Jesus could never serve as a priest under the Law. The Law entrusted the priesthood to the family of Aaron. Jesus isn’t a descendant of Aaron; He’s from the wrong tribe entirely. But God isn’t trying to make Him that sort of priest.
The Aaronic/Levitical priest of Moses’ Law had to be a descendant of Aaron, who in turn was a descendant of Abraham. But long before the Aaronic/Levitical priesthood was ever established, Melchizedek served as priest of the Most High. Who is this guy? You’ll find his story (what there is of it) in Genesis 14; He met Abraham with a divine blessing, and in turn Abraham paid him a tithe. That means—has to mean—that Melchizedek serves as Abraham’s superior in an older priesthood. A priesthood that has no recorded end and depends, not on genealogy, but simply on divine calling—a calling renewed 500 years after the Aaronic priesthood began, when God moved David to write the song we know today as Psalm 110. “Yahweh has sworn, and will not relent: You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”
Jesus, the recipient of this prophetic promise, called by God, already risen from the dead, no longer needing to offer daily sacrifices, lives forever to intercede for us, and is therefore “able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through Him.” He is already perfected forever—and remember, He’s our big brother, our Forerunner. Where do you think He means to take you?
If you’d like to hear more on Hebrews 7, check out my Hebrews podcast with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.
Comments Off on The Seventh Day of Christmas: Perfected Forever | Christmastide | Permalink Posted by Tim Nichols
Hebrews is written to encourage people not to give up, and we all need that from time to time, don’t we? For the original readers in their time and place, giving up meant conceding that the respectable people were right to murder Jesus. High stakes, right? “If you’re gonna do that,” the author says, “then nothing I say is going to make you repent, so I’m just gonna move on to talking about other things.” He’s right; after they’ve experienced all the goodness that God gives in Jesus, if they’re gonna go back to “Give us Barabbas!”—what do you say to somebody like that? But they’ve come so far already; he’s confident of better things from them.
These people don’t lack experience of God. The same way they are seeking to be partakers with Jesus, they are already partakers of the Holy Spirit; the same way Jesus “tasted death” for them, they have “tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come.” They have what they need; they just need to be diligent. Keep encouraging each other daily. Keep going to Jesus for help. All it takes is faith and patience—the same faith and patience Jesus showed, and helps us show—to inherit the promises.
What promises? It doesn’t really say yet, but we’ve had some sneak peeks. Jesus has anointed companions; He unashamedly calls us brothers; He partook in all our weakness and temptation, won the victory, and has ascended to God’s right hand as our High Priest. Where do you reckon His companions end up?
God promised Jesus this priesthood, and confirmed it with an oath (see Psalm 110, and we’ll come back to that). In every storm, we can anchor our souls to that promise: Jesus enters behind the veil into the very throne room of God, and He enters as our Forerunner…which means we are coming along with Him. Because He became one of us and attained to the very presence of God, we—His little brothers and sisters, the children God has given Him—now have access to the very presence of God. How’s that work? Stay tuned.
If you’d like to hear more detail about this passage, see Episode Seven and Episode Eight of my Hebrews podcast with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.
As we saw yesterday, holding fast to our confidence in God is not a solo effort; we need to be exchanging daily encouragement with our brothers and sisters. But that’s not the only place we should be seeking help; we also have Jesus Himself as our High Priest. Like any other High Priest, He was appointed by God from among the people. He has compassion on us who are “ignorant and going astray” because He was one of us. He was tempted in every direction just as we are, with one crucial difference: He didn’t ever give in.
Because He was one of us, God could appoint Jesus as our “priest forever after the order of Melchizedek” (more about him later). Following the duties of that office Jesus “offered up prayers and supplications, with vehement cries and tears” to the Father – think Garden of Gethsemane, here. The Father heard Him, and was able to save Him from death. But He didn’t, and because He didn’t, Jesus “became the author of eternal salvation to those who obey Him.”
