You know that I’ve been a little cynical at times over the pace of technology and the emphasis we put on having instantaneous communication access: cell phones, pagers, Blackberries, laptops, etc. My Microsoft friends tell me I need to be more open in this regard, so I am always on the lookout for positive signs. A few weeks ago I thought I had found something…then the government of Finland had to ruin it. The headline that caught my eye said,

“Finland Halts Answers to Prayers.”

That was a little alarming. But apparently the Finnish government shut down a service where you could use your cell phone to call in your prayer request, and for $1.52 you would receive a response directly from Jesus as a text message on your phone. $1.52 is not bad!

This morning we jump back into the book of Hebrews, after one week away to talk about marriage. Let me just remind you that this letter to the Hebrews, as far as we know, was written to a small gathering, a house church…and that it appeared at a time when Christians were undergoing some degree of persecution for holding their faith.

Hebrews 3:1-14

If you read between the lines of these first chapters, you might be able to hear what is being said to these Christians who gather together, what they are perhaps being told by people around them:

“Sure, Jesus was quite a guy. But don’t go too crazy over him. There have been lots of prophets, many great leaders all through history. Maybe Jesus was one. Maybe. But remember, he was a man. Don’t go too overboard.”

In our day, we hear it all the time. Anyone who wants to call themselves spiritual will generally acknowledge that Jesus was a great teacher, a godly person. Some will even say that he was a great leader, or that he was one of the greatest spiritual leaders. But most will also say,

“Just remember he was a man. Don’t go too overboard.”

C.S. Lewis’ famous lines from Mere Christianity speak to this:

“Let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about Jesus being a great moral teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

From the beginning of the letter, the writer of Hebrews talks about exactly why his readers should go overboard on Jesus. Actually, I think, he just reminds them why they followed in the first place.

• In chapter 1, he talks about Jesus as greater than any of the prophets.
• Later, that Jesus was also greater even than angels. He claimed that Jesus was in fact “the exact imprint of God’s very being.”
• And then here, he makes the case that Jesus was far greater even than Moses.

Now that is a bigger statement than we might think. If you were from a Jewish background, Moses was more than some pages out of history. Moses was the one God had used to free Israel from slavery. Moses was the one who regularly was in God’s physical presence. Moses was the one God gave the Ten Commandments, the Law, to…in fact, traditions had built up to the point where Moses and the Law of God were virtually inseparable. Moses was the Law.

So when the writer of Hebrews says that the great Moses was (merely) a faithful servant of God, but that Jesus was God’s very Son, he is making a huge claim. And he gives him these names.

Nowhere else but here in the New Testament is Jesus called an apostle…but if you consider that the word “apostle” means “sent one,” it takes on different meaning. Jesus was sent to us. And when the writer calls Jesus a “high priest,” he has in mind the atonement of God, part of the priestly function of bringing people back into God’s presence.

The writer of the Hebrews says, remember:

“No matter what other people might be telling you. There has never been anyone like Jesus. Your heart once leapt up and caused you to go overboard.”

Do you remember that? Do you remember when you first encountered Jesus Christ? When you were overwhelmed at a glimpse of his love for you? Do you remember the first time you confessed him as Lord and Savior? Perhaps you promised you would follow in thick and in thin, in hard times, in illness, in prosperity? Remember! Hold fast to that confession!

In the middle of chapter 3 comes this Old Testament quotation that Kimberlee read earlier. Why does the writer insert it? Actually the quote comes out of Psalm 95, but the words and phrases connect to a couple stories in the book of Numbers. The one I want to tell you is in Numbers chapters 13 & 14.

Some of you will remember the story. After escaping from Egypt, the people of Israel have slowly made their way through the desert towards Canaan. God had promised them a land, and they are finally poised at edge of that Promised Land. At God’s instruction, Moses sends 12 spies into the land. They return, and ten give a fearful, depressing report about the strength of the people, and the impossibility of conquering the land. They advise Israel to turn aside.

Only two, Caleb and Joshua, disagree, not because they evaluate their enemies differently…but because they remember what God has already done, and believe that God will continue to lead them.

The people, however, despair. They complain about Moses and Aaron, and even say,

“We wish we would have died in Egypt!”

Or (second choice),

“We wish we had died in the desert. Instead, you have insisted that we come here to die by the sword.”

They even think about stoning Moses to get rid of him.

Think about how ironic this picture is. If you could look behind the Israelites gathered there, if you could look behind them in time you would see them in horrible slavery in Egypt, and then you would see their salvation come to them. God rescues them from the Egyptians, brings them out, counts them as a people, His people. Behind them are the parted Red Sea, amazing miracles, water when they were thirsty, manna when they were hungry, the Ten Commandments given at Sinai, God communicating in a pillar of fire. Salvation is behind them! God saved them.

And now they are poised at the brink of the land God has set aside for them, looking into it…they are so close they can taste it. But they quit looking back. They forget the redemption God has provided in the past. And as they quit remembering all that God has done, they can’t see the promise at their very doorstep. They are afraid. Their hearts harden, they can no longer look to the future with trust. It is a huge crossroads.

Why does the writer of Hebrews bring this story up? It is because he is afraid…that these Christians are in the same place. They are at a crossroads as well. What will they do?

