Lindsey Blair and Bobby Gilles recap and discuss Pastor Bobby's sermon from Hebrews 2:10-13.
Lindsey Blair and Bobby Gilles recap and discuss Pastor Bobby's sermon from Hebrews 2:10-13.
Bobby: Welcome to the Midweek Checkup. My name is Bobby Gilles and I’m joined by Lindsey Blair. This past Sunday Pastor Me continued our series “Matchless” The Wonder Of God’s Word.
Lindsey: Pastor Him taught from Hebrews Two, verses Ten through Thirteen. He taught that Jesus is like us, he is for us, and he stands with us. If you want to feel this is your bones, then stand with someone else. And for anyone who missed the sermon or needs help remembering, let’s do the weekly recap:
Bobby: We began by noting that we are all looking for solidarity from a hero, like a big sibling. Not just someone who says, “I welcome you” but someone who says, “I stand with you. I’m in your corner no matter what gets in your way.”
Lindsey: Early Christians often felt shame because it was customary to worship all the gods, including the hometown gods wherever you lived or traveled. If any bad thing happened in a community, and that community knew of a person or family who hadn’t respected the local gods, then the whole community said, “It’s their fault.”
The preacher of Hebrews gives them hope, and in doing so, gives us hope by using Old Testament passages to let us overhear conversations between the members of the Trinity.
Bobby: Prosopological exegesis!
Lindsey: Yes. And verse eleven says Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters. The hero who saves us became like us and experienced this broken world as one of us. Not only that, he stands with us, praising the Father and encouraging us to sing along. And by quoting Psalm Twenty-Two, which begins “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” he lets us know that he understands when you suffer a loss so deeply that you don’t know how you can make it another day.
Bobby: Jesus knows the depths and heights of life, and he teaches us to trust our Father as he stands with us. Not only that, he says, “Here am I, and the children God has given me.” A family patriarch in the first century would often appoint his eldest son to care for his minor siblings and their inheritance until they became adults. The father expected his firstborn to cherish and train the others to be like him so the father could be proud of all his kids.
Lindsey: Jesus is like us, he is for us, and he stands with us. Our older brother is beaming as he presents us to the Father. He stands beside us in the assembly, saying, “I’m with them. I did what you asked, and you’re going to be so pleased. I’m bringing them with me to our family feast.”
Bobby: Imagine what we could do if we embraced our big brother’s solidarity with us. And imagine if our words and deeds told our neighbors, especially those who suffer, who are marginalized, who are ashamed, that we are like them, we are for them, and we stand with them.
Lindsey: The poet Amanda Gorman says, “Just like a skill or any art,
We cannot possess hope without practicing it.” Practice the hope we have in Christ by standing with those who need you. They could be someone in our church family who is having a hard time, a lonely coworker, or a neighbor raising kids alone.
Bobby: If you don’t know anyone, look to the voiceless, the poor, the outcasts. That’s what your big brother did.
Lindsey: This coming Sunday, we’ll continue our series called Matchless: The Wonder Of God’s Word, looking at verses fourteen through eighteen of Hebrews two. And you and I will be back in Bible Fellowship. Are you ready for that?
Bobby: Am I ever. We’ll be diving into Second Thessalonians, or as Larry the Cucumber from Veggie Tales would say, Second Thessalupians.
Lindsey: Join us, and bring a friend.