Father, we say with all creation, and we say, Lord, with all of heaven and all the heavenly hosts, that there is none like You. Lord, there is none like You.

Lord, we just want to pause in the moment and just worship You. And just thank You that You have revealed Yourself to us. That our satisfaction and joy is in You alone, Lord. Lord, we pray this morning You would show more of Yourself to us, that You would speak to us through Your Word. We just love You. We bless Your name. And it’s in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Well, good morning. I hope you had a great Christmas and a happy New Year. I know we’ve got a lot of folks still traveling around for Christmas, trying to squeeze out. It’ll last a bit of vacation time before it’s back to the regular grind. But it’s good to be with you this morning. I just want to look at a couple of verses with you in Hebrews chapter 3. If you’d turn there with me. Hebrews chapter 3. Just verses 1 and 2. Hebrews 3, 1 and 2.

And the Hebrew writer says, Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, who is faithful to Him who appointed Him.

I’m glad to be done with the Christmas season because I’m tired of driving all over the place in a minivan with family. Not that I love my family, but you can only be in a minivan with anybody for so long. But one of the things when we travel, and I don’t know why I never address it, but the glass on the inside is always so filthy. And it would take me five seconds to just clean it so I can see, but I don’t do it. And it gets like dusk and the sun hits it and all I can see is the filthiness. And I just squint and drive on through it and I keep doing it and I keep doing it. And we do that a lot of times in the Christian life. We don’t deal with and address the things that are slowing us down, the things that are going to keep us from really thriving as Christians. And that’s what the Hebrew writer is really talking to his audience about, about thriving in the Christian life and running the race and keeping your eyes clear and your mind clear for pursuit of Jesus. And so there’s no better time to really consider that and clean the eye of the mind and the eye of faith than at the beginning of a new year, a new year to live for Christ. I want to do this morning what the Hebrew writer is encouraging his audience to do. And it’s just those two simple words, consider Jesus, consider Jesus. He says, therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling, consider Jesus, consider Jesus. He says, therefore, and whenever you see a therefore in the Bible, you always have to ask, what’s it there for? What’s there? Because previously he gave them a good bit of news. He said, Jesus, God, is your help, not angels’ help. He is for you on your long pilgrimage home. Christ is your help and your salvation. All the things that we think and feel, and you and I do feel and think a lot of weird, bad, wrong, unhelpful stuff or factories of… problems or factories of lies, and we cloud easily our hearts and our minds. All that we think and feel, Jesus is our help. That’s the therefore. And he says, because this is so, brothers, he calls them brothers. Therefore, holy brothers. He can say that to them because they together have this identity in Jesus together. They’re a family because of who Jesus is. They’re set apart. That’s what holy means. They’re set apart as the family of God. He says, brothers and sisters, we share, we participate in together. We have a common way of life. We have a common place in heaven. We have a common calling. We have a common summons. It’s not something that any of us woke up one day and realized that we needed. That’s what a calling is. God called us. He summoned us to heavenly life. And just as it’s so that he called these Hebrew Christians, friends, I want us to know in the year 2021, you and I as brothers and sisters at Providence Fellowship, we have the very same holy calling together that we share. But just as it was back then, for them, it’s no different for us today in that it’s a rigorous calling. It’s a challenging calling to arrive at that great and grand, grand end with Christ. So really, if you think about it, the whole book of Hebrews, even though it’s very long and it’s this very deep argument, he’s really speaking in the plainest terms he can. He just built this argument to encourage these Christians. You guys are Jews. Here’s your Jewish faith. Let me work out for you why Jesus is better and great. That’s basically the whole argument of Hebrews. You don’t need, I don’t need fancy rhetoric. When we’re in a brittle moment, I just need you to speak the truth. I don’t need you to impress me with how well you can say the truth. I don’t need you to use special esoteric language. Just say what I need to hear and say it effectively for me in this dire moment. And that’s what he does. And you know, he can really accomplish that for us in two words. Just two words.

