The Ultimate Spiritual Leader
Sunday March 23, 2003
Hebrews 5
“The Ultimate Spiritual Leader”
How many of you noticed my tie last Sunday for my “installation service”? OK, it seems like I have to make the same disclaimer again: “It was NOT my tie!” Just before the service, our senior pastor called me in his office and asked me to tuck in my Hawaiian shirt, “Do you have a tie? No? I had one in the car, which will match your shirt perfectly!” So he ran out to his car and got it for me. As I put it on, he added: “Oh, don’t worry about it too much, God looks at the heart! This is only for the pictures!”
People may frown on me for not being too proper. In fact, when I first started leading the High School ministry here, a member in the church board complained to our senior pastor because I didn’t have the proper conduct (“khong du tu cach” in Vietnamese) to be a leader. When I heard about it, I was angry and wanted to write a letter to the board to defend myself. But the Holy Spirit also worked in my heart and show me the truth, that I am not qualify to be a youth leader. Indeed there is no one qualified to be a leader at all, except for one person: Jesus Christ himself!
With that in mind, I titled my talk today as “The Ultimate Spiritual Leader.” Let us turn to the Word of God in Hebrews chapter 5. [Reading the text]
{RECAP} We have been studying Hebrews for the last couple of weeks. (If you want to have a better understanding of this book, I would encourage you to sit down and read the whole thing in one sitting. It was written as a letter, and designed to be read in such a way. It’s not that long, only about 8 pages on my laser printer.) This letter was written for the original Jewish Christians to help them understand “Who Jesus Is” and “What is His Role in Relation to the Old Testament”. That’s why in the first few chapters; we see the author established that Jesus is superior to the prophets, than the angels, and even Moses. Starting in the middle of chapter 4, the author begin to shift his focus and start discussing about Jesus’ role as the ultimate mediator between us and God and that’s why he was comparing about the role of a High Priest to Jesus.
It was such a blessing for me to be able to prepare for this passage the last few weeks of my “installation service”. As I studied this passage, God used it to point out many lessons for me about spiritual leadership, which I would like to share with you today. Many of you would probably think in your head: “If this is about spiritual leadership, and then perhaps it’s not applicable to me, since I am not doing anything at all.” Wrong! You should pay attention to this lesson because you will be a spiritual leader in your family, in your groups, or in your circle of friends. Or even if you are not a leader, it’s helpful to know what a spiritual leader suppose to be like.
{POINT A1- Spiritual Leaders: Who Are They?}
The first thing we learn about spiritual leaders is about “Who They Are: They are mere men!” Verse 1 said that they are “selected from among men and is appointed to represent them.” The literal phrase is they are “from among men” and “on behalf of men”. Why is it important for us to remember that our spiritual leaders are just mere men? For if we do not, we would be so gullible in trusting them too much, or we would be so disappointed when they fail to meet our expectation.
I was talking to Huy last week and he said that his uncle hates all the priests and pastors with a passion. It’s hard to resolve these hatred, especially when we see many fallen leaders out there. But perhaps, it would be a bit easier for us to remember that leaders, even the one at the top like the High Priest at the time, are only mere human beings.
Here the Bible said two specific things about being human: He has his weaknesses (as in v. 2) and he has his own sins (in v. 3). Weaknesses are flaws and defects in one’s personality, temperament, training, ability, etc. They are the stuffs that you may or may not be able to do something about. Some weaknesses you can improve a bit, some you will learn to live with. Everyone have strengths and weaknesses, leaders included. You should know your leaders’ weaknesses to help them and compensate for them. Last week, one of you guys pop out a breath mint and share it to me, “You need it,” he said. That action could be a joke, but it could actually be the way he was compensating for me, so that I wouldn’t scare people off with my bad breath! Hey, thanks for the mint, you guys could feed it to me any time, that way I don’t have to carry my own mint!
Sometimes, you cannot directly compensate for the leader’s weakness, then you could also help him or her out indirectly. You guys know that our senior pastor is very passionate about leading people to Christ, right? The problem with it is sometime he was too passionate and he scared people off! I remember one time Khuong was having some of his non-Christian friends over at church. We were in the parking lot, and Pastor Dai was approaching, what we did was getting Hae out in front, so the pastor would pick on him and talked to him about spiritual matters, and protecting our friends from an uncomfortable situation.
