It's Time to Get Real 4

[HKHaugan]

I remember seeing a TV show years ago about a plane flying through clouds that seemed never-ending only to emerge from them and the earth below being totally unfamiliar territory. What had been highways and cities was now only forest and jungle. The whole environment in the sky and on the ground had completely changed. Where were they? Where were they going? Was there a landing field somewhere? With limited fuel and no response to repeated requests for location what were they to do? The TV show offered no resolution to the problem and left the plane flying to let you draw your own conclusions.

I see that show as a reminder. Mankind is like the passengers and crew on that plane finding themselves drifting through a cloud bank only to emerge into a restless searching, the crew frantic to find a place
to rest and land safely in a somewhere somehow someplace knowing they will have to start over. Sound familiar? Genesis 3 on? Look at the recent TV show ‘Lost.’ Same scenario. How many books, movies, poems, paintings, plays and activities are simply attempts to deal with the basic reality of ‘lost’ people looking to land? The musical ‘West Side Story’ is a prime example. It has a song touching that deep restless nerve in the heart pleading for resolution, ‘Somewhere.’ “There’s a place for us, a time and place for us, time together with time to share, time to love time to care, somewhere….’

Returning to that lost plane, if we think of the restless heart in plane language the airport is the Kingdom of
God, the High Priest Jesus mans the control tower and He communicates His Word through the Holy Spirit. He finds them on His radar, gives them their location, directs their flight path and brings them into His terminal. But that isn’t all. He gives them further instructions and support as they go into the villages, towns, cities, homes, jobs and relationships in which they find themselves. This is not only plane language it is also plain language. Jesus gives us our destination, which is rest in Him. He gives us the support
system, the Word in the context of His Body of believers and the guarantee of His presence as High Priest directing traffic through the power of the Holy Spirit.

To look at Hebrews in a nutshell we see chapters 1-3 establish the centrality of Jesus as Savior and Lord in the present moment (Today). Then Chapter 4 lifts up three spiritual realities functioning through Jesus in every next moment, the rest of God (vs.4-11), the Word of God (vs.12-13) and the Priesthood
of God (vs.14-16).

Chapter 4 acts like a hinge between chs.1-3 and chs.5-13 enabling us to see Jesus’ main function as our
ever-present personal and interpersonal High Priest.

It is in Chapters 5-10 that we get into specifics of the priesthood of Jesus.The last three chapters are reminders. Chapter 11 reminds us of the continuity of faith. Chapter 12 reminds us of the discipline of faith and Chapter 13 reminds us of the responsibility of faith.

Hebrews is unique in its contribution to the larger picture of Jesus’ purpose amongst us. Its call to us is to see its specific place in Scripture and as Scripture it beckons us to open it with an attitude of trust leading to open obedience. We need to trust its author, His intention and His authority. John Stott puts it this way, “Obedience is a precondition of understanding. We need to repent of the haughty way in which we sometimes stand in judgment upon Scripture and must learn to sit humbly under its judgment instead. If we come to Scripture with our minds made up, expecting to hear from it only an echo of our own thoughts and never the thunderclap of God's, then indeed he will not speak to us and we shall only be confirmed in our own prejudices. We must allow the Word of God to confront us, to disturb our security, to undermine our complacency and to overthrow our patterns of thought and behaviour (John Stott--From "Culture and the Bible" Downers Grove: IVP, 1981, p. 33.)”