He says, consider Jesus.

Consider Jesus. Consider Jesus.

I think if we could make a habit of just doing that one thing, all of life would be different. All of 2021 would be different. If you and I could regularly consider Jesus. It’s not that you’re not going to be stuck between a rock and a hard place many times over in 2021. You will. It’s not that the devil won’t be the devil in 2021. He will. It’s not that maybe you’ll have trials that squeeze your wallet a little tighter than you’d like your wallet to be squeezed or your health or your faith tried in some way. Temptation galore awaits you in 2021. But here’s what I’m sure of, that if you and I would consider Jesus, we would look much more like runners running hard, getting ready to apprehend a glorious, victorious end, rather than someone down on all fours just trying to make it a couple more paces.

Consider. What does it mean to consider? It means to think carefully. It means to think deeply. It means to observe so as you truly learn and you’re changed by something.

Our minds get clouded. Very clouded. And you know what the chief thing is that clouds your mind and your heart and the eye of faith so often like my dirty windshield? It’s fear. You and I choose to willingly fantasize about all the things that don’t have the power to undo our Christian life, but we let them live in our hearts and minds as if they could. We consider, oh, how weak I am for the Christian life. How little I have to give God. We think about how great and strong the enemy is over top of us. We think about just how long and narrow the right path is. We consider sometimes our own sufferings. Oh, how terrible my suffering. Oh, how unbearable. And when we let those things weigh on our minds like that, it will bring a Christian running like lightning to a stop. That’s the power of discouragement. That’s the power of despair. In Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Christian and his companion, they’re locked in the giant despair’s cage. And the giant despair, constantly beats them and beats them and starves them and they’re on the ground. But you know, the whole time, they don’t have to stay there. Christian realizes at last, I can just walk out of here. So we let despair do that to us all the time.

So I want us to do that this morning. I want us to turn the eye of the mind, the eye of the heart, the very eye of faith upon Jesus. And I think if we do that, if we consider Jesus, our joy, and our strength for Christian living, it will overflow into oceans. Oceans. Here’s the first thing he says when he challenges them to consider Jesus. He says, consider Jesus because He is the Apostle of your confession. He is the Apostle. This is the only place in all the New Testament where Jesus is referred to as an Apostle. When we say, we hear Apostle, we usually think of Jesus’ first twelve disciples and the disciples later become the Apostles of the church and the infancy and birth stages of the church. But when we talk about Jesus being an Apostle, we mean something slightly different. What is an Apostle? Well, an Apostle, that word chiefly means a messenger. It means an envoy. It’s someone or someones who carry a message. Or they carry a task, a mission given to them by someone else. So you see, Jesus is our Apostle from Heaven sent by the Father. He has a message and He has a project. He has work to do. He is an Apostle to us. And what was this Apostle’s message? Well, He made it clear so many times and Paul says it plainly in Ephesians 2.17. He says, and He came, and He preached peace. That was the Apostle’s message. And we just celebrated that in the Christmas season, didn’t we? His message was a message of peace on behalf of the Father. The Father who is judge would desire to be Father to us. He doesn’t desire to condemn and judge. The Father would have reconciliation with us if we would have it with Him. That’s chiefly, the message Christ brought.

