditus but he says make your own attitude that of christ jesus who existing in the form of god did not regard equality with god as something to be taken advantage of instead he emptied himself and assumed the form of a slave taking on the likeness of men it comes a man in his external form he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death even to death on a cross for this reason god highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name so that at the name of jesus every knee will bow those were in heaven and on earth and below the earth and every tongue will confess that jesus christ is lord to the glory of god the father important theology how's that for a life verse i think it's a pretty good one he's the superior gift we saw that on christmas eve right the superior gift so we asked the question in this series how are we responding to this what jesus did for us hebrews 2 1 so we must listen very carefully to the truth we have heard or we may drift away from it for the message god delivered through the angels has always stood firm and every violation of the law and every act of disobedience was punished so what makes us think we can escape if we ignore this great salvation that was first announced by the lord jesus himself and then delivered to us by those who heard him speak we ask the questions if we too are sons and daughters of god then jesus is our superior brother hebrews 2 17 therefore it was necessary for jesus to be made in every respect like us philippians talked about that his brothers and sisters so that he could be our merciful and faithful high priest before god then he could offer a sacrifice that would take away the sins of the people the question was asked as brothers and sisters of the lord how aren't we behaving ourselves and representing this royal family that we now belong to jesus better than moses hebrews 3 5 moses was certainly faithful in god's house as a servant his work was an illustration of the truths god would reveal later but christ as the son is in charge of god's entire house and we are god's house if we keep our courage and remain confident in our hope in christ we saw that jesus was always obedient to the father told you about the agony in the garden didn't really want to go through with it but your will be done father unlike moses who we saw made some mistakes right so the second time at the rock says speak to the rock moses not so much for that god told him you're not going to get into the land you're not going to see it kind of teases him it says take a look at it that's nice you're going to die back here who's going to bring them in joshua joshua but jesus is the superior joshua he's really going to get us to our eternal promised rest hebrews 4 8. now if joshua had succeeded in giving them this rest god would not have spoken about another day of rest still to come so there's a special rest still waiting for the people of god for all who have entered into god's rest have rested from their labors just as god did after creating the world so let us do our best to enter that rest but if we disobey god as the people of israel did we will fall our application there was that sabbath foreshadowing i talked about the sabbath it's one of the ten commandments i showed you that it was actually given before the ten commandments were given interesting yet why do we take the other nine very seriously but not the force not the sabbath what's up with that in fact i pointed out that that one of the ten commandments is actually the one that we're often very prideful about breaking kind of interesting how do we take pride in how busy we are and how much we i don't even take a day off i work all the time because i'm tough but my wife and kids don't like it so much and they're not impressed got news nobody else is either no one is smarter than the sabbath it's about pride so we asked the question why would anyone want to return to the law of moses pride we talked about busy work and we saw that sometimes even the ministry becomes the idol time with the lord we saw that rest was a critical element to developing relationship just being with the lord jesus is the great high priest both high priest and sacrifice you saw that teaching i mentioned earlier about melchizedek kind of interesting come to bible study not this week i get one bible study off a year we're not going to have it this week but the following week if you want to ask some questions about it i will be glad to answer them or email me i'll get back to you as soon as i can he is an eternal high priest this is a good point where hebrews will clarify things about melchizedek that genesis doesn't for us he has no mother and father again pre-figure of jesus christ yet even though melchizedek is better than the levitical priesthood of the old testament jesus is better than him so we need to grow up in maturity so that we can understand these things the author a preacher here will digress a little bit at this point he mentions melchizedek and then imagine me saying this to you all of you who don't understand what i'm talking about in melchizedek remember this is probably a sermon imagine right here from the scriptures hebrews 5 11. there's much more i would like to say about this but it is difficult to explain especially since you are spiritually dull and don't seem to listen wow you have been believers so long now that you want to be teaching others instead you need someone to teach you again the basic things about god's word you're like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food for someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn't know how to do what is right solid