1. Look behind, remember how they met God in the first place, how he provided for them in the most amazing event of history in Jesus Christ…and thus look ahead to the promises of God as firm?
2. Will they believe God’s promises as firm enough to base their life on, that God will be with them, that the kingdom is breaking in?
3. Or will they cave in and blend into their culture and look like everyone else?

I remember a couple of years ago going hiking with a friend up by Snoqualmie Pass, to a place called Red Mountain. “Mountain” might be pushing it a bit. Red Mountain is…well, it’s higher than Queen Anne…but lower than Rainier! In fact, it’s closer to Queen Anne. But it’s a pretty good climb, about 4,000 feet.

I had been up it once years and years ago, and I remembered it as having a pretty spectacular view. After you cross a meadow you start up the mountain, and eventually the trail peters out and you scramble up as best you can. It was one of those places where every time you thought you were near the top…there was another incline to scramble up, and another and another. It was discouraging.

At lunchtime we sat down, and looked below. We’d come a long way, and the view down below was nice, looking across the valley. It’s always fun to see how far you’ve come just from putting one foot in front of the other. But we still weren’t at the top, and we’d been disappointed enough times that we thought maybe we didn’t have time to go all the way up.

Crossroads. Do we go back down and pat ourselves on the back for the nice view we had of the valley? Or try more fruitless scrambling? I was ready to come down. Fortunately my partner said,

“Oh, let’s go a little higher. We’ve come all this way.”

It’s a good thing we did. The top really was just one more hill away, less than five minutes! And when we arrived, then you looked out the opposite direction and it took your breath away. You stood at the top of a sheer dropoff that fell hundreds of feet. The Cascades stretched out in all directions; there was a little alpine lake to be seen. It was stunning. We almost missed it.

I wonder if any of you are at a crossroads? Are you at that brink in any way, looking into the Land of Promise, into the future…with some fear and trepidation? Maybe you see the challenges in front of you. A health problem, the loss of someone you love, uncertainty…I wonder if this writer’s picture would speak to you this morning…reminding you that God has been faithful in the past, and can be counted on to do so again in the future? Don’t harden your heart, the writer says. Remember what God has done in the past. Don’t get a hard heart.

I don’t know about you, but I usually think of having a hard heart as being mean, cruel, untouched by human brokenness, selfish, greedy. Maybe true. But what the writer to the Hebrews says is that a hard heart occurs when it is forgetful. When it does not look to God’s presence in the future in the light of the past. Remember…God is faithful. He can be trusted again. Now.

The word is to remember. But we so easily forget! And so the writer says,

Exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today.”

This word “exhort…” can mean a lot of things, as the bulletin cover helps us see. “Encourage, urge, appeal.” Literally, the word parakalew means “call alongside,” or “call near.” The very word is a word of community, of being together in faith. And it is this that can keep our heart from getting hard. We need to remind each other. We need to tell each other the stories that remind us…of what God has done. Help us see what God is doing. And help us trust that God will act in the future.

This weekend was the Session Retreat for the elders and pastoral staff. On Friday night, we met in groups of 4-5 for dinner somewhere. The intention of the time was really just to be together, to let people get to know one another. But me being me, I had to give each of the groups a couple of questions to talk about. One of the questions was simply,

“Where have you seen God at work most recently?”

Now, I will confess that when I showed up for my group, I’d had a long week, with some hard moments, and I was tired and quite frankly I wasn’t sure how I would answer the question…and I had thought it up!

But the five of us began to go around the table…talking about places where we had seen God. Little places. Big places. Someone talked about an interaction with their children that had touched them. Someone else shared about God walking through a long, difficult health issue, beginning now to look back and see things differently. Some hadn’t heard my story of being called to ministry here, and they asked me some questions about that. And you know what?

My heart started to beat a little faster. And I remembered several places along that journey where God had very specifically dealt with Anne and me in a powerful way. How we had hit a period of confusion, and God spoke both to us and through people around us to encourage us. And around the table it went. And suddenly I thought…here it is. Exhortation! Calling alongside, encouraging, telling the story, reminding each other of God’s role in the past and encouraging us to trust for the future.

And then my heart opened up even more. And I started to remember the stories of the last few weeks. I remembered the story of Helmi McCormick, our dear friend who went home to be with the Lord a couple of weeks ago at age 95. Helmi had been in pretty severe physical pain and discomfort every day and night for many years. But on what turned out to be her last day, she marveled with a Bethany friend over the phone about how good she felt that day, better than she could remember. She went to be with God that very night.

I remembered the story of a friend who had been distant from God for several years, and was drawn back to faith literally at the birth of a child, describing it as God’s Holy Spirit just landing on him in a powerful way that he’d nearly forgotten.

I remembered being up on Whidbey Island a couple of weeks ago watching the sunset over the Olympics and the Sound, and being overwhelmed by such beauty and feeling God so near.

The more we talked, the more I heard, the softer my heart became, the more I remembered, the more I was reminded….

It’s one way we serve one another in the body of Christ. We help one another avoid the hard-heartedness that says, “God is far off,” by telling the story, by reminding one another:

• Christ has come,
• He is present and active in the Holy Spirit, and
• He can be trusted for the future.

It is our assignment as we try to be faithful followers as we stand together at these crossroads, peering into the future:

Exhort one another, every day, as long as it is called today.