A friend of mine circulated this picture with the application, “I guess guardian angels come in all shapes and sizes. May yours give you whatever lift you need today as you walk the ‘righteous path for His name’s sake. Psalm 23′”
A picture seems to show an elephant carrying a lion cub.
A lovely sentiment from my friend, but there’s only one problem: the “photo” is faked.
An image of an elephant walking alongside a lion, carrying a lion cub tucked under its trunk is digitally altered, and was created as an April Fool’s joke.
Dozens of social media users have shared the altered image, claiming that was “considered the best photo of this century.”
I’m always sensitive to what I or others forward. I never do so without fact-checking first. Truth is important. We can be especially sensitive to the importance of truth today with a war of aggression being waged by Russia while its news media tell Russians it’s just “a military operation.” More on that tomorrow.
Let’s be people of truth, and if we do accidentally send something out that’s false, and someone points it out, let’s send out a follow-up message so stating.
You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. – Jesus, John 8.32, ESV
There is powerful stuff in Hebrews 10: it’s not priests and ritual. The sacrifice for sins is complete.
And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. (Hebrews 10.11 – 14, ESV)
“By a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” And this was predicted in the Old Testament – the covenant in Jeremiah.
“This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds,” then he adds,“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.” (Hebrews 10.16, 17, ESV, quoting Jeremiah 31.33, 34)
“Not neglecting to meet together…” – compare Hebrews 3.13, “Encourage one another daily.” My Alcoholics Anonymous friends are onto something. For new people they say, “90 meetings in 90 days.” I have a friend who is nearly 15 years sober and still goes to a meeting every day. Why? Because it’s easy to drift.
And we don’t want to drift:
Hebrews 10:26-31 (ESV), bulleted for clarity
For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
but a fearful expectation of judgment, and
a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries.
Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses.
How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who
has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and
has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and
has outraged the Spirit of grace?
For we know him who said, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay.” And again,
“The Lord will judge his people.”
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Depending on your theology, you may want to look for ways to explain why this passage doesn’t say what it appears to say. But my friend and Navigator Hero Skip Gray, whose memorial service we attended Sunday, would say: “I don’t know all that that means, but it’s a bad scene, and I don’t want to make it.”
Hence, we need to keep encouraging one another and “hold fast our confession.”
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. (Hebrews 3.12 – 14, ESV)
If you’ve been reading Hebrews with us, you’re into the section on Melchizedek, beginning with this sentence in Hebrews 5:
So also Christ did not exalt himself to be made a high priest, but was appointed by him who said to him… “You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.” (Hebrews 5.5, 6, ESV, quoting Psalm 110.4)
We have another short reference in Hebrews 6 and then most of Hebrews 7 is given to explaining and drawing applications from the story of Melchizedek which occurs after Abraham’s (still called “Abram” in Genesis 14) defeat of the kings who had defeated Sodom and captured his nephew Lot:
After [Abraham’s] return from the defeat of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him, the king of Sodom went out to meet him at the Valley of Shaveh (that is, the King’s Valley). And Melchizedek king of Salem brought out bread and wine. (He was priest of God Most High.) And he blessed him and said, “Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Possessor of heaven and earth; and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand!” And Abram gave him a tenth of everything. (Genesis 14.17 – 20, ESV)
That’s it. There’s nothing more about Melchizedek in Genesis and only the short reference in Psalm 110.
Hebrews 7 goes into detail about Melchizedek and shows how Jesus is a priest of that order – not the Levitical order, especially since “death prevents them from continuing in office!” (See Hebrews 7.23)
Jesus always lives
Jesus is holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, exalted above the heavens.
He doesn’t offer the sacrifice daily but rather once for all
Jesus is “perfect forever”
Jesus is better than the priesthood and the law which establishes the priesthood.
As I read Hebrews 9, perhaps the real significance of Melchizedek comes through even though he is no longer mentioned. It talks about the place and the rituals.
