Paying Much Closer Attention — Hebrews 5

0:00 We're on Hebrews chapter five and I realize I have science will tell us. I have about thirty to sixty seconds to communicate to you the necessity for your brain to focus on what we're going to cover. If I don't give you adequate reason, your brain will shut me off whether you want it to or not. Some of you want it to, some of you might want to. And we'll talk about that at the end a little bit.

0:26 But your brain has a filtering system and it will decide what he's saying, what Scott Donah is saying right now is not worth it to me. I need to think about the Browns or Thanksgiving dinner, cleaning my house, the laundry I didn't get done. Your mind will take you to what other ever other things that you've prioritized through your thought processes recently. So we'll talk about that a little bit. But we're going to talk about Hebrews five and I'm going to just give you a little bit of of my reasoning here.

1:34 We must pay much closer attention and I'm going to repeat this several times and hopefully it will you remember it like it's been into my mind. We are drifting away from biblical truth in America. We are drifting away. The threat is not to us Judaism. I don't think there's any of you who are having thoughts because of persecution or things not going your way about is that my cellphone?

2:00 I think it was. Can you turn that off? I got an email. I better don't check it. Okay.

2:35 In 1980, the surveys showed roughly about 51% of evangelical Christians. This is not non Christians. These are people who say, I'm an evangelical Christian. Roughly 51% said, we do not believe in absolute truth. In 1994, it was 62%, 1999, 78%, twenty eleven, 91%.

2:57 These are evangelical Christians who say, I do not believe in absolute truth. What do they believe? They believe instead, there is no absolute truth outside of myself. There's nothing outside of myself. What I deem absolute truth applies to me, that is it.

3:12 The Bible is not the absolute authority. It's how I interpret the Bible. I saw a posting on Facebook recently that said, no one's going to hell. Love who you want. Love whoever you want.

3:27 Meaning, homosexual was from a it was a quote from a a homosexual website. No one's going to hell. Love who you want. There's no absolutes. It applies to you.

3:38 So, 91% of evangelical Christians are basically saying there's not an absolute truth out of themselves. So this is the danger that I think applies to us today about and that we'll get into in Hebrews five. Josh McDowell states in that article until a couple of years ago, my most valuable asset was my time. Now, it's my focus. He talks about the internet and the internet dragging youth, the the the bombardment of of information we have from the internet is diluting the truth of the gospel and the truth of the Bible and the authority of the Bible and we're we're pulled in so many different directions.

4:16 We can't focus and he's talking about focus. It's hard to focus. I had a hard time even, I couldn't even print that article from the whatever website. I was on some Christian website. These things kept popping up, you know, reduce your mortgage, secret thing that no Ohio police don't know about car insurance.

4:34 Videos were playing in the background. I couldn't shut them off. I I couldn't even print the article. All this input is coming at us and at our youth constantly. We're bombarded.

5:19 We must play pay much closer attention to what we've heard so that we we do not drift away from it. So now we're going to get into Hebrews five. So turn in your Bibles to Hebrews five and we're going to see what we can glean from it, what we can pay much closer attention to in Hebrews five so that we do not drift away. Okay. I've asked some gentlemen to read it.

6:35 So also Christ did not glorify himself to become high priest. But it was he who said to him, you are my son. Today, I have begotten you. As he also says in another place, you are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek, who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with vehement cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death and was heard because of his godly fear. Though he was a son, yet he learned obedience by the things which he suffered.

7:18 And having been perfected, he became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey him. Called by God as high priest according to the order of Melchizedek, of whom we have much to say and hard to explain since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

8:15 Okay. Thank you. As Christian said last Sunday, the lord blesses the reading of his word. This part of my thinking of of and about Josh McDowell in the beginning came probably about a month ago, I was talking with Scott Doeringer, some other conversation came up about believers falling away. I have a very good friend in high school.

8:37 He sang at my wedding. He might have been in my wedding also and it's a little foggy. But strong believer through my whole high school, we we accepted the lord together, strong believer all the way through high school, on fire for the lord has now completely fallen away. Does not follow the Lord at all to my knowledge. Doesn't go to church.

8:59 Is living with the woman so forth so on. Scott said in that at that at the conference he was at years ago, Josh McDowell said, look to the front of you, look to the back of you, look to the right, look to the left, one of you is going to fall away. Believers fall away and most particularly right now, it's our youth and result of everything that they're being bombarded with. So, we're to look at Hebrews five and I'm going to look at three things. I'm really going to just pick out three verses or three sections of verses to focus on.

