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| Strength for the Journey #3 In Awe of Moses? |
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In Awe of Moses?
Reading: Hebrews 3:1-19
Introduction: “Unimaginable.” That was the word that I used a year ago to begin our first lesson in the Gospel of John. It wasn’t John’s account of the life of Jesus that was unimaginable. It was the events of September 11 that we already were looking back on as we began that series. As we approach the one-year anniversary of that event, we are being given multiple opportunities to reflect on the event and its impact on our lives as individuals and as a nation. How have we been shaped? How is our national identity different? What does it mean to be at war with terrorism? When, if ever, will the economy improve, and how much of the economy is actually related to ground zero? Some in the media are even asking faith questions? How has the nation’s faith been affected? What do individuals think about God a year later? Was there a sudden upsurge in attendance that now has settled out again? Where is our national faith to be found? Is it faith in our leaders and our military might? Is faith in a God that we can’t see made stronger or made weaker by such events?
What do we remember, and do we need this media frenzy to remind us? If you are like me, there is no need to replay the scenes of planes crashing into buildings or giant skyscrapers collapsing, because those images are permanently burned into my brain. But how much is, in fact, forgotten? How much of the “sharing in common” that we experienced in the days that followed is now beginning to be swallowed up again by individual desires, and personal difference and pride, and even apathy? What will this event be a generation from now? Why remember in the first place? After all, escaping the pain of remembering doesn’t seem like such a bad idea, does it?
When we were living in Oregon a few years ago, at the church where I was working we invited an older woman to come speak to us one Sunday evening. We weren’t in the habit of meeting together on Sunday nights, except for small groups. Nor were we in the habit of listening to female speakers at church. But we invited this woman in. She was an acquaintance of one of our shepherds. She also was a survivor of the Holocaust. The memories burned into her brain came from a childhood of horror and death in Nazi death camps. She told us about the innocence that was lost when, for no apparent reason, soldiers came to her home and rounded up her family and they all marched off toward their deaths. No one listening that evening doubted that her identity was shaped by those events. No one doubted that her view of God and her definitions of faith in God were shaped by those experiences. And all of us who heard her story were shaped as well by her experiences.
Our preacher in Hebrews understands the power of past events to shape identity. He believes that remembering is absolutely essential to people’s self-understanding and it is essential for spiritual health. He also believes that the past is a great teacher. By studying past events, and seeing their outcomes, the preacher believes that people can have a fuller understanding of the present and the future. So he began his sermon by recalling the past—both the ancient past and the more recent past—making the claim that God had now acted in extraordinary, identity shaping ways in the recent past. To earlier generations, God revealed himself in a variety of ways through the prophets, but in these last days he had revealed himself through a Son. We’ve now spent a couple weeks studying the contrasts, the “how much more” comparisons that the preacher is making, contrasting God’s activity in the Son with angels in order to compel his audience to take seriously the coming of the Son of God into the world. These are events one can’t afford to forget, he says. These are identity shaping, eternity claiming events. But he recognizes that his audience does not have the same memory of eyewitnesses. Their collective memory and the identity that flows out of such memories already had been handed onto them. So he uses the collected memory of God’s people, Scripture, in order to reinforce the memories and the identity that he believes one cannot afford to lose. If you forget these events, if the memories fade, one risks losing the ultimate identity that we have received through these God-shaped events. Creator God of the Universe has revealed himself in the Son; we dare not neglect the salvation that has come through these events. We must remember appropriately. The preacher believes that Scripture is this active, living memory of the past that God uses to shape the present and predict the future. It is the power available to maintain an identity that his audience already has received by faith.
So he begins what to us is chapter three by rehearsing their common identity that they have received through the Son of God. Listen to this description of their identity in verse one: “Therefore, brothers and sisters, holy partners in a heavenly calling, consider (fix your thoughts on) Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession.” First he takes up the family language of brother and sister, language that is derived from his argument in chapter two that Jesus himself was pleased to call those who believe in him his own brothers and sisters.
“It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters, saying, ‘I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters, in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.’ And again, ‘I will put my trust in him.’ And again, ‘Here am I and the children whom God has given me’” (Hebrews 2:10-13).
Remember, that his whole point in chapter two was the superiority of Jesus over all other heavenly beings. Jesus was equated with God himself at one point. But Jesus also was equated with human beings, becoming united with us humans even to the point of suffering death so that he could sympathize with us in all of our trials.
Thus, the preacher claims for his audience that identity as “brothers and sisters, holy partners in a heavenly calling,” and asks his audience then and now to consider Jesus the ultimate apostle—the ultimate “one sent” from God with a message, the high priest of our confession. He is the ultimate mediator between humans and God. The preacher immediately then compares Jesus with the other great mediator in Scripture sent from God to redeem his people. That would be Moses the one sent from the burning bush in the wilderness to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt. The preacher is not interested in making Jesus look better by making Moses look bad. It’s quite the opposite. He upholds the greatness of Moses in order to argue that Jesus is so much more.
(Jesus) “was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses also ‘was faithful in all God’s house.’ Yet Jesus is worthy of more glory than Moses, just as the builder of a house has more honor than the house itself. (For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.) Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that would be spoken later. Christ, however, was faithful over God’s house as a son, and we are his house if we hold firm the confidence and the pride that belong to hope” (3:2-6).