Jesus’ message, His Gospel message, you know it makes sense of what’s broken, what’s wrong with the world more than anyone else, more than any other religion or founder of religion or spiritual guru. Jesus makes sense of everything. Jesus teaches us it’s not a failure of government. What’s wrong with the world is not a failure of social engineering. What’s wrong with, What’s wrong with the world is not a failure of education. What’s wrong with the world is a failure of holiness. That’s what’s wrong with the world. And Jesus and His Father alone have a plan, and Jesus said they had a plan before time even began to deal with that problem. Jesus’ message was a message of mercy and grace. It was good news for everyone, for the outcast, for the too-far-gone-tight. He taught us heaven’s truths. He taught us, remember those beatitudes. He taught us the law of Moses better than the people who thought they even knew what the law of Moses was. He says, you don’t even begin to know what I know about the depths of the truth of God’s law. And Jesus taught us His message that through that we could truly be satisfied and know God. That was His message. But Christ had more than a message. Christ had substance to His life. He didn’t just talk about love. Jesus loved well. He loved sinners, and He loved outcasts, and He was patient with His own erring, goofy disciples. Jesus was selfless in His life and ministry. He drew children to Himself. Everybody pushed children away in that time. Children, you know, with kids, it’s not even those kids around. Jesus drew the children to Himself, and He modeled perfect obedience to the law, and He was righteous in all His life. So you see, Jesus manifested the substance of heaven in His words, and He manifested the substance of heaven in His life. He was like no one else. But that wasn’t all of His mission, to just manifest heaven. The fullness of this apostle’s mission was to die. It was to die the righteous for the unrighteous, that we would have life. Friends, that’s… That’s our confession. That Jesus Christ didn’t just come, but He lived perfect, and He died, and He was raised to new life, and His new life makes Him our sovereign King, our Savior, and our Lord. So you see, the thing about Jesus as apostle is this. He didn’t just pioneer something. I’m going to start this. I’m not going to finish it. No, Jesus pioneered it when He came, but Christ completed the mission when He rose from the dead. So you, in your lowest of low moment in 2021, you know what that means? It means you can consider the faithful apostle. That’s what verse 2 says. He didn’t just say, consider Jesus your apostle. He goes on to say, your apostle and high priest, who was faithful to all that God called Him to do. Faithful, it means trustworthy, dependable. Jesus is your dependable apostle. He pioneered. He pioneered and perfected all that the Father called Him to do and all that you require for a salvation for your life. That’s the Jesus the writer of Hebrews says, you must consider, consider Him.

I want today to be the first of many days that we together as a church, you in your own life, you in family devotion, do that. Consider your faithful apostle, Jesus. He is your salvation.

And I think unfortunately a lot of times, friends, we consider Jesus much like a beautiful painting. Imagine if you could have an artist, commission an artist, and he painted your idyllic place, whatever that is. You know, rolling hills of Ireland. I don’t know, Swiss Alps. And it was such a beautiful representation of where you wanted to go. But you had a ticket in your hand the whole time to go there.

You know, I think sometimes we do that with Jesus. We know it’s true and we appreciate it from a distance. But this kind of considering the Hebrew writer is calling us to do, it’s the consideration of what’s your story. It’s not a picture you’re looking at, it’s a picture you’re in. Because Christ came and Christ put His victorious life in you. So you see, the substance of heaven is not something to observe. The substance of heaven that was pioneered and perfected in Christ, it’s in you. Consider Christ in you, your hope of glory. See, if you consider that, your lowest of lows is not going to hurt any less, but you will have all the more strength, however that low is, to get up out of it for the glory of God, because Christ has overcome. He has overcome it in His life, in His death, in His resurrection. Consider your Apostle. I think if you consider Jesus your faithful Apostle, you would be full, you would be complete, you know, you’d have true contentment.

You wouldn’t want as much, because you would have all your soul could have. You would have peace, you know. Talking Chase this morning, uh-oh, the car is making, uh-oh, the car is making, what if my roof starts to leak? What if the air conditioner goes out? What if this? What if that? You know, when you know you have a great Apostle who keeps your soul and surely keeps your life as well, boy, you live with a certain peace.