10:15 Taken from among men appointed on behalf of men in things pertaining to god. So, in the high priest, most of you are familiar with Leviticus, right? In the Old Testament, priest offered sacrifices. It was a system of approaching god. So, god had appointed men on be, had appointed, taken men, and appointed them on behalf, taken from among men, and appointed on behalf of men and things pertaining to god.

10:43 In other words, without these men, we could not approach god. We could not come directly to god. We had to have men appointed on our behalf and those men in verse five were priests, were the high priest specifically talking about Aaron. And as you look in the Old Testament, I'm not going to go back to Leviticus right now but if you look in the Old Testament, it gets very detailed about high priests about what exactly they have to do. When it, when we, when we talk about the animal sacrifices, we get into the types of animal sacrifices.

11:27 There are five sacrifices, burnt sacrifices. What are the five? Burnt, grain, peace, sin, guilt, talks about the types of animals. They must be spotless. It talks about the process.

11:39 The priest stand with their hand on the animal. Talks about the blood sprinkling it, pouring it. Some parts are burned, some parts are eaten, some parts are washed, some parts are in the camp, some parts are out of the camp. It's very detailed, very specific thing. God said, this is exactly what you must do and what the priest must do in order for man to approach god.

12:01 Not sure what slide is next. Point number one, god is holy. God is holy. That is not specifically in that verse but it applies it. We cannot approach god on our own without in the Old Testament, the priest and now without Christ because god is holy.

12:23 We cannot approach god in our sinful state. Josh, did you put that? Okay. I put that in there as an example of a bride in a in a white dress and it's a simple example that always comes to my mind when talk about the holiness of god. Is a bride in a white dress and the thought of purity and and holiness and the bride all dressed up ready for the the ceremony and if a dog or my dog or in in our case in in your wedding, if a dog would have come up there or in Erica's wedding, well, we did get a little muddy in your wedding but If some something came up and jumped on their dress or kids with dirty hands, you, neither one of my daughters would have wanted kids with grape jelly or coming up and giving them a hug right before they walked down the altar, okay?

13:21 It's a very simple illustration but we cannot approach god. God is holy. We are sinful. We have grape jelly all over us and god is pure and holy. We cannot come and approach god.

13:35 Apart from Christ The attention to detail in the Old Testament really speaks, I think, to the importance of the work. You know, I I I manage people at work. I I work for a home builder. Caleb is one of the people that I manage and if I tell Caleb, go clean up that house. I mean, he'll go clean up the house and but he'll clean it up in in in his sense of priority.

14:12 Maybe not being my sense of priority or or anybody that you deal with. If you just give general, your kids, hey, go clean up your room. Okay? There's a wide variety or range of what you would consider clean, okay? The attention to detail focuses on the on the importance of it.

14:30 So, god gives the priest in the Old Testament all these details. You must do this and do that and your head here and what and slay it and I mean, I can't even really comprehend that. I don't know how many of you have actually been in the presence of an animal being slain. Probably more here than most but by far, I I I yeah, probably everybody here but it's not an easy, simple, clean. I mean, it's just...

14:54 There's nothing easy about it. I had to load up pigs a week ago to take them to the butcher. I didn't even have to butcher them but I couldn't get the pigs in the trailer. I couldn't get them in. We had two of them in.

15:04 I couldn't, we couldn't get the other three in. I'm poking them and prodding them and as tradition would have it, I usually give up. I get mad and I say, this is it. I'm going to shoot them and drag them on. Like, and then it's closed and, you know, they're going to sit overnight dead and they can't eat, you know, that doesn't work.

15:22 And Karen's usually just, well, no, no, they'll go on. Let's just, you know, just wait. Relax. You do this every year. I said, yeah, you're right.

15:31 I do do this every year but this year is worse. It's just worse than last year. So, sure enough we waited and we got them on. And then we got to the butcher and we couldn't get them off. We got two of them off, couldn't get the other three off.

15:46 That time I prevailed and said we're leaving. Leave them in the trailer. We'll take them back tomorrow. And we had to go back and take them off the next morning. But anyway, all that to say butchering animals.

16:00 The attention to detail expresses the importance of work and in the military, they are very detail oriented. Those of you who've been in the military, Sam, I heard you reference it this morning about we were in the bathroom talking about lines and he said, it's the same in the military. Everybody gets in line. In the military, you have to pay attention to detail. This this is Drew in basic training.

16:23 Your tax dollars at work. His closet has never looked like that and it probably will never look like it again but they pay attention to detail to emphasize the importance of it. God gave the detail to the priest to emphasize the importance of holiness. You cannot just walk in and talk to god. You must go through all these things.