That was about weaknesses, which is the stuff you may or may not do something about. But when it comes to sins there is not much we can do, except for forgiveness. Notice that the word “sins” here is in the plural; it’s the various offenses from our attitudes and behaviors, not the singular “sin” for the nature of sin. Spiritual leaders are also not perfect in their conducts. Just like us in the journey to follow God, they are also making mistakes in life and they are stumbled in their walk too. They also are relying on God’s grace for forgiveness. The only problem is that often, they can count on God but cannot count on the forgiveness from their fellow Christians. The third week after Timmy was born, Pastor Thach called me and asked me if I can go to a training event. Jenney got so upset at him for being inconsiderate, “How could he ask you to go in a time like this?” And I answered her, “Nah, cut him some slacks, he is just a human, and he’s making mistake this time!”
Pastor Thach’s offense were so mild compare to other offenses that other leaders and I may have made toward you. I never forgot a conversation I had with a medical doctor in residency. We were talking about the mistakes the interns made in the program, and there were times patients died because of these mistakes. Then this doctor looked straight into my eyes and asked, “So, Bumble can you honestly say that you didn’t make mistakes in ministry which may have resulted in lost of life too?” Honestly I cannot be so sure about that. The only thing I could be assured of, is that my God is greater than all of my mistakes and offenses, and ultimately He is able to redeem for all of my weaknesses and sins.
I pray that you guys would not forget the fallen humanity in your spiritual leaders whenever you see their weaknesses and their sins.
{POINT A2- Spiritual Leaders: What They Do?}
It is interesting to see what God would like these mere humans to do as High Priest and spiritual leaders. There are two vertical movements here we can see. First is the movement toward God (in v.1) where the high priest represents the people to God by “offer up gifts and sacrifices for sin”. And there is another movement toward men (in v.2) where he can “deal gently” with the people who are “ignorant” and “misguided” (per NASB).
In the first movement, the spiritual leader responsibility is to up lift the people to God. The High Priest back then did that by offering up both “gifts”: the gratitude and praise to God, as well as “sacrifice of sins”: repentance and acceptance of forgiveness in God. Today, being a spiritual leader meant that we would continue to up lift the people to God, but in many other ways. I just talked to one of our worship leaders the other day, and he said that God had called him to be burden with the people in our group, and praying for them. Other leaders among us here also lift us up to God by words of encouragement, by helping us remember who God is, what He had done in our life. Even in our act of sharing the Gospel with our friends, we are doing the up lifting, and help people to take one step closer to repentance, one step closer to accepting the forgiveness of their sins, and one step closer to worshiping God.
In the second movement, the spiritual leader responsibility is to pour out God’s compassion to people. The word “deal gently” here is the translation of the verb metriopathein. This is a compound word from the base of {G3357} (metrios – vessel/measure) and {G3806} (pathos – passion/passionate deed). So the picture here is one of a pottery vessel, full of measure of compassion. With that word picture, we see that an available pot without its contents is useless, and the contents without the pot cannot make a delivery to people. God had chosen to deliver His compassion to people through pottery vessels like you and me. We also need to take note that the object of His compassion are a bunch of unlikely candidates: the one who passively “ignorant” – those don’t know any better, and the one who actively “going astray” – those thought that they know and choose their own ways.
{POINT A3- Spiritual Leaders: Their Attitude?}
The demand for the task of spiritual leadership is huge: we were supposed to up lift the people to God, and we were supposed to deliver God’s compassion to the people. But the means to accomplish the task were so minute: What we have is just a bunch of mere human, full of weaknesses and sins. How could we perform that great admirable task, with such despicable means?
At this point, some of you may start thinking, “Man, this stuff sounds hard; I am not so sure if I ever want to be a spiritual leader.” Exactly! That’s the kind of attitude you need to have! If it’s not for God, we shouldn’t even attempt to try! This is why in verse 1, the author used the passive verbs they are “selected”, and they are “appointed”; and here in verse 4, it states more clearly: “no one take this honor upon himself! He must be called by God!” Being a spiritual leader is not something that we seek for status and honor (even though, no doubt there are some people who served God with that wrong motive.) Being a spiritual leader is something God call you and He put you in that position.
Back in the Old Testament time, the high priest office was maintained through the line of Aaron; if you were born into it, you will assume that office automatically. It’s not a degree that you can study for; it’s not an accomplishment that you can achieve, you don’t choose to be a High Priest, God chose you, let you know and trust that destiny on your shoulder.
In my case, I’ve never thought about I am being called into any formal leadership post at the church; and God had to take about two years and He used many circumstances to convey to me that I had already being look at as a leader, regardless if I want it or not, regardless if I have any formal position or not.
Similarly you will become a spiritual leader too! When a man gets married, he will become a spiritual leader to his wife, and to his kids. He cannot decline that role. You don’t have to even wait that long, right now, many of you are in the role of spiritual leaders already: when you live among your non-Christian friends, you are the spiritual leaders to them. No matter what you may think of yourselves!
