Hebrews 10
Over the next few months, our morning gatherings will be working through the book of Hebrews, and our evening gatherings through the book of Daniel.
Readings for this week June 19 - 23
Click here for a pdf of this week’s readings
Day 1 – Final Forgiveness Foreshadowed
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Hebrews 10:1-4
Last week we saw that the earthly sanctuary – whether tabernacle or Temple – was a shadow of the heavenly reality. Now, carrying on the same idea of one thing being a not-quite-as-good copy of another, the writer moves on to the Law, which he describes as a shadow of “the good things that are coming.” Certain streams of Christian theological tradition have tended to downplay the Law, even denigrating it as an imperfect, defective thing because it failed to save people. But the Law is a good thing: how could it not be considering it was a gift from God to his beloved people, and as Matthew 7:11 says, God is a much better gift-giver than we could ever be!
So the Law was a good gift from a gracious God. But it still couldn’t save people. As much as it laid out a pathway for a good, God-pleasing life, as much as it marked out the Israelites as God’s people, and as much as it provided a sacrificial system of atonement, the sinful humans to which it was given still could not be saved by its strictures. No matter how many sacrifices were made – again and again, year after year – people’s sin remained. So it was just a shadow of “the good things that are coming” – just a shadow of the fullness of salvation provided by Jesus, his crucifixion a one-time only event that put a stake in the ground and said “Enough,” and dealt with all our sin and guilt for good. The Law foreshadowed the full reality of forgiveness offered on the cross when Jesus laid down his life for all of us. For us, that fullness is now come.
Questions to Consider
What was the point of the Law? What is our relationship to it now? Why?
Prayer
Lord God, thank you for the full forgiveness you have offered us through your son. You did not leave us mired in sin and death but stretched out to us to set us free. May I be forever grateful. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 2 – Knowing and Living Scripture
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Hebrews 10:5-7
As mentioned before, the intended audience of this sermon/letter is presumed to be predominantly Jewish in part because of the author’s frequent use of scriptural quotations from the Hebrew bible. He is assuming that when he quotes a passage from the prophets or from the Torah or, as is the case here, from the Psalms (40:6-8), that his audience are familiar with the quote’s origins (remember, there’s no helpful marginalia in the letter giving chapter and verse references like our bibles do) and can fill in the original background context for extra meaning and relevance. Scripture was important to the Israelites and it was important to the early Christians too. It was their guide. It played a formative part in their practices – both private and communal (remember Acts 2?) – and it played a major role in forming them as people and as a people.
How well do we know our scripture? Are we spending regular time reading? Are we letting it speak to us? If we’re not being shaped by scripture, then something else must be shaping us – something else will fill that bible-shaped gap in our lives, explicitly or implicitly, whether we are aware of it or not. In order to let ourselves be moulded and transformed by the words of scripture and its testimony of God revealed in Jesus, we need to read it, we need to absorb it, meditate on it, memorise it, sing it, pray it, wrestle with it. We need to spend time with it because it is a crucial pathway to the ongoing transformative presence of Jesus in our lives.
Questions to Consider
What does your daily interaction with scripture look like? What ways do you find most transformative when engaging with it? Why?
Prayer
Heavenly father, take me deeper into your word. I can always do with more of you in my life. Show me new ways to engage with your word, new disciplines and habits of discipleship that will grow my love of you. Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 3 – Made Holy
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Hebrews 10:8-18
We’ve been made holy through the sacrifice of Jesus once and for all. There it is, plain as day, written in scripture for all of us to see. Through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross we have been made holy. Holy. That’s us. That is what we have become, what we have been made. Holy. But if we are honest with ourselves, we would no doubt say that that isn’t the reality we experience every day. We don’t feel holy, we don’t act in ways that are holy – and even more than this we often feel like our status before God still depends on what we do, how well we act, how much we offer to him and sacrifice and give up for him. And while these things may be important in our formation and development, they don’t change a single thing about the truth of that sentence “We’ve been made holy through the sacrifice of Jesus once and for all.”
Our holiness is a gift from God. The salvation he offers is a gift that we have not earned and cannot earn. They are his grace in action; they are a gift of his love, and the only part we have to play is to accept his gift, accept this new status he bestows on us and in the power of the gift of his Spirit, live into it. No matter what we do we cannot change his opinion of us – he already loves us extravagantly. What is up to us is our response to the overwhelming love he has lavished upon us, and hopefully our response is one motivated by love and gratitude towards the one who simply says, “I love you; come follow me.”
Questions to Consider
What makes you realise you are holy and loved by God? What helps you remember this and live in the power of this truth?
Prayer
Almighty Father, thank you for your grace and your love. Help me live into the reality of your boundless affection and help me remember that you have everything for me – give me the grace to respond with love. Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 4 – People Who Need People
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Hebrews 10:19-31
We come back to confidence again, the confidence to draw near to God, knowing that the way to him has been made clear and that he waits to welcome us into his presence. We can approach God with assurance and with faith in his love for us and his desire to have us with him, to be near us. And that ‘us’ is important. We can all approach God and find his welcome waiting for us. Everyone has the right to do so; our Great High Priest took on his role so that all of us might be free to enter the presence of God. It’s for all of us together.
And so we are to spur each other on in all we do. We do not walk alone. Following Jesus alone is not possible. All of us need the encouragement of each other all the time. As much as we think we can grow in our relationship with God by ourselves, that is not how God works and that is not how we grow. Right from the beginning of humanity’s dealings with God, he has been calling a people. The pair in the garden, the call to Abram to gather his immediate family and leave his homeland, the rescuing of the Israelites, the calling of the disciples – we cannot be the individual people God wants us to be without also being the community he wants us to be. They – and we – go together. So much of what he wants to grow in each of us and accomplish through each of us requires all of us. So let’s support and encourage and lift each other as we go.
Questions to Consider
Why are others so important to our relationship with God? How do others shape your faith and your continuing growth in God?
Prayer
Gracious God, thank you for the loving, faithful, challenging, infuriating, unforgettable people you have put in my life to make me who I am – and to make me into your likeness. Help me be a compassionate, challenging companion to them as they are to me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 5 – Hope in Suffering
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Hebrews 10:32-39
We don’t know the details of the community that originally received Hebrews, but we have seen that at various times the author has alluded to outside pressures that the community is facing, and the necessity of persevering in the face of opposition and persecution. Today’s passage is another example of this, with some added details of the opposition and hardship the community has faced in the past, and the magnificent way they were able, with God’s help, to overcome this opposition and continue faithfully on. God promises to reward such steadfast faithfulness.
Following Jesus requires perseverance, not because of any failure of God to act in our lives and world, but precisely because he has acted to reclaim the world but the world refuses to listen. The world is subject, for a little while longer, to the powers and forces that work to oppose God. But we are to take heart: the troubles we face are just what might be expected if the new age has already broken into our present time through Jesus himself, making us, his followers, somewhat out of sync with this present world because we are (trying to be) in sync with the future world to come; because we are endeavouring to live as citizens of that future world now. But as the writer of Hebrews has been at pains to explain throughout the letter, God is with us through all of it, never leaving or forsaking us, but always guiding, prompting and shaping us, with loving faithfulness, until the new age is consummated in full, an age we will all share in.
Questions to Consider
What gives you hope? Where do you see God’s new reality coming to birth? Where do you see the most need for it? What can we do about it?
Prayer
Heavenly Father, give us grace and peace and strength to be your faithful, holy people in a world that is still either fighting you or ignoring you. Give us hope so that others may see and embrace the hope we offer. Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)