Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

Today’s sermon text is Hebrews 4:14 through Hebrews 5:10. Now if you have a handout from today, the outline is unusually placed, but in the midst of the order of worship itself. If you don’t have one of those, it’ll be harder for you to follow what I’ll be talking about today. You can take a moment to send a runner back to get some. I think we still have a few left. And if you have it, you might want to follow along in the actual handout itself.

We’re finishing up the third section of Hebrews—seven sections total. Next week we’ll return to a particular phrase that we’ll be reading today in this section. Today we’ll deal with the whole section and relate it to Trinity Sunday. And then next week, we’ll return to “boldly approaching the throne of glory” as our text. And then in two weeks from today, Peter Leithart will be preaching. And in three weeks, David Dorsey, and then when I come back after that, we’ll move into the fourth section of Hebrews.

I’ll be talking about the need to mature, to move ahead in knowledge, and to the end that we should be teachers and not simply hearers of God’s word, but those that teach other people God’s word. So it’ll be a call to maturity. But today we finish up section three and we’ll deal with perichoresis and trinitarian life. Hebrews 4:14-5:10. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Seeing then that we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tested as we were and yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. For every high priest taken from among men is appointed for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins. He can have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray, since he himself is also subject to weakness. Because of this, he is required, as for the people, so also for himself, to offer sacrifices for sins. And no man takes this honor to himself, but he who is called by God, just as Aaron was. 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 for the things which he suffered. 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.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your scriptures. Thank you, Father, for bringing your life to us. Thank you for bringing us into your life. We pray that the Holy Spirit may now use this word, teach us, Jesus, Lord God, convict us, bring us sorrow for our sins, and give us a renewed commitment and the empowerment to live together in true community with you and with one another. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

Well, let’s get the big word out of the way first. Today is Trinity Sunday. And this word—perichoresis—I don’t normally do this, but it’s a good word. It’s a word that the early church fathers used to describe the life of the Trinity itself. Perichoresis means that all three persons of the Trinity mutually share in the life of the others, so that none is isolated or detached from the actions of the other. Inner trinitarian life is what’s being described here.

There’s some contention these days about inner trinitarian covenant. Is there a covenant amongst the three members of the Trinity? But I don’t think that anybody would argue with the truth that the word of God tells us that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have this perichoretic life. That is, they are separate persons. They have their own identities, and yet their lives are indwelt by one another.

We don’t see this, but we see this most clearly in the Gospel of John. Remember that John is the capstone of the four gospels, which is the capstone of the Old Testament, and the epistles are reflections upon the gospels. So the Gospel of John takes a preeminent place, I think, in the development of the revelation of God’s word. And in that gospel we have these wonderful statements such as we read in John 14, again in John 17, and other places where the Father and the Son indwell one another and the Spirit indwells them. And they have this perichoretic indwelling—opening to one another, not in a static sense, not as buckets that are filled by each other, but interactively.

There’s a similar Greek word to perichoresis—from a related word meaning to dance—and so the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit dance in the context of their actions one toward the other. John of Damascus developed this doctrine most thoroughly in the early church fathers, although Augustine, Basil the Great, certain other fourth century Eastern fathers all talked about this doctrine as well: the mutual interpenetration and interdwelling of the three persons of the Trinity.

And so this is what perichoresis is—this indwelling of one another. In John we read this: Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me? Jesus says: The words that I say to you are not just my own; rather, it is the Father living in me who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me. There is a mutual indwelling of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And whatever we understand the doctrine of God to be, this flows out into our lives and informs us who we will be made in his image. And so this is an exceedingly important element of the truth of the Trinity. And on Trinity Sunday we focus on this. We see examples in the world around us.

We saw an example in this text from Hebrews 4 where time itself is not isolated one from the other. We can talk about the present tense, the past tense, and the future tense, and yet they all indwell one another, don’t they? The eternal Sabbath rest of God begun in the past is now in the present. That’s what Hebrews 4 says. And not only is it in the present, we can enter into it here and now. And in a sense, that’s what we do every Lord’s day.

