Copies, Shadows, and the Real Thing

Hebrews 8:1-13

I don’t know about you, but I love a good comic strip. I think its an under-appreciated and undervalued but very legitimate art form. I never really got into comic books as a kid, but from when I could read until now, I’ve always enjoyed reading “the funnies” in the newspaper, and now on social media. One of my favorites is Calvin and Hobbes, by Bill Waterson. It’s the story of a young six-year-old boy named Calvin, and his stuffed tiger Hobbes, who comes alive when he and Calvin are alone. We are never told whether Hobbes really comes alive or is just a stuffed representation of an imaginary friend.

In one story arc in the brilliant comic that went on for several days, Calvin’s parents take him to the zoo. And while there we see Calvin walking along at the zoo with his mother, though we can only see his mom from the waist down – kind of a six-year-old’s visual perspective. As they walk together, Calvin notices some other kids feeding the animals and he tugs on her dress to ask if he can feed them too. In the next panel, we see the woman fully, and it is not Calvin’s mom. The concerned woman looks down at Calvin and asks if he’s lost, and what his mom looks like, to which Calvin replies, “From the knees down, she looks just like you.”

Calvin wasn’t trying to be bad. He was just walking along with the woman he thought was his mom, only it wasn’t.

We see it all the time in grocery store parking lots – parents holding on to the hands of their children as they navigate the parking lot on the way in to the store. Some of those kids are holding on to their parents hands, walking in step beside them. Others are pulling and tugging, trying to run on ahead. And there’s always one or two parents who have their kids by the scruff of the next or are half carrying, half dragging them into the store.

As we continue our journey through the New Testament book of Hebrews, we encounter God as the one who takes us by the hand and leads us to freedom and forgiveness and life. The question is, are we willing to walk along with him, or do we resist and pull away? Turn with me to Hebrews 8. We’re going to start by looking at Vv. 1-6.

We as human beings have a bent toward drifting, wandering away. Even if we aren’t intentionally trying wander, we wander. We sing the words of the hymn, “Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.” Like Calvin wandering around the zoo with a woman he thinks is his mom but isn’t, we have a tendency to wander away from the life God has created us to live. We aren’t trying to be bad or being intentionally rebellious. We’re just walking along and somehow we wind up somewhere we didn’t think we could wind up.

At other times, we’re like children struggling against our parent’s safe hold … trying to free ourselves to do what we want to do. Or like rebellious teenagers bend on doing what we want to do when we want to do it, and who cares about the consequences. Sometimes we’re rebellious, and sometimes we just wander off. Either way, we get into trouble. We all have hearts that wander away from the loving embrace of our heavenly Father.

Our natural state, if we just give in to who we are as human beings, is to drift. Why? Because it’s easier. It’s easier to react in anger – with harmful words and actions –  than it is to take a deep breath, creating space for the Holy Spirit to step in and transform our words and actions in the heat of the moment. It’s easier to be overcome with jealousy or greed or the desire to fit in and run out and spend a bunch of money on the latest trend or to keep up with our friends than it is to practice contentment with what we have, allowing the Holy Spirit to transform our attitudes toward our possessions.

That’s why the writer keeps coming back to his or her main point and repeats it here … Jesus is better than anything this world has to offer. Those things won’t ultimately fulfill you. So keeping going. Keep moving forward with Jesus. Keep holding on to him. Nothing else will fully satisfy you.

What he offers is real. It doesn’t fade. It doesn’t tarnish. It doesn’t get old or wear out. His salvation, his grace and mercy and forgiveness never wear out or run out. His is a well that will never run dry.

In Old Testament times, the people of God found fulfillment and forgiveness in keeping the law and then offering sacrifices when they inevitably messed up. It was never intended to be the final solution to our wandering problem, our sin problem. It was a provisional way of coming into God’s presence, a way of enabling people to experience God until the time was right for Christ to come into the world. It was a shadow, a copy, but not the real thing. It pointed forward through history to what God was preparing to do, and it left people thirsty for more.

