Speaker: Dustin Scott

Passage: Hebrews 3:7-14

SAVED FOR TRANSFORMATION

You guys are getting quiet, which must mean it’s time to study the Scriptures. You know, I am working to be a recovering Broncos fan right now because they were so bad for so long that right now that they’re doing well, I’m trying to convince myself to care again. 

This drought season in football for the Broncos inspired me to do a whole pivot to the sport of hockey and become an avid Avalanche fan, which is really a much safer bet in the sports world. But enough about sports. 

We’re living in an incredibly exciting time in the life of the Church. Now, I’m not talking about the world. How many of us are history nerds in this room? You just love history? So, whenever someone says, It’s worse than it’s ever been before, you’re like, Nope, the world’s always been a giant ball of fire. Since the fall, it’s had a couple good moments. It does these ebbs and flows, but it’s mostly a giant ball of fire. 

I’m not talking about the world. It is an exciting time to be a part of what God is doing within his people, the Church. You see, God is restoring His original intent, His eternal, unchanging intent, that the priesthood of Christ would reign within His people, that we wouldn’t be a people who are defined by someone else’s relationship with God. We would be a people who experience His voice and are transformed together as His body. 

The Scriptures say in John 1 that Jesus, the eternal Word, the eternal Son of the Father, the second person of the Trinity, is light, and His light gives life to every human person, that every human person’s beginning comes from Jesus, the Word. 

That’s why Paul will say of the resurrection and the crucifixion, that just as all men, all humanity, fell into sin and into death through the sin of Adam, so has all of humanity through faith been restored through the person of Jesus because He is the Alpha, He is the Omega, He is the beginning, and He is the end. 

And His eternal intent would be that His people are a priesthood who live from His voice and live from His presence, not from someone else’s experience in the life of the Church that was forgotten for many ages. 

And there were lots of good things about Church history. I’m not a person who loves to slam Church history or tradition. In the fourth century, there was a particular Emperor by the name of Constantine, who became a believer in Christianity. Went from being the persecuted faith of Jesus to being the state religion of the Roman Empire. And that was a beautiful thing, in many ways, the power that that decision had was able to bring the Gospel throughout the entire world. 

But here’s the problem: the priesthood of Christ was forgotten. People would go to church, they would hear a priest or a monk or a nun speak about God. They would say to that priest or monk or nun, Hey, you go experience God. You go encounter God. You go and pray for our region, and when you come back, tell us what He said. 

And faith became a spectator sport instead of a priesthood. And the Reformation didn’t fix that. We have Lutherans and Calvinists, all these various movements that are named after someone else’s experience of God. Hey, I’m a follower of Luther’s experience of Christ. Hey, I’m a follower of Calvin’s experience of Christ. 

And in our time and in our day, there is tumult within the Church because that system of faith is breaking down because God never intended it. He never intended that someone else would have a relationship with Christ for us. He died and rose again so that we could become a transformed people. 

And there’s voices within our culture that raise up celebrity Christians and influencers, and that’s a screaming for the past, a Christianity that was a spectator sport. There are those who say, Let’s bring Christianity to where it was one hundred or two hundred years ago. That’s a cry for a spectator sport. 

God is interested in transforming every single one of us through His voice, through His presence. There is no other way. That is what He lived, died, and rose again for, that’s the life of faith. That’s the transformation of the Church, where Christ becomes all in all. Why? Because He’s living through every single one of us. We’re entering into the Book of Hebrews, and we’re going to explore the priesthood of Christ together. 

And I don’t know how many of you are New Year’s resolution people. I’m not, so you know I’m going to make you do it again. Would you stand with me for the reading of the Scriptures? That did not make my New Year’s resolution. 

We’ll be starting in Hebrews 3:7-14. It says, “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, as on the day of testing in the wilderness, where your ancestors put me to the test, though they had seen my works for forty years. Therefore I was angry with that generation, and I said, “They always go astray in their hearts, and they have not known my ways.” As in my anger I swore, “They will not enter my rest.”’ Take care, brothers and sisters, that none of you have an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partners of Christ, if only we hold our first confidence firm to the end.” 

Let’s pray. Lord, the realization from this passage is that today, Your voice is speaking to us. So, Lord, would You give us ears to hear what You’re saying? Would You restore us to our ultimate intent, that we would be a people who are transformed by conversation with Your voice, that we are a people who are transformed together? 

That, as the Church is the family of God, this would be a place where every member matters, where every member’s experience of You is integral, that You would become all in all within us, so that the world could see a Gospel that doesn’t only save from sin, but that transforms and restores all things. 

So Lord, be with us as we study Your Word. Show us what You would have us hear. As always, if there’s anything I say that isn’t from You, allow Your voice to reign supreme and let the things I say be forgotten. May You become all in all, within the Church, and all in all within our world. We ask this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

WHY MUST WE BE TRANSFORMED?

