The Heart God Wants (Hebrews 8)

Editor's Note:  The comments below are some notes for a sermon I've been working on about Hebrews 8, still in rough form. Please note, this is not the sermon itself but my preliminary reflections on my studies thus far. Consider it research and ramblings. But any feedback you may have is much desired!

This weekend we'll focus on the spiritual heart. What does it mean to have a hardened heart? And how does Christ's superior ministry and better covenant involve a different kind of heart.

Note the contrast between shadow and substance, and how the Law belongs to the shadow but the substance belongs to Christ. By knowing him, we pass from a two-dimensional knowledge about God to a fully-dynamic, interactive, relational knowledge (i.e. relationship) of (i.e. with) God in Christ.

People should end up asking themselves: Do I have a hardened heart or the kind of heart the new covenant calls for? Do I know God or just about God? If they find themselves in need with regards to either of these areas, I'd like them to discover how to have what God wants for them in each of these areas--and choose to pursue that--through Christ's perfect sacrifice.


Review: There has been a change of priesthood and so, a change of law (Heb 7:12).

Why? Because the old law could not do the job (Heb 7:11).

The New Priesthood:

NOT BASED ON: family or tribe or nationality (Aaron, Levi, Israel)

IS BASED ON: Jesus as High Priest in the eternal order of Melchizedek ... Priesthood of all believers (no clergy/laity). He alone can fix and provide what the old law could not!

With this, Jesus is now the guarantor (promiser/provider) of a BETTER covenant.

OLD Cov't = temporary, passing away (lit. “about to pass away.”)

NEW Cov't = eternal and coming now upon us in the new order of the KOG .

OLD needed repeated sacrifices day after day because it was partial and temporal.

NEW is based on Jesus full, final, permanent, and complete sacrifice--perfect and lacking nothing.

And so we come now to Jesus, who is the perfect high priest who:

1. Sits on the throne of majesty in heaven as king forever, and
2. serves in the true sanctuary, not a replica (like Aaron's tabernacle), as priest forever!

OLD = copy and shadow (2 dimensional & dark, boundaries of shadow give us parameters, not a relationship.)

NEW = the real deal! Involves a BETTER covenant that is AS MUCH BETTER as substance or person is better than the shadow cast. And it comes with BETTER PROMISES!

THE PROBLEM: Hebrews 8:7 - There was something wrong with the first covenant. What was it God found fault with?

Answer in 8:8-9 - The people. Specifically, something was lacking in their hearts.

GOD'S SOLUTION: Heb 8:10f - The new covenant changes the human participants in the covenant. God places his laws on their minds and writes them in their hearts. (According to the prophets, God will do this by placing a new spirit in our hearts!) The result is a full and actual relationship (not just one in name only or based on second-hand information): "I will BE their God; they WILL BE my people." And in v. 11 "They will all KNOW me from the least to the greatest." (Note OT use of verb “to know.”)

Knowing and experiencing God on an actual relationship level is now not just the exclusive experience of patriarchs, prophets, earthly priests, or kings, but ALL will know him: young and old, great and small.

How will this happen? 8:12 reveals that Christ's final and perfect sacrifice, of which we've been speaking, resulted in full forgiveness and opens for us total reconciliation with God.

OUR QUESTION:

So this leaves us with a huge question because it now is clear just how important the heart is to God. Since the heart is the key to experiencing the fullness of the new covenant, passing from the shadow to the substance, then what does a heart look like that God wants, and what does one look like that he rejects?


The heart is mentioned over 575 times in the OT and 150 times in the NT. We could spend years studying what the Bible has to say about the heart because it probably is the biggest concern God has for his people.

As early as Deuteronomy, Moses was calling people to circumcise their hearts, even though the whole generation born in the wilderness were not physically circumcised for the forty years they wandered--until Joshua brought them into the land of Canaan (Josh 5). Jeremiah echoes this (Jer 4:4; 9:23-26). And Paul makes circumcision of the heart the test of a true Christian or Jew (Ro 2:25-29; Col 2:11). The symbolism is of removing the flesh, particularly dead flesh, and making ourselves open to God.

The kind of heart most often objected to in the Bible is the kind we've heard the Hebrews writer admonish us against repeatedly: the hardened heart.

What does a hardened heart look like?

