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Hebrews 4- ‘Allowing the Knife to Cut’
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The Bible tells us that Jesus is the pre-existent and eternal ‘Word of God’, correct? It also tells us that this eternal, pre-existent ‘Word of God’ became flesh and dwelt among us, correct? Then, tell me: Did the Word of God ever struggle to obey the Word of God? Did the Incarnate Word of God ever have to wrestle ‘in prayer and petition, temptation and doubt’ with the Heavenly Word of God? The answer is ‘Yes!’ Our reading from Mark 14 makes this quite clear: There, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus struggled. The incarnate Word of God wrestled with, and struggled to obey, the Word of God!
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Hebrews: ‘The Journey of Becoming’
Sermon 3- ‘Allowing the Knife to Cut’
Passages: Hebrews 4: 12- 5:10
Mark 14:32-42
Let me start off this morning’s message with a ‘brain teaser’.
• The Bible tells us that Jesus is the pre-existent and eternal ‘Word of God’, correct?
• It also tells us that this eternal, pre-existent ‘Word of God’ became flesh and dwelt among us, correct?
• Then, tell me: Did the Word of God ever struggle to obey the Word of God? Did the Incarnate Word of God ever have to wrestle ‘in prayer and petition, temptation and doubt’ with the Heavenly Word of God?
• The answer is ‘Yes!’ Our reading from Mark 14 makes this quite clear: There, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus struggled. The incarnate Word of God wrestled with, and struggled to obey, the Word of God!
• Look at Mark 14:35-36! Going a little farther, he fell to the ground and prayed that if possible the hour might pass from him. 36 "Abba, Father," he said, "everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will."
• There was a tension…a struggle for Jesus, the Incarnate Word of God, to submit and obey the Heavenly Word of God.
Now this same tension between the Incarnate Word of God and the Heavenly Word of God is embedded in today’s passage from Hebrews 4 and 5.
You see, the big question raised in the Book of Hebrews is whether or not there is anyone on earth who truly believes…truly trusts…truly submits to the God who speaks from heaven? Does any human being have faith enough to actually give themselves over completely to the Heavenly Word of God, trusting that God really does see the big picture and knows what is best for us?
Of course, trusting in the Heavenly Word of God is not all that easy. Not only is God invisible, but listen again to the way His word works upon human beings:
(Heb 4:12-13) “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. Nothing in all creation is hidden from God's sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.”
In other words, our heavenly Father is a surgeon…and with His Word, He has a tendency to cut us…cut us deeply! Who wants to be opened up like that…unless, of course, you know that there’s something dreadfully wrong inside of you that you desperately know needs to be cut out? Otherwise, God’s surgery is a rarely desired thing and the scalpel of His Heavenly Word seems a bit too drastic for us!
When the Word of God became a man in Jesus Christ, for the most part there was a beautiful cooperation between He and the Heavenly Word of God…between the Son and His Heavenly Father. For the most part, Jesus submitted quite willingly to the Father’s Word; He was obedient to the Heavenly commands. That is, at least until the cross began to loom largely in the distance. As the sharp knife of God’s Word began to bear down upon Jesus, you might say that some degree of human panic set in! Nevertheless, when the end finally did come, Jesus no longer resisted, saying, “Father, not my will by Yours be done.”
Now, why is all this important to us today? Because the fact of the matter is that, when our backs are against the wall, it can be very hard to trust the hand of the Heavenly Father as He wields His scalpel! Think about it: All throughout the Old Testament, time after time, the Israelites proved that no one had enough faith to bear the surgery of God. No one trusted the Heavenly Word of God! Not even Moses and Joshua maintained perfect faith in the Heavenly Word of God.
And that’s why the Word of God came to earth, incarnated as a man! He came to us in order to prove that the Heavenly Word of God was trustworthy. For 33 years of life on this planet, Jesus, the Incarnate Word of God, was forced to utterly entrust Himself to the Heavenly Word of God! From the day He entered human history, the Incarnate Word, Jesus, had to take the Heavenly Word of God totally at face value…by faith! Born in a feeding trough; raised as a refugee in the land of Egypt until the death King Herod; his young adulthood spent in obscurity in a small Galilean town plying his father's trade as a carpenter. Then, throughout his 3 years of ministry, he was falsely accused of being a glutton, a madman, a drunkard, a deceiver, a man possessed by the devil, a friend of prostitutes, tax collectors and sinners. He was excommunicated from the synagogue and several times threatened with stoning. The folk of his home town even tried to throw him over a cliff.
But the real test for Jesus came in the last hours of his life—from the moment he was betrayed and deserted by his friends, to the agony of flogging and being nailed publicly to a wooden cross. It’s no wonder why Jesus is described in the Bible as "a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering" (Isaiah 53:3).