I often have dreams in which I’m really, really thirsty. And in my dream, when I am able to take a drink, I keep drinking and drinking, but my thirst never goes away. In my dream, it feels like water, but it doesn’t satisfy like water. Why? Because I’m actually thirsty in real life – my mouth is dry. Dreamed water doesn’t satisfy real thirst. But when I wake up, and go get a drink of REAL water, for my REAL thirst, it quenches my thirst, and it tastes soooo good.

The book Sahara Unveiled tells the story of an Algerian named Lag Lag and a friend whose truck broke down while crossing the desert:

They nearly died of thirst during the three weeks they waited before being rescued. As their bodies dehydrated, they became willing to drink anything in hopes of quenching their terrible thirst. The sun forced them into the shade under the truck, where they dug a shallow trench. Day after day they lay there. They had food, but did not eat, fearing it would magnify their thirst. Dehydration, not starvation, kills wanderers in the desert, and thirst is the most terrible of all human sufferings.

Physiologists use Greek-based words to describe stages of human thirst. For example, the Sahara is dipsogenic, meaning “thirst provoking.”

In Lag Lag’s case, they might say he progressed from eudipsia, “ordinary thirst,” through bouts of hyperdipsia, meaning “temporary intense thirst,” to polydipsia, “sustained excessive thirst.” Polydipsia means the kind of thirst that drives one to drink anything. There are specialized terms for such behavior, including uriposia, the drinking of urine, and hemoposia, the drinking of blood.

For word enthusiasts, this is heady stuff. Nevertheless, the lexicon has not kept up with technology. I have tried, and cannot coin a suitable word for the drinking of rusty radiator water. Radiator water is what Lag Lag and his assistant started into when good drinking water was gone. In order to survive, they were willing to drink, in effect, poison.[i]

We have a tendency to chase after dream water, and then wonder why it doesn’t satisfy. We chase after the three P’s … pleasure, possessions, and power … but no matter how much we drink, the thirst is still there.

Jesus doesn’t offer dream water. He doesn’t offer sacrifices in a representative throne room for God in this world – in the Holy of Holies. He offered himself. And now He sits in the throne room of heaven itself at God’s right hand. He is not a shadow, a forerunner, a copy of things yet to come. He is the one the shadows and forerunners and copies pointed to. He is not dream water. He is the real thing.

So what does he offer? What does the real water look like? Look at Vv. 7-13.

Remember, Hebrews is a sermon. And our pastor has been preaching primarily from Psalm 110, but he or she has also taken us back to Genesis – and Abraham – and Exodus – and the wilderness generation, right? And now he quotes the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah (31:31-34). He’s compared our tendency to wander, our sinful natures, with that of the wilderness generation. That generation of Israelites who came out of Egypt, witnesses to one incredible miracle after another, and yet constantly wanted to turn back. To go back to slavery. To go back to Egypt. Until they got to the edge of the land God had promised them through Abraham. And then they adamantly refused to go into the land, because the inhabitants were powerful and they were afraid. And so God allowed them to give in to their fear, as they died, one by one, outside the land God had promised to give them. Until that generation died out and God led them into the Promised Land under Joshua.

When they were in slavery in Egypt, they cried out to God under the strain of the heavy burden being placed on them by the Egyptians, and God heard their cry, and called Moses to lead them out of Egypt. They were barely on the road, at the shore of the Red Sea, when they first grumbled and decided they wanted to go back to slavery. And they did it over and over and over again throughout the journey, until they flat out refused to step into God’s promise at the edge of the Promised Land.

We’re like children who keep trying to pull away from the safety and security of our parents’ loving hand-hold, insisting on running off to do our own thing, oblivious to or not concerned with the dangers around us, the dangers of our sin. The damage that we do to ourselves and to others, and the eternal consequences we reap if we don’t accept God’s merciful offer of grace and forgiveness in Christ. We want that dream water, and reject the real thing.