There are several NT passages outside of Hebrews that describe it for us: Mt 13:14-15, Jn 12:40, and Ac 28:27 all look to Isa 6:9-11. And here's what we find:

A hardened heart results in and is therefore evidenced by these symptoms:

1. Little or no understanding of God
2. Does not hear God (and therefore does not heed God)
3. Does not see God or his truths
4. Therefore it will not and cannot turn from its errors (repentance) and therefore,
5. It prevents God from healing the person who has it. And the major area of healing is in regards to their relationship to God, but also in regards to having a healed, healthy spirituality that lives in harmony with God and his world.

EXAMPLES OF HARD HEARTS:

The greatest example is Pharaoh - 17 references in Exodus to his hardened heart attempting to undermine God's plans. (cf "God hardened his heart" to "my sister got me angry.")

Proverbs 28:14 - Contrasts hard heart to one that trembles before God (in reverence and awe).

Daniel 5:20 - The whole chapter is a chilling example of how Nebuchadnezzar's hardened heart and now his son's similar heart, brought horrible consequences -- the fall of Babylon and the death of the king that very night. Here the hard heart is associated with pride and brings God's opposition and judgment.

Zechariah 7:12 & context, esp. vv. 8-14 - Those who ignore social justice and the oppression of the poor are said to have hardened hearts. We might add to this, those who ignore the salvation needs of their lost neighbors, families, and friends.

Jesus associated divorce with hardness of hearts. In other words, our relationships are affected, even broken and destroyed, when we harbor a hard heart. Hard hearts are uncircumcised hearts. And therefore they operate in the flesh rather than in the Spirit. They block God out and presume to live life without his power. Even if a person with a hard heart seeks to live a holy life, they do so in their own strength and will always end up in the opposite place from holiness. As in the case of divorce, hard hearts lead to sin, even adultery, alienation of relationships, animosity, division , fighting, complaining, bitterness. This is a brief summary based on a cursory survey of the passages that talk about the heart.

When the disciples lacked understanding and faith in Mark 6:52 and 8:17 with regards to Jesus' ability to provide loaves of bread, Jesus explains their lack of faith and understanding as hardness of heart! The message here is that hard hearts prevent faith, that therefore can block God's provisions and miracles in our lives.

There are many other passages we could discuss. But the last three times the NT speaks of people hardening their hearts is in the passages we studied together in the past few weeks (Heb 3:8,15; 4:7). Those passages, you will recall, hearkened back to the problems God and Moses had with the people complaining and rebelling against their leaders in the wilderness. Even though they complained about seemingly necessary things like needing food and water and security and safety, their behavior was in accord with hardened hearts rather than hearts of faith, full of the knowledge of God. And so an entire generation fell in the wilderness and none of those people, not even the ones who made it into Canaan with Joshua, found their way into God's rest.

Again, we could spend a long time on this. Hopeful we can develop it more in the weeks ahead. The Bible has much to say about a heart that's right and acceptable to God. David asks God for clean heart and a new/right spirit (Ps. 51). Ezekiel speaks of the same (Ez 36:24-28) and calls us to have an undivided heart (Ez 11:19). Jesus promised that the pure in heart would see God (Mt. 5:8). The Psalms say in a couple of places that only the one with clean hands and a pure heart may enter God's sanctuary.

OUR RESPONSE:

None of us is immune from having a hardened heart. Even the most devout among us can find hardness has crept into our thoughts, our decisions, our choices, our conscious and unconscious commitments. This is not the kind of thing we can finger point about. Nor can we judge others harshly when we ourselves must remain constantly vigilant over our own hearts. (In fact, it is usually those who are most judgmental who have the hardest hearts!) So: "Guard your heart!" the book of Proverbs warns, "for everything you do flows from your heart!" (Pr 4:23).

And so with what little time we have in this service, I want to beg each of us to examine our hearts. Consider if you've hardened it to God or to others in your life. You don't need special instructions or hours of discipleship to know this. You probably felt a twinge of awareness as soon as I raised the matter.

Where is your heart today? Is it open? Is it laid bare before God and thirsty for his Spirit to be poured out? Is is sensitive to his voice and compliant with his leadings? Or is it eclipsed by your own fleshly attitudes and opinions, your own self-confidence and your own selfish agendas?

God wants you and each of us fully immersed in his new covenant. That's the place were all sin is removed and forgotten because of the shed blood of the now risen Christ--our high priest.

God wants you on his team—the Melchizedekian priesthood, interceding for others and bringing the gospel to others. But most of all, he wants a relationship with you, where in you KNOW him as he knows you. He wants you to understand, hear, see, turn and be healed. What a blessed life of peace and wholeness that will be! This is what it means to enter his rest. This is what the priesthood of Jesus, his sacrifice, and his covenant are all about!