The underlining principle is this: once you know God, that relationship will compel you to go for Him! I have a great 30 seconds clip to show you just to illustrate this point. Remember Isaiah 6, when God was asking “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” I had always thought Isaiah was stepping up to the plate and said, “Here am I. Send me!” But this clip was illustrating that point much profoundly.
[Show the Urbana clip of Bruce Kuhn acting out Isaiah 6, in humble volunteering for the job]
You see, we are called to spiritual leadership not because we want to, but because God want to! It is God who is the main figure behind us, behind our actions and our ministry. Spiritual leadership is about not so much about leading, but about following the Ultimate Spiritual Leader, to point people to God. We are like signposts on the way, people may look at us to start with, but eventually they should look down the road!
{POINT B- Christ: The Ultimate Spiritual Leader}
The author of Hebrews wrote the same thing too. After talking about the High Priest, starting in verse 5, he directs our attention to Jesus, the Ultimate Spiritual Leader for us; hence the focus of the second part of this passage.
Early on, we have examined who is a spiritual leader (human being with weaknesses and sins), what is he supposed to do (up lift the people and pour out God’s compassion), and how did he get to that position (by the calling of God). But the one crucial question remained open is “Why?” Why would God want to have a High Priest? If He wants to fellowship with people, then let all of them come, each of them offers up gifts and sacrifices; and if He were so offended by the people sin, He could have stayed in heaven, why bother appointed and called the High Priest for. The position of the High Priest therefore represented the heart of a God, who love His people and want to be with them, but also cannot tolerate their sins. The High Priest represented a mediator to reconcile people back to Him. The High Priest represented Jesus Christ, the Ultimate Reconcilator from God.
But representation is very limited to convey the whole thing. A painting is a limited representation of the scenery it described, a piece of poetry is a limited representation of the poet’s mind, a wedding is a limited representation of marriage, and all spiritual leaders, including the High Priest is a limited representation of God. Therefore, if we really want to know God, we need to beyond the human representation: we need to know Christ.
In verse 5, we see that Jesus is the perfect revelation for us to know about God. We can look at Jesus and see the God who cannot be seen. In Jesus we have God himself, walk the earth, in the flesh. “God said to Him, You are my Son; today I have become your Father.” This prophecy (recorded in Psalm 2:7) literally took place at the Baptism of Jesus, when the heaven opened and God spoke to Jesus; and then at His transfiguration on the mountain, God spoke again with Peter, James and John were the witnesses.
Some may ask, “even if Jesus is the Son of God, it’s not the same as Jesus is God, right?” Some of your college’s professors would also point out that Jesus himself never claim to be God! They could argue that way because they didn’t understand the Jewish culture at the time. Let’s see for yourselves from John 10:25-33 [read the text]. Here, you can see clearly that the Jews understand what it meant to be a Son of God and eventually they killed Jesus for that claim.
But just as the High Priest was selected “from among men”, Jesus is also fully human as well as he is fully God. MS Son said last week that we have the full divinity and the full humanity in the person of Jesus. And if Jesus were fully human, did he have weaknesses like we do? You bet! Notice in verse 7 it said, “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions WITH LOUD CRIES AND TEARS.” We saw this in the garden of Gethsemane: here Jesus wrestled and agonized over His looming death, the struggles were so great that He pleaded to the Father to remove death from him if possible. Here we didn’t see a heroic Jesus, who stepped up to the plate, “Yes, Father! No problem, I will gladly take on the sin of the world!” What we see here is a full human, struggling with weaknesses, struggling to obey.
A couple of verses previously, the author of Hebrews made this point clear, he said this about Jesus: “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet was without sin.” (v.4:15) So, being fully human Jesus knows about human weaknesses we have, he even knows about every single temptation we faced, because He had been there. The only thing different is that he had committed no sin (also here in v. 7 it said, “he was heard because of his reverent submission”, or “his piety”).
So, similar to a spiritual leader, Jesus is also a human being; however as the Ultimate Spiritual Leader, He is God. Similar to a spiritual leader, Jesus experienced human weaknesses; but as the Ultimate Spiritual Leader, He committed no sins. Similar to a spiritual leader, Jesus was called by God; but as the Ultimate Spiritual Leader, He is the call of God.
However, there is a tremendous differentiation when we take a look at what Jesus do. In verse 1, we learned that the priests “offer gifts and sacrifices for sins” up to God. In verse 7 here we see that Jesus offered up His prayer “to the one who could save him from death!” In short, what Jesus offered up to God is His own death, the ultimate sacrifice for sin. In the first movement to up lift people toward God, He offered up himself to reconcile people to back to God.