And here’s the point-- The staggering truth of the Bible is that God deliberately made the choice to do exactly what no other human being could do—namely, to live (and die) by faith. The Incarnate Word of God deliberately came to earth and put Himself in a place where He had to implicitly trust the Heavenly Word of God …trust in the midst of a fallen and confusing world!
As Dorothy Sayers wrote in her book, Christian Letters to a Post-Christian World:
“For whatever reason God chose to make people as they are - limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death - he had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with his creation, he has kept his own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from us that he has not exacted from himself. He has himself gone through the whole human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When he was man, he played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it all worthwhile.”
The Incarnate Word of God pressed on through temptation and doubt, pain and suffering, and came out the other side as living proof that the Heavenly Word of God is totally trustworthy. In effect, the Incarnate Word of God took the Heavenly Word of God on faith, and at the end of the day was able to say, “Yes, the Living and Active Word of God may have penetrated me, examining my heart and thoughts, dividing between soul and spirit. Although it may have cut me deeply, in the end, I wasn’t disappointed.”
Hebrews 5:7-10 expresses this curious dynamic of how the Incarnate Word submitted Himself to the Heavenly Word. “During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.”
As Jesus, the Incarnate Word of God, reverently submitted to the Heavenly Word of God, allowing the knife of the Heavenly Word to cut Him open and put the deepest parts of his heart under scrutiny, the Incarnate Word of God was being made perfect—That means that the Incarnate Word was being brought into perfect alignment with the Heavenly Word. The two were becoming one in Christ’s flesh.
Furthermore, the text tells us that, as a result of Christ’s submission to the knife of God’s Word, He “…became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him.” Now, the word salvation here is equivalent to the Hebrew word ‘shalom’, meaning wholeness, security and peace. This ‘shalom’, however, is only found in alignment with the Heavenly Word of God, and this alignment is only possible through perfect obedience and submission to that Heavenly Word.
This, of course, was something that no one in Israel…not even the High Priests, nor Moses…were capable of obtaining or pursuing. No one was able to perfectly obey; perfectly live in submission to the Word of God. That is, until Jesus came. Hence, as the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ, aligned Himself with the Heavenly Word of His Father, Jesus was able to live life on this earth in the perfection of ‘shalom’! Despite the decay and destruction around Him, nothing could touch Him, as long as He stayed in constant union with the Heavenly Word of His Father.
Now, it is this very ‘shalom’ that is offered to anyone who comes to Jesus by faith…in obedience and submission. You see, this is what Hebrews 5:9 means when it says that Jesus has now become “the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him.” The pattern is important to recognise: In the same way that Jesus submitted to and obeyed His Heavenly Father’s Word and it brought Him into ‘shalom’, so will this ‘shalom’ of God fall upon those who submit and obey the Word of Jesus.
Of course, now the question is, “Will we obey and submit to Jesus’ word? Will we allow it to cut us deeply? Will we accept its penetrating power to examine our hearts and minds in order to bring us into ‘shalom’?” Two critical words are involved here…words that our modern, Western ears don’t like to hear: obey and submit. We don’t like these words because we think that, though them, we will somehow be diminished…that our needs will no longer be met…that our personality will be erased. “Obey? Submit? Are you kidding?” , we ask.
But remember 2 things, my friends:
1. Submission and obedience are critical ways to discovering our true identity! The Bible says that Jesus was ‘perfected’ as he submitted Himself to the cross and obeyed His Father’s command. He didn’t lose Himself, bit discovered His true personhood in alignment with His Father. In the same way shall we also be perfected! We shall discover our true selves as the unhealthy, false things that we hold onto are cut away under the scalpel of God’s Word and command.
2. Submission and obedience are not a matter of effort on our part. They actually mean the exact opposite—submission and obedience mean that we must rest. Indeed, submission and obedience bring ‘shalom’. As the Incarnate Word trusted in the Heavenly Word, He learned to give in to it, rest in it, relaxing in the knowledge that, in the long run, the Father’s Word was true. Yes, it took Him to the cross. Yes, it cut Him deeply. But Jesus trusted that His Father knew what was best. That’s why He submitted to it and was “obedient even unto death, even death on a cross.” In fact, the only way that Jesus was able to willingly accept its shame and agony was through a deep confidence that the Heavenly Word of God was going to uphold the Incarnate Word of God through the whole experience.
We are called to be submissive and obedient; that is, we are called to trust in God, rest in His word and allow it to cut us open. It is the only way to be perfected and become His channels of God’s grace to the world.
So, back to our brain teaser: Did the Incarnate Word of God ever struggle to submit and obey the Heavenly Word of God? Yes! But…1) it perfected Him, and 2) it brought Him into ‘shalom’.
The same is true for us. Let’s pray.
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