Now even the first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly place of holiness. For a tent was prepared…[and] the priests go regularly into the first section, performing their ritual duties, but into the second only the high priest goes, and he but once a year, and not without taking blood, which he offers for himself and for the unintentional sins of the people. (Hebrews 9.1 – 7, ESV)
Melchizedek had neither place nor rituals. He met Abraham outside, served him bread and wine(!), blessed Abraham, and Abraham gave him the tithe. That’s it.
Jesus fulfilled the place and the rituals:
For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. (Hebrews 9.24 – 26, ESV)
We continue to complicate what Jesus came to simplify. He’s the high priest, and the rest of us are all priests – 1 Peter is clear about that – and our work is “outside” also.
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (1 Peter 2.9, ESV)
In remembering St Patrick yesterday, we observed the value of imagination in evangelism. My son David just passed this on from a sermon he heard last weekend at a regional evangelism conference for pastors. It’s from a familiar verse: 2 Corinthians 5.17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (ESV)
When I and most people I know memorized this verse, the emphasis was always on “new creation.” That’s me! I am a new creation! Praise God! Important, yes. But so is the anyone. Not just me. Not just people like me.
ANYONE
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. (Galatians 3.28, ESV)
This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. (John 3.16, MSG, emphasis mine)
I wrote about St Patrick last year, but I didn’t come close to capturing what my friend Bill Mowry did in his recent post How Will You Celebrate St Patrick’s Day? Here are some snippets, but I recommend you read it in its entirety.
St. Patrick’s day is a time to celebrate imagination and evangelism. Did I catch your attention? Here’s the backstory on how this former slave saved civilization.
At the age of sixteen (approximately 406 C.E.), Patrick was kidnapped from his home in Britain and forced into slavery in Ireland. During this time of harsh deprivation, Patrick came to the Savior. After being enslaved seven years, he escaped and returned home. At the ripe age of forty-eight, Patrick responded to God’s call and returned to Ireland as a missionary to convert his former captors. Instead of revenge or retribution, he came with a message of forgiveness.
…Patrick’s mission was inspired by a night-time vision where the Irish people cried out in a dream, “We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk with us.” With an entourage of priests, seminarians, and others, he embarked for Ireland in 432 C.E.
Let me pause. God still speaks, just as he did when he called Paul to Greece (see Acts 16.6 – 10). Bill’s narrative continues:
Patrick married himself to the language, customs, and imagination of the Irish people. The Irish excelled in expressing themselves in symbols, metaphors, and image, both visual and poetic. Their imagination created wonderful geometric designs, filigree work, and enameling.
Instead of urging his converts to renounce those qualities, Patrick embedded the Irish imagination into the gospel and into the life of the Celtic church.
… Patrick intentionally sprinkled the flavor of the poet and the storyteller into the gospel movement, touching the Irish soul through the familiar channels of storytelling, poetry, music, drama, and dance.
… Patrick wasn’t afraid of what he discovered in the culture. Cahill observes that “Patrick found a way of swimming down to the depths of the Irish psyche and warming and transforming Irish imagination — making it more humane and more novel while keeping it Irish.”
An example of the transformed imagination is the Celtic cross. In this cross, we see the great O, the circle of the globe held in tension by the two arms of the cross, creation and redemption. Together, they celebrate the greatness and nearness of God. One author calls the Celtic cross “a sermon in stone.”
God uses all kinds of people, often if they’re willing to sacrifice their own comfort and safety for the sake of others. Bill writes:
In his lifetime, Patrick planted seven hundred churches and baptized thousands of people. His gospel wed salvation and social justice together. Slavery and human sacrifice became unthinkable in Ireland. New laws were influenced by gospel norms.
…When you put on a touch of green on St. Patrick’s Day, thank God for this great leader. God wedded his zeal for the gospel to the Irish imagination, planting a gospel movement in a pagan culture. Patrick showed us how imagination can be a powerful ally in the Great Commission. – My Creative Friend Bill Mowry, How Will You Celebrate St Patrick’s Day?
