Hebrews
The Final Word
Coming To God
March 19, 2023 • Drake Osborn • Hebrews 12:18–29
Hebrews 12:18-29 // All throughout Hebrews, we have seen two ways to come to God. In this passage, the two ways are represented by Sinai (the shakable way) and Zion (the unshakable way). What are the markers of trying to come to God by way of Sinai, and why is the way of Zion so much better?
Discipline
March 12, 2023 • Drake Osborn
Hebrews 12:3-17 // God’s great comfort to us—the evidence that he is for us and working in us to make sure we make it to the end and achieve our prize of life with him—is his discipline. We can endure and even rejoice in his discipline because it teaches us to trust him as Father, it shapes us to share in his holiness, and it prepares us to make it to the end together.
Fragility, Fortitude, and Focus
March 5, 2023 • Drake Osborn • Hebrews 12:1–2
Hebrews 12:1-2 // Life is a race—but not just any race—it's an agonizing struggle. In order to make it to the end to see God, we need endurance, but our problem is our fragility, our natural inclination to blame-shift, heap-on, and quick-fix. If we are going to run well, we must fix our eyes on the ultimate goal of life: Jesus Christ who has gone before.
What Is Faith?
February 12, 2023 • Hebrews 11:1–6
Hebrews 1:1-6 // What is faith? The writer to the Hebrews gives the church a two-old response, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” (Heb. 11:1) Faith is forward and future, it gives substance to our hope. Faith is why Christian hope is more than wishful thinking on a cosmic scale. Faith is also holistic and demonstrative. Faith pulls events of the witnessed (testified) past through to the unseen events that belong to God’s promised future. Faith in this way is living in this moment between God’s faithful past, and his promised future.
Endurance
February 5, 2023 • Drake Osborn • Hebrews 10:26–39
Hebrews 10:26-39 // The Christian life is a marathon, not a sprint, and we are in need of endurance. This text shows us three necessary steps for endurance in Christ to the end: 1) know the stakes; 2) recall the race; 3) trust the righteous one.
Confidence as God's Family
January 29, 2023 • Buck Rogers • Hebrews 10:19–25
Hebrews 10:19-25 // In Christ, we have both access to God directly, and a great Advocate to help us in our time of need. Knowing this, we can be confident to draw near to God by faith, hold fast our hope in the gospel, and stir one another up towards love and good works.
Remembering
January 22, 2023 • Drake Osborn • Hebrews 10:1–18
Hebrews 10:1-18 // Far too many of us, far too often, live in constant remembrance of our sins. As we approach God's presence, we can live with a greater remembrance: the perfectly efficacious work of Jesus Christ, wherein God "remembers" our sins no more.
Preparing For Judgement
January 15, 2023 • Drake Osborn • Hebrews 9:23–28
Hebrews 9:23-28 // In the face of the certainty of our death and the judgement to come, we can eagerly await the return of Jesus. Why? Because in his death he has already judged your sin once for all—when he returns it won't be to condemn us, but to save us totally.
The Cost Of Your Inheritance
January 8, 2023 • Drake Osborn • Hebrews 9:15–22
Hebrews 9:15-22 // Throughout the book of Hebrews, the author has attached superlative after superlative to Christ and his work; a wave of blessings that come from Jesus can best be described as "a promised eternal inheritance." In this text, we learn that Jesus gave up everything, spilling his divine blood, in order to secure our inheritance—and that is exactly how he planned it. ** Due to a technical issue, audio is not available of this sermon. Please see the sermon manuscript. **
Christ, the Heart of Worship
January 1, 2023 • Dave Becker • Hebrews 9:1–14
Hebrews 9:1-14 // God has always shown us how he is to be worshipped and provided us with the means to worship him. In the Old Covenant, that meant giving his people clean hands to enter into his presence. But now in the new and better Covenant, we are given clean hearts in Christ, and can come to worship God freely and truly.
Shadow and Substance
November 20, 2022 • Drake Osborn • Hebrews 8
Hebrews 8:1-13 // Only through Jesus, and through the superiority of his new covenant, can we move from the shadow of God’s blessing to the substance of it. Jesus came to bring us into a whole new relationship with God, infinitely better than the old, where the blessing of the presence of God goes from black and white to color.
The Perfect Priest
November 13, 2022 • Drake Osborn • Hebrews 7
Hebrews 7:1-28 // There are all sorts of priests we turn to deal with the weight of our sin—like blame, penance, or apathy—but only Jesus Christ is the perfect priest of a different tribe, who due to his eternal intercession can deal with our sin fully and finally.
A Priest Forever
October 23, 2022 • Dave Becker • Hebrews 5:1–10
Hebrews 5:1-10 // We have an essentially universal desire for the ministry of a high priest - to be represented faithfully before God, and therefore to be known by God. Within that desire we can recognize that we desire a high priest who is like us; one who understands our life and situation because he has similar experience. At the same time, one who is not like us; one who has been clearly called and set apart by God for the specific work of offering gifts and sacrifices for sin. Jesus uniquely and perfectly fulfills the qualifications required in any high priest, and the desire we have for a high priest. The path to his appointment as high priest lay not along the way of lineage, but along the way of suffering. Although a Son, he learned obedience and perfectly completed that obedience in his suffering and death on the cross. Through his death he became the source of eternal salvation and was appointed by God “a priest forever.” Jesus Christ is our forever-priest who has secured for us a forever-salvation.