food is for those who are mature who's through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong i told you there are no chapter breaks in this sermon right so in my sermon imagine that i'm like okay chapter six whoever's writing this down didn't happen it's one flow straight through so the author continues we looked at an application we must grow up have the word in us grow up in the faith or risk falling away hebrews 6 1 preacher continues preaching so let us stop going over the basic teachings about christ again let us go on instead and become mature in our understanding surely we don't need to start again with the fundamental importance of repenting from evil deeds and placing our faith in god you don't need further instruction about baptisms laying on of hands the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment and so god willing we will move forward to further understanding for it is impossible to bring back to repentance those who are once enlightened those who have experienced the good things of heaven and shared in the holy spirit who have tasted the goodness of the word of god and the power of the age to come and then turn away from god it is impossible to bring such people back to repentance by rejecting the son of god they themselves are nailing him to the cross once again and holding him up to public shame tough teaching we started looking at both sides of the coin here and there but people often have a difficult time reconciling two different concepts this is one of them where it's either you're in this camp you can lose your salvation or you're in that camp you can't i give you a third option maybe there are some people who say they are christians who are not they weren't one of us anyway is what first john says if it walks like a duck here we asked ourselves is jesus enough well if you're calling yourself a christian you should be or do we idolize things like pastors talk about the early church pastor worship it was a problem in the early church in fact the first problem that paul addresses in what we have of his letters first corinthians not the first one we don't have the first one so there's a zero corinthians if our first corinthians is one a multitude of problems in the church in corinth the first one he spends four chapters addressing is pastor worship they're going after certain pastors well i like the way apollos speaks he's great he's eloquent he makes me feel good about myself i like the way gene preaches so they're developing factions imagine having many different pastors i like peter oh paul's better i follow him paul gets really mad i'm glad i baptized none of you except christmas gaius and stefanus's whole household but anyway i'm glad i didn't baptize any of you otherwise you might say you are baptized in the name of paul chapter four shall i come to you with a stick or with love what would you like he's not happy it's a major problem today major during the series i had read about yet another celebrity pastor who fell away he had an affair this week i read about another one who's passed away but now all this stuff is coming out celebrity christian speaker how often do we do that we're talking about that in staff meeting maybe a week or two ago we should be reading the word so many people come up to me and they say who are you reading they're surprised when i say god i don't need anything else i don't know time to get to that stuff spending my time in the word but oh this so-and-so is so great oh he said this he's so great god's word is great nothing i say is going to be any better than that and that's why i read a lot of scriptures to you on sunday morning not sorry god's word but i told you a very difficult thing when i see these things in my news feed i told you that i'm not surprised because almost all of the time that wasn't the first affair they were having they were having an affair with the world that was the problem they were just telegraphing what they were about to do or probably already doing living in excess i took you to james very very tough read challenge everyone read it five chapters all the way through it's not going to make you feel too good about yourself james 4. this is the problem they're praying for selfish things it says adulteresses feminine adulteresses james calls them don't you know that to be a friend of the world is to be an enemy of god read it for yourself open up your bible but now we have a perfect priest in jesus you don't need these guys hebrews 8 6 but now jesus our high priest has been given a ministry that is far superior to the old priesthood and celebrity pastors for he is the one who mediates for us a far better covenant with god based on better promises indeed in hebrews 8 we saw that jesus is the mediator of a new and better covenant good place to go for people who want to talk about pridefully following the law that being some kind of yoke or necessity that we need to put on ourselves again hebrews 8 go there jesus is better than the law of moses we cannot boast in anything we do just him while we're there we did talk about that prideful busy work we sometimes do again the ministry sometimes becomes the idol but we looked at both sides about love or of that grace and works coin yes we are saved by grace ephesians 2 8 9 10 but so that no one can boast but we're created for good works read the other part of those verses paul continues to say that the bible tells us that actually religion is a good thing don't listen to what pastors say about it listen to what god says about it we saw that i took you to james again 1 27 pure and genuine religion in the sight of god the father