The Pittsburgh Pirates opened
their spring training exhibition season this past week. Besides of thinking of warm weather, nights
at PNC, and wishing the wild card game would be a three game series instead of one
game, the other thing coming will be the movie Field of Dreams. It usually
is shown on TV a couple of days before the regular season begins, and it is one
movie I can watch over and over again. The story (familiar to many of you I am sure) is about an Iowa corn
farmer who has a dream and hears voices to turn his low productive corn field
into a baseball field with lights and everything. The voice he hears several times tells him “if you build it he will come.” The farmer is the only one who hears this
voice, and he struggles to find out what this message means. What we find out in the movie is in his
younger days the farmer was estranged from his birth father, had some harsh
words with him and eventually never saw him again. He spent the remainder of his life with the
guilt and shame he felt because of this. The book of Hebrews was written to early Christians who had come from
the Jewish faith, but in their current condition wondered where was God as they
were going through tough times. The
lessons the preacher of Hebrews gave to them are just as valuable for us today.
It is almost inevitable that
people who live in the modern world of technological marvels, hearing and
seeing events from around the world as they happen, and fast changing gadgets which
seem to go out of style in 6 – 8 months may feel lost when reading Hebrews. Hebrews describes things which are old,
strange, culturally foreign and we may wonder what does all this mean to us
today? There are at least two things we
will see this Sunday which troubled those who read this letter when it was
written to them. The first issue is
guilt. Guilt centers around what we have
done or not done, the seriousness of our failures, and how does one become free
from this guilt. The second issue is shame, and how we look at ourselves in light of our
guilt. Shame relates to our conscience,
our sense of answerability for our motives and actions as we stand before
others and our Creator and give an account of ourselves. We begin to determine if we are capable of
being in the presence of someone who we may believe knows too much about us,
knows us too well, and because of the inconsistencies of our life we feel
better not being in the presence of those who know us too well. We might ask these questions: “Will
this person still love me even though they know everything about me? Will God continue to love me?”
The series Full Disclosure continues as we look as Jesus as our
Sacrifice. The following are some things
for you to think about as you prepare for worship this Sunday.
- What was cleansed under the old covenant (Hebrews 9:13)?
- What was cleansed under the new covenant (Hebrew 9:14), and what is significant about the words “how much more.”
- What did Jesus make possible for those who believe by the “purifying of our conscience” (9:14)?
- In what ways was Jesus an unblemished sacrifice ( see Isaiah 53:9, II Corinthians 5:21)?
- Contrast some of the differences of the work of the priests and the finality of the sacrifice of Jesus (Hebrews 10:12-14)?
- What are the blessings of the new covenant (Hebrews 10:15-18) as compared to the shortcomings of the old covenant (Hebrews 10:1-4)?
