Hebrews 7:11 - 8:13
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 12 - 16
Click here for a pdf of this week’s readings
Day 1 – Wholly Perfect
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Hebrews 7:11
When we think of something being perfect, we often think of it in pristine condition, unsullied, unmarred, clean and spotless without a blemish in sight. When we apply this idea to human beings, we tend to see it in terms of moral perfection: sinlessness, upright character, all wrong actions and wrong thoughts banished – and all achieved by greater and greater moral effort on our part. But not, as we have already said before, that there’s anything wrong with moral effort – God still wants us to strive to be more like Christ and give of ourselves as we do so. Perfection in any area requires practice and effort. Of course, we’re all aware of how far distant such a goal actually is…
But another meaning of perfection is ‘completeness’, when everything is in its perfect final place, and all is ready to fulfil the purpose for which it was ultimately created – to fulfil God’s intention for it. The advent of Jesus has brought into being this perfection which had previously been impossible, unachievable, unrealised. The Law and the priestly system pointed to this perfection yet couldn’t bring it about. But Jesus has. This is something to be celebrated, something that the followers of Jesus need to hang on to amid all the turmoil of their lives, the uncertainty, the disappointment, as we work to bring God’s compassion and justice to life, as we live as God’s ‘daytime’ people in world still enshrouded in night. Jesus is our hope; he is the one who brings perfection, who brings – and who will one day finally bring – God’s good creation and all it contains to full completeness.
Questions to Consider
What does perfection mean for you? How is your life a pathway towards the ultimate completion of God’s plans for his world?
Prayer
Lord God, thank you for your purpose, for your intentions and plans for us and your creation, and that you ask us to be part of them. Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 2 – A Better Hope
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Hebrews 7:12-22
Much as we saw last week that as great as God is, and as deeply, profoundly in need of grace as we all are, incapable of our own rescue, we are still called to give of ourselves, to make an effort, to respond to God. Today’s reading is sort of a parallel flip side of this. Whatever we are capable of, and whatever we can do (and should do!) to contribute to this world, and the lives of others and bring God’s redemptive justice and compassion to the world – all of this good stuff – Jesus is better. The hope he offers is better, bigger, stronger than what we can offer and what we can do.
Notice that in this passage the writer is not saying that the Levitical priesthood and the descendants of Aaron, the tabernacle or the Temple, the ordinary efforts that we ourselves make in relation to God, or anything else that supports people to do so, are bad or unworthy or useless. They are good things, and we are capable of good things and of bringing to birth good things in this world – and we should strive to do so. That is not in dispute. But regardless of all this good stuff, Jesus is better. In fact, he is perfect and will ultimately bring creation to its perfection in God! Was the Law bad? No, but compared to Jesus it was weak and incapable of bringing this ultimate perfection – in us, in creation – into being. All the imperfection and injustice and sorrow, and the incomplete, diminished, atrophied elements of our world will, in Jesus, be healed, perfected, redeemed and renewed. All of it. All of us. Everything.
Question to Consider
How have you noticed your life – and the world – as better with Jesus?
Prayer
Sovereign Lord, give me the strength of heart to continue when discouragement is weighing me down; when the gap between the world as it is and as it will be seems too wide to bridge. Renew my faith, Lord. Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 3 – The Love that Meets all Needs
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Hebrews 7:23-28
The comparison continues here: priesthood good, Jesus better. Why? Because he is the perfect, final, incomparable, eternal high priest. His death, unlike the death of any earthly high priest, does not stop him from fulfilling his priestly role, but in fact is the pathway to his perfect fulfilment of it. As such he can “save completely” any who come to God through him. He is always interceding on our behalf, always reaching out, always offering himself to us – the ultimate, perfect, eternal mediator between us and God. He can meet our needs more perfectly and more completely than we can ourselves or that others can on our behalf. He is the perfect one to know what we need and to provide for us.