means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you that's a good thing good behavior is evidence of our salvation i told you some funny stories all right i was going around knocking people out in the lobby does that look like a good christian to you no so we asked the question what happens if we do the opposite hebrews 10 asks that question how much worse is it if we sin against the son of god if jesus is superior to the law hebrews 10 26 dear friends if we deliberately continue sinning after we have received knowledge of the truth there is no longer any sacrifice that will cover these sins there is only the terrible expectation of god's judgment and the raging fire that will consume his enemies for anyone who refused to obey the law of moses was put to death without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses just think how much worse the punishment will be for those who have trampled on the son of god and have treated the blood of the covenant which made us holy as if it were common and unholy and of insult and disdain the holy spirit brings god's mercy on us we saw that buffet obedience is no obedience gave you some funny examples to get you guys kind of thinking the new guy you remember him how can you forget you'll remember in a minute comes in the lobby you people are all very friendly right so you're going to introduce yourself aren't you comes in oh welcome are you new well here but not to christianity i've been a christian my whole life read the bible i want to get around to it the you version pumps out a verse of the day so i read that i read the bible one verse at a time i'll be done reading it in 67 years so anyway randomly yeah so you know i got that i got the bible thing down you know i pray you know like right after i almost get in car accidents and things like that but otherwise otherwise yeah i'm you know i'm doing good but you know i struggle with sin one in particular now you all are really nice any of you greeting this this gentleman you'll say ah i do too it's okay right throw yourself under the bus i struggle with sin too right like saturdays for example i eat too much i snack way too much i go out and eat really struggling with it but i got it down to one day a week you know during the week in my routine it was same thing i'm doing the same thing same kind of thing man it's like just on the weekends just on saturdays i got it down to one day a week want to open up you know what is it man maybe i can help you with it murder i murder people but just once a week i used to do it every day but now i just got it down to saturdays i only murder one person a week now it's awesome right i know you're not supposed to murder on the sabbath but you know whatever i know and do it every day what are you doing saturday sounds crazy right oh well are we picking and choosing do we have a nice little buffet you know i like that one not that one at least i'm not filling up the whole plate right we talked about the kids imagine leaving some kids at home who are old enough to watch themselves and you give them a list of chores also remind them give them a list of things you shouldn't be doing well okay so they get to the chores let's get that out of the way first they do the laundry they fold it up real nice they vacuum they do the dishes they make their beds they wash the dog you finish up and then they decide to play with some matches burn the house down well does it matter that they did any of those chores well no we saw that jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith in hebrews 11 we saw that faith and fear are actually two sides of the same coin another one of those teachings you see faith is ideal but fear of the lord is the beginning of all wisdom we should have fear of that kind of a problem in our world today not enough of that we saw that fear of the lord was indeed the beginning of all wisdom and insight and we looked at faithful people it was interesting and a whole list of them but we saw that even though they're listed as faithful people when we read into them they had fears too i told you about abraham or abram kind of had fear a couple times he told pharaoh that his wife was his sister kind of true i know gross but not the point then he told abimelech later his wife was a sister because he was afraid of being killed he had fear did he trust the lord then no both sides one coin we saw that faith is all about letting go of what we think might be helping and focusing on jesus hebrews 12 1 therefore since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith let us strip off every weight that slows us down especially the sin that so easily trips us up and let us run the race with endurance god has set before us we do this by keeping our eyes on jesus the champion who initiates and perfects our faith in hebrews 12 we saw again that jesus is the superior son jesus is our example of discipline and suffering and worth suffering for and god is the superior father hebrews 12 7 as you endure this divine discipline remember that god is treating you as his own children whoever heard of a child who is never disciplined by its father if god doesn't discipline you as he does all of his children it means that you are illegitimate and not really his children at all since we respected our earthly fathers who disciplined us shouldn't we submit even more to the discipline of the father of our spirits and live forever for our earthly fathers disciplined us for a few years doing the best they knew how but god's discipline is always good for us so that we might share in his holiness no discipline is enjoyable while it's happening it's painful but afterward