A Better Hope

Hebrews 7:11-19

Monica’s worst fears had come true. Her son had become involved in a strange mystical religion. She’d had such high hopes for him. Monica was a faithful follower of Christ, and since his infancy she prayed God would touch his life. Her husband wasn’t a Christian and sometimes, when he was in a bad mood, he would make fun of her praying, but she kept on. They lived in a small town. The family owned their home, but they weren’t wealthy by any means. But Monica was determined that their son would be well educated, they scrimped and saved to send him to school.

He did extremely well in school. People began to notice his brilliant mind. She was so proud. But her joy in his intellectual prowess lessened as she worried about his spiritual health. He attended church some, but he refused baptism. And there were little incidents – stealing, things like that. He excelled in graduate school and finished with high expectations. But his religion . . . well, his letters home were filled with long explanations of finding true reality and speculation as to how reality, he thought, was divided into darkness and light. He told her that her precious Jesus was not truly God incarnate, but an example of pure light entrapped and suffering in a human body. He had always been good with words, but these words wounded her.

She decided to visit him. She thought her heart couldn’t take any more pain, but she was wrong. He was living with a girl and they weren’t married. They had a son … The years passed. Her son was unhappy with his job; he was often ill. He left the girl but kept the son. Finally he became disillusioned with his mystical religion and began to question her about God. He started to go to church again. There he found Christian friends and questioned them. He began to read the Bible.

Her husband died, but he had become a Christian in his final days. She, too, had grown weaker, older. She was afraid she would die before her decades of constant prayer for her son were answered. Her grandson was a teenager now and she went to visit. A changed son met her – a son hungry to know about God, asking questions, requesting prayer. A son who would one day rush to tell her he had given his life to God by trusting Jesus as his personal savior. At Easter her son and grandson were baptized.

Their times together now were so precious, talking about the Lord and praying together. Her prayers overflowed with thanks but still she desired much more for her son. She knew her son as a Christian less than a year. In the August after his Easter baptism she breathed her last and went home to her Savior. She never saw with earthly eyes the great man of God her son became.

She never heard his great sermons or read his writings that determined much of Christian theology. She never knew that her son’s insights would jog Martin Luther into seeing that we are saved by grace, through faith alone. She would never hear her son’s words that stirred so many hearts: “Thou hast made us for thyself, oh Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” Every part of this story is true – Monica was the mother of St. Augustine, one of the single most influential people in Christian history outside of Jesus himself.

“Thou hast made us for thyself, oh Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” We can spend our whole lives looking for purpose and meaning in life, for hope in this very broken world, for peace deep in our souls, and never find it.

1,300 years after Augustine found the peace of Christ that settled the restlessness in his soul, French mathematician and physicist Blaise Pascal wrote, “What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.”[i]

There’s a “God-shaped” hole in every human soul, and we try in vain to fill that void with things that cannot fill it. “Thou hast made us for thyself, oh Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” Turn with me to Hebrews 7:11-19.

What do these words about Jesus and priests and a guy named Melchizedek – who most of us hadn’t even heard about before about two weeks ago when he first showed up in our journey through Hebrews – have to do with the “God-shaped hole,” the restlessness in our souls?  Well, let’s find out.

Look at Vv. 11-14. Ever since sin ruptured the relationship between humanity and God, we have been desperately trying to bridge that gap. Many of us try to bridge that gap by being as good of a person as we can be, hoping that someday, when we die, the good in our lives will outweigh the bad enough for God to accept us.

Others turn to the rules of religion for hope. If I just do these things, and don’t do those things – if I just follow the rules – I’ll be good enough and God will have to accept me.

Still others try to ignore the issue altogether by saying that there is no God and therefore no one we need acceptance from, other than maybe our fellow human beings.

Most try not to think about it, and turn to the three P’s – possessions, pleasure, and power – to numb the restlessness in our souls, or at least distract us enough to not think about it most of the time. But the truth is, there is this God-shaped hole, this nagging restlessness, that keeps driving us toward God. We may try to ignore it, but its there.

When God called Abraham and made a covenant with him, promising him that he would be the father of a great nation, and that all the peoples of the earth would be blessed through him, he made a way for people to know and worship him. You see, the chasm between humanity and God created by sin is there not because God chooses for it to be there, but because of the character and nature of God. God is righteous. Perfect. Holy. That is who God is. God cannot make himself not righteous, because righteous is who and what God is.

The problem is that because of sin, we are not. God’s righteousness would destroy, consume, our sinfulness. Our not-righteousness. Think about God’s righteousness like this. In 1986, reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power plant in the Soviet Union, in what is now Ukraine, was melted down in the worst nuclear accident in history. Massive amounts of radioactive material were released, leading to widespread environmental contamination and health consequences for people in the area.

Even today, almost 40 years later, if you were to visit the site, which you can’t, but if you were, you’d have to wear all kinds of equipment to protect you from the radiation, otherwise it would kill you quickly. Here’s the thing. The radioactive uranium isn’t TRYING to kill you. It’s just being uranium, doing what uranium does. Without a barrier, it would consume you.

Later in Hebrews, God’s righteousness, holiness, and purity are called “a consuming fire” (12:29). God is what God is, and unrighteousness, sinfulness, cannot survive in God’s presence. Not because God decreed it. But because God IS so righteous that his very presence would simply consume us, like a fire consumes dry wood.