So there is this indwelling of past, present, and future—a connectedness to it as well—that images the God who created time. The perichoretic action, the eternal divine dance of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each person of the Trinity participates in the life of the other without forsaking his own dwelling. It is a dynamic interrelationship of love between the divine persons of the Trinity. This is what perichoresis refers to.

And this is the life of the Trinity that, as we’ll point out as we move forward through this sermon, we are brought into.

Now, on the outlines for today, I’ve got again the overall structure of Hebrews at the top. I’ve bolded the section we’re in. We’re in that third section, 3:1-5:10. This third section was introduced at the end of chapter 2:17—”that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in things pertaining to God.”

So we move now, having considered Jesus as Son in the early part of this epistle—or sermon, rather—we now move to Jesus as high priest, and this is where he’ll camp for many chapters. And explicitly, the section before us is the completion of this section that was introduced by saying that Jesus is a high priest with two characteristics: He is merciful, compassionate, sympathetic, empathetic, sharing in our sufferings and able to help us in times of need. And he is also faithful.

In the discussion of Jesus’s faithfulness, we saw a comparison and then a contrast with Moses. Moses was a faithful priest as well, and Jesus was like Moses, and it begins with that comparison and then moves to how Jesus is the greater Moses. In the same way, in our text today, the text begins with Jesus’s comparison to the Aaronic priesthood and their sympathy and their empathy, their suffering for one another, and only then does it move to say that he’s the greater Aaron and he is of the order not of Aaron, but of Melchizedek.

So this is the section of the sermon of Hebrews that we’re in. And then I also have given you again today on the outline the structure of this particular section. One other thing before I move on: At the top we also have bolded Roman numeral number five. “We should live with faith and endurance.” This is a matching set of sections as we move to the center of Hebrews. And so we saw this. We’ve looked at it in some detail in the past. We don’t want to belabor the point, but there is this connection: Jesus is faithful and he’s sympathetic because he endured to the end. We’re called then to be faithful, enduring to the end, and being sympathetic to bind up the weak limbs around us in the body of Christ.

And so there’s this connection. The third day of creation is the day when the first of the plants come forward. The third feast of Leviticus 23 is the feast of first fruits. The third section of Hebrews describes Jesus, and it will then become applicable to us in the last—in its complementary section, the fifth section. We’ll see the connection there. So Jesus is the first fruits, but it has tremendous implications for what we’re to be like as well.

And of course, the point is we’re to be faithful and compassionate and enduring. So we see that.

And then the next little portion of the outline is the overview of this particular section, 3:1-5:10. Jesus is a better high priest, the source of faithfulness, rest, and compassion. Jesus is faithful and worthy of our faith. The greater Moses—we should give him our faith and enter into his rest via Sabbathkeeping. We should seek mercy through him. The text we read today—Jesus is merciful and compassionate. And so we have this kind of bookend characteristic again: Jesus is faithful and compassionate. We should show faith in him and enter into his Sabbath rest. And we should seek his help because he is compassionate to us.

And then the connection—the complementary section, the fifth section. The same way our ancestors were faithful, they endured hardships—the great chapter of faith in Hebrews 11. Like our ancestors in Hebrews 12:1, we are called to run the race with endurance, looking to Jesus. We exercise faith in Hebrews 12:2. Jesus endured unto joy, and we his sons should endure chastening—the rest of that section from Hebrews 12. So this is where we’re at.

And what we want to do today is look at this concluding section—the compassionate section. Today being Trinity Sunday, we’ll look at the compassion of Jesus, and we’ll see its connection to our lives and the need to be compassionate to one another as well.

So, in review of the last section: Let me just mention that last week—actually two weeks ago when I last preached—the handout was not as refined for that section as I’ve made it today. So if you have the handout there, if you look briefly at this section that we dealt with two weeks ago, Hebrews 3:1-4:14, you’ll see I have made it a little clearer, I think, these sections that help us to see the flow of the argument and of the discussion in this portion of the sermon to the Hebrews.