This morning, we’re setting the stage for where we’re heading. We’re doing a mini series on the Book of Hebrews that’s going to center on chapter 10, and we’re going to talk about all kinds of exciting, nerdy stuff– at least it’s exciting for me.

We’re going to talk about the image of God. We’re going to talk about the problem of evil. We’re going to talk about the Levitical priesthood of the Old Covenant, and its function and its purpose. We’re going to talk about Christology– how Jesus, this divine man– restored us to God’s original intent. 

But the central message of our series is going to be a very practical one that’s already near and dear to our church family’s heart, and that’s a conversational relationship with His voice and presence changes everything. It’s all about hearing His voice. 

And this series was prompted by a set of questions. They all were all slightly different, they were all from incredible people within this church family, friends of mine, and all of them asked in slightly differing ways: Hey, if the work of Christ, if the death and resurrection of Jesus paid it all for my sins, then why are we spending so much time talking about transformation? Isn’t that a works-based Gospel? Isn’t it impossible to add anything to the finished work of Jesus? 

That was the question that prompted our series, and it didn’t come from nowhere. How many were with us for our study of the Book of Titus? It was a bit of a slog, wasn’t it? Paul was addressing a lot of behavior. Hey, don’t lie. Hey, don’t cheat. Hey, serve one another. Hey, don’t talk back against your manager or your master. Paul was dealing greatly with behavior. 

And as modern Christians, it’s easy to hear those instructions and go, Isn’t that just a long list of do’s and don’ts? Isn’t that just a bunch of rules? I thought the Gospel was about grace, not works. 

So, as we study the Book of Hebrews, we’re going to be looking at the why– which is the finished work of Christ– that stands behind the what– that is our daily life of being transformed by Him. Why does the finished work of Christ necessitate our life of transformation? 

At the beginning of the Letter to the Hebrews, we learn in the very first verse that God has always desired to speak and have conversational relationship with His people, that we were created to reflect His image by living from His voice. 

In verse 1, it says, “Long ago, God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways, by the prophets.” But we know the story. Disaster came, didn’t it? Humanity listened to other voices other than God’s. 

This takes me back to Genesis 3, where God is rebuking Adam, and He says, Because you listened to the voice of your wife instead of Me, cursed is the ground because of you. We decided to live from a different voice, the voice of the enemy, the voice of one another, instead of living from Him. 

And sin separated us from our conversational relationship with God under the Levitical system, God’s voice and presence was only known in partial and fragmentary ways, and even when it was heard, it was heard through intermediaries like priests and the later prophets. 

And the function of the ceremonial Law was to stress one thing: our sin had separated us from His voice and from His presence. But the intention of God never changed. He always desired to have conversational relationship with us. 

And what does the Scripture say about God? It is impossible that He should lie, and He does not change. So, that’s when Jesus arrives. And in verses 2 and 3, it says, “In these last days, he has spoken to us by a son who is the exact imprint of God’s very being.” 

The Letter to the Hebrews was written to emphasize that Jesus was infinitely superior than the Levitical system. Why? Because the Levitical system told us, Hey, you’re separated from God. The priesthood of Jesus says, Hey, you’re reconciled to Him. 

The finished work of Jesus is what enables us to approach the Father and be transformed by conversational relationship with His voice and presence, we are saved to live a transformed life before Him. 

That’s why, in Hebrews 3, it says, “Today, if you hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts.” And in chapter 4, “Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in our time of need.” 

Hebrews is going to tell us, Hey, Grace has a trajectory. And Paul told us that in the Letter to Titus, he reminded us that grace saves us from something, but grace also saves us for something. He says in chapter 2, “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce sin and worldly passions, so that in the present age we might live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly.” 

I had a Greek professor named Gregory Lehner say, Hey, good theology exists in the prepositions. We are saved from our sin. We are saved for transformation. And the problem is a doctrine of grace. 

And I think our time in the church is dominated by this false doctrine of grace, a doctrine of grace that neglects the sin we were saved from or the transformation we’re saved for, isn’t actually a Biblical doctrine. 

It’s just half the story, right? How many of you have ever told a half-truth because you’re afraid to tell the whole truth? I won’t make you raise your hand. What do we know about half-truths? They’re not true. 

The author of Hebrews is going to emphasize that in this loaded, grammatical way. If any of you ever decide to study Greek, the Book of Hebrews is like the final boss in a video game. It has the hardest and most complex Greek in the New Testament. 

And in this loaded phrase, he says, “For by a single offering, Jesus has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” Do you see the tension there? He’s perfected it. He’s finished it. His work is complete. Just like He said on the cross, “It is finished.” Tetelestai. 