I’ve often heard this passage preached in a completely unsympathetic way: “Jesus endured every temptation without sin—what’s wrong with you, ya wimp?!!!” But that’s not how Hebrews presents it. Hebrews acknowledges our weaknesses, assures us that Jesus sympathizes, and orders us to “come boldly to the throne of grace” to get the help we need. You know what “come boldly” looks like? It’s how you go into the E.R. with chest pains or an arterial bleed. You don’t wait demurely in line; you stagger right up to the desk, interrupt everything, and loudly announce your problem, because every second counts. That’s how you come to Jesus. He knows that every second counts, and He stands ready to help.
If you’d like to hear more on this passage, check out my Hebrews podcast with Chris Morrison of Gulfside Ministries.
Hebrews 3 begins with a direct address: it’s speaking to “holy brethren,” to “partakers of the heavenly calling.” Because we belong to Jesus, He is not ashamed to call us His brothers and sisters. He has made us holy, because He was faithful to His calling, as Moses was faithful in his time. If Christ Himself has faithfully made you holy, you’re stuck in the people of God. The question now is whether you will be faithful with what He has given you—and the danger of failure here is very real. After all, the people who followed Moses didn’t turn into not-Israel when they failed…but they did fail, and they all died in the wilderness because they didn’t trust God.
If we were retelling their story, we would point to the rebellion at Kadesh Barnea, when God told them to go up into the promised land and they refused, as the climax of the story. Hebrews locates the failure much earlier, at Massah, where that generation complained against God and went “astray in their hearts.” And so Hebrews challenges us to attend to our hearts, and that’s not a job anybody should tackle without help.
Hard-heartedness doesn’t have to happen intentionally; it sneaks up on you. And so we should be diligent together, “encouraging one another daily.” To be a “partaker with Christ,” one of His companions who fully exhibit His victory in this life—to succeed where the Exodus generation failed, in other words—we need to remain confident to the very end. That confidence is more fragile than we like to think. So let’s not allow a day to go by where we don’t encourage each other, and Christmastide is a great time for it. The Son was faithful, so that we could partake in the divine nature. Remind someone of that today! We all need it.
For a longer discussion of this passage, see Episode 4 and Episode 5 of my podcast with Chris Morrison at Gulfside Ministries.
Jesus, by taking on humanity, became “a little lower than the angels,” as Psalm 8 says. But Psalm 8 also says that God “put all things under” man’s feet. So which is it? Are the angels above Jesus, or under His feet? The author of Hebrews resolves this tension by pointing out that it’s a process. Jesus became lower so that He “might taste death for everyone,” and for exactly that reason He is “crowned with glory and honor.” As we already saw in chapter 1, He sits at God’s right hand until His enemies are made His footstool.
But Psalm 8 is not principally a meditation on the Messiah; it’s a meditation on the nature of humanity. Through Jesus, God is “bringing many sons to glory.” And so Jesus unashamedly calls us His brothers and sisters, prefigured in the words of Psalm 22 (“I will declare Your name to My brothers”) and Isaiah 8 (“Here am I, and the children God has given Me”).
Isaiah 8 is particularly striking, written just before a catastrophic invasion. Isaiah’s ministry was to announce the impending judgment and that God would preserve His people through it. Knowing his homeland was about to be invaded and destroyed, Isaiah did the most foolish thing you can imagine: he kept having kids. Because God assured him that there was hope, and he believed God’s promise. Likewise Jesus, believing God’s promise that He is bringing many sons to glory, is not ashamed to call us His brothers and sisters, to identify fully with us. It’s a sign of hope that can’t be faked. He became one of us, so that we could one day be His companions, “crowned with glory and honor.”
For a longer discussion of this passage, see Episode 2 and Episode 3 of my podcast with Chris Morrison at Gulfside Ministries.
Comments Off on The Third Day of Christmas: Hope That Can’t Be Faked | Christmastide | Permalink Posted by Tim Nichols
In the opening verses of Hebrews 1, we learn that the Son has been appointed heir of all things. This is not a status He’s had from eternity; He earned it in the incarnation when He purged our sins and redeemed the entire human race, and now He sits as an incarnate son of Adam at the right hand of God. That’s good news for us, but there’s more.