Does loving your Muslim neighbor mean sharing your church with them?

The Lord's Prayer in Arabic

A Christianity Today article, entitled Why We Opened Our Church to Muslims, tracks a debate among Christians about sharing their church facilities with Muslim groups needing meeting spaces. Steve Stone says:

Jason Hood raised issues about inviting Muslims to share worship space with Christians. Hood, who is a scholar in residence at Christ United Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee, referred to our flock Heartsong and me. While I couldn't tell exactly where Hood stood on the issue, it seemed that he had decided that our decision to allow Muslims from the Memphis Islamic Center (MIC) to use our Celebration Center for Ramadan prayers was made off hand and without much, if any, theological reflection. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Stone then goes on to cite the church's justification for its actions and says:

As a Jesus-following tribe we could not be more evangelical and exclusivist when it comes to Jesus. We are 21st century Jesus freaks, and we fly that flag on T-shirts which many of us wore as we greeted the Muslims who came for Ramadan prayers each night. All we have ever done or will ever do is a witness to Jesus—his teaching, his life, his death and resurrection, and the presence of the Holy Spirit with, in, and through us.

Our Muslim brothers and sisters know this about us because we always speak of Jesus and our love for him, and our love for them because of him, every time we are with them. There was no trading of theologies. They are Muslims; we are Jesus followers; both of us are clear about that. Jesus said people would know we are his disciples by our love for one another, and that is just what is happening with the dear and gracious people of the MIC. They recognize us as people who have been with Jesus.

What do you think of Christians opening their church buildings for use by their Muslim neighbors?

After reading the article, what do you think of the church's justifications for its decision?

Schaeffer's Perspective on Criticism & Attacks

God willing, I will push and politick no more.... The mountains are too high, history is too long, and eternity is longer.  God is too great, man is too small, there are many of God's dear children, and all around there are men going to Hell.  And if one man and a small group of men do not approve of where I am and what I do, does it prove I've missed success?  No; only one thing will determine that—whether this day I'm where the Lord of lords and King of kings wants me to be.  To win as many as I can, to help strengthen the hands of those who fight unbelief in the historical setting in which they are placed, to know the reality of 'the Lord is my song,' and to be committed to the Holy Spirit—that is what I wish I could know to be the reality of each day as it closes."

 - Francis A. Schaeffer, Letters of Francis A. Schaeffer: Spiritual Reality in the Personal Christian Life, ed. with intro. by Lane T. Dennis (Westchester, Ill.: Crossway Books, 1985), p. 39.

Presupposing: The Apologetics of Francis Schaeffer and Cornelius Van Til

Amidst all the strange events of the 1960s—flower children, hippies, marches for peace and marches for Jesus—when college students were challenging the establishment, the Vietnam War, racism, and conventional social structures, an even stranger thing happened. A squeaky-voiced little man in knickers, who in 1948 felt called of God to become a missionary and to move with his family to a lonely chalet in the Swiss Alps (knowing not a word of local language), began to attract young intellectuals from all over the world.

Francis A. Schaeffer (1912-1984) had written no books or popular articles in those early years.1 He made no broadcasts or tape-recorded messages in his early ministry.2 Yet by the end of the decade Schaeffer's remote chalet had become a place of refuge for young people searching for answers to life's deepest and most troubling questions. This phenomenon would come to be known world-wide as “L'Abri” (French for “the shelter”).

Rev. Louis Gifford Parkhurst, Jr., who served the Schaeffers as their pastor in the last years of Dr. Schaeffer's life, describes L'Abri's beginning:

L'Abri began in a very real way with Priscilla [Schaeffer's daughter] on the weekend of May 6, 1955. She brought home from college a girl who had many questions, and so began the flow of people. L'Abri came to be a spiritual “shelter” for people with real and honest questions. God's hand was so obviously in the work that Dr. Schaeffer courageously wrote his mission board on June 5 and resigned. He asked that all salary be cut off immediately, and he told of the beginning of L'Abri Fellowship. The Schaeffers had had the reality of the existence of God demonstrated to them in real ways up to that point, and L'Abri was begun simply from a desire “to demonstrate the existence of God by our lives and our work.” 3

From this humble beginning Schaeffer's work began to grow and to attract attention. In the late 1960s Schaeffer began to speak at American colleges like Wheaton in 1967 and, later, at Westminster Seminary. By the end of the decade and the beginning of the next Schaeffer was speaking at Harvard (1968), Princeton (1972) and Yale (1973) as well as some prestigious universities in Europe and Asia.4 It was during this same period that Schaeffer began to publish his lectures in book form.

