Hebrews: The New Covenant Administration of Christ Max A Forsythe (c) Anno Domini 2002

From the Pulpit at Pilgrim's Rest Presbyterian Church in America

“About this we have much to say, and it is 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 basic principles of the oracles of God.  You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child.  But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. ”

Introduction As is my normal habit, I would like to establish a parallel assumption of our American experience so that the setting for this passage is better understood.

I think that the baby boomers were not only enchanted but also fixed in their minds already, when Mary Martin crooned the ever popular lullaby about “never growing up” in the award winning play of the fifties:  Peter Pan.  The island of lost boys was better named than the parodists knew in the flush of lost innocence and an overweening desire for a paradise that must remain only a tragic phantasmagoria  seated in the popular secular-humanistic theories, which were and are presumed. These ideas were given a more than theoretical existence, and therefore are all the more easily massaged as realistic sublimities of the human mind.

Thus was born the Age of Aquarius, so popularized by the pied pipers of humanism  The Beatles and all their hairy kin!  They and their followers earnestly desired more than anything else to remain: forever young, forever ignorant and thus happily presumed to be: forever innocent.   If their generation has a pretense to use and abuse political power: it is to overturn every serious rule, regulation and requirement that might limit the human panorama of their various and sundry wants and desires.

As a result, every serious study of philosophy, theology and even the difficult predictable hard sciences has suffered from want of scholarship and even being made submissive to the evolutionary mantra which supposedly frees mankind to be everything he or she wants it to be!  “No political boundaries,” King Arthur geographically proclaimed in the pop musical of the sixties: “Camelot.”  And the politico residents of the White House in that era gladly complied in the habits of their day to day living.  If only the communists hadn’t been so stick in the mud about materialism  surely an accommodation of sorts could have been worked out?

But providently the socialist dream turned nightmare collapsed and a resurgent anathema to materialism shifted to the Middle East, wherein the keys to the kingdom of prosperity resided deep down in the bowels of the earth.  Certainly, we be a war with terrorism  but for what spiritual purpose in our day and age?  Now that the great soviet socialist power has collapsed, isn’t it strange how the intellectually elite are so fascinated with the cultic aberrations of Islam.  After all, it really is a similar system to that of the soviet!  The few, the rich and beautiful people can live any way they please, with a self-appointed spiritual police to keep the rabble quiet, poor and at bay.

And what about the constant whining and carping of those whose earnest religious desire is to create a modern republic reminiscent of Plato’s obsessive utopian dream.  No wonder their system imitates the soviet and the muslim cults  because everything revolves around power and deciding who shall prosper and who shall not!  The rest of mankind is and must be nothing more than a toy for every Saddamite pleasure.

Arnold the bold is now the heir apparent to the throne of the left coast precisely because he admonished independent candidate Huffington to get a life, or more precisely to drink a little less caffeine.  He might just as well have told her to just grow up!

Development:  And that is a summary statement that the Church can well afford to advertise widely and boldly to every worldly critic in our day as well as in the time of the Apostles.  In simple language that is just the point of our passage today:  “Grow up and learn the true realities of life as they exist in our Creator’s world and kingdom.”  “Have done with lesser things,” a popular hymn also admonishes us and all of mankind.

As we look out on the American landscape, it is as if every ounce of judicial, governmental, educational, moral and spiritual advance ever attained in the course of becoming civilized was or is about to be swept away in a mantra of feel good about being ignorant, sinful and even downright depraved, whose primary fault is at bottom a refusal to grow up and smell the tulips!

The Apostle in this section of his letter to the Hebrews is leading up to the great doctrines surrounding the priesthood and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.  He has begun his basic arguments and laid the foundations for a proper understanding of the heritage of Christ  but the people of Israel are so ignorant, lazy and down right stupid that he must dress them down a notch before lifting their thoughts on high again.

The issue is this.  Doctrinally, we in the Reformed Churches have always breathed the rare air of proclaiming Jesus Christ as prophet, priest and king.  Kingship we have always appreciated through the line of David.  And yet, like the ancient Jews of His time  do we comprehend the essence of Christ’s claim to being a priest on the order of Melchisedek in any way shape or form?

Before last week, how many of us had ever dug deep enough into scripture to realize that Jesus was entitled to a real claim of priestly power precisely because David conquered and secured the original geography related to the priest-king of Salem?  We are more familiar with the genealogies and races invented by Tolkien and I am certain that the viewers of this winter’s grandest epic will have more knowledge of what is happening in a Tokienesque:  Return of the King, than they do of the difficult but literate documentation here in the book of Hebrews!

