Belonging: Welcome | Hebrews 10:1-25
This message was preached at Sherwood Community Friends Church on Sunday, January 15, 2023. You can watch the video in full by clicking below.
Tomorrow, as a nation, we observe Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. King was not afraid to take necessary action to push back against the oppressors of his day. He was imprisoned and eventually assassinated because he would not back down fighting against injustice.
There were minister counterparts that thought his bold actions were too aggressive. He wrote them a letter in 1963 and notes why he continues to fight so boldly. He says, “Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority.”
Reverend King fought to bring honor to the shamed. We have talked before about mishpat and tsedeqa, justice and righteousness. These are themes throughout Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation. Jesus came to restore honor to the oppressed.
Isaiah 61:1 says this, “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners.”
Social Justice efforts joined together with evangelism of the Gospel have been a vital part of Friends faith for centuries. We’ve been contributors to the abolition of slavery, prison reform, the introduction of free public education, and welcoming in the immigrant. But the work is not done. We each continue to have a call to being people of justice and righteousness, to be the voices of those whose voices are continuing to be muted.
Let’s pray.
Father God, we ask that you would give us boldness to bring honor to those that are held down by those in power. We ask for those in power, that your spirit would change their hearts towards you and towards the people you love. If their heart is hardened to you, then we ask they be removed from power. May we look at each person as a reflection of you, of your creation, and may we love them as you love them. Show us how we can join those who are oppressed in their battle for freedom. In Jesus name, Amen
Four Purpose Words
Last week, we started our 12-week vision series, where we will spend 3 weeks walking through our 4 keywords. Let’s review:
BELONGING: Belonging in community to experience the love of the Father.
PURSUING: Committed to the leading of the Holy Spirit.
SHARING: Jesus Everyday
HONORING: Every voice matters and we do everything in love.
Bob started us last week with Belonging and our Identity. Today, we will talk about what it means to demonstrate belonging through welcoming and hospitality.
When I think of times I have felt welcomed, it rarely has to do with the environment I’m greeted in. Sure, it’s lovely to have the right pictures on the walls, the right placement of our furniture, and for the space to be well kept. In fact, Thom Rainer points out in his book Scrappy Church the importance of these external pieces in contributing to specifically a welcoming church environment.
But when I think of when I’ve felt the most welcomed, whether it be a home or a business or a church, it’s all about how the person or people I interact with make me feel.
Do they make space for me?
Do they engage me in conversation?
Do they seek me out?
Am I accepted for my quirks and differences?
Do I feel seen?
Today we will be in Hebrews 10, if you want to follow along in your Bibles, but before we get there, let’s revisit Bob’s third point from last week, where we left off coming into this week: “God created us to belong with others. We are to be in community with other humans.”
God welcoming in the Old Testament
When we look back into the Old Testament, we see that God is a relational God.
Going back to Genesis 1, we see that God created this beautiful garden. Describe the Garden. He didn’t create for us. He created this masterpiece for himself. For a place for him to have communion with himself.
When he decided to create man and then woman, he welcomed them into this most perfect space. He didn’t say to them, “Well, you won’t follow the rules, so you can live outside of Eden.” No. He welcomed Adam and Eve, even though he knew they would break the rules.
God is a hospitable and welcoming God.
It says in Genesis 1:27 that we are created in the image of God. To be clear, this does not mean that we are god, but we are his likeness. This means, that we have it in us to be both hospitable and welcoming, even when we rightly could be skeptical of people who don’t know us or who we don’t know.
After the fall, God seeks out a people to redeem what was lost by the choice of Adam and Eve. In Genesis 12:1-3, we see God promises to Abram blessing and a great nation to come from him, and in return, Abram and his offspring will bless all peoples on earth.
We see God’s hospitable and welcoming heart continued in the Levitical law. Leviticus 19:34:
“The foreigner who resides with you must be to you like a native citizen among you; so you must love him as yourself because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”
Did you catch that word of engagement?
“So you must LOVE him as yourself…” Again, these are foreigners, with different cultures, different foods they eat, different habits whom God is instructing the Israelites to welcome in like they are native citizens. Like they’ve been there from the beginning.
Hospitality through salvation
If we were to continue to look through the Old Testament, we would continue to see this thread of hospitality. But, for the sake of time, let’s jump to the New Testament and our main passage for today in Hebrews 10:1:
Since the law has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered year after year, make perfect those who approach. Otherwise, would they not have ceased being offered, since the worshipers, cleansed once for all, would no longer have any consciousness of sin? But in these sacrifices there is a reminder of sin year after year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said,
“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired,
but a body you have prepared for me;
in burnt offerings and sin offerings
you have taken no pleasure.
Then I said, ‘See, God, I have come to do your will, O God’
(in the scroll of the book it is written of me).”
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), Heb 10:1–7.
The people were bound to their sins. They were required, year after year, to go and make sacrifices. Donald Guthrie says about this passage, “Every offering that was made testified to the inadequacy of the previous offering and reminded the worshipper that another similar offering must follow.”
They didn’t necessarily want to go through this process, but they did it as an act of worship to God. This was all done in the best way possible. The right facilities. The intention and the heart were likely from a good place. In fact, they were following instructions even given to them by God to make atonement. But it was always a temporary solution.
