Sermon. There are some great sentences in that passage from the letter to the Hebrews:

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Amber Palmer
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1 Sermon There are some great sentences in that passage from the letter to the Hebrews: 22 let us approach (God) with a true heart in full assurance of faith 23 Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering 24 And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds These things are commended to us and they seem to make perfect sermon material. A good protestant sermon always has three parts, so here is one that comes ready made: a three point sermon all ready and waiting to be preached. And what good points they are too: a call to approach God, to draw near to him, a call to hold fast to our faith, a call to provoke each other, not for the sake of causing disputes, but to urge one another to do what is good and make it difficult for each other to settle for anything less. There you go I m starting already I m sure I could use these verses to give you, at the very least a reasonable sermon urging us all to be more faithful, to try harder, to be more active and more committed to the task of following Christ. But, as they say on Who wants to be a millionaire? I don t want to give you that. That is what the presenter of the programme says as he shows the contestant a cheque for 5,000. It looks like a great prize, and he would enjoy handing it over, but he doesn t want to give it to them because he is hoping that they will go on to win something even better. That is how I feel this morning. I don t want you to accept a sermon on how we could try harder or how we could do better. A sermon like that might have a good effect on us, inspiring us to action. But more likely it will leave us feeling guilty and inadequate and

2 2 frustrated as experience reminds us that even if we do try harder we will only fall short again. I don t want to give you a sermon like that because I believe our faith offers us much more than that. So never mind what we are called on to do in the section of this passage that begins with the word therefore. Let s get behind that and find out why we might want to do these things. This passage is not really about what needs to be done. It is really about what has been done, and there the claims that it makes are truly phenomenal. It speaks about what it describes as the finished work of Christ "But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, 'he sat down at the right hand of God'"(v. 12). Jesus has finished the work and he has sat down. That is quite an image, isn t it. He has completed all that he has to do and he has achieved all that he needs to achieve, so he can have a seat. That finished, once-forall work of Christ is the context for everything else that the writer is going to say. This is what our faith is built upon. It must never be about what we can do for God and it should always be about what God has done for us. You see the Priests were still working in the Temple. They couldn t sit down for very long. every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. They were still working away to do what they believed they had to do. They were still working away in order to put right all that had gone wrong in the relationship between a Holy God and our broken humanity. And that description of what went on the Temple was merely a description of the way we all tend to live. Jesus said the Temple would be torn down and destroyed and that all sorts of terrible things would happen, as indeed they did. Priests no longer went about their religious duty there, but the idea of religious duty certainly didn t come to an end. Right down to today, right down to you and I, we can still go about our business with an anxious determination to do all that we can to please God, to do well, to try to put right all that we see going wrong.

3 3 And that is good isn t it? That is what we want, isn t it? But the deeper truth is that we cannot really do anything for God until we have really come to terms with what God has done for us. He has forgiven us, and there is nothing that we can ever do that will earn that forgiveness, or improve that forgiveness, or add to that forgiveness. Jesus has done all that needed to be done. He has done it, and he has sat down waiting for the consequences of his work to be brought to its inevitable conclusion. The victory has been won. The breakthrough has been made. Forgiveness now exists, and we are invited to accept it and to live it. This is a whole new way of looking at the world. Do we see problems? Do we feel guilty? Do we get stressed about all the things that need to be done? Are we worried about the future? If the answer is yes then we have just recognised the fact that we are human, which is useful thing to know. As humans we are part of the problem, we are all part of what has gone wrong in the world and even our best efforts at living well are always going to get tangled up in the webs of great and selfishness and fear and ambition that make up the human condition. That is the human condition and as long as we are humans it is our condition. Our faith is not that we can become good enough to overcome all of that, but that God has already done all that is needed to break that desperate cycle of trying and failing and feeling guilty. He has done it and it is complete and he waits simply for us to discover it and to begin to live as if it were true. I went home the other day and tried to unlock the door. The key can be a bit awkward so I wasn t surprised that it was difficult. I tried all the usual things: wriggling it a bit, poking it a bit, gritting my teeth a bit. I tried everything I knew and I twisted it with all by strength until my fingers were hurting, but the key was not for turning. Then I found out why. Instead of turning the key I tried the door handle

4 and found that the door wasn t actually locked. Someone else had already returned home and had unlocked the door and was sitting inside wondering why I was taking so long to come in. 4 Of course I felt silly and of course I would never tell anyone about it but isn t it a picture of the way we live so much of our lives? We are trying to force a door that has already been opened for us. We are trying to earn forgiveness that has already been freely offered. We are trying to overcome those dark parts of us that have already been overpowered. So the message of our scripture today is not we must come to God, but we can come to God. For he has already opened the door and waits for us to walk through. The writer to the Hebrews is not saying, come on chaps, lets focus all our energies and do our very best. He is saying isn t this wonderful! Look what we can do! We can worship with a true heart. He remembers that bit from Jeremiah where the prophet promises that one day Gods Laws will not be rules we must obey but will be something written on our hearts and in our minds. Something has happened that can change us on the inside. We can worship with full assurance of faith. Not working up our own faith and wondering if it is enough or concerning ourselves about whether it is sincere enough. For this is faith in what Jesus has done and not in the strength of our own convictions. And we can worship with a clean conscience. Because we imagine that we are without sin? No to do that is to deceive yourself. Rather it is because forgiveness has been gained and given. There is no question about that. That is the work of Jesus and he has done it and taken his seat. So the writer, inspired by what he now understands, says come on lets draw near to God and offer him our worship, because there is nothing to fear and nothing to hold us back. Lets keep meeting together, even though they would have faced persecution and real

5 5 danger, because meeting together is what keeps the faith alive for us. Let s keep speaking about this great hope that we have, and lets put it into practice in everything we do. Lets share our love and do good deeds and encourage one another, not because we have to, but because we can. We are not going to win the victory over evil and corruption and injustice in the world. The victory has already been won. All that we have to do is to know that it has been won and to live accordingly. It will make all the difference in the world.

ON BEING HUMBLE. Rev. Robert T. Woodyard First Christian Reformed Church, Lynden, WA July 3, 2016, 10:30AM. Text for the Sermon: I Peter 5:5-7

ON BEING HUMBLE. Rev. Robert T. Woodyard First Christian Reformed Church, Lynden, WA July 3, 2016, 10:30AM Text for the Sermon: I Peter 5:5-7 Prayer: Holy Father, we are a poor and needy people and we