Yet at the same time, what else is salvation? It’s us being made holy. In the Greek, that’s a big fat present participle, which means that this is an ongoing, continuous process in our life. Salvation is the finished work of Jesus that restores our relationship with the Father, but salvation is also our ongoing, transformative life as we hear His voice and we respond to it. 

Those of you who listened well in theology class, maybe you went to Bible college, maybe you went to a Christian or a Catholic high school, would say, Dustin, aren’t you mixing up categories? Isn’t justification our salvation? We’re justified before God by Jesus’s finished work. And isn’t sanctification that thing we do after we’re saved? 

I like to jeer a little bit, it’s like the unnecessary extra credit we do when our homework is already finished. No, the Scriptures resist our compartmentalized theologies. In Hebrews 10, it says we’re sanctified through the finished work of Jesus. And in James, it says that we’re justified by our ongoing changed lifestyle of works.

You see, the Bible doesn’t play in categories, it plays in truth. And the truth is, God saved us so that we could live a transformed life, not live in a box of systematic theology. The Book of Hebrews is going to continue to define this trajectory of grace. 

LIVING IN RESISTANCE TO THE VOICE OF GOD

But for now, let’s establish a little background context. Who on earth wrote the Book of Hebrews? Well, I hate to tell you, there’s no name in this book. There’s been a couple theories. There’s some early church traditions that speculate maybe Paul or Luke wrote the Book of Hebrews. 

Martin Luther had a theory, maybe Apollos of Alexandria, this young Jewish preacher we learn about in the Book of Acts, maybe he wrote Hebrews. I like to settle for the answer of Origin, the church father, when he says, Hey, if we want to know who wrote the Book of Hebrews, we’re going to have to ask God because He’s the only one who knows. 

The audience is easier to intuit, our ancestors in the Church gave us a title to kind of help us with this, the Letter to the Hebrews. This is written to Jewish followers of Jesus, who had a high degree of familiarity in the Levitical Law. 

And we see that in verse 1 of chapter 1, “Long ago, God spoke to our ancestors.” Who’s that? The ancient Israelites in various ways by the prophets. Now, this is the important part: what was their problem? Why was this letter written in the first place? We can’t assume their motive, but we can know their problem. 

It says, as we began today, “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.” And then later in verse 12, “Take care, brothers and sisters, that none of you may have an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.” 

What we can exposit from the Book of Hebrews is that they were living in resistance to the voice of God. They weren’t listening to Him. They were resisting His voice. And what was that lifestyle doing? It was hardening their hearts towards Jesus. 

The Book of Hebrews is a scary book because it shows us the subtlety of hard-heartedness. In the Book of Revelation, Jesus was rebuking churches who were compromised in overt sin. They were worshiping the Roman emperor. They were sleeping with temple prostitutes. They were engaged in gross immorality. 

But in the Letter to the Hebrews, Jesus is addressing very well-behaved Jewish believers who weren’t tempted to dive into crazy sin. They were tempted to go back to a Levitical system, a religion that had rituals that were familiar, that had the comfort of the Scriptures, but it didn’t have the voice of Jesus. 

This means that a person can have all the external markers of being religious, all while refusing, resisting, or neglecting the voice of God in their daily life. 

And Hebrews 10 warns against this haunting predicament, saying since the Law has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the true form of these realities, it can never by the same sacrifices that are continually offered year after year. Make perfect those who approach. 

Can I highlight a phrase? Make perfect those who approach. God is not in the business of ignoring sin through external religious practices. God is in the business of restoring sinners through a conversational relationship with His voice. 

The author of Hebrews writes of Jesus, the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow, and it is able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 

You see, salvation doesn’t narrowly save us from the consequences of sin. Salvation isn’t even intended to give us a good religious life. Salvation is a lifestyle in a relationship where God saves us from our sins so that we can be transformed by Him and become more like Jesus each and every day. 

Where our evil thoughts are put to death, where our evil intentions are put to death, where our selfishness becomes selflessness, where our bitterness becomes love, where our resentment becomes forgiveness, where our addictions become holy, living so that Christ can be all in all. That’s salvation, and it’s only found by hearing the voice of God and responding to Him. 

Now, there’s many reasons or motives for why we might say, Hey, why do I have to live a transformed life? The first one is fear of rejection. We’re afraid my sin is too big. God doesn’t want to see me. He doesn’t want to be with me. 

Well, guess what? He already sees you, and the eternal Son died for the sin of the entire world throughout all history. So, I don’t think your sin is bigger than His forgiveness. And how is your God complex going to be healed unless you go to Him, as Hebrews says, and receive His mercy and His grace when you need it? How will your view of God ever heal unless you experience His love for yourself? 

Some of us are resistant to His voice. We don’t want to talk to Him because we’re like, Man, I like my bad attitude. It makes me feel good when people are mean to me, and I get to get back. It feels awesome. And we’re afraid God’s going to assess that and say, No more. 