Then there is the second movement of pouring out compassion from God to the people. Verse 9 said that, “He became the source of eternal salvation for all!” Jesus is the source of our salvation, we will have eternal life in God because of Jesus, and not because of anything we have done at all. My favorite example I used in the basic Christianity class compare a person who become a Christian with an orphan being adopted to a wealthy family from the orphanage. The source of the adoption is in the abundant of love and the riches from the family, not in the love and the riches of the kid.
But Jesus poured out more than just the eternal salvation we will have for the future; He gave as a model, an example to follow for right now, for our practical daily life today. Back in verse 8 it said, “although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered.” Notice those peculiar words “learned obedience”? As fully human, Jesus also had to learn to obey God in his daily life. Remember when Jesus went to the temple at the age of 12, he stayed back without his parents and even challenged them, “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” But Luke 2:51 said that, “He went to Nazareth and WAS OBEDIENT”.
If Jesus were only interested in dying for our sin, wouldn’t you think that the death and resurrection of Jesus at age 12 would also be sufficient for us to have eternal life with God? Yes, of course. However, we see that Jesus continued to grow in his obedience through out his life, to the point of obedience in the garden of Gethsemane we talked about earlier. That modeling was for our benefit for our practical life while we are still on earth. He also has a teaching ministry during his last few years. Those teaching are intended for us to obey and follow while we are still living on earth now. This is also why verse 9 didn’t say, “Jesus became the source of eternal salvation” but appended “for all who OBEY Him.”
Some could be confused at this point and asked, “Wait a minute, I thought you said that our salvation depends on what God have done, but now you also say that we need to do something too!” Yup, but let me use the adoption illustration again. Let’s say that I am that orphan who is being adopted into a wealthy family. Even if my clothes are still dirty, my mouth still talk foul language; the foremost profound change is the change in my legal status: I am now belonging to a family; I am subjected to a new name, new life, new opportunities, and even inheritance! I don’t have to change my clothes or watch my mouth in order to be adopted by God.
However in times, my attitudes and behaviors will change - no more foul language, no more dirty clothes - those are reflections of my new reality of being adopted. The relationship that I have with my adopted parents and the new life will produce these changes. Before my adoption, I could careless about my adopted parents because they were stranger to me. But now, if I were to accept the reality of being a child in this family, I will be willing to obey my parents. These changes also help a lot in telling other orphan about my parents. I could come to other orphans in the orphanage and tell them about the riches of my parents, and how they would also love to adopt other orphans too. But if I am still insisting on wearing my dirty rags, my friends could easily laugh at it, “Yeah right, your parents are rich, and loving!”
{POINT C- Everyone is Spiritual Leader: Leading to the Word!}
As the Ultimate Spiritual Leader, Jesus offered up Himself to God, and poured out God’s reconciliation to us. Compare to the mere human Spiritual Leaders, Jesus is way superior. The only problem for us is our tendency of focusing on our human leaders more than our Ultimate Spiritual Leader. How can we move our eyes away from looking at the human and look toward God? Here’s how: we need to look at the Word of God.
As the author started to expound about the role of Jesus, about how it is comparable to a Jewish High Priest, but it is much more superior, he got frustrated because they don’t know the Word of God. Listen to this, [read v. 10-14] – in fact, he was pretty frustrated that he went off tangent in the whole chapter 6 and didn’t come back to the topic of Melchizedek until chapter 7 later on.
Since we are running out of time, I just want to pin point a few things here. The first level of progression here is like infant taking milk. Here it refers to learning from someone else the basic elementary truths. This including coming to church and bible study, listening to sermons, listening to Christian radio stations, this may also be reading Christians books, etc. Pretty passive stuff, you just make yourself available to receive. However, we need to move beyond that infant stage a bit by being “acquainted” with the Word. The word “acquainted” here meant that we must have a direct experience with the Word; we need to read it for ourselves, not just learn it through someone else. Then we also need to develop a regular habit as well as the phrase “constant use” suggested. And finally, we need to put what we learn into practice days in days out, just like athletes trained themselves. Only then, we will be matured; we can survive on our own.
Without the maturity in the Word of God, we cannot look at Jesus as the Ultimate Spiritual Leader of our life and ends up depends on the milk from our human leaders. If the human leaders messed up, our milk supplies got cut-off and we starved. But if we grow in the Word, then even with much human interference of weaknesses and sins, we will still able to worship God, get guidance for our life, and enjoy a dynamic relationship with Him.
As I told you before, this passage had special lessons for me during the weeks of my installation. It helps me to understand our roles as spiritual leaders better. That our job, is to help people to come into a genuine relationship with Jesus, the Ultimate Leader of their lives, and we must do that by helping people mature in the Word of God.