16:45 That's his sock drawer. Those are his underwear. These are T shirts and these are socks. In order to roll the t shirts, they made a machine. They called it the machine.

17:00 I don't I don't still really understand it to this day but they had like took stuff out of the barracks, heavy heavy metal containers and laid them down and on a on a hard surface and somebody sat on one of them and they made like a press and they confined it to the exact dimensions and they rolled it. Exactly tight. Perfectly tight. And they had to be they have to be exactly perfect. And they inspect that every single day.

17:26 And why do they do that? Do, you know, I don't think what happens to his socks is critical in the in the big scheme of things but what he's doing now, he's working on F sixteens and if he leaves a wrench in the engine of an F 16, it's going down, right? So, they pay attention to the detail at every level at at basic training because it's very important. That's what Christ, that's what the Old Testament priests were doing in the first part of this chapter. God gave them very specific detail on what to do.

18:12 So, under the point, god is holy. Attention to detail expresses the importance of the work and I want to just side note on elders are appointed by god for our benefit. It's a little bit of a side note that I've felt compelled to talk about this morning a little bit, just a little bit. As as we just as we look at this package as passage, we understand that Christ is now and my next point is Christ is our high priest. That's what we're going to look at.

19:55 That's verse three or four in chapter five. So, the priest were appointed by god. The elders are appointed by god. They make tough decisions and we have to submit to their leadership. We're not always going to agree with it but we're called to submit to it.

20:23 I bring that up just as I said as a sidelight and as a reminder. Really most of this is a reminder. One of the things I struggled with in this whole chapter, I don't think if I if I ask any of you, is there any of you who disagree that Christ is our high priest in the order of Melchizedek or that Christ is superior to the angels or Moses or everything we've talked about so far. It's not something we disagree with. It's a little hard for us to relate to for me because it's he's talking specifically to Jewish Christians concerned with falling back into Judaism.

20:58 So, I'm taking some of these what I see as points in in the scripture and applying them to us. Psalm one hundred ten four, you are a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. That's that's the Old Testament reference there in verse five which leads to our second point. Christ is our high priest. Christ is now our high priest.

21:27 Verse five, so also Christ did not glorify himself as to become a high priest but he who said to him, you are my son. Today, I have begotten you. Just as a passage, just as he says also in another passage, you are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. Christ is is now our high priest. So, what does that mean?

22:00 Just as in the Old Testament, they could not approach god without the priest and without the sacrifice. Now, we cannot approach god without Christ. Without Christ, we cannot come into god's presence. We cannot be saved. Again, this is probably not new news to a lot of you but it is a fact.

22:20 It is the truth. We must come to god through Christ. Apart from Christ, there is no salvation. There isn't. You can make it up but you don't have any basis for it.

22:31 It comes from very clear teaching from the scripture but we don't want to hear that nowadays, do we? Not us particularly particularly but even people in general, Christians in general, we don't want to be told the Bible is the authority. We don't. It's the authority up until it hits us where we don't want to hear it anymore. Isn't it?

22:52 I mean, if there's something I disagree with, I don't want to hear it. I don't want, I don't want, I just, I want to put it out of my head because it's not it doesn't apply to me because I have a reason why it doesn't apply to me. I'm I'm I'm sure. There's, you know, why should I suffer? There's this guy's down the street, 10 times worse than me, doing well, doing well financially, everything's going great, everything's perfect.

23:19 Why is that happening to me? As we read a little further in that verse, It talks about in the days of his flesh, he offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears to the one able to save him From death and he was heard because of his piety, although he was a son, he learned obedience from the things which he suffered and having been made perfect, he became to all those who obey him the source of eternal salvation. Being designated by god as the high priest according to the order of Melchizedek. I'm not going to get in much to Melchizedek because that's covered later in these chapters. Chapter five is introducing this concept that Christ is a superior high priest.

24:07 He is our high priest and we will be talking about that for the next five chapters. The the implications and the details of that. This is just an introduction to Christ being our high priest but the phrase stuck out in my head Hebrews five eight, although he was a son, he learned obedience from the things which he suffered. I thought, what does that mean? He learned obedience from the things which he suffered.

24:34 He already was obedient, right? I mean, he came in the world to be obedient. He said, I think it's in late later in chapter 10, I come to the world to do my father's will. So, what does it mean that he learned obedience from the things which he suffered? I have a quote from FF FF Bruce which was one that Josh books that he gave me that that I can understand.