You live with a certain power. So consider Jesus your Apostle. But there’s a second thing, as if that wasn’t enough. He says, I want you to consider Jesus, who’s not just your Apostle, He’s also your High Priest. Now, what’s a High Priest? Well, High Priests, or Priests even in the Old Testament, they were those raised up by God, they were of the tribe of Levi, Moses’ brother Aaron being the first of many, who would essentially be mediators between God’s people and God. They kept the temple where God’s presence dwelt, they took care of the sacrifices, the offerings, they oversaw the festivals at the priesthood, the people were supposed to enjoy and observe, they taught the law, they interpreted the law. So they essentially were God’s representative to the people and the people’s advocate to God. That’s what they were. They were a go-between, if you will. So even though the Israelites were God’s people, the closest the people could get to God was the work of the priesthood. The priest in the temple. It’s as close as you could get. And even the priest himself couldn’t get all that close to God. It was only the High Priest who could once a year go into the Holy of Holies to be near God. And that priest, the Scripture tells us, he had to make sacrifice not just for the people’s sin, but for his sin. Perpetual. Perpetual. Perpetual offerings for perpetual sin, which kept the people at a perpetual, permanent distance. Distance from God.

But the Hebrew writer says there’s something better about this faithful High Priest.

This faithful High Priest, he didn’t need to make sacrifice over and over again. This faithful High Priest, he did it, the Hebrew writer says, once for all. Look at Hebrews 7, verse 26.

He says, For it was indeed fitting that we should, have such a High Priest,

holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens. He has no need like those High Priests to offer sacrifices first for his own sins and then for those of the people. Since he did this once for all when he offered up himself.

You see what that means? Every time you’re guilty, and your sin come on you like a crushing burden, and you’re just sure there is nothing to alleviate your conscience. Friends, remember this, that the Lord Jesus Christ, when He spilled His blood, it was a one-time thing, but it was good for all your sin. When you conceive of that shame and that sin too great for God, you have conceived of an imaginary thing. The blood of Christ, Christ covers all your sin. When Satan says, you’ve gone too far this time, the blood of Christ speaks back in louder volumes. I’ve covered that already. It was once, and it was for all. It was once for all. But the second thing about this High Priest Jesus is this. We enjoy a special nearness and closeness to God because of Him. Hebrews 10.19, see what else? It says about Jesus. He says, Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that He opened for us through the curtain, that is through His flesh, since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith. What happened when Jesus died on the cross? It says the veil in the temple was ripped in two. See, Jesus is a High Priest that cannot just represent us to God. Jesus takes us by the hand and He takes us into the inner place where God is. Jesus takes us to the intimate place. Jesus takes us to the place where only children get to go to the Father. That’s what Christ has done. He’s forever, eternally united us with the Father through Himself.

But thirdly, this High Priest is not far off now. This High Priest beckons us to come to Him that we would find mercy and help right now in the present fight. Hebrews 4, verse 14. Since then, we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens. Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. Why? Because we do not have a High Priest who is unrighteous. Unable to sympathize with our weaknesses. But one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.

God is, you know, God. He can’t deal with my problems. I mean, He doesn’t understand what I’m going through. No, He does. You know why? Because we just celebrated Christmas. And you know what Christmas means? It’s that wonderful doctrine of the Incarnation that Jesus, He put on a real flesh. He became a real human. He looked evil right in the eye as a man and He defeated it. He knows the full breadth of what it means to be tempted and tried in a broken world as a broken person, yet He was not a broken person. And that one person who was unwittingly, unbroken, became broken for us broken people so we could be made whole. Jesus understands you and He sympathizes with you. He knows you inside and out. Imagine Jesus at the right hand of the Father looking down from heaven because He’s affected. You ever been affected by something? The worst being those Sarah McLachlan commercials with the dogs. You have to change a channel. But something more serious. You see change. Children overseas who are hungry. You see people who have terminal illnesses. You hear sad things. And your heart’s affected. I’m affected. It bothers. I wish I could do something. A lot of times you can’t. But Jesus, He’s at the right hand of the Father. And imagine in every struggle and trial you have, every down moment, Jesus is affected. He’s affected. He’s looking down at you. And His heart, His heart hurts and He has compassion for you. He wants to help you. He sympathizes with you. You get that? It’s amazing. That the Lord of heaven and earth, He takes time not to just consider your existence but to be affected by it. Because He wants you to have life.

It makes me love this quote. It makes me love this quote. The Bible is one language The Bible is one language to deconstruct our natural vision of who God is. Natural or broken wrong.