Hebrews 5
“The Ultimate Spiritual Leader”
How many of you noticed my tie last Sunday for my “installation service”? OK, it seems like I have to make the same disclaimer again: “It was NOT my tie!” Just before the service, our senior pastor called me in his office and asked me to tuck in my Hawaiian shirt, “Do you have a tie? No? I had one in the car, which will match your shirt perfectly!” So he ran out to his car and got it for me. As I put it on, he added: “Oh, don’t worry about it too much, God looks at the heart! This is only for the pictures!”
People may frown on me for not being too proper. In fact, when I first started leading the High School ministry here, a member in the church board complained to our senior pastor because I didn’t have the proper conduct (“khong du tu cach” in Vietnamese) to be a leader. When I heard about it, I was angry and wanted to write a letter to the board to defend myself. But the Holy Spirit also worked in my heart and show me the truth, that I am not qualify to be a youth leader. Indeed there is no one qualified to be a leader at all, except for one person: Jesus Christ himself!
With that in mind, I titled my talk today as “The Ultimate Spiritual Leader.” Let us turn to the Word of God in Hebrews chapter 5. [Reading the text]
{RECAP} We have been studying Hebrews for the last couple of weeks. (If you want to have a better understanding of this book, I would encourage you to sit down and read the whole thing in one sitting. It was written as a letter, and designed to be read in such a way. It’s not that long, only about 8 pages on my laser printer.) This letter was written for the original Jewish Christians to help them understand “Who Jesus Is” and “What is His Role in Relation to the Old Testament”. That’s why in the first few chapters; we see the author established that Jesus is superior to the prophets, than the angels, and even Moses. Starting in the middle of chapter 4, the author begin to shift his focus and start discussing about Jesus’ role as the ultimate mediator between us and God and that’s why he was comparing about the role of a High Priest to Jesus.
It was such a blessing for me to be able to prepare for this passage the last few weeks of my “installation service”. As I studied this passage, God used it to point out many lessons for me about spiritual leadership, which I would like to share with you today. Many of you would probably think in your head: “If this is about spiritual leadership, and then perhaps it’s not applicable to me, since I am not doing anything at all.” Wrong! You should pay attention to this lesson because you will be a spiritual leader in your family, in your groups, or in your circle of friends. Or even if you are not a leader, it’s helpful to know what a spiritual leader suppose to be like.
{POINT A1- Spiritual Leaders: Who Are They?}
The first thing we learn about spiritual leaders is about “Who They Are: They are mere men!” Verse 1 said that they are “selected from among men and is appointed to represent them.” The literal phrase is they are “from among men” and “on behalf of men”. Why is it important for us to remember that our spiritual leaders are just mere men? For if we do not, we would be so gullible in trusting them too much, or we would be so disappointed when they fail to meet our expectation.
I was talking to Huy last week and he said that his uncle hates all the priests and pastors with a passion. It’s hard to resolve these hatred, especially when we see many fallen leaders out there. But perhaps, it would be a bit easier for us to remember that leaders, even the one at the top like the High Priest at the time, are only mere human beings.
Here the Bible said two specific things about being human: He has his weaknesses (as in v. 2) and he has his own sins (in v. 3). Weaknesses are flaws and defects in one’s personality, temperament, training, ability, etc. They are the stuffs that you may or may not be able to do something about. Some weaknesses you can improve a bit, some you will learn to live with. Everyone have strengths and weaknesses, leaders included. You should know your leaders’ weaknesses to help them and compensate for them. Last week, one of you guys pop out a breath mint and share it to me, “You need it,” he said. That action could be a joke, but it could actually be the way he was compensating for me, so that I wouldn’t scare people off with my bad breath! Hey, thanks for the mint, you guys could feed it to me any time, that way I don’t have to carry my own mint!
Sometimes, you cannot directly compensate for the leader’s weakness, then you could also help him or her out indirectly. You guys know that our senior pastor is very passionate about leading people to Christ, right? The problem with it is sometime he was too passionate and he scared people off! I remember one time Khuong was having some of his non-Christian friends over at church. We were in the parking lot, and Pastor Dai was approaching, what we did was getting Hae out in front, so the pastor would pick on him and talked to him about spiritual matters, and protecting our friends from an uncomfortable situation.
That was about weaknesses, which is the stuff you may or may not do something about. But when it comes to sins there is not much we can do, except for forgiveness. Notice that the word “sins” here is in the plural; it’s the various offenses from our attitudes and behaviors, not the singular “sin” for the nature of sin. Spiritual leaders are also not perfect in their conducts. Just like us in the journey to follow God, they are also making mistakes in life and they are stumbled in their walk too. They also are relying on God’s grace for forgiveness. The only problem is that often, they can count on God but cannot count on the forgiveness from their fellow Christians. The third week after Timmy was born, Pastor Thach called me and asked me if I can go to a training event. Jenney got so upset at him for being inconsiderate, “How could he ask you to go in a time like this?” And I answered her, “Nah, cut him some slacks, he is just a human, and he’s making mistake this time!”