25:02 He set out from the start on the path of obedience to god right from the start, Christ set out through that and learned by the sufferings which came his way in consequence just what obedience to god involved in practice in the conditions of human life on earth. I thought that was a very good quote. He learned just what it's like to be on Earth and to be a human and to face the trials and temptations. Actually, he was tempted more than we are in the sense that he never submitted, right? We have all sinned.

25:41 He never sinned. He never submitted to that temptation. So, unless you've not sinned here, you don't know fighting the temptation to that degree, right? Because we've never gotten, well maybe occasionally there's something that we strive against and we don't give in and so there's a small victory. But Christ never gave in ever at all.

26:14 So, under Christ as our high priest, we have also Hebrews five nine and having been made perfect, he became to all those who obey, who obey him, the source of eternal salvation. What a great verse. He became to all those who obey him, who obey him, the source of eternal salvation. Christ is the source Apart from him, we can do nothing. Apart from him, there is no salvation.

27:05 All these in reference to two one, Hebrews two one. We must pay much closer attention to these things. So that we do not fall away. We do not drift away. We must practice.

27:24 Hebrews five fourteen, but solid food is for the mature who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. You're young only once but you can stay immature indefinitely. I love that verse. Number 14, but solid food is for the mature who because of practice have their have their senses trained to discern from good and evil. We must practice but how so how do we practice to to to train our senses?

28:07 Really, we practice by one decision after another decision after another decision, right? We we we make a correct decision and then we make another one. Then, we may make two or three wrong decisions but we make another correct decision. We keep practicing and we keep practicing until we're able to discern good from evil. When we're young, we're not as good or trained at discerning good from evil, right?

28:35 I mean, I, hopefully, I'm able to discern more than my children. Sometimes, that's not the case but as a rule, we should be able to through practice. Another quote from FF Bruce, mature believers have built up in the course of their experience a principle or standard of righteousness by which they can pass discriminating judgment on moral issues as they arise. That was, I mean, that was enough, you know, from a vocabulary standpoint for me to to tackle. So, we build up experiences.

29:15 One experience after another after another of practicing righteous decisions and we build up experience that we can when another situation comes up. We have a background, we have some, we have a wealth of information, we have some practice on making the right decision. How do we practice and train our senses by repeatedly making correct decisions and of course, by the Holy Spirit. John fourteen twenty six, he will teach you all things and bring into your remembrance all that I said to you. The Holy Spirit will teach us all things and bring into our remembrance.

30:38 And the Holy Spirit will convict the world concerning sin, righteousness, and judgement. Last time I spoke, I spoke a little bit about the Holy Spirit and afterwards, Dave Bingham, Dave Bingham came up to me and said that was all completely wrong. No, he didn't. He didn't. I was.

31:05 Yes, that's. He came up and said, the Holy Spirit usually convicts me. That's how the Holy Spirit usually works in my life. He brings me under conviction. I thought, later, I thought, that's really true and that he brings us under conviction and if we're not in the word and not in prayer and not in fellowship, we are not going to have that discernment of the Holy Spirit.

31:36 There's another story I've I've forgot that I was going to talk about the holiness of God that pops into my mind every now and then. When Karen was in in I think it was youth group or Sunday school and and Dave was the teacher and she kind of came in nonchalantly and not real. She said she didn't throw it. She kind of set the Bible down but not gently. I kind of tossed the Bible, I'm sure.

32:03 On the table, Dave said, hey, That's the word of god. That's the word. He used to do that a lot more than he does now. He said, hey, what are you doing? Right, Jim?

32:25 But that's just this illustration. That's the word of god. We would do well to teach our kids, myself, and especially about the holiness of god. You know, everything now is about god's our buddy. High five god.

32:39 You know, me and god, we're cool. That's not the Bible. That's not the Old Testament. Talk to Aaron or you know, any of you look at the Old Testament. Look at Leviticus what we talked about.

32:52 Right after all those commandments and everything they're supposed to do and all the details of everything, two of his sons offered a strange fire to the lord, did something that they weren't supposed to do in the process which they weren't and they were wiped out. God wiped them out. They weren't high fiving god. God is holy. Back to the Holy Spirit.

33:14 The Holy Spirit will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness. And he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that is said to you. Your mind will seek the things you think think about. This is the last point and this is what I talked a little bit about in the beginning. Now this is a little bit of the science side of it.

33:47 Okay? But I kind of enjoy this part of it. I've talked about this before. The reticular activating system, you probably remember maybe, maybe not. Maybe you shut me down because your reticular activating system said I wasn't important.

34:03 But there's a part in your brain, a place where your thoughts, internal feelings and outside influences converge. It's considered the main source of motivation. Now, this is science again. This is apart from the Holy Spirit. We know that the Holy Spirit is indwelling us and enabling us to learn about god and teaching us all things.