So God made a way. The tribe of Levi and the line of Aaron was set as a tribe of temple workers and priests who would serve as mediators between the people and God, offering sacrifices for sin.

But there was still a barrier. The presence of God rested on the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies in the tabernacle, and later the temple. God was there among his people. But a thick curtain separated the people from God. Only the high priest could go behind the curtain. Other priests couldn’t. And then only once a year, on the day of atonement, and then only after offering sin sacrifices on behalf of him and his family. The Old Testament law and the sacrificial system weren’t a forever fix. They were a temporary solution. And they didn’t afford people direct access to God. There were still barriers. The permanent, once-for-all solution would have to come from outside the typical priest from the tribe of Levi.

You see, what God really wants is authentic relationship with us. And what we really need is authentic relationship with God. Not a list of religious and moral do’s and don’ts. God wants us in right relationship with him, not just following a set of rules.

For example. We all know that it’s wrong to cheat on your spouse. So you can remain faithful to your spouse, following the rule, because it’s a rule, and have a heart that is far from your spouse, always wondering what it would be like to be in relationship with someone else. That’s rule following. That’s religion. That isn’t what God wants.

You can also be faithful to your spouse because you love them and have a right relationship with them and don’t want to hurt them. The rule is still followed, but it’s done naturally, from a heart that wants to stay close. That’s what God wants. A real relationship. Not a heart that wants to see how close it can get to the line without crossing it. And the real, once-for-all solution would need to be wholly other … completely outside the Levitical priestly temporary solution.

In Galatians 4:4, St. Paul says, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law …” When the fullness of time had come. When the time was right, God sent his Son. The perfection that was not attainable under the priesthood was made available through Christ. Look back up at V. 11. Perfection refers to the ultimate, once and for all removal of sin. Salvation completed once and for all.

Look at Vv. 15-19. A priest was simply a mediator between humanity and God. In Jesus, God stepped outside the Levitical priesthood and did once and for all what no sacrificial lamb or goat or calf could do … he paid the sin penalty, not for one person or one family, but for all persons. Not for now, but once and for all.

Yes, sin is still a part of my experience. But because of my faith in Christ, every sin – past, present, and future – has been dealt with. In Galatians 3:24, Paul says, “So then, the law (and everything it represents) was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith.” Justified by faith. Made righteous. In fact, but not yet in experience. But more and more in our experience too, as our outer lives come more in line with the inner reality that is taking hold. In 2 Corinthians 3:18, Paul says, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”

The Holy Spirit is working to transform me into the image of Christ “from one degree of glory to another,” leveling up, from one degree of Christ-likeness to another. And I am an active participant in that process through actively engaging in spiritual formation. Working to grow in my ability to pray and in my knowledge of prayer. Working to study and memorize scripture and applying it in my life, allowing it to transform me. Participating in the community of God, the church, where I am shaped and formed.

In Christ, once and for all, we can draw near to God. Look at what happened when Jesus died. “And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. And the earth shook, and the rocks were split” (Matt. 27:50-51).

The earth itself was rent, but more significant than earth shaking and rocks splitting is this … the temple veil, the veil that separated the Holy of Holies and its Ark of the Covenant, from the rest of humanity, except for one person on one day each year – and even he couldn’t look at the Ark – was torn in two from top to bottom. Why? Because in Christ, we are made righteous, and therefore we can approach the throne of God not in fear and trembling, but with confidence. Remember Hebrews 4:16. “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.”

“Thou hast made us for thyself, oh Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” In the words of Hebrews, “A better hope is introduced, through which we draw near to God.” A better hope. The only way to fill the hole, to calm the restlessness. Not a system of religious rules, of do’s and don’ts. A relationship. With God. That’s what God wants. Desires. Yearns for. Seeks. That’s what we’re created for. Need. And want, even if we try to distract ourselves from that truth.

The 2010 website of the Chicago Bears football team presented a series of videos that followed the team’s rookies from their first arrival at training camp and on through the preseason. One video showed part of coach Lovie Smith’s first orientation talk with the rookie class.

Of course, the biggest thing on each rookie’s mind is whether he’ll make the team. Rookies know that the team roster begins with 80 players who come to camp. After a few weeks the coaches cut the team down to 65 players. Then before the season actually begins all NFL teams are required to trim down to 53 players. Of the 19 rookies who were invited to the 2010 Bears training camp, the team would likely keep only around 7.

Lovie Smith knew that, and so he addressed the rookies’ concern in his talk to the 2010 class. His challenge to them was, “Make us put you on the team.”

In other words, play so well in practice that the coaches couldn’t imagine cutting you. Make us put you on the team. Take the decision out of the coach’s hands. Let your performance make the decision for us.

Most religions and most people of the world think that God makes the same sort of speech about who will get into heaven. “Do you want to ‘make the team’ and have eternal life? Make me put you on the team. Live such a good life, do so many good deeds, that I could not imagine rejecting you. Take the decision out of my hands.”

The counterintuitive truth is that God works on a completely different basis than football coaches do. People who think they can perform so well that they can make God add them to heaven’s roster because they are so deserving of it will be rejected. This is the idea of salvation by works, and it is the opposite of salvation by grace. God saves us by his grace and his grace alone, through faith in Jesus Christ.[ii] A better hope. Let’s pray.

[i] Blaise Pascal, Pensées VII(425)

[ii] “Inside Rookie Minicamp (pt. 1), July 6, 2010,” www.ChicagoBears.com