“You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, Your God, has anointed You with the oil of gladness more than Your companions.” He may have purged our sins “by Himself,” but in His victory, the Son is not alone. He has companions. Who are these companions of the Son? What do we know about them? At this point, all the text tells us is that He is anointed with the oil of gladness “more” than His companions—which means these companions share His anointing. They get lesser portions of the same thing. How does one become a companion of the victorious Son? Keep reading; that’s one of the questions Hebrews was written to answer. We’ll be exploring the answers Hebrews gives over the rest of Christmastide.
The stockings are stuffed with goodies, the presents are under the tree; the scents of good things to come waft from the kitchen to fill the home. We have been waiting for a month, and the day has arrived. Tomorrow, we will begin digging into the meaning of the Incarnation of God. Today, it is enough that it happened.
God the Maker of all things, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, God who came on Sinai in storm and fire, God who dwelt between the cherubim on the Mercy Seat—that God, the God, entered a human womb, squeezed through a birth canal, and became God with us. This is our God, and we are His people. So lift up your hearts in celebration. Give your gifts, and receive what is given to you in turn. Eat the fat, and drink the sweet with a merry heart. God has been generous with us, and nothing could be more fitting than to enjoy it! Merry Christmas!
Comments Off on The First Day of Christmas: God With Us | Christmastide | Permalink Posted by Tim Nichols
As an ideology, an arrangement of mental furniture, Christianity is absolute trash. If all you’re after is a way to arrange your head, an “I like to think of things like this…” kind of thing, then save yourself a pile of trouble and just go Buddhist-lite. You’ll be a lot happier. Your ideology won’t comport with reality in spots, but you can always blame that on residual Western dualistic thinking, and just try to transcend the contradiction.
Christianity doesn’t claim to be an arrangement of mental furniture that will make you happier, more satisfied with life, or a better person somehow. That’s not the claim. The claim is that it’s actually true. God incarnate walked the earth in the Man, Jesus Christ. He lived in perfect harmony with the Holy Spirit, and empowered by the Spirit, He healed the sick, preached freedom to the captives, cast out demons, and was murdered by a coalition of the respectable people. When He died on the cross, every sin, every dark thing, every character flaw and sickness, everything that stands between you and God — it was all nailed to the cross with Jesus, died on the cross with Jesus, was buried in the heart of the earth with Jesus. And when God raised Him from the dead three days later, He did not come out of the grave dragging a Hefty bag of your crap. It’s all done, it’s gone, it’s taken care of.
Now as an ideology, that’s pretty useless. You can think of your unfortunate actions as sins, and your sins as forgiven, but that doesn’t really change anything much if it’s just a way of thinking about it. But if it’s true, then it’s a truth that remakes the entire moral and physical universe. If it’s true, then all the things you’ve ever done that make you just sick to think of them? There’s a medicine that cures that sickness. You need only accept the reality of what Jesus has done for you; you could be free today, and stay free for the rest of your life.
And it is true.
People often object at this point: “I did those things. If someone has to suffer for them, it should be me.” Sure. If God had consulted with you beforehand, you would be morally obligated to object, wouldn’t you? But He didn’t consult you. He just did it. He loves you that much, so He just conspired to pay all the costs on your behalf and set you free forever. And now it’s too late to object; it’s done.
You can either pretend He didn’t do it, or say “Thank you.”
“Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men.” -the “multitude of the heavenly host” (King James translation)
That word “host” is στρατιά, and it doesn’t mean “choir.” It means “army.” See, “peace on earth” isn’t a feel-good slogan to embroider on pillows. Have you met us? Bringing peace to our world is a serious undertaking. Nobody’s successfully done it yet.