Pastor Thach’s offense were so mild compare to other offenses that other leaders and I may have made toward you. I never forgot a conversation I had with a medical doctor in residency. We were talking about the mistakes the interns made in the program, and there were times patients died because of these mistakes. Then this doctor looked straight into my eyes and asked, “So, Bumble can you honestly say that you didn’t make mistakes in ministry which may have resulted in lost of life too?” Honestly I cannot be so sure about that. The only thing I could be assured of, is that my God is greater than all of my mistakes and offenses, and ultimately He is able to redeem for all of my weaknesses and sins.
I pray that you guys would not forget the fallen humanity in your spiritual leaders whenever you see their weaknesses and their sins.
{POINT A2- Spiritual Leaders: What They Do?}
It is interesting to see what God would like these mere humans to do as High Priest and spiritual leaders. There are two vertical movements here we can see. First is the movement toward God (in v.1) where the high priest represents the people to God by “offer up gifts and sacrifices for sin”. And there is another movement toward men (in v.2) where he can “deal gently” with the people who are “ignorant” and “misguided” (per NASB).
In the first movement, the spiritual leader responsibility is to up lift the people to God. The High Priest back then did that by offering up both “gifts”: the gratitude and praise to God, as well as “sacrifice of sins”: repentance and acceptance of forgiveness in God. Today, being a spiritual leader meant that we would continue to up lift the people to God, but in many other ways. I just talked to one of our worship leaders the other day, and he said that God had called him to be burden with the people in our group, and praying for them. Other leaders among us here also lift us up to God by words of encouragement, by helping us remember who God is, what He had done in our life. Even in our act of sharing the Gospel with our friends, we are doing the up lifting, and help people to take one step closer to repentance, one step closer to accepting the forgiveness of their sins, and one step closer to worshiping God.
In the second movement, the spiritual leader responsibility is to pour out God’s compassion to people. The word “deal gently” here is the translation of the verb metriopathein. This is a compound word from the base of {G3357} (metrios – vessel/measure) and {G3806} (pathos – passion/passionate deed). So the picture here is one of a pottery vessel, full of measure of compassion. With that word picture, we see that an available pot without its contents is useless, and the contents without the pot cannot make a delivery to people. God had chosen to deliver His compassion to people through pottery vessels like you and me. We also need to take note that the object of His compassion are a bunch of unlikely candidates: the one who passively “ignorant” – those don’t know any better, and the one who actively “going astray” – those thought that they know and choose their own ways.
{POINT A3- Spiritual Leaders: Their Attitude?}
The demand for the task of spiritual leadership is huge: we were supposed to up lift the people to God, and we were supposed to deliver God’s compassion to the people. But the means to accomplish the task were so minute: What we have is just a bunch of mere human, full of weaknesses and sins. How could we perform that great admirable task, with such despicable means?
At this point, some of you may start thinking, “Man, this stuff sounds hard; I am not so sure if I ever want to be a spiritual leader.” Exactly! That’s the kind of attitude you need to have! If it’s not for God, we shouldn’t even attempt to try! This is why in verse 1, the author used the passive verbs they are “selected”, and they are “appointed”; and here in verse 4, it states more clearly: “no one take this honor upon himself! He must be called by God!” Being a spiritual leader is not something that we seek for status and honor (even though, no doubt there are some people who served God with that wrong motive.) Being a spiritual leader is something God call you and He put you in that position.
Back in the Old Testament time, the high priest office was maintained through the line of Aaron; if you were born into it, you will assume that office automatically. It’s not a degree that you can study for; it’s not an accomplishment that you can achieve, you don’t choose to be a High Priest, God chose you, let you know and trust that destiny on your shoulder.
In my case, I’ve never thought about I am being called into any formal leadership post at the church; and God had to take about two years and He used many circumstances to convey to me that I had already being look at as a leader, regardless if I want it or not, regardless if I have any formal position or not.
Similarly you will become a spiritual leader too! When a man gets married, he will become a spiritual leader to his wife, and to his kids. He cannot decline that role. You don’t have to even wait that long, right now, many of you are in the role of spiritual leaders already: when you live among your non-Christian friends, you are the spiritual leaders to them. No matter what you may think of yourselves!