And you’ll see that I’ve marked each of the seven sections with lines to the edges except the middle one, the fourth one. And we see that, beginning and after, we have the heavenly, repeated high priest, confession, and Jesus marking this off as a distinct section of this portion of the sermon that is Hebrews.

So we see that little tiny section at the end corresponding to the first one. And then we see that next section in where the Holy Spirit says in the present, and there’s a quotation from Psalm 95 that matches up with the word of God is living and powerful. And I wasn’t going to make any Star Wars references, but I hear there’s been some kind of bets placed: how often will I mention it?

Well, “living” is the word. Now, Yoda speaks in a peculiar way. Yoda can play certain words forward for emphasis, and in the Greek rather—in this sixth section down at verse 12—”For the word of God” (that’s in a box) you can match it up to the word at the beginning of this in Psalm 95: “is living.” Well, actually, it says “living.” The first word there in the Greek is that it’s living. Living is the word, and powerful. And at the end of that section, I’ve got a box around “account,” and then the Greek term logos there. And so this is to show that this is a section where God’s word demands a response of our word, our account, to him on the basis of that powerful and living word.

And so those sections sort of match up, and I think I’ve shown it a little clearer for you in this particular overview.

And then in the third section beginning at verse 12, there’s a warning: “Beware, brethren, then lest it be found in any of you an evil heart of unbelief.” And then you look at the bottom of that little section—you see the darkened box: “Exhort one another daily, if you will hear his voice, and then do not harden your hearts.” So we have a reference to “heart” fore and aft at that little section, marking it off.

And then we have a distinctive set of parallels moving in that section again showing us that our words are linked to God’s words. And so we’re exhorted to exhort one another with our voices. And “if you will hear his voice” connects up to: How do you hear his voice? Well, you hear his voice in the exhortation of other Christians who bring the scriptures to bear to your life. And so that’s very important.

Now I’ve got “unbelief” underlined in verse 12 because it matches as well down to the bottom of this section in verse 19, where we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief. So that’s one long section written in a couple of different ways: first the exegetical portion, and then the back and forth of citations from Psalms and then citations and references to the account in Numbers 14 of the failure of the Hebrews to enter into the promised land. And so that’s one long section, marked off by unbelief at the beginning and end. And that matches up to the disobedience of verses 6-11 again, exhorting diligence to us lest we fail.

That puts us at the very central section as being the one without a line to the left—beginning at chapter 4:1: “Therefore, since a promise remains of entering his rest,” and now we have this incursion of the creation rest of God as being what we can rest in. And so we’re exhorted to do that.

So hopefully this handout is a little clearer of the structure of this particular portion of Hebrews. And turning back now to the first page of the handout, I have then some summary truths from Hebrews 3:1-4:14.

We note:

A. The goal of this section is our steadfastness to our confession. That’s the whole point: remain steadfast to the confession.

B. Living is the word. The Spirit speaks to us in the present. The Spirit—not said, but says—the Spirit speaks to us in the present through the word. Psalm 95 is the one portion that’s quoted, but he speaks through the word. The result is our word of account to God. The matching section at the end of those two B sections is that we have a word of account to God that’s required.

C. We’re to hear the Spirit’s voice through the voice usually of men. We don’t want to limit the Spirit. Certainly reading our Bibles can do this, but usually we hear the Spirit’s voice through the voice of men. And the structure itself gives us that correspondence between the Spirit speaking and then our speaking. You hear his voice by hearing the exhortation from other Christians to persevere in the faith. So we are to hear the Spirit’s voice through the voice of men exhorting us to faith, to the end that our hearts not be hardened by the alluring lies of sin. The deception of sin is the reason why our hearts are deceitful and wicked. Who can know them? And so when we read the Bible, we tend to shift what’s going on there. And God is pleased to use other men and women—their voice—to break through the selfdeception, the alluring lies of sin. This is a God-appointed key means to the goal of steadfastness to the confession.

D. At the beating heart of the passage of warning and exhortation—it is, it’s a section of warning and exhortation, but at the beating heart, it begins that section in the middle with a wondrous promise. The promise that we can enter in the present into the eschatological and creation rest of God. That this indwelling of time is ours to enter into. Now, a wonderful promise at the core of this—the beating heart of this section here.