And lastly– this takes us to the most dangerous place of all– a posture of outright refusing to obey Him. Now, I don’t believe a person can lose their salvation in the sense of, Oh my gosh, I had my keys. I lost them. I can’t get to work. 

Now, salvation isn’t like that, but I do think a posture of resistance to His voice begins to change our heart, and as our heart becomes hard, we eventually turn away from Him, which is why living from His voice is so necessary. 

The Book of Hebrews only gives us two choices: to live as He lived in the words of 1 John, by approaching Him and living in relationship with Him, and hearing Him and inviting His strength, His correction, and His transformative grace. Because the other option is this: we clutch onto our own will. We turn away from His voice, and eventually we perish with our old humanity. There are only two ways forward. 

LIVING A TRANSFORMED LIFE

So, in the coming weeks, our study of Hebrews is going to look at many exciting and nerdy truths of Scripture. But for now, I want to invite us, according to Psalms 95 in Hebrews 3, it is an inarguable fact, God’s voice is speaking to us today. So, are we giving Him intentional space throughout our week to hear Him through studying of His Scriptures and through hearing His voice in prayer? 

I understand that it’s hard. My wife and I have a young son and a daughter who’s a toddler, and whether the day begins at 4:30, or 5:30, or 3:30, or 6:30, depending on how our kids are just geared that day, Kelly and I will try to switch spots so that she can go have a few minutes to pray, and then I can. 

And I got to be honest with you, on Saturday this week, I went down to the downstairs office to pray, and my infant son, Ezra, loves the robot vacuum, and decided to engage in a great battle against it. And so, above my head, I’m trying to focus on the Lord and pray, and I hear my son yelling, my wife trying to pull him off the robot vacuum, the robot vacuum mounting in incredible resistance against my son. And the only transformation I felt in that moment was irritation. 

But I have to believe that God’s voice is faithful, and whether we feel it or not, He changes us in those moments. So, are we giving Him space so we can hear His voice next? If we’re unwilling to do so, that can look like saying, Hey, I’m too busy. I don’t have time for prayer. 

Well, you’re just saying His voice isn’t important to you. And you know what the dangerous thing about that is, if He’s speaking to us today, and the danger is that our hearts may become hard if we aren’t hearing His voice, our hearts are going to inevitably become hardened against Him. The only thing that changes us, the only thing that saves us, the only thing that transforms us, is Him. He’s the source of the power. He’s the source of the grace. 

Next, has God already spoken to a present attitude, habit, or decision in our life, and are we responding to His voice, or are we refusing to obey it? To just show you that we’re all in this process together, a couple weeks ago, I did something unkind to my wife. I felt that instant heart check to apologize, and as I apologized, I made a remark. I said, Hey, I didn’t mean to hurt you. 

And I walked away from that interaction, and I heard the Lord’s voice say, The problem is you did, and He’s like, You need to go back and not just apologize for what you did, but why you did it. And you know, my instant response was, No, I don’t want to do that. 

I was participating in our church’s week of fasting at the time, and the Lord’s response was, Well, you’re going to fast until you obey Me. So, after four more days of fasting, I listened to His voice, and I went and apologized, and of course, my wife forgave me just as quickly as she did before. 

We’re all in this process together. And as the Book of James says, we all make many mistakes, but the problem is, if we say no to His voice again and again and again and again and again and again, our heart becomes hardened against Jesus. 

So, what is the overarching trajectory of our life right now? Are we living from His voice? Are we turning away from it? I would invite you, even today, to go to Him in prayer and ask that question: Search me and know me, Lord. 

Am I being defined by Your voice, or is there something within me which is resistant? Because if there is, I need You to correct it. I need You to speak to it because You’re my only source of salvation. I’m excited for Hebrews, but it’s going to be a punch in the face, for sure. It is for me. Can I pray for you guys?

Lord, the truth of the morning is that it’s today and You’re speaking. So, would You give us ears to hear Your voice? That statement is a bit ironic, because unless we’ve been through a major accident, we all have ears, which means we can hear You. 

So, Lord, will You deal with the places where we’ve refused to hear You, where habits in our life, where allegiances in our life, where bad intentions in our life have blotted Your voice out? And would You restore us back to the path of Your salvation? 

Lord, thank You that You, Creator God, desire to have living, daily relationship with us, mere mortal human beings. I think of when the psalmist says, Who am I, that You would pay attention to me? I’m just a human being, and yet You desire not just to have relationship with me, but transform me so that every part of me can become better in You. 

Thank You for Your kindness, thank You for Your grace. I pray that You would bless every person in this room with Your patience, with Your compassion, with Your strength, and would we become a people who live from Your voice and become defined by You in every way, so that You become all in all. We ask this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.