Whatever needs we might have can be met – and met more fully and in more transformative ways – in Jesus. These needs, of whatever type, find their answer in him. Perhaps the greatest need we have is the need to be loved, to know that we are loved, to know that no matter who we are and where we have been and what we have done and what has been done to us – we are loved, by a God who loved us so much that he sacrificed himself in order to show just how much he wanted us to know how much we mean to him. When we are struggling to understand our own worth, God has already signalled how much he thinks we are worth. We are worth dying for. As the one who created each of us and knows us intimately, he should know – and we should trust his valuation.
Questions to Consider
What needs of yours has Jesus met? How has he met the needs of others through you?
Prayer
Heavenly Father, thank you for loving me. Thank you for thinking me worthy of life and love. Help me see others the way you see me – help me see all creation through your eyes. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 4 – The Copy and the Reality
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Hebrews 8:1-6
What is meant by ‘heaven’? It is too easy to slip into a dualistic mindset and think that ‘heaven’ means a non-physical, spiritual realm, far away from this world, perhaps “up in the sky,” a place where, after death, our ‘souls’ go to be with Jesus. (This is more like Plato’s heaven than anything we find in the bible.) Heaven is not just a spiritual place, a non-physical place to be crudely contrasted with the physical world, but is rather God’s realm, the space that interlocks with our physical earth and space in many ways. We say Jesus ascended to sit beside the Father – in other words, the human being Jesus bodily parted the ‘curtain’ between realms, entered this divine space, this holy realm and from there intercedes on our behalf. Therefore, because he is now in the heavens, he, our eternal once-and-for-all high priest, is so much better than the earthly priests.
This continues the contrasts the writer has been making and why he is keen to point out that the tabernacle in the wilderness, and the Temple that eventually superseded it, are simply copies of the true heavenly reality. The tabernacle and Temple were good – the reality of Jesus and the heavenly Jerusalem is better. Likewise, the old covenant established on Sinai between God and Moses (good) and the New Covenant long promised and revealed in Jesus (even better). Being able to recognise this true reality when it breaks through the shadows is one of the key things followers of Jesus need to be able to do – not clinging to the copy but looking for and working towards and pointing out the reality.
Questions to Consider
What does ‘heaven/the heavenly reality’ mean to you? Why?
Prayer
Gracious God, help me see the reality of this world – your world – through the love you hold for it and for its people, and the end you desire for it. May my vision not be blinded; may I see truly. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)
Day 5 – A New Covenant
Silence, Stillness and Centering before God (2 minutes)
Scripture Reading – Hebrews 8:7-13
Too often we want to turn back. Too often we long to return to a time and place we knew, when things were better, easier, more comfortable, like the Israelites mentioned in chapter 3, who had been freed only to immediately turn around and complain about how much better things had been in captivity. They hardened their hearts against God, made a golden calf to worship and returned the old idolatrous ways they had known before. Everything that the writer of Hebrews has been saying up to this point – and that is perfectly summarised and encapsulated in this quotation from Jeremiah (the longest quote in the letter so far) – has been to remind the Hebrews of the great new thing that God has done in Jesus, and the new reality that his life, death, resurrection and ascension reveal.
And this new reality, this new covenant, is better than anything that came before. What the Israelites had was good, but God has done – and is still doing – something even better. What had previously been revealed was true, but not the whole truth. The most important thing to know now is that God is doing something new. And that is the point of this letter: to tell the Hebrews that this something better, this greater, complete truth, this full revelation has now arrived in Jesus. So don’t go back. Don’t try to recover the old ways, don’t try to hang on to the older patterns and ways. However good and true they are, they have been surpassed by something better: Jesus and the new life and renewal that he brings.
Questions to Consider
What makes you want to turn back to the way things were? What stops you? How is Jesus making all things new for you?
Prayer
Loving Father, thank you for the restoration and renewal you are bringing. Thank you for the role you are calling me to take up as an ambassador for this new reality. May I be faithful in this task. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Conclude with Silence (2 minutes)