The Apostle Paul’s approach was similar:
Even though I am free of the demands and expectations of everyone, I have voluntarily become a servant to any and all in order to reach a wide range of people: religious, nonreligious, meticulous moralists, loose-living immoralists, the defeated, the demoralized—whoever. I didn’t take on their way of life. I kept my bearings in Christ—but I entered their world and tried to experience things from their point of view. I’ve become just about every sort of servant there is in my attempts to lead those I meet into a God-saved life. (1 Corinthians 9.19 – 22, MSG)
We observed yesterday that the occasional big event, no matter how spectacular, is not enough to keep us walking with God. Neither is a weekly church service:
Exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. (Hebrews 3.13, ESV, emphasis mine)
Hebrews 4 takes it a little further:
Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4.14 – 16, ESV)
My responsibility:
Hold fast my confession
Confidently draw near to the throne of grace to receive mercy and grace to help in time of need
Confessions must be “held fast” or they go away. And if I don’t remind myself daily (hourly!?) of Jesus’ person and God’s power, then I don’t bother to go to the throne to receive mercy and help.
Interestingly, this instruction is repeated in its entirety in Hebrews 10.19 – 25 (bulleted for clarity):
Therefore, brothers,
since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, (19, 20)
and since we have a great priest over the house of God, (21)
Let us…
draw near 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. (22)
hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful. (23)
consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near. (24, 25)
What can help us hold fast?
Events? Perhaps, but we won’t make it between events.
Weekly church services. “The weekly or ‘mid-week’ shot in the arm”? Again, not likely.
The text says daily in Hebrews 3.13 – daily encouragement from others. That’s a challenge worth working on.
Here’s something to consider. Maybe it’s more than daily: maybe it’s continuously! 1 Thessalonians 5.16 – 18:
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks.
Note the comprehensive challenge:
Rejoice ALWAYS (verse 16, ESV, NIV)
Pray CONTINUALLY (verse 17, NIV)
In EVERYTHING give thanks (verse 18, NKJV)
So the goal is not just a daily period to spend time with God, as important as that is. The goal is to ACE our relationship with God! ALWAYS, CONTINUALLY, in EVERYTHING, rejoicing, praying, giving thanks.
And the good news is that God loves us even when we don’t meet the goal of rejoicing always, praying continually, and giving thanks in everything (see Ephesians 2.4 – 9), although the Apostle Paul seems to make a good run at it!
I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy… (Philippians 1.3, 4, ESV)
We wrote Sunday that we can’t do discipleship by big events. The author of Hebrews is clear about what we do need:
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. (Hebrews 3.12, 13, ESV)
Following Jesus is a process facilitated by DAILY interactions with God and others. Back in the day, we had Sunday morning church, Sunday night church, and the mid-week “prayer meeting” for, as a friend told me once, “a spiritual shot in the arm” to get us through the week.
It rarely occurred to church leaders that they ought to be equipping and facilitating their people’s ability to meet with God and others DAILY. Everything revolved around events: the annual (or semi-annual) “revival” and the weekly (or semi-weekly) church services.
I’m encouraging DAILY time with God, and some of us also have to figure out how to have DAILY stimulation from others. And it may even be more than DAILY – more tomorrow.
My voice You shall hear in the morning, O LORD; In the morning I will direct it to You, And I will look up. (Psalm 5.3, NKJV)
Hear instruction and be wise, and do not neglect it. Blessed is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors. For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the LORD. (Proverbs 8.33 – 35, ESV)
It’s March 14, our annual homage to pi, whose decimal representation starts out 3.14… As I wrote last year, it’s a number God gives us, and we can’t have any opinion as to its value.
Despite being a mathematician of sorts and having a sense of humor, I was lost for a while on this problem on my math calendar:
My math calendar problem for March 14: i 8 [summation sign] pi
In this calendar, the 14 of the date indicates the answer to the problem…except in this case. It’s one of the two annual jokes, no problem solving required. Translation?
i 8 [summation sign] pi = I ate some pie!
Most of us remember that pi is associated with circles. The circumference of any circle is 2 x pi x radius, and the circle’s area is pi x radius-squared. But pi pops up in other places as well. Watch this:
One-half plus one-quarter plus one-eighth… = 1
That’s not too hard to intuit. Starting with zero, each time, we’re advancing half the distance from where we are to 1. We will get as close to 1 as we like, and mathematicians say that this infinite series converges to 1.
