Greetings to you in the name of God who loves us so dearly. I am trying to get everything done before I take off for a couples days. Our family has this little, non-exciting event happening this weekend. I mean it's only JoAnna's wedding, no big deal. Just kidding, I am super excited to see her and Steven get married. I am still working on my wedding sermon, trying to make it short and sweet and yet meaningful. Although, no body remembers wedding sermons anyway. I am going down to Nebraska on Wednesday night after confirmation and will be there until Sunday afternoon.
I will try to post the wedding sermon on here next week. For today though here is the sermon I preached yesterday on Hebrews 2. I had been studying the Beatitudes all week and trying to come up with a sermon for that. So I went to my supervisor for some advice and he asked me why I was working on a sermon for that text. I showed him that was the assigned text for the 4th Sunday of Epiphany. However, he informed me we were celebrating the festival of Purification and Presentation. So, getting three new texts, I chose the Hebrews text to preach on. There are about forty different sermons one could write off of this beautiful passage of rich Gospel. However, Spirit-lead, I wrote and preached this one. Hope you enjoy:
Text Hebrews 2:14-18 14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, 15 and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. 16 For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. 17 Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. 18 For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Relationships are a funny thing. Now when I say relationships, I do not mean just dating or marriage. I am talking about all relationships, parents and children, sibling to sibling, friend to friend, boss to employee, but yes also boyfriend to girlfriend, and husband to wife. Every relationship is different. Even in my own life I can see that. My relationship with my mom is far different than my relationship with my dad. My relationship with my sister is much different than my relationship with either one of my brothers. Even my relationships with my two brothers are different. Each relationship is a little different, and yet they all have some things in common.
You all know this from your own lives and experiences. You have relationships in your life that probably mean the world to you. And yet you have probably had relationships in your life that maybe you wish you didn’t. We have all had good and bad experiences with the numerous relationships we have had in our lives.
In our text today from this beautiful passage from Hebrews we see a special kind of relationship. This passage is giving us a beautiful Gospel statement that Christ became human in order to save humans. As I was reading this text earlier this week, I immediately thought of 1 Corinthians 9, which you may have noticed in the As We gather on the front cover of the bulletin. St. Paul says that became as a Jew in order to win Jews and he became weak in order to win the weak. St. Paul puts himself on the same level as whoever he is ministering to in order to be able to relate with them and connect with them. The Gospel message is received and shared so much better when there is a connection and a relationship with the other person. You can walk up to a stranger and tell them you love them and want them to go to heaven, and they will most likely just give you a weird look and walk away from you. But when you have a relationship with someone and have shown them you care about them through your actions and words, now when you say you love them and want them to know the love of Christ, they will know you are sincere and be much more receptive. The Gospel is shared through relationships because the Gospel is a relationship. Christ was born of the flesh, becoming a human being. In verse 14 of our text is says that children share in the flesh and blood, so Christ partook of the same things. Then in verse 17 is says that he had to be made like His brothers in every respect. He became a human just like us, being born in the flesh and blood like all children, being like us in every respect. And this is the beautiful Gospel statement the writer of Hebrews is giving us in this passage.
Most likely all of you have heard the old song, “What if God were one of us.” People sing that song or at least that one line of the song because they want a god they can relate to. They want a god who knows them and knows the struggles they go through. A god who is just up in the sky and doesn’t talk to us and doesn’t show himself does us no good. A god who cannot relate to his people and is not there when they need him is no god at all. Unfortunately, this is the view too many people have about the one true God. They think God really can’t relate to them, that He doesn’t talk to them, or ever show Himself. They think He is just up there sitting on the clouds watching us struggle and suffer through this life for His entertainment. I think some people feel abandoned by God, that He made them and then left them to make it through this world on their own. They do not know the true God or the Gospel truth of how He really works, and they do not care to try to learn more about this worthless god they have imagined in their minds.
I can remember a conversation I had about this topic, I think it was with a seminary professor but I don’t remember who. Anyway, the conversation was asking does God use the relationship we have with Him to teach us how our relationships in our lives should function, or did He design the relationships in our lives to teach us about the relationship we have with Him. Does the relationship of our heavenly Father who protects and loves His creation teach us how to be good parents, or does the love and protection of a parent teach their children that He is our Heavenly Father who loves and protects us? I believe both are true and this it does work both ways. Today though I want to focus in on the second one of how our relationships in this world teach us about our relationship we have with God. I like this because since God intentionally designed relationships his way, it shows that He hardwired us to have relationships. It shows that He created us to not be alone, but to have family and friends. This is how God has made us, to desire to be with other people, to share our experiences in this life with others. He wants us to have relationships because these relationships remind us and teach us about our relationship we have with Him.