But the Man who will has already been born: Jesus of Nazareth, the construction-worker son of an unwed mother in a town 5 miles from nowhere. Even as a baby, He had a supernatural army at His back. He’s going to need one. His methods are not what we expected; instead of slaying the wicked, He died so that the wicked could live and be transformed. (That’s you and me, in case you were wondering: “the line between good and evil runs through every human heart.”)
So eat the fat and drink the sweet; taste and see that the Lord is GOOD! The eternal Son became man that man might partake in the divine nature; nothing less could get the job done. It takes supernatural power to bring peace; join His army on earth. Rebuke, convince, encourage, with all humility. Let the peace of God rule in your heart, that in your peace others may also have peace, and in theirs still others. None of this comes easy; we’re following a Man who was murdered by a coalition of the Respectable People: the mainline liberals (Sadduccees), conservative grassroots (Pharisees), the politically-connected (Herodians), the deep state (Scribes), the Roman civil power — they were all His enemies, and their spiritual descendants will hate you too.
But we keep going. We extend peace everywhere, to everyone, and in the end, there will be fewer stragglers for that angelic army to mop up, and “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as water covers the sea.” Start being part of the peace of Christ today, with your in-laws.
Once upon a time, there was a chef named Burk. Burk absolutely refused to cook with anything less than the very finest ingredients. Thing is, Burk sucked at cooking. He would buy perfectly ripe, beautiful, crisp peas and boil them into tasteless grey mash. His chicken cutlets were raw on the inside, and his pies were burned black. Obviously, the feedback Burk got was less than stellar.
So Burk did the obvious thing: he took to the internet to complain. “Chefs who use the best ingredients will be rated poorly only by people who are seeking something besides the best ingredients,” his meme read. Lots of other chefs liked Burk’s meme, and Burk never got any better at cooking.
Is there a subset of the Christian public that the meme accurately describes? Sure, and it’s not a small group, either. But that “only” in the meme transforms what could have been a penetrating observation about the Christian public into a steaming pile of pastoral cope. They will only call you boring if they’re not interested in faithful preaching? Really? It’s just not possible that you’re, well, actually boring?
Don’t be ridiculous. Nothing you can buy at the farmer’s market is so good you can’t ruin it in the kitchen. In the same way, the Word is living and powerful and profitable, but YOU can still ruin it with bad presentation. You might get called boring because you’re hard to follow and never get to the point. You might get called boring because you make your point in the first five minutes, and then repeat that same five minutes relentlessly for an hour before mercifully closing in prayer. You might get called boring because your voice is a flat monotone and it puts people to sleep no matter how good your content is. Or for any one of a hundred other reasons. Preaching isn’t entertainment, but it is public speaking, and it’s a skill, and it’s entirely possible to be terrible at it. If you’re patting yourself on the back purely because people call you boring, you’re an idiot.
There’s a subset of conservative pastors who are absolutely terrible teachers, and genuinely proud of it. They preach long, impenetrable sermons, use Greek and Hebrew grammatical terms that are meaningless to the congregation they’re preaching to, adorn their preaching with unnecessary theological neologisms, wander off on rabbit trails that are at best diagonally related to the point they’re making. Their congregants tend to be proud of it too, to the point of dismissing other skilled teachers as “not serious enough” if they don’t also do these same things.
Among these folks, there’s a group that maintains, in all seriousness, that if you’re walking with the Holy Spirit, the Spirit will teach you through your pastor’s sermons, no matter how bad they are. Therefore, they reason, if you didn’t get anything from your pastor’s sermon this week, it must be that you had some unconfessed sin gumming up your relationship with the Spirit, and were unable to grasp what the Spirit was teaching you. (I am not making this up — I’ve heard this taught from the pulpit, and I’ve heard it invoked self-condemningly from people who were struggling to understand a poorly constructed sermon.) That’s all rot. Pastors are not inerrant; sometimes we just preach a bad sermon.
Do not be like the hypocrites. There’s no excuse for sucking at your craft, and slagging the audience instead of finding ways to improve yourself is a really lame approach to ministry. Don’t do that.
Posted by Tim Nichols 
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