there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way our heavenly father cares for us so like a good father he's going to discipline us it's for our own good we talked about as we have the prosperity gospel right the half gospel yes all the blessings but not going to tell you about the discipline the suffering or anything else nope well a lot of parents today are spoiling their kids in this way they can just do whatever they want with no discipline how's that going to work out so the author here is connecting that right if you are experiencing some suffering something's going on you are just being refined you're being disciplined by god we looked at both sides of those that coin and i told you the best way in your personal lives to exert discipline on those you are leading is to exhibit discipline you can discipline physically you can discipline with words if you're using them right the best way is to be an example to those who are leading and here finally in chapter 13 we see that jesus christ is the same yesterday today and forever hebrews 13 8 and if this is true if all this is true shouldn't jesus be superior to everything else in our lives i say yes hebrews 13 is the conclusion of this sermon or letter it summarizes with different instructions to different people kind of common and perhaps a sermon or a letter different groups of people love your brothers and sisters love your spouses be kind to one another focus on heavenly things not earthly things and one of my favorite passages of scripture for you hebrews 13 17 obey your spiritual leaders and do what they say just i'm done their work is to watch over your souls and they're accountable to god give them reason to do this with joy and not sorrow that would certainly not be for your benefit so remember i talked about a suggestive resolution like what if you gave someone you know like i really think you should do this this year i'm going to give everyone in the church my suggestion for your resolution this year three of them read your bible that would make me very happy read your bible be nice to everybody everybody simple all right everybody and don't complain so i'm going to thank you in advance for doing that next year right so just get this verse write this down everybody it's okay to be on your phone hebrews 13 17. that's your new life verse okay for me just being a little selfish and i got what i wanted for christmas too so i look forward to doing life with you next year and being the church being the true body of christ because here's the thing we have some very exciting news to share with you in january next year i'm excited about this but this isn't the news we're going to be doing a series as i said before called the rest of the story because here's the deal if we're being honest most people don't have the statistics in front of me but i've read them before most people don't read the bible at all most christians don't read the bible at all really if they're being honest they read the verse of the day and if we're being really honest how many understand the context of that verse i do it all the time right philippians 4 13 i can do all things through christ who gives me strength my favorite one to pick on yeah paul says that like i can sit here in a jail cell almost die get beaten with rods shipwrecked all kinds of stuff like that that's what he's talking about but people will post that right so that what i don't know they can win a football game or something it's not about that that's the problem we're going to go a level deeper we're not only going to look at the stories that everybody else looks at we're going to take a look at the rest of the story there's a lot of things in there that people miss and it's going to be fun it's going to be quite interesting but before we do that i want to spend the month of january doing two things projecting out what we're gonna do and also giving the lord praise for what he's done in the church so we're going to take a look at some success stories i'm going to talk to you guys about what we did in 2020 while everybody else was complaining what we got done because we got some stuff done i'm happy to report we did really well so about twice a year i give the status of the church report so you can hear how we're doing so i want you to be here for that i'm gonna do that the second week of january because the first week we're gonna have doug barclay from mission india come here and he's gonna tell you what we're getting done we met one of our goals now i'm just going to let you guys find out i almost said it come to church find out we met one of our goals and we're going to be doing something else we're going to be doing a lot with mission india and doug's going to tell you about what they do they do it with integrity and efficiency as far as foreign missions is concerned that's why we focus on them for our foreign missions and doug we'll tell you all about it i'll give you the status of the church update we're going to hear testimonials too success stories from people whose lives have been changed right that's what we're here to do on a personal level as well so i'm really really excited about it come to church in january or if you're tuning in from somewhere else make sure you tune in from somewhere else now may the god of peace who brought up from the dead our lord jesus the great shepherd of the sheep and ratified an eternal covenant with his blood may he equip you with all you need for doing his will may he produce in you through the power of jesus christ every good thing that is pleasing to him all glory to him forever and ever
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