Having read the first two chapters and listened to the preacher’s extended comparison of Jesus and angels, we might expect the contrast between Jesus and Moses to continue. Instead, the author turns from Jesus and Moses to the contrast of their followers. Precisely because the preacher believes that memory shapes identity and past events can teach us about the present and the future, he challenges his audience to revisit the experiences of those who followed Moses out of Egypt. Here were people who received God’s salvation in the Exodus. How did they respond? How long did they remember the identity they had received from God. Rather than quoting immediately from Exodus or Numbers, the preacher reaches into the church songbook and starts singing the second stanza of a familiar praise song. The story of Numbers 14 already was being rehearsed in the life of Israel centuries after the events themselves. So he takes up the words of Psalm 95:
“Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, as on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors put me to the test, though they had seen my works for forty years. Therefore I was angry with that generation, and I said, ‘They always go astray in their hearts, and they have not known my ways.’ As in my anger I swore, ‘They will not enter my rest.’”
Numbers 14 records the story of Israel arriving at the edge of the promised land. They had been free from slavery in Egypt a little over two years when they arrived on the edge of the wilderness. You may remember the story of sending the 12 spies into the land to scout out circumstances. Ten return saying that the land is full of giants and massive armies that would destroy Israel in battle. Only two spies believe that the same God who delivered them from Egypt will deliver them from these enemies. Forty years of wilderness wanderings are the result of the people’s constant failure to trust those first memories, trust that God presence that is with them.
Notice how the preacher takes the Psalm, an ancient document itself, and makes it contemporary. “Therefore as the Holy Spirit says….” Pay attention to the God-speak of Scripture when it says, “Today”—that is his reminder to audiences then and on this TODAY. So he continues to press for the power of memory and identity to shape his hearers. Listen to the way in which he picks up the identity given to his audience in verse one. They are “brothers and sisters, holy partners in the heavenly calling.”
“Take care, brothers and sisters, that none of you may have an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partners of Christ, if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end. As it is said, ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.’ Now who were they who heard and yet were rebellious? Was it not all those who left Egypt under the leadership of Moses? But with whom was he angry forty years? Was it not those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, if not to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief” (Hebrews 3:12-19).
Sometimes we hear these exhortations from verses 6 and 14, these “if only” clauses-- if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end; if we hold firm the confidence and the pride that belong to hope—and we ask questions about the possibility of Christians losing their salvation. I want to suggest that for the preacher in Hebrews, that is not quite the right question. He doesn’t see salvation as an abstract event that one wins or loses like a game show prize. Salvation is a transformation of human identity that determines eternal habitations for those who participate in it by faith. He exhorts his audience to exhort one another “today, as long as it is today,” to remember their identity as brothers and sisters in God’s house, their identity as brothers and sisters with the Son of God, their identity as holy partners in the heavenly calling. Scripture reminds them of the great leader God sent to Israel to bring about their salvation. Moses was a great leader; but he was a servant in God’s house, not the Son. They had Moses; we have the Son, one who is over the house, not just a servant in the house. Therefore, Today…..Today, when you hear his voice, do not harden your heart.
Today, when there are so many alternate voices and compelling reasons for you to find your identity elsewhere. Today, when others would look at the events of September 11 and say “There is no God, because a real God would never have allowed this to happen.” Today, when others already are apathetic toward faith once more, busy with all that materialism offers to distract us. Today, when faith can so easily be placed in military intelligence and smart bombs and patriotism. Today, when there are so many reasons to be cynical about life because our economic indicators continue to disappoint and big business has crippled our country in ways that Al Qaeda could not. Today, when the Christian faith is so easily reduced to social and cultural events like going to church once a week and then living as though there is no God for six days. Today….
I said earlier that the preacher of Hebrews turned to the church song book to find his story of Israel in the wilderness. My guess is that his original audience was much like us—much more familiar with the earlier stanza in the song. The words of part one, Psalm 95, have made it all the way into our contemporary song books.
“O come, let us sing to the LORD;
let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation!
Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving;
let us make a joyful noise to him with songs of praise!
For the LORD is a great God,
and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth;
the heights of the mountains are his also.
The sea is his, for he made it,
and the dry land, which his hands have formed.
O come, let us worship and bow down,
let us kneel before the LORD, our Maker!
For he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture,
and the sheep of his hand. (Psalm 95:1-7a)
So we find ourselves this morning in a setting quite like that of the Psalm itself, in which, having begun with a time of wonderful praise and worship, having been reminded of our God and the identity we have received from him, we are now asked to remember his claims upon our lives. Today, while it is still today, remember whose you are! Brothers and sisters, holy partners with Jesus Christ—the apostle and great high priest of our confession.
(Call the servers).
Some of you remember those churches of days gone by with those tables sitting down here in the front with that phrase inscribed on the front: “Do this in remembrance of me.” For many of us the words and the table itself became invisible after awhile—not because we moved them out of the building, but because they became too familiar. It was a year ago in August and early September that as a congregation, John Mark Hicks led us in a remembering, rediscovering journey through the Lord’s Supper. He reminded us that it was a table not an alter. That it was an identity meal that made us the one body of Christ, that united us with one another and with the Son, Jesus Messiah. At the time, we did things differently to break the routine. We talked about the fact that around the table it is our oneness in Jesus Christ that we celebrate. There is no slave or free, Jew or Gentile, male or female—there are no identity distinctions in the family of God around the table because all of us are servants of Christ and servants of one another.
Those were some incredible moments shared by this church. At the same time, there were those who struggled to remember Jesus Christ because all they could remember was the way they had done the Lord’s Supper all of their lives. As we talked about this summer, church traditions can have a powerful role in becoming our faith rather than being assistants for keeping the faith.
We come to the table this morning, with the events of September 11 on our minds, in our hearts, with other memories of this year very fresh and often very painful for many of us, with a background of praise and worship calling us into the presence of the living God, and the exhortation of the preacher of Hebrews to remember. Remember the Son! Remember the event of God sending his apostle and high priest to bring about our salvation. Remember who you are today, encourage one another as long as it is today. Remember—and BE who you are!
Delivered at Woodmont Hills, September 8, 2002
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