When he said above, “You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings” (these are offered according to the law), then he added, “See, I have come to do your will.” He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. And it is by God’s will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), Heb 10:8–10.
It is our will that keeps us bound to offerings and sacrifices when the price has already been paid. Sure, today we aren’t sacrificing bulls and goats. But we offer up our completed checkboxes of all the ways we are “doing the right things.” The doing makes us feel whole. It makes us feel like we have some control over our salvation and acceptance.
But Jesus came to replace all our efforts, all our works, all our penance. And it is only by grace that this happens.
Jesus came to replace our burden of living in past sins so we can live in present freedom.
Jesus says in Matthew 11:28, “28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), Mt 11:28–30.
He replaces our burdens, our sins, the heavy “yoke” or workload that tie us to the past. That is no longer for us to carry. We exchange the heaviness of our burdens with what Jesus is offering. That is freedom.
Again, “we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all time.”
Picking up in verse 11:
And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, “he sat down at the right hand of God,” and since then has been waiting “until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feet.” For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying,
“This is the covenant that I will make with them
after those days, says the Lord:
I will put my laws in their hearts,
and I will write them on their minds,”
he also adds,
“I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.”
Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), Heb 10:11–18.
Can someone say THANK YOU GOD!
Turn to your neighbor and say, “I’m not stuck in my past.”
Now tell your neighbor, “You aren’t stuck in your past.”
Just as we sang earlier:
Wonderful the matchless grace of Jesus
Deeper than the mighty rolling sea
Higher than the mountain, sparkling like a fountain
All-sufficient grace for even me
Broader than the scope of my transgressions
Greater far than all my sin and shame
O magnify the precious name of Jesus
Praise His name
I have a Book Recommendation listed for you in your bulletin. The Simplest Way to Change the World is about how to practice Biblical hospitality as a way of life.
Dustin Willis and Brandon Clements say this, “Throughout the saga of history, God consistently initiates relationship. He is a gracious host, constantly welcoming in wayward sinners who deserve His wrath - a people whose only hope is that He would show them undeserved hospitality. If ever there has been a stranger in need, someone completely excluded and hopeless, fully dependent on the grace of another-that is us. We were out in the cold, victims of our own folly, freezing to death from the coldness in our own hearts. And throughout history, God opens the door, rescues us, and welcomes us back into relationship through sheer, inexplicable grace.”
I belabor this point of our salvation and the enormous act of God’s hospitality extended to us because it is out of the overflow of this as our center that we are able to emulate hospitality and welcoming with the world around us.
Now, let’s get into the scripture Shannon read earlier. Verse 19 -
Therefore - that is, because of everything we just talked about. In light of what we have received in Christ, the grace to cover all our sins without any further action - WHO? My friends, - that’s you and me, holy partners in a heavenly calling - since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus— some translations use the word boldness instead of confidence. We can also read this as a statement of FREEDOM.
Who’s house can you go into that you know you can enter into boldly? Who’s house that, if you ring the doorbell instead of walking right in freely, they are going to look at you like you have 3 heads? Who’s house do you go to that you have confidence as to where the glasses are kept and where their silverware drawer is? This is the kind of confidence we can have when we walk into God’s sanctuary.
I can have the confidence to enter into and be familiar with God’s presence.
The audience of Hebrews didn’t imagine a time like today, with fancy church buildings with beautiful carpets and comfortable chairs. Similar to when the Israelites wandered through the desert for 40 years, the spirit of God was with them both day and night. That boldness or confidence to enter into his sanctuary is an invitation into that communion with the triune God, to be familiar with his presence.
And, let’s see what verse 20 says -
20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh),
The curtain that separated everyone from God’s presence in the temple that only the high priest could go into once a year, that curtain was now the body of Christ. Matthew 27:51 tells us that when Jesus died, that curtain of separation was torn in two, thereby completely eliminating any remaining barrier between God and us. And that barrier was removed by God through the sacrifice of Jesus — verse 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, - that is, Jesus is the great high priest over us, his body.
Now we are going to get into our part -verse 22 let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. We have a responsibility to enter into God’s presence, to approach with authentic hearts that are in full faith. No pretenses. No facades. Fully believing in the certainty God gives, cleansed and made pure by God.
God welcomes us into himself, but our responsibility is to receive that gift of hospitality. We must allow ourselves to be welcomed in, to be cared for by Him, and to fully trust him who has proved himself faithful.
Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.
Just as we saw from Genesis 1, God welcomed us into his perfection, regardless of whether he knew we were going to mess it up. When we failed, he didn’t. He gave us another extension of hospitality with Abram. When the Israelites failed, he redeemed again, once and for all with Jesus. And these are just the macro-highlights! If you and I were to sit and compare notes of all the ways God has been faithful to us, we’d likely be here for weeks! This is why we can hold fast to the hope we claim to have, even in a season that may feel less than hopeful.
And now comes the doing.
And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989), Heb 10:24–25.