The Full Stature of Women as Servants of Christ in His Church - Part 11/11

Conclusion

and

What's A

Search Committee

To Do?

We began this series with a hypothetical pastoral search committee faced with a dilemma. They need a pastor but all the applicants are women!

After our brief survey of the key texts that are involved in the complementarian-egalitarian debate, what should our search committee now conclude?

The Full Stature of Women as Servants of Christ in His Church - Part 10

WOMEN ELDERS
AND OUR
MALE-BIASED
TRANSLATIONS




Paul's instructions for choosing elders/overseers fuel our case that, contrary to traditionalist interpreters, Paul not only saw women as vital participating church members, but that he actually had both genders in mind for the jobs of pastors, elders, and deacons.

 We looked at 1 Timothy 2 in the last few blogs. In the next chapter, 1 Timothy 3, and in Titus 1:5-2:5, Paul gives us  lists of qualifications that most churches today include in their pastoral selection process.

After asserting in 1 Timothy 2 that women will be restored by faith and faithfulness, he goes on in chapter 3 to say, literally, "Whoever aspires to be an overseer desires a noble task." It does not say, as some translations have it, "If any man desires" but it says literally, "if anyone" does.

The Full Stature of Women as Servants of Christ in His Church - Part 9

THE

SPEAKING ROLE

OF WOMEN

 IN THE

NEW TESTAMENT

CHURCHES - 2c

From an Obscure Word to an Interpretation that Illumines the Whole Chapter
 
So far, we've looked at several possible ways to interpret Paul's statement in 1 Timothy 2:12-14 that many take as restricting women from teaching or speaking in church. All of these proposed interpretations make sense and show that an anti-woman rendering of this passage is unnecessary.
 
But there is another scenario that not only explains Paul's meaning in this verse but also brings the whole chapter together into a meaningful whole. (Remember that when we looked at the entirety of chapter two, we found it riddled with problematic statements.)

Who Is My Neighbor?

The Lord's Prayer in Arabic

How far we've come....

The American backlash against Muslims since 9-11-2001 has infected many Christians' attitudes toward the people of Islamic faith. There was a time when the Evangelical's opinion of Muslims was simply that they needed to be missionized and evangelized. We recognized the danger of some radical elements, but coercive and violent forms of persuasion were not commonly given respect in serious consideration of how to interact with Muslims.

Rather, we thought of sending missionaries and teams of evangelists, either covertly or overtly, to convey the unconditional love of Jesus. And we did so recognizing the dangers.

Lately, that love has not seemed so unconditional, at least if you gauge it by the eroding Evangelical-American attitudes that seem to becoming more hostile and widespread daily.

The Full Stature of Women as Servants of Christ in His Church - Part 8

THE

SPEAKING ROLE

OF WOMEN
IN THE
NEW TESTAMENT
CHURCHES - 2b



We continue our discussion of 1 Timothy 2:11-14 by noting that there are several plausible explanations for Paul's words, other than taking them to mean women cannot lead or teach men. The fact that other explanations are possible should signal for us the inadvisability of using this passage to dogmatically restrict woman for exercising their Spirit-given gifts for the edification both sexes in the church.

The Full Stature of Women as Servants of Christ in His Church - Part 7

THE

SPEAKING ROLE

OF WOMEN

IN THE

NEW TESTAMENT

CHURCHES - 2a

The Issue at Ephesus
And the Infamous 1 Timothy 2:11-14

So what's the deal with Paul's comments about keeping women silent and restricting them from teaching in 1 Timothy 2:11?

Doesn't he say a woman should learn in silence?

Well, the word used for silence, hesuchia, more literally means "quietness." When Paul instructs women to learn with quietness and submission, he is simply telling them to be cooperative. Some scholars point out that just by commanding women to be taught, Paul was advocating a significant liberating advance for that culture from the perspective of both Jews and Greeks. It is as though he said, "Let the women go to seminary and get their M.Div. degrees." It may be that the women Paul refers to did not even know how to behave in such a context.

Why then, our hypothetical search committee asks, does Paul explicitly say in 1 Timothy 2:12-14 that women may not teach or hold authority over men?

"I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent [hesuchia: quiet]. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner." (1Tm 2:12-14)

This seems to contradict all we have been saying -- and all the New Testament is saying -- about women and their total equality with believing men as priests. But just how explicit is Paul in this chapter?