And the real thing involves inner transformation, not outward conformation. Look at V. 10. “I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts.” When Jesus was beefing with the Pharisees, which was usually, he accused them of being like cups that were clean on the outside but dirty on the inside. When we’re together, we tend to focus on the externals. What people wear. What they say. How they act. And the externals ARE important. But we tend to focus ONLY on the externals.

Did Jesus really die a horrible death on the cross so that I could go to church on Sunday and try not to cuss or drink to much? No! He died on the cross so that I could be close to him and become a part of his family. We don’t “go to church.” We ARE the church, and the church is simply his family. I had a friend who grew up in a very different kind of home than I did. His parents cursed at each other all the time. They cursed at the kids, and the kids cursed back. I wasn’t allowed to repeat about every other word that came out of his mouth. I grew up in a house were cussing was more than frowned upon. It was punished. I mean, they would hint at the words. When dad got mad a whatever he was working on, he would mutter “you little son of a bee.” For a while I pictured a daddy bee and little son bees flying around. Oh I quickly figured out what he really meant though. He didn’t fool me for long. Grandpa taught me.

Anyway, I grew up getting in trouble for cussing. So I didn’t cuss much. My friend could add a curse word to the phrase “good morning.” It was just what he knew. But he placed his faith in Christ, and slowly, he cussed less and less. He still cussed a lot by my parents’ standards, but way, WAY less than he used to. Which one of us was being transformed and growing in Christ? I may have LOOKED more like what a Christ-follower is supposed to look like, but he was ACTUALLY being transformed because he wasn’t just trying to follow the rules, he was getting closer to Jesus.

The real water involves inner transformation, not outer conformation. It also focuses on relationship, not rules and regulations. Look at V. 10-11 again. God doesn’t want us to follow the rules and yet hate him. He wants us to be close to him. He wants us to enjoy his presence, to enjoy his love. To live this adventure called life with him.

The Westminster catechism is one of the key expressions of Christian faith, especially within the Reformed and Presbyterian traditions. A catechism is simply a systematic tool for teaching and learning core doctrines. Kids in confirmation classes learn the catechism, among other things.

The first question of the Westminster Catechism is “What is the chief end of man?” In other words, “Why do we exist?” And the answer is, “To glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.” Relationship. Living in a right relationship with God, not because we have to, but because we get to. Not just knowing about God. Knowing God.

Inner transformation. Relationship. And forgiveness. Look at V. 12. Now, God is omniscient. That means God is all-knowing. There is nothing God misses. So when he says “I will remember their sins no more,” it isn’t that God develops selective amnesia or gets forgetful. WE can’t even do that unless we develop dementia, and even then, we may remember things that we’d rather not remember. When God says, “I will remember their sins no more,” what he’s saying is “they will be counted against you no longer.

When I’m working in the realm of forgiveness with a couple in therapy, I talk about the fact that forgiveness is a decision. A choice. In fact, it is a daily choice. A choice to absolutely refuse to hold a person’s error or failure against them any longer once forgiveness has been offered. I will no longer bring it up. That is, of course, assuming that there has been true repentance and the pattern of bad behavior is being worked on and corrected. Maybe not perfectly, but there’s progress and effort.

Once your sin has been forgiven in Christ, God no longer brings it up, and no longer needs to, because justice has been done. The sin has been punished. Christ took the punishment on himself. That doesn’t mean we can run around in sin because sin doesn’t matter. It means we no longer want to because we have a relationship with God, and he is transforming us, and when we do fall, we are sincerely sorry and grieve our sin.

Inward transformation, not outward conformation. Relationship, not rules and regulations. And forgiveness. Those are the ingredients of the water that really quenches the thirst.

Yes, we have hearts that tend to wander. To look to have our thirst quenched pretty much anywhere BUT in Christ. But as we place our faith in the matchless Christ, our great high priest, his inner transforming work begins, and our hearts learn to trust and follow him. Never perfectly in this life, but more and more, until the day when we stand in awe in his presence, enjoying the life he has created for us. Forever. Let’s pray.

[i] William Langewiesche, Sahara Unveiled (Vintage, 1997)