Listen to commentator John Brown’s assessment of the work and place of Melchisedek:  He “was a priest under the primitive or patriarchal dispensation, which was not limited like the Jewish economy, but of a universal character.  He was a priest, not of the law, but of the promise.  He offered up sacrifices, not for men as members of a particular family, but as partakers of human nature; not as descendants of Abraham, but descendants of Adam.”

Brown continues:  “The first religious dispensation was of the most liberal kind; and the Apostle Paul plainly teaches us, that the Christian dispensation is but the full expansion or development of the original economy.  The restrictive economy of the law, to which the Aaronical priesthood belonged, ‘was added because of transgressions,’ till the Seed should come in reference to whom the promise was made.”

Brown comments on the people of his time, and the fact that we are all creatures of like mind and habit  means that his descriptive analysis fits our own time as well.  “I am afraid this is a very common habit among hearers of the Gospel in the present age.  They have been accustomed to hear the Gospel from their infancy; they fancy they know and understand it perfectly; and under this impression, if they continue to read the Scriptures or hear the Gospel, it is almost entirely without anything that can be called intellectual effort.  They indolently assent to what their teacher states, but they do so in a way which makes it plain they do not understand it  they are not interested in it.”

Application:  I can well remember the hardly intellectual requirements of college and seminary.  College I found enjoyable because I had read most of the authors quoted by my teachers.  Only the hard labor of earning my tuition kept me from maximizing my grade-point average.  The fact that my average kept improving over the seven years of my undergraduate career was more an indication of the dumbing down process of modern progressivism than for any scholarly inclinations and abilities on my part.  True, had I not argued with my sociology, psychology, philosophy and theological instructors  I might have had a more respected and politically correct grade-point average by half a point or more?

But since, the Aquarius generation and their humanistic leaders meant to lower every possible standard so as to include more of their own truly ignorant kind  every type of standard that had once informed the professions was thrown away.

Now, I have spoken in generalities today of course.  And most of you are here today because you want something more than baby food and milk.  Thank you for that interest!  Thanks are also in order for all of you who have already developed the necessary knowledge and habits for teaching.  What we have here in Christ Covenant Reformed is a critical mass of leaders and teachers that can enable us to extend the knowledge and the faith of the kingdom and as the Lord allows: to establish other churches and organizations dedicated to the advancement of the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.

By my count we have at least a dozen or more men and four or five women with the necessary skills and experience to be teaching Bible Studies or Sunday School and Tulip Academy classes out of a total of sixty-five souls currently and actively involved.

We also have opportunities in Newark and at Capitol University, as well as your home communities in the surrounding areas to meet and great people and to encourage them to study the gospel.  Somewhere in the mail, there is a study guide and program for sharing the gospel with unbelievers and marginal believers.  As soon as these are in, I will be meeting with interested parties to see how they can be used.  Our elders are also willing to mentor younger men to do the teaching jobs that they are currently performing.

In addition, we may be able to take under the wing of the session a candidate or two for the Gospel ministry and along with our Presbytery; perhaps we can help them through the rigorous trials for ordination.

I count it a blessing to be a small part of this enterprise of faith, and if in the process of training  those being trained excel beyond my own experience, training and abilities, so much the better.

But, and this will be my last two points for today. 

First, as a congregation that has always had more chiefs than it has Indians  we need to find students of the gospel who are willing to learn and grow.  I realize that many of you have busy careers and growing families  but I would like to see more of you involved in addition to Sunday worship.  Only about 50% to 60% of our congregation is involved in church activities beyond the usual Lord’s Day activities!  Yes, I know that, that is higher than the ordinary average.   So I would ask all of you to read the passage before us today to see if there is a personal challenge being spoken to you by the Apostle and through the Holy Spirit.

Second, in the past we have sometimes hurried people into positions of leadership, training and teaching before they were of one mind with the session.  Thereby  difficulties came to the surface.  For all of you who have the necessary skills and calling to teach and lead  I would challenge you to spend more time in getting to know your leaders and where necessary to treasure the hoops which we require for full participation as a means to increase your understanding, your fellowship and your abilities and confidence to speak and teach boldly about our common Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

May the Lord bless you all with the fruits of the Spirit as you work towards your calling to grow in grace and service.  Amen.