The Christian life is the long journey of letting our natural assumption about who God is over many decades fall away and slowly replaced with God’s own insistence on who He is. And that’s so true. It’s so easy to get such a warped, broken view of who God is We often think God is like us. God does not deal with us the way that we would deal with us or the way that we wrongly deal with others. Christ is perfectly compassionate and loving towards you at all times. So what does that mean? I’ve got to constantly consider the high priest because He’s perfectly sympathetic. And when Christ is this master over me and He’s beating His fist and He’s telling me I’m not good enough and He’s saying, how could you do that again? I don’t have enough for you this time. And we imagine God’s love for us. God is this monster hanging over us. We’re not considering Jesus of the Scriptures who is perfectly sympathetic, who is a faithful high priest. He sympathizes with you always.

Come to me, you who are weary, heavy laden, and I will give you rest. For I am meek and lowly. You know, that’s the only place in all the Bible where Jesus describes Himself. He describes Himself emotionally.

Meek and I’m lowly in heart. That’s what Christ wants us to know about Him when we come to Him.

Here’s what that means. It means that you and I do have the hard work of doing, of time and time again coming back to the text. Coming back to the text. Coming back to the text. Who is God? Who is God? Who is God? Who is God? My mind’s going to constantly imagine something else. The world’s going to tell me something else. The devil’s going to tell me something else. No, God, I need You to tell me who You are. And it takes a lot of sermons. It takes a lot of Bible studies. It takes a lot of prayer. It takes a lot of getting up early in the morning and fighting with God and the Scriptures and wrestling with it. So you cannot sit back and just say, God, show Yourself to me. You have to go stand on the mountain and take a look. You’ve got to climb up the mountain. So be willing in a new year to say, Lord, I’m not content to have whatever idea I have of You. I want to have even clearer vision. I want a clear windshield. I want to consider my Apostle who’s faithful to save. I want to consider the High Priest who is faithful to remove my sin and guilt and sympathize with me in all things. How clean is the eye of faith in 2021? Are you really committed to seeing Christ?

You know, God’s got a special word for you a hundred times over in 2021.

You know, that morning that you just chose not to get up and get out of bed and look at the Word, God had a word for you and you missed it.

You know, when it’s time to study the Bible with others and you’re invited and you’re not there, God had a word you missed. When we lay in bed and don’t come to church, no one at Providence, of course, we miss the word that God had for us. God’s got a word for you. God wants to show Himself to you clearly so that you are filled with all joy and in your joy, you are fully like Christ and so glorify the Father.

Prioritize being a word-saturated Christian with clear vision of your Jesus. Consider Jesus. He is your Apostle. He is your High Priest. And He’s faithful to be those things to you. He’s faithful to save you. He’s faithful to keep you. Consider Jesus, the Apostle and High Priest of your confession because Christ Himself is your confession. He lived and He died and He rose to new life. And His new life, friends, is our new life. So my great encouragement to you in 2021 will be a year of unending consideration. And let that consideration be of the person, the God-man, Jesus Christ. Would you pray with me?

Lord, our minds, they wonder and wonder.

And we see this and we see that. And we worry about this and we squander our time on that, God. And we’re so prone to wonder. We’re so prone to doubt and become feeble and afraid. But not because we must, but because we do not fully grasp with faith all that we’ve been given. And so, Lord, I pray that You would war against our doubts. War against, Lord, the enemy in us. War against his tactics. Lord, stir up in us a great desire to work hard to see what’s there. To know what’s there.

To drive ourselves deeper into Christ and the Scriptures. To hold the sword of the Spirit.

Lord, we know that You’ll be faithful to equip us for every good work. You’ll be faithful to equip us for ministry. Your Word says that. You give us all we need. So, Lord, give us all we need. Be our only joy and delight, we pray.

And thank You for Jesus. Thank You for that faithful, that perfect high priest, that perfect apostle who is our very life. We just pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.