E. The beginning of entering into this rest is our diligence to enter into the sabbatic celebration of a convocated Lord’s day worship. It doesn’t say, you know, “there remains a rest for the people of God.” It doesn’t say that. It says there remains a sabatismos—a Sabbath-like keeping, a Sabbath celebration, a joyous Sabbath feast and convocation together. And it says that this remains for us until the eschaton is established. We still have this pattern of one day in seven. There remains a Sabbath-like keeping, a joyful celebration of God. And it basically says this is what we should be diligent to enter into. This is the point of connection without which we’ll fade off. If we fail to observe the Lord’s day and specifically the time of celebratory convocation, the author of the sermon to the Hebrews is basically saying there’s not much hope for you if you forsake that.

You see, they’re to be diligent to enter into this Sabbath celebration of convocated Lord’s Day worship. To fail to do this is to risk everything through disobedience. Disobedience, unbelief, failing to enter in—that’s what they were doing in Numbers 14. Now, the Hebrews are thinking about failing to enter into convocated worship. It’s not the only time of the week that’s important, but it’s the symbol, the representation of the rest of it. And so this is what they’re urged to do by way of practical application. And if to fail to do this is to risk everything—

F. God has us in a headlock. Believe it or not, remember that the word is living and powerful. And what it says in literal Greek terminology is God has you in a headlock whether you like it or not. And this is the truth of God. And if you fail to enter into his rest, if you slide back from Christian community, if you don’t hear or speak the words of exhortation to one another, if you are not diligent to make this day one out of seven separate, distinct, and celebratory as the pattern for the rest—then God help you. Then God help you because he’s got you in a headlock.

I know this may be a little controversial to some, hopefully not to most. But on the children’s outline, the Holy Spirit speaks by means of the Bible. The Holy Spirit uses men to speak biblical truth to us. That’s the normal means. This speech will have power to help or hurt us. We’re under increased obligation in our speech to give account to that living word of God. It has power—the biblically informed speech one to the other—to help or to hurt.

This speech will have power, and then the result, the application here is the most important: The most important time of our lives, I believe, is 11:00 a.m. Sunday morning—to gather together to constitute the body of Christ in convocation of joyous celebration, to hear his word, to receive his gifts, to exhort one another to faithfulness. It’s not the only time. It’s the beginning. The beginning is the part for the whole. It’d be foolish, as we’ve said before, to try to overshoot the mark and say that you come to church on Sunday, that’s it. No, it’s the beginning. But it is the beginning. Well begun is half done. And so this is the application: to be diligent to enter that Sabbath celebration.

Now in today’s section, I also have those particular verses lined out for us in a particular way. And so if you look at what I guess is now the third page of the handout, where the actual section Hebrews 4:15-5:10 is, you can see that we’ve given a structure to it as well. And actually, we’ve given two.

The first structure is one that several commentators have used, and what it shows is the old priesthood of Aaron—and that he’s not called by himself. He’s first there’s an exhortation in the first couple of verses. And then verses 1 through 10 is the difference between the two the top and the bottom outline. And the top one shows the high priest taken among men: the Aaronic priesthood doesn’t assert his own responsibility, but rather God has to call him. The B and B-prime sections talk about compassion—right? The Aaronic priesthood, the high priest particularly on the Day of Atonement, had to offer up sacrifices not just for other people, but for the sins of his own family and himself as well. And because he was called in that way, he was sympathetic to the weaknesses of the people. He was a man. He put on his pants, you know, one leg at a time like everybody else. And because of that, he was compassionate—supposed to be. If he was prideful or puffed up, that was different. But the idea was that the Aaronic priesthood was like everybody else, and they would have compassion upon people.

And in the same way, Jesus Christ in the days of his flesh suffered. So he has compassion upon other people. So there’s the old high priest, and at the end of it, the new high priest, Jesus. The old high priest is characterized by compassion—understanding the weakness of people. And the new high priest, same thing. He comprehends the weakness of humanity because he didn’t sin. That was the difference. But like the Aaronic priesthood, he became a man and understood the weaknesses of men. He’s compassionate and sympathetic.