That “good works” statement and “gathering together” “all the more.”But this is the beauty of the Gospel. Everything that we’ve spent the last 15 or so minutes talking on, this central part of who we are, when Jesus has transformed us we can’t help but to fully embrace verses 24 & 25!
The urging to act on our faith is out of our God-given identity, not obligation.
If we choose to receive Jesus, then we do what he asks. That is, we lay down our wants, maybe even our needs, in order that he may be made alive in us, making Christ the center of our being.
Jesus was the most welcoming. Some might argue that Jesus caused division by how welcoming he was! He welcomed in the adulterous woman when the crowds were ready to stone her. He received hospitality from sinners and tax collectors. One of his financial supporters was a woman who previously was plagued with 7 demons. He associated with Pharisees too, like Nicodemus and He brought in rough people into his inner circle of 12, like a zealot, a tax collector, fishermen, and a future traitor. He even welcomed into Paradise the thief who hung on the cross next to him.
So, how can we be image-bearers of God? How can we live like Jesus, engaging in welcoming and being hospitable to everyone we meet?
Jesus was the master question asker. He wasn’t afraid to make people feel uncomfortable.
He asks the Samaritan woman for a drink, a banned conversation from the start.
He challenges the Pharisees, when he forgives the paralytic, why they are thinking such things in their hearts against him. Then he physically heals the man too.
Again, we see him challenge the Pharisees about if it’s lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil when they criticized his healing.
He asks the man at the pool of Bethesda if he wants to be made well.
He asked the crowds who touched him when he knew quite well it was the woman unclean by the issue of blood.
We tend to avert from deep questions and stick to small talk. We like to keep things surfacey and lacking depth. We hope the other person will respond cordially and move on.
But what if we carried out a revolt against the mundane small talk? What if we started engaging in questions of depth, challenge, accountability, empathy, presence and love?
Shortly after my dad passed away, I went through Griefshare. One point that really stuck with me is that when grief is at its hardest points, that’s when most of us want to talk about what we are experiencing the most. That’s when we want someone to ask us about our lost loved one, or other losses we are grieving.
When I was going through the difficult points in our marriage, it would have rocked my world to have had someone to see past the exterior, the forced smile, the perfect performance. It may have started my healing journey sooner.
I challenge us today to be good question-askers.
I see that the role of a reconciler can go two ways.
First, if there is a rift between you and someone else, as a reconciler, you have a responsibility to do everything you can to mend that gap. Matthew 5:23 says,
“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to them; then come and offer your gift.” NIV
There might be someone that comes to mind today that you have been resistant to going and making things right with. This is your prompting. Today is that day to go and reconcile.
Now, that said, there are sometimes when you have done everything you can in your power to make things right with others, but the other person chooses against reconciliation. If so, you are released.
A few words of disclaimer: Just because you make things right doesn’t mean you have to allow that person back into your life in the same way. You may need to work with them or be around them in some capacity, but forgiveness does not mean you must allow them to continue to hurt you. In addition, if you are in an abusive situation, the burden is not on you atone for your abuser. If you have questions on this, please reach out.
The second way that we are reconcilers are to be a people of reconciliation.
Since, then, we know what it is to fear the Lord, we try to persuade others. What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your conscience. 14 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. 15 And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again.
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us.
The New International Version (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), 2 Co 5:11–21.
Henri Nouwen says this, “You’re sent into this world to be a people of reconciliation. You are sent to heal, to break down the walls between you and your neighbors, locally, nationally, and globally.”
Be a reconciler - both in restoring relationships with others that might be broken and on behalf of all peoples of the world.
Be an inviter
We read in the New Testament about thousands of people showing up, whether that was when Jesus was giving his famous Sermon on the Mount, or when he needed to feed the 5,000, or in Acts when thousands were coming to be followers of the Way.
How do we think all those people showed up? Did they RSVP to the event on their Facebook page? Did they see Jesus’ tweet about where he was going to be?
Craig will be speaking more on this next week, so I don’t want to take away from him. But I will say this… We can be invitational even with the people we see week to week here in this sanctuary. Take a look around the room.
Go ahead. Look around. I’ll wait.
Who do you see that you aren’t sure when you last had a conversation with them?
How can you invite that into a conversation today? Before we will be invitational with our neighbors, our friends, our family, we get to practice being invitational right here, in our conversations, every week.
Be an inviter.
As we go into open worship, I’d like us to consider the completion of the quote I read earlier:
“For those of us in Christ, we have been grafted into the same rescue mission. According to 2 Corinthians 5:18, God has given us “the ministry of reconciliation,” proclaiming the good news that He’s made a way for our sins to be forgiven, for traitors to sit at His table again. He invites us into the welcoming mission that He has proclaimed since the beginning of time.”
The Simplest Way to Change the World - Dustin Willis & Brandon Clements p. 41
It’s possible for us to be a part of that welcoming mission, not because of our own power. It is only through the grace of God inside the core of our being that overflows us and compels us to bring others into the journey with us.
Let’s spend some time reflecting on the message God gives us in Hebrews 10 and these prompts up here in light of the generous hospitality God himself has extended to us. The microphones are available if God prompts you to share.
Who do I need to get to know better?
Who do I need to reconcile with?
Who do I need to invite?