The underlining principle is this: once you know God, that relationship will compel you to go for Him! I have a great 30 seconds clip to show you just to illustrate this point. Remember Isaiah 6, when God was asking “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” I had always thought Isaiah was stepping up to the plate and said, “Here am I. Send me!” But this clip was illustrating that point much profoundly.
[Show the Urbana clip of Bruce Kuhn acting out Isaiah 6, in humble volunteering for the job]
You see, we are called to spiritual leadership not because we want to, but because God want to! It is God who is the main figure behind us, behind our actions and our ministry. Spiritual leadership is about not so much about leading, but about following the Ultimate Spiritual Leader, to point people to God. We are like signposts on the way, people may look at us to start with, but eventually they should look down the road!
{POINT B- Christ: The Ultimate Spiritual Leader}
The author of Hebrews wrote the same thing too. After talking about the High Priest, starting in verse 5, he directs our attention to Jesus, the Ultimate Spiritual Leader for us; hence the focus of the second part of this passage.
Early on, we have examined who is a spiritual leader (human being with weaknesses and sins), what is he supposed to do (up lift the people and pour out God’s compassion), and how did he get to that position (by the calling of God). But the one crucial question remained open is “Why?” Why would God want to have a High Priest? If He wants to fellowship with people, then let all of them come, each of them offers up gifts and sacrifices; and if He were so offended by the people sin, He could have stayed in heaven, why bother appointed and called the High Priest for. The position of the High Priest therefore represented the heart of a God, who love His people and want to be with them, but also cannot tolerate their sins. The High Priest represented a mediator to reconcile people back to Him. The High Priest represented Jesus Christ, the Ultimate Reconcilator from God.
But representation is very limited to convey the whole thing. A painting is a limited representation of the scenery it described, a piece of poetry is a limited representation of the poet’s mind, a wedding is a limited representation of marriage, and all spiritual leaders, including the High Priest is a limited representation of God. Therefore, if we really want to know God, we need to beyond the human representation: we need to know Christ.
In verse 5, we see that Jesus is the perfect revelation for us to know about God. We can look at Jesus and see the God who cannot be seen. In Jesus we have God himself, walk the earth, in the flesh. “God said to Him, You are my Son; today I have become your Father.” This prophecy (recorded in Psalm 2:7) literally took place at the Baptism of Jesus, when the heaven opened and God spoke to Jesus; and then at His transfiguration on the mountain, God spoke again with Peter, James and John were the witnesses.
Some may ask, “even if Jesus is the Son of God, it’s not the same as Jesus is God, right?” Some of your college’s professors would also point out that Jesus himself never claim to be God! They could argue that way because they didn’t understand the Jewish culture at the time. Let’s see for yourselves from John 10:25-33 [read the text]. Here, you can see clearly that the Jews understand what it meant to be a Son of God and eventually they killed Jesus for that claim.
But just as the High Priest was selected “from among men”, Jesus is also fully human as well as he is fully God. MS Son said last week that we have the full divinity and the full humanity in the person of Jesus. And if Jesus were fully human, did he have weaknesses like we do? You bet! Notice in verse 7 it said, “During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions WITH LOUD CRIES AND TEARS.” We saw this in the garden of Gethsemane: here Jesus wrestled and agonized over His looming death, the struggles were so great that He pleaded to the Father to remove death from him if possible. Here we didn’t see a heroic Jesus, who stepped up to the plate, “Yes, Father! No problem, I will gladly take on the sin of the world!” What we see here is a full human, struggling with weaknesses, struggling to obey.
A couple of verses previously, the author of Hebrews made this point clear, he said this about Jesus: “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet was without sin.” (v.4:15) So, being fully human Jesus knows about human weaknesses we have, he even knows about every single temptation we faced, because He had been there. The only thing different is that he had committed no sin (also here in v. 7 it said, “he was heard because of his reverent submission”, or “his piety”).
So, similar to a spiritual leader, Jesus is also a human being; however as the Ultimate Spiritual Leader, He is God. Similar to a spiritual leader, Jesus experienced human weaknesses; but as the Ultimate Spiritual Leader, He committed no sins. Similar to a spiritual leader, Jesus was called by God; but as the Ultimate Spiritual Leader, He is the call of God.
However, there is a tremendous differentiation when we take a look at what Jesus do. In verse 1, we learned that the priests “offer gifts and sacrifices for sins” up to God. In verse 7 here we see that Jesus offered up His prayer “to the one who could save him from death!” In short, what Jesus offered up to God is His own death, the ultimate sacrifice for sin. In the first movement to up lift people toward God, He offered up himself to reconcile people to back to God.