34:24 We already talked about that but from a practical standpoint, your mind will do things that you may not want it to do because you train it to do that. Like we talked before, we must train ourselves to discern good and evil. Now, your RAS is it's used by goal setting speakers or motivational speakers. When you set goals, you're using your RAS. You set a goal.

34:52 I I first was involved with this when we had a business. We had a business coach and he had to set goals. Set your goals. Everybody set your goals. Make a picture of those goals.

35:03 You want a new VW bug, cut a picture out of a VW bug and post it on the wall. You want, you know, a bigger house, cut a picture out of a bigger house as detailed as you can make it. Find exactly what you want and put it on your goal sheet and put them all there and make those pictures and look at them every day. Why do you do that? Why do you do that?

35:28 Because you're training your mind what is important to you and your mind will work for you when you're not even thinking about it. I mean, sure you guys have have experienced this. Guys, have you know, I have several used cars. I'm always looking for the next used car. You know, the next one is going to be better.

35:46 It's just

35:46 going to be, I know that one's going be better. And so, there's always some kind of car I'm thinking about, usually. So, all of a sudden, if it's a Toyota RAV4 with, you know, all wheel drive and whatever, all of a sudden, I noticed there's a RAV right there. There's a red. There's a there's one.

36:06 I saw five at the mall today. Who's buying all the RAVs? Nobody's buying more RAVs. It's in my brain is is filtering that out for me. Filtering out what I've told it is important.

36:19 That's the whole goal setting things. You're telling your brain, that's important to me. Find me a Rav. Find me a Toyota Rav and it will do it. When you're not even thinking about it.

36:28 You're driving down the street, there goes a car. Woah, look at that one. Woah, you know, it does that for you and it will do that for you as in this setting like I talked about before, there are studies that show that you will, some of us, will make a decision on a speaker or a teacher in class or whatever in thirty to sixty seconds. Your mind will take that sound bit and know just how he started. I can tell already.

36:55 I don't want to listen. Your mind will shut that down and you will you may not even realize it why your thoughts drifted off to something else but it's because you've already programmed your mind to not, to tell that that's not important. So it's a place where your thoughts, internal feelings and outside influences converge in that part of your brain. It's a filter. There's things going on right now that nobody's thinking about.

37:19 The car car driving by is my daughter leaving early. Those things happen all around us and we don't sometimes even notice them because our brain filters it out. The fans are spinning. Has anybody been sitting here thinking, that fan has been spinning this entire time And if that fan doesn't stop spinning, don't know what, we don't think about it. Our brain filters it out.

37:43 That's not important. The light's not important. Maybe there are some things that we think are important they filter. Our brain will do that. And again, I said, this is more on the science side.

37:55 Obviously, from a Christian standpoint, the Holy Spirit is our main teacher and motivator. But my point is simply this, if we're not telling our brain what's important, we're not going to, it's not going to come into our mind. That's why we memorize scripture. That's why we read the word. That's why we pray.

38:13 That's why we do all these things because we're teaching our brain to prioritize what's important. Have you ever noticed if you memorize a verse? That verse will come back. If the week that you memorize that verse or the next couple of weeks, it just pops into your head. Just out of the blue.

38:31 When right when it's needed, that's going be the Holy Spirit obviously but it's also aided by the fact that you memorize the verse. You disciplined yourself and you memorize the verse and you told your mind, memorizing this verse is important to me and it got that message and when the situation came up, popped right, it came right to your consciousness. It came right to the center of motivation. So that's enough for the science side. I say all all these things to say simply, I keep as I said in the beginning, I keep coming back to chapter two verse one.

39:15 For this reason, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard so that we do not drift away from it. We must pay much closer attention. We need to pay closer attention to god's holiness, to Christ as our high priest, and to training our thoughts to be able to discern between good and evil. Let's pray. Heavenly father, we thank you that you are holy, that you provided a way for us to come to you in spite of our sinful condition, that through Christ, our high priest, we can approach you.

39:57 Through his death and sacrifice and the blood that he shed, we can come to you and are seen as forgiven. If we repent and come to you and ask for forgiveness, you will accept us and receive us through the blood of Christ and you don't see us, our sin any longer, you see only Christ and his righteousness. We thank you for that. We thank you that through your holy spirit, you can train our minds to be obedient to you, to focus on righteousness, and you can train us to act righteously in the situations we we face. We pray lord, we would pay much closer attention to these things that we would not drift away.

40:48 In Christ name, amen.