Following Jesus means choosing Him over the world—not just once, but every day. Like the people of Israel on Mount Carmel, we can be tempted to divide our hearts and hold on to the things that compete with God for our attention, affection, and worship. The world promises satisfaction, but only Jesus can truly satisfy our souls.
There is no doubt that the matters the writer has been talking about in the last couple of passages are weighty. Such weightiness calls for greater clarification, but he can’t do that because his listeners are not in a place to hear it. This is because they are, simply put, not mature. In this passage he will dive into this hard, but necessary to hear topic on immaturity/maturity.
As we pick up where we left off in verse 4, we’ll see that the writer is not ready to move away from the topic of the High Priest. We saw 2 weeks ago that this was a much-needed position with very clear qualifications and duties, but only Jesus can fulfill them perfectly. So, the position is filled by Him alone. We will see precisely how this is so in the next verses of chapter 5 that Jesus is the only true candidate for the position of the THE High Priest.
Last week’s message on Jesus as our High Priest was really just the beginning of our exploration of this topic because the writer of Hebrews revisits this matter MANY times. In fact, the very next time is now as we dive back into the role of High Priest. In these verses the matter revolves around the qualifications and duties of the High Priest as established by God.
In this week’s text we will look at the concept of and what it tells us about God’s rest and how we can experience this kind of rest.
Today as we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, we will look to the timelessly amazing paradox of the empty tomb. We know it’s glorious!!! We know it’s life-giving!!! But there’s more there we can say.
In part 1 of our Easter Sunday Sermon, we will start with the Last Supper section of Luke and as we lead into Good Friday and start thinking about why something so horrific is in fact good. In fact, Good Friday is so good that we can rejoice about what His death and spilt blood means for us.
In this next chapter and section, the writer of Hebrews is concerned that some are drifting away from that great salvation we have been given in and through Jesus. The antidote to this drift is to pay attention to the Gospel rather than neglect it and will look at why this should be so.
This week as we look at verses 8-14, we are continuing with the assertion that the Son is greater than the angels. Whereas 5-7 emphasized the inferiority of the angels, these verses will emphasize the superiority of the Son and will look at how this truth is supported.