Then there is the second movement of pouring out compassion from God to the people. Verse 9 said that, “He became the source of eternal salvation for all!” Jesus is the source of our salvation, we will have eternal life in God because of Jesus, and not because of anything we have done at all. My favorite example I used in the basic Christianity class compare a person who become a Christian with an orphan being adopted to a wealthy family from the orphanage. The source of the adoption is in the abundant of love and the riches from the family, not in the love and the riches of the kid.
But Jesus poured out more than just the eternal salvation we will have for the future; He gave as a model, an example to follow for right now, for our practical daily life today. Back in verse 8 it said, “although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered.” Notice those peculiar words “learned obedience”? As fully human, Jesus also had to learn to obey God in his daily life. Remember when Jesus went to the temple at the age of 12, he stayed back without his parents and even challenged them, “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” But Luke 2:51 said that, “He went to Nazareth and WAS OBEDIENT”.
If Jesus were only interested in dying for our sin, wouldn’t you think that the death and resurrection of Jesus at age 12 would also be sufficient for us to have eternal life with God? Yes, of course. However, we see that Jesus continued to grow in his obedience through out his life, to the point of obedience in the garden of Gethsemane we talked about earlier. That modeling was for our benefit for our practical life while we are still on earth. He also has a teaching ministry during his last few years. Those teaching are intended for us to obey and follow while we are still living on earth now. This is also why verse 9 didn’t say, “Jesus became the source of eternal salvation” but appended “for all who OBEY Him.”
Some could be confused at this point and asked, “Wait a minute, I thought you said that our salvation depends on what God have done, but now you also say that we need to do something too!” Yup, but let me use the adoption illustration again. Let’s say that I am that orphan who is being adopted into a wealthy family. Even if my clothes are still dirty, my mouth still talk foul language; the foremost profound change is the change in my legal status: I am now belonging to a family; I am subjected to a new name, new life, new opportunities, and even inheritance! I don’t have to change my clothes or watch my mouth in order to be adopted by God.
However in times, my attitudes and behaviors will change - no more foul language, no more dirty clothes - those are reflections of my new reality of being adopted. The relationship that I have with my adopted parents and the new life will produce these changes. Before my adoption, I could careless about my adopted parents because they were stranger to me. But now, if I were to accept the reality of being a child in this family, I will be willing to obey my parents. These changes also help a lot in telling other orphan about my parents. I could come to other orphans in the orphanage and tell them about the riches of my parents, and how they would also love to adopt other orphans too. But if I am still insisting on wearing my dirty rags, my friends could easily laugh at it, “Yeah right, your parents are rich, and loving!”
{POINT C- Everyone is Spiritual Leader: Leading to the Word!}
As the Ultimate Spiritual Leader, Jesus offered up Himself to God, and poured out God’s reconciliation to us. Compare to the mere human Spiritual Leaders, Jesus is way superior. The only problem for us is our tendency of focusing on our human leaders more than our Ultimate Spiritual Leader. How can we move our eyes away from looking at the human and look toward God? Here’s how: we need to look at the Word of God.
As the author started to expound about the role of Jesus, about how it is comparable to a Jewish High Priest, but it is much more superior, he got frustrated because they don’t know the Word of God. Listen to this, [read v. 10-14] – in fact, he was pretty frustrated that he went off tangent in the whole chapter 6 and didn’t come back to the topic of Melchizedek until chapter 7 later on.
Since we are running out of time, I just want to pin point a few things here. The first level of progression here is like infant taking milk. Here it refers to learning from someone else the basic elementary truths. This including coming to church and bible study, listening to sermons, listening to Christian radio stations, this may also be reading Christians books, etc. Pretty passive stuff, you just make yourself available to receive. However, we need to move beyond that infant stage a bit by being “acquainted” with the Word. The word “acquainted” here meant that we must have a direct experience with the Word; we need to read it for ourselves, not just learn it through someone else. Then we also need to develop a regular habit as well as the phrase “constant use” suggested. And finally, we need to put what we learn into practice days in days out, just like athletes trained themselves. Only then, we will be matured; we can survive on our own.
Without the maturity in the Word of God, we cannot look at Jesus as the Ultimate Spiritual Leader of our life and ends up depends on the milk from our human leaders. If the human leaders messed up, our milk supplies got cut-off and we starved. But if we grow in the Word, then even with much human interference of weaknesses and sins, we will still able to worship God, get guidance for our life, and enjoy a dynamic relationship with Him.
As I told you before, this passage had special lessons for me during the weeks of my installation. It helps me to understand our roles as spiritual leaders better. That our job, is to help people to come into a genuine relationship with Jesus, the Ultimate Leader of their lives, and we must do that by helping people mature in the Word of God.
posted by mar13 at
10:14 AM
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