Never Will I Leave You (Part 2)

Nathan Stam
Children/Communications Pastor

The following is adapted from a sermon by Dennis Johnson on Hebrews 13:5-14 that deals with change and I thought it would be appropriate for us to consider as we transition from Phil (who was with us for 28 years) to a new Lead Pastor. 

In this installment we'll take a deeper look at one of the wrong ways to respond to change based on Hebrews. You can read Part 1 here.

The first incorrect way to respond to change is to retreat from change by clinging to the past. This response is addressed by the author of Hebrews in 13:9-10:

It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by ceremonial foods, which are of no value to those who eat them. We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat. 

These ceremonial foods are the sacrificed animals, particularly the animals sacrificed as the "peace offering" that the Israelites would eat in the temple courtyard after the best parts were consumed by fire. It's a reference to what Hebrews has already addressed: "Don't go back into the shadows of Old Testament worship." Don't go back to the old sacrifices, which could never cleanse the conscience and wash away the guilt of sin.

In Chapters 3 and 4 of Hebrews the author encourages the congregation not to be like the wilderness generation of the Israelites who had forgotten the hardships of slavery and instead pined away after the "good old days" of Egypt when they had enough food to eat.

In the same way we tend to be wistful and remember the "good old days", even when they weren't particularly good. Our memories get hazy and we tend to "airbrush away the sorrows." The truth is the only good days lie in the future as verse 14 tells us: "for here we do not have an enduring city, but we are seeking the one to come."

When the Hebrews received this sermon, it wouldn't be long before Jerusalem would be destroyed and the temple desecrated and ruined by the Roman armies.

"So don't look back to the past, and don't simply cling to its traditions: there is no security from the threatening changes of the present to be found back there!" 

(In the next installment we'll take a deeper look at the second wrong way to respond to change based on Hebrews.)