Now the problem is that we live in a sinful world. Sin affects every part of us and our lives and unfortunately even our relationships. We were created to have relationships that would teach us about our relationship we have with God. But because sin has entered these relationships, it has corrupted them and therefore corrupts our understanding of our relationship with God. An example could be sin causes a husband or wife to cheat on their spouse. They have been cut deep with betrayal. They are left with either self-doubt of wondering why they weren’t good enough or what they did wrong, or else with anger and resentment towards their spouse. If you try to witness to that person that Christ loves His church like a bridegroom loves His bride, the person who has been hurt through their marriage does not see this as a positive thing. They will shift their hurt and feelings of betrayal, anger, or self-doubt from their relationship with their spouse onto their relationship with Christ. Or a little more extreme example, and yet it happens far too often in this sinful world, would be a young girl who was sexually abused by her father as a child. She is emotionally scarred for life. If you try to tell her God is her Father, she will most likely shift those feelings of being used and abused by her father towards God and think He will use and abuse her too. Even in cases not as extreme as these, sin affects our relationships. A happily married couple of forty or more years will tell you that they have been hurt and let down by their significant other on more than one occasion. A child will tell you they have been mad at their parents more than once. A parent will tell you they have been disappointed in their child several times. Every relationship we have with any other human has its times of pain, confusion, stress, fear, or anxiety. And that is because these relationships that are designed to be a blessing have been corrupted by sin. And yet we know they are still a blessing, they are still worth the times of hurt and stress. The good times in a relationship are what help us get through all the bad times. They were designed to be a blessing and teach us about our relationship with God, but the corruption of sin in these relationships causes blame, anger, and pain. We allow those things to be placed onto our relationship with God to the point where we are angry with God, question Him, or think He is the one hurting us or leaving us.
This is why God sent His Son to be one of us. To partake of the flesh and blood, to be like us in every respect. He sent His Son to be our brother. I love the way the writer of Hebrews includes that term, “Brother!” He had to be made like His brothers. Christ came to this world in the flesh to have this relationship with us as our brother. God wants us to know He can and does relate to us. He proved that by sending His Son to be our brother, our brother who lowered Himself from the perfection of heaven to the sin of this world. To suffer and be tempted, to laugh, cry, sweat, and die just like us. He can relate to us and knows what we are going through because He has been there too. Verse 18 tells us “For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.” Our God is not just sitting up on a cloud watching us suffer for His entertainment. He is not distant or aloof to what is going on. He is personally connected to us, because He has a relationship to us.
And unlike other sinner who we might be in a relationship with who does let us down, hurt us, and leave us, God is not a sinner. He loves us unconditionally, constantly, and continually. He will never abandon us, hurt us, or let us down. He is the perfect Father who created us and sustains us. He protects us and is always there with us. He talks to us through His Word and sent His Son into the flesh to show Himself to us. He lets us make our own mistakes and lets trials and tests cross our paths, but He is there always with us to help us through them and to pick us back up when we fall. He truly does love us unconditionally and He proved it to us by sending His Son to be like us, to live like us, to relate to us. Jesus tells us in John’s Gospel, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” Christ laid down His life for us, His friends, but even more importantly His brothers and sisters. He lived a life in this world to relate to us, but He laid down His life for us, the ultimate suffering and sacrifice to be the propitiation for our sins. You see we are the ones who corrupted our relationship with God by sinning and turning our backs on Him. And yet He His unconditional love for us caused Him to fix that broken relationship. Propitiation means to appease the wrath of God. Christ appeased God’s wrath that our sin caused by dying for us, laying down His own life as the greatest act of love for His for His brothers and sisters. We are now reconciled back to our Father who never stopped loving us. Our ultimate relationship is with our Heavenly Father through His Son Jesus. This relationship is one hundred percent pure blessing. He continually loves us, forgives us, and gives us the blessings of prayer, His Spirit, and our eternal salvation in this relationship, on top of the abundant daily blessings He showers upon us.
Our God loves us, He speaks to us through His Son and His Word, He has revealed Himself to us by sending His Son to be like us in every respect, He relates to us because He has been through trials and suffering Himself, He is always with us and knows what we are going through. He blesses us with the relationships we have with other people, and He blesses us through our relationship with Him. He reconciled us back to Him so that this relationship is not affected by sin. He proved through His Son, our brother, that He does indeed loves us unconditionally, constantly, and continually.
In the name of our brother, who became one of us to reconcile us back to the Father who loves us, Jesus Christ. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment