Come and Go Sunday School “GOD HAS SPOKEN--Part One: Now What? What we do.” from First Church of the Nazarene of San Diego, California, United States with Dr. Frank Carver and Dr. Herb Prince

Come and Go Sunday School “GOD HAS SPOKEN--Part One: Now What? What we do.” from First Church of the Nazarene of San Diego, California, United States with Dr. Frank Carver and Dr. Herb Prince

GOD HAS SPOKEN

Part One: Now What?

What we do.

(Hebrews Thirty)[The following outline is that of Kevin L. Anderson, Hebrews: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition, New Beacon Bible Commentary (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 2013), 5-6.

I. Hearing the Apostle and High Priest of Our Confession: Hebrews 1:1—4:13

II. Jesus’ Superior High Priesthood: Hebrews 4:14—10:18

III. Call to Persevering Faith and Acceptable Worship: Hebrews 10:19--13:25

1. Exhortations to Persevere in Faith, 10:19—12:13

1. Confidence and Perseverance in Faith, 10:19-39
2. Worthy Examples of Faith, 11:1-40
3. Training for Enduring Faith, 12:1-13

2. Exhortations to Offer Acceptable Worship, 12:14—13:25.]

Hebrews 10:19 So, brothers, we have confidence to use the way into the Holiest Place opened by the blood of Yeshua. 20 He inaugurated it for us as a new and living way through the parokhet, by means of his flesh. 21 We also have a great cohenover God’s household. 22 Therefore, let us approach the Holiest Place with a sincere heart, in the full assurance that comes from trusting — with our hearts sprinkled clean from a bad conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.[Hebrews 10:22 Ezekiel 36:25] 23 Let us continue holding fast to the hope we acknowledge, without wavering; for the One who made the promise is trustworthy. 24 And let us keep paying attention to one another, in order to spur each other on to love and good deeds, 25 not neglecting our own congregational meetings, as some have made a practice of doing, but, rather, encouraging each other.

And let us do this all the more as you see the Day approaching.

Hebrews 10:19, 23:        “since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus . . . let us hold fast to the confession of our hope.

“Man proposes, God disposes” was a frequent saying of Earle Lee, pastor of Pasadena First Church for many years. Imagine my surprise recently when reading a letter from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s mother Paula to Eberhard Bethge, her son’s closest friend, dated July 30, 1944, the identical saying appeared: “Humankind proposes and God disposes.” [ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, Volume 8, ed. John W. de Gruchy, trans, Isabel Best, Lisa Dahill, Reinhard Kraus, and Nancy Luiens (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010), 497.] Her German form was probably “Man denkt, Gott lenkt” [“man thinks, God directs”] with the comma.

Questioning PLNU’s German professor, Michael McKinney, I learned that although the German saying (Sprichwort) may be much older, it can be traced back at least to Bertold Brecht (1898-1956), a German Marxist playwright who fled the Nazis to Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and eventually in 1941 coming to the United States.[ In 1947 Brecht was subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee where he testified that he had never been a member of the Communist party on October 30, 1947. He returned to Germany in 1945 after the war, and died on August 1956 of a heart attack at 58] But Brecht’s form did not have the comma: “Man denkt Gott lenkt.” For him it meant that “Man thinks [that] God directs.”

A recent early morning inspiration led me to further inquiry, and behold, I found the exact phrase in Thomas á Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, which first appeared in print in 1441. The saying is in Book I, 19: “Man proposes, but God disposes.”[Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, ed. Harold C. Gardner (Garden City, New York: Image Books, (1955), 53-54. Born Thomas Haemerken, his dates are c. 1380-1471. ]

Introduction

As the old Pietists used to say, true theology always moves from “head” to “heart” and to “hand.”[Stanley J. Grenz, “Deconstructing Epistemological Certainty: An Engagement with William J. Abraham’s Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology,” Wesleyan Theological Journal, Volume 36, Number 2 (Fall, 2001), 42.]

The writer to the Hebrews with 10:19 moves directly to the “heart” and the “hand.” He has certainly challenged our heads with his complex exposition of the sacrifice of Christ (7:1—10:18) using ideas that basic Christian teaching had not previously employed. Hopefully, the preacher has not failed to touch our hearts along the way. As William Barclay observed, the Hebrews author is

one of the deepest theologians in the New Testament. . . . He does not think merely for the pleasure of thinking, or for the thrill of academic and intellectual satisfaction. He thinks only that he may more forcibly appeal to men to enter into the presence of God.[William Barclay, The Letter to the Hebrews Daily Bible Studies (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1956 ), 133. P. T. Forsyth, Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1980 [1907]), 201-202, would approve of the Hebrews writer as a preacher. He writes of  his contemporary preachers that  “he may be quite unfit to lecture in theology as a science, but he is less of a preacher, however fine a speaker, if he have not a theology at the root of his preaching and its sap circulating in it.”]

Primarily “What we do” is set forth for us in 10:19-25:

19Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, 20by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), 21and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. 24And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, 25not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

I.

“since . . . since”

In characteristic fashion, the writer to the Hebrews renews his exhortations to his readers. He begins in vv. 19-21 with a very brief summary of the argument he began in 7:1, a thrilling theology from which his “hand” concerns inherently flow (“since . . . since”). To apply the profound lines of D. M. Baillie’s classic work, God Was in Christ, we see in these verses

the long sacrificial tradition as having at last found its climax and fulfillment; but in such a way that its meaning is completely transformed, because now it is God Himself who makes the sacrifice. . . . God . . . bearing the brunt and paying the price.[D. M. Baillie (1887-1954), Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of St. Andrew, God Was in Christ: An Essay on Incarnation and Atonement (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1948), 177.]

The author’s first “since” leads us to another profound, almost beyond comprehension, summary statement: “we have a great priest over the house of God.” Two great past and present redeeming truths surround this theological affirmation. First, from the past there was “a cross in the heart of God before there was one planted on the green hill outside Jerusalem,”[Baillie, God Was in Christ, 194. This is the truth in a not quite accurate, but traditional, translation of Rev, 13:8: “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (KJV).] that is, it was the eternal divine atonement that became the incarnate life and sacrificial death of Jesus—life was set free in the shed blood of Jesus-- “the life of the flesh is in the blood” (Lev. 17:11).

Second, into the future: “we have”—now and forever! With Jesus as our “great priest over the house of God” that Hebrews has presented so vividly and forcefully, “the divine sin-bearing, the atoning work, which appeared once for all on Calvary, goes on ever since in the heavenly sphere.”[ Baillie, God Was in Christ, 194.] We have seen that Christ “entered once for all into the Holy Place” (9:12), that is, “he entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf” (9:24). And Christ is still there as the Crucified One;[ In 1 Cor. 2:2, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” The Greek participle “crucified” is “not in the aorist but in the perfect tense” meaning not “the Christ who was once crucified” but the “Christ who is crucified,” that is, “the Christ who has been crucified and bears its marks on Him still.” Baillie, God Was in Christ, 194.] there “he always lives to make intercession” (7:25) for us who approach him, being continually “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (4:15, KJV).[This theology is at the heart of our partaking of the Lord’s Supper, the Eucharist, where in our ritual the self-offering of Christ is very real in his heavenly presence that hovers over our worship.]

II.

“we have confidence”

10:19-21

The result is as our writer proclaims, “we have confidence (or “boldness” as in 4:16[The Greek parrēsia was used for” the civic privilege of all freeborn citizens to speak their minds openly in public assembly.” Anderson, Hebrews, 161.]) to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh).” A difficult interpretive problem is one of grammar: what is the antecedent of “his flesh”? Is our author identifying Jesus’ full incarnate life in “his flesh” including his “sacrifice of himself” (9:26) with “the curtain” through which he has “opened for us” into “the new and living way”? Or, is he describing “his flesh,” his bodily life and death, as “the new and living way”?

The issue of course was not if Jesus is “the new and living way”—he certainly is! But the question grammatically is, if “curtain,” used previously by the writer only of the literal tabernacle (temple) “curtain” (6:6:19; 9:38),[The only other occurrences of this term for “curtain” are in the Synoptic Gospels where according to Mark, “Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom” (15:38; see Matt. 27:51; Luke 23:45). Anderson, Hebrews, 275, discusses the question of the relevance of these references to Hebrews in a sidebar. C. F. D. Moule, The Sacrifice of Christ, Facet Books: Biblical Series (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1964 [1956]), 11, interprets: “But whether or not the Evangelists believed that it happened literally, at all events what they describe was a symbol of something dramatically new and  revolutionary in the relations between God and man: a quite new way of approach—an open access to God.”] functions here metaphorically for Jesus’ person and work as proclaimed in Hebrews? We take it that the latter meaning is intended. The primary reason is that it is in line with the normal grammatical force in Hebrews of the author’s use of “that is.”[ Anderson, Hebrews, 274. See 2:14; 9:11; 11:16; 13:15.] The linguistic shift would then be that of transforming “the ‘curtain’ that separates” from the holy divine presence to “the ‘curtain’ that overcomes the separation” from the presence of God.
Thus “the curtain” in verse 20, is Jesus’ “human existence characterized by mortality,” his mortal body that we are graced to pass through for “full access to the living God.”[Johnson, Hebrews, 257.] Everything that has and does separate you and I from God, Jesus, as God’s Son and our “great priest over the house of God,” he, in himself, has taken care of as he opens for us “the new and living way.” So the expression, “the curtain (that is, through his flesh),” Anderson concludes, is “a succinct way of saying that access to God’s presence has been achieved through Christ’s bodily death.”[Anderson, Hebrews, 274.]

III.

“let us approach”

10:22-25

With his second “since,” based on who Jesus is and what he has done and does, the preacher turns to a salad-sounding exhortation in vv. 22-25 with a threefold “let us, . . . let us, . . . let us.” The first “let us” has to do with “faith,” the second with “hope,” and the third with “love,” reminding us of Paul’s great trinity of Christian virtues: “now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love” (1 Cor. 13:13).

1.

Given now our privilege of bold access to the presence of God we are invited simply—and absolutely, to “approach”! The key to such drawing near to God is expressed in the twofold mention of “heart,” which takes us back to the new covenant where the will of God is written in our “hearts” and on our “minds” (10:16). So now we are freely invited to “approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith,” having had “our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water,” by “the blood of Jesus, . . . the new and living way” to enter “the sanctuary.”

We come with “a true heart” as opposed to a false one, that is, as with the Israelites in the wilderness (3:7-19) whose hearts were rebellious, unbelieving, or hardened. This “sincere heart” (NASB) as “the seat of human freedom”[Johnson, Hebrews, 238.] is a mind convinced of the truth and a will confident, even bold, in its approach—“ín full assurance of faith.” Our faith is one now clearly seen as both informed as to its basis (“since . . .”) and sure of its privilege (“since . . .”).

2.

Given in our approach to God such a “full assurance of faith” we are further to “hold fast,” to “hang on”! Such echoes the earlier “hold firm” of 3:6 and the “hold . . . firm” of 3:14, both referring to the Christian’s “confidence.”[Interestingly two different Greek words for “confidence” are employed, parrēsian in 3:6 and hypostaseōs in 3:14. We have seen the former in 4:14 and 10:19 and the latter in 1:3 and 3:14, and we will look at it again in 11:1.] Here the object is “the confession of our hope without wavering.” Already in 4:14 we are exhorted to “hold fast to our confession.” There the motivation is “since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God.”

As to “hope,” our author in 6:18-20 has spoken of “the hope set before us, . . . a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus, a forerunner on our behalf, has entered, having become a high priest forever” (see 3:6; 6:11). We are called to “hold fast . . . without wavering” to our declared allegiance to him who is alive in “the inner shrine behind the curtain” where he forever “lives to make intercession” for us—the Easter message!

To confess our hope here is “to say the same thing”[The Greek for “confession” is homologian, homo meaning “same” and logia “saying.”] that God says to us in his in his Son Jesus who is our “priest” in “heaven itself” appearing “in the presence of God on our behalf” (9:24). Why can we “hold fast” to such a confession? Simply because the God “who has promised is faithful”! For “in him [Christ] every one of God’s promises is a ‘Yes’” (2 Cor. 1:20)!

3.

With the preacher’s third exhortation he moves on from “faith”  (10:22) and “hope” (10:23) to “love” (10:24-25), completing his trinity or triad of virtues for credible Christian living. No matter how essential “faith” and “hope” are for a vital Christian community, they are not all we are to do as the writer to the Hebrews exhorts:

let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

For the people of God there is a threefold corporate responsibility: (1) mutual stimulation to loving service; (2) gathering for common worship; and (3) the “building up” of one another: “Everything we do, beloved, is the sake of building you up” (2 Cor. 12:19).

The first item of extra interest is the English translators’ use of the verb “provoke” to render a quite different sentence construction in the Greek woodenly translated as “pay attention to one another unto the provocation of love and good works.” The noun here rendered “provocation” is only found elsewhere in the New Testament to describe the sharp disagreement between Paul and Barnabas over Mark in Acts 15:39. Strong, persistent stimulation or arousal is the thought.

Another item in the exhortation is “not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some.” The contemporary question is “how crucial is committed and regular gathering (church?) with other Christians for effective Christian spirituality and service? Apparently in the church our author had in mind, only a few were “neglecting” coming together. The preacher has two concerns: first, the welfare of the non-attenders, and second, the effect their absence and influence have on the many who do gather. “Encouraging one another”: the need for mutual encouragement within the fellowship is obvious.

When our writer adds the biblical perspective on Christian existence to his exhortations with “all the more as you see the Day approaching”: it “underscores the preacher’s insistence.” His reference to a future “Day” arouses “the specter of looming judgement.”[Anderson, Hebrews, 279. In this section I am highly dependent on Anderson, 278-279.] And to this topic he will soon turn: “It is a fearful toing to fall into the hands of the living God” (10:31).

Conclusion

Our preacher to the Hebrews—and to us, with his threefold “let us” exhortations has brought us all the way to the “hand.” He has not, however, left “heart” and “head” behind. His call to action is integrated with an appeal to the emotions and a challenge to the intellect.

The ultimate reference of “let us approach . . . let us hold fast . . . [and] “let us consider” is a Person, “a Son . . . [who] sat down” with all that that means as the Hebrews writer has declared, and that’s a plenty! It is him, our “great high priest over the house of God,” Jesus, the Son of God who is the object of our faith, the content of our hope, and the motivation for our love.

E. Stanley Jones whom most of you are old enough to remember, was a long term Methodist missionary to India. In a discussion with an Indian judge, he was told that a Hindu’s self-description is simply that of “a good man. . . . You can believe anything and still be a Hindu.” But Jones said that “I belonged to Person who presented himself as the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” He writes in his autobiographical  A Song of Ascents that he felt “a pressure from within and a call from without to enter this field of the intelligentsia of India—to present Christ there.” [E. Stanley Jones, A Song of Ascents: a spiritual autobiography (New York: Abingdon Press, 1968), 86..] Jones continues:

This brought on a spiritual crisis. It was aggravated by the fact that, while I had passed my examinations in Urdu and Hindi, my use of these languages was confined to the surface. I couldn’t feed myself spiritually by my own preaching. I preached what I could say, not what I wanted to say. The depths and heights were unplumbed—I preached surface things and my spiritual life became surface. . . .

Jones ended up after eight and a half years going home on furlough:

As a consequence, at the end of eight and a half years I was ordered to go to America on furlough. So at the end of my first term as a missionary I ended up with a call and a collapse.”[Jones, A Song of Ascents, 86-87.]

How E. Stanley Jones found his way out of his spiritual stupor is another story,[ See Jones’ chapter “A Change of Climate and a Change of Me,” A Song of Ascents, 88.] but it was in line with our preacher’s call: “since we have, . . . let us”!

____________________________