Not all infinite fractional series do. For example, consider the harmonic series:
One plus one-half plus one-third plus one-fourth…
The harmonic series does NOT converge. It may take a while, but we can make the sum of this series as large as we want. I’ll spare you the proof even though it’s not difficult.
But consider this variation on the harmonic series:
one over one-squared plus one over two-squared plus one over three-squared…
Put this into a spreadsheet, and run it out a few thousand terms, and you’ll see it appears to converge to 1.6449… Which is…wait for it…pi-squared/6. Wow. Bet you didn’t see that coming. I know I didn’t until someone told me. It’s another example of things that are. Is mathematics invented or discovered? In this case, it’s discovered and was first observed by Euler in 1735 and formally proved in 1741.
So Happy Pi Day! We’ll get back to more serious topics tomorrow.
The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. (Deuteronomy 29.29, ESV)
We’re not making much progress in Hebrews, are we? So let’s press on into chapter 3 where there is a very clear message that many of our churches seem to have missed:
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm to the end. As it is said,“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.”
For who were those who heard and yet rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led by Moses? And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient? So we see that they were unable to enter because of unbelief. (Hebrews 3.12 – 19, ESV)
“Do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion” is quoted twice in chapter 3. And who rebelled? Those who experienced:
Passover (and the other plagues in Egypt – see Exodus 7 – 13)
The Red Sea (Exodus 14)
Sinai (Exodus 20)
Three of the greatest events in history. The lesson we often miss?
Events, even three fantastic events, don’t get it done.
What’s the solution? We are to…
Take care (verse 12) – compare Matthew 26.41:
[Jesus said, ] “Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
Exhort one another DAILY (verse 13) – this is one we lack today. Most of us are not in close enough daily community that daily exhortation occurs.
I think we’ll explore this a bit more in a couple of days.
[Sunday…] They brought the donkey and the colt and put on them their cloaks, and he sat on them. Most of the crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”(Matthew 21.7 – 9, ESV)
[Friday, same place, many of the same people…] Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowd to ask for Barabbas and destroy Jesus. The governor again said to them, “Which of the two do you want me to release for you?” And they said, “Barabbas.” Pilate said to them, “Then what shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?” They all said, “Let him be crucified!” (Matthew 27.20 – 22, ESV)
I have to make two more observations about Hebrews 2.1 – 4 that I quoted a couple of days ago. Here’s what it looks like in Olive Tree, the Bible app I use on my iPad:
Hebrews 2.1 – 4, ESV
What’s the significance of the green highlight, you ask? I have marked all verses I have memorized. I don’t remember when I memorized this or whether I chose it or it was suggested by a scripture memory plan of some sort. What’s interesting is that my memory plan did not include verse 4, separated by verse 3 by a comma!
In other words, I left out “signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit…” Why? Because such things are largely outside my experience and that of my tradition. It’s amazing how we reinforce our own perspectives while ignoring other parts of scripture. In an effort to remedy this omission, most of my blog posts in Acts focus on the POWER, which you know if you’ve been following along.
The other obvious observation, which I’ve alluded to before is:
…gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will
How clear can it be? There are a lot of gifts of the Spirit listed in the New Testament, and we don’t even know if these lists get them all.
(If you read all the texts, you know that there is some overlap among the listings.)
A key principle is diversity:
For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit. For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? (1 Corinthians 12.12 – 19, ESV)
I love baseball, but among all the skills one needs to play the game well, all I could claim when I was younger was range: I could cover a lot of ground in the outfield. I couldn’t hit well, and I didn’t have a good arm. Once I was lamenting to a friend my inability to throw hard, and he said something like, “Bob, you can teach the Bible, you can play the piano, you can do math; you can’t do everything!” Sigh…
If I can’t do everything…in baseball or in the Kingdom, maybe I should surround myself with people who can do what I can’t. And that’s what we don’t do very well, do we? Each church seems to have people with a small subset of the gifts rather than a cross-section of them all. I don’t know how to fix that.
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. (1 Corinthians 12.4 – 7, ESV)