And then at the very center, the high priest didn’t take this upon himself. Neither did Jesus. The Father is the one who gave Jesus this responsibility. And it’s very interesting that if you look at that middle section—the C-sections—we’ve got Jesus, and there’s two citations. “You’re a son.” This is Psalm 2 again. “Today I have begotten you.” And then “in another place,” explicitly Psalm 110: “You’re a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”

Now we’ve seen this couple of times already, haven’t we? Psalm 2, Psalm 110 in the introduction, and in the next section describing Jesus’s relationship to angels—Psalm 2 and 110 become quite important for what this author is going to do. And explicitly, what he does here is he says that in Psalm 2, Jesus is called Son. And in Psalm 110, he’s referred to as priest. Son and priest. So he’s making the point that Jesus was humble. He didn’t take this honor to himself. But while he makes that point, he tells us the whole flow of the book.

The book moves from a consideration of Jesus as Son to then consideration of Jesus as priest. You see, that’s the big structure here. He’s the name better than the angels, Son of God, Son of Man, Son. And then he’s a high priest. And now the rest of this book—many, many chapters in the middle—will flesh out what that high priestly character of Jesus is, both comparing and contrasting him to Aaron.

And so Son and priest are the essence of what’s going on here. And we get that little overview of the book right at the very center through citations to Psalm 2 and Psalm 110.

So Jesus is like that. Now I’ve given a little different structure underneath. A second way of looking at these things: After the—or we have again the four-part beginning section. “We do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses.”

See, he’s just told us about Jesus as a faithful high priest, more faithful than Moses. And the idea is maybe we get frightened. Then maybe Jesus is too much the Son of God and not the Son of Man. You see, maybe he’s too, you know, remote from us. And so the author immediately goes on then to talk about the nearness of Jesus to us. He’s Son of God, but he’s Son of Man. He is faithful, but he’s compassionate. He’s faithful to execute God’s living word, you see, but he’s compassionate upon those who are weak and ignorant.

And we need to hear that. In the Middle Ages, they didn’t hear that. All they stressed was Son of God, and he became too magisterial, too remote, too detached from humanity. And they needed an intercessor that would be compassionate, and that became Mary. That’s the origins of Mariology according to R.J. Rushdoony.

You see, we run into all kinds of heresies if we don’t understand the nature of Jesus Christ. And here, the nature of Jesus Christ is compassion.

The same thing is true of us as a people. Reformed people tend to want to re-emphasize the majesty of Jesus Christ—that’s good. But if we lose compassion, you see, then we’re all about law, structures, and calling people to faithfulness, and we’re not about extending mercy and grace. And in the word of God, those got to go together.

Another part of the church of Jesus Christ emphasizes grace and mercy and not faithfulness to God’s word and its execution. And they’re nicer than Jesus. Some people are more harsh than Jesus—not harsh. Jesus is never harsh, but somehow more remote than Jesus. It has to do with our conception of who God is, again. And here we have this depiction of Jesus as faithful and yet compassionate and merciful.

Boy, that is so important for us as we walk around the world, isn’t it? When we bring cases, benevolent cases, we get to talk to people, try to help them. You know, you can get too much into the compassion side. You can get too much into the faithful God’s word side and call them into faithfulness. In Jesus, we have those characteristics brought together. And as a result of that: “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace in time of need.”

It ends with need there. See, Hebrews—this is what these people needed to hear. They had a time of need. They were like us, living in an urban environment, tempted not to have a full witness of Christ, tempted to make the Lord’s day like any other day the rest of the culture does, tempted just to kind of blow it off or kind of marginalize ourselves, tempted to become isolated and alienated from community. That’s what happens in a big culture like ours.

And they need to hear that in that time of need. It’s the same time of need that we have, folks. Very same temptations. In our time of need, we need to know that Jesus is a compassionate high priest and we can go to him because not only does he sympathize and is empathetic—it doesn’t just mean he feels our pain. It means he knows our pain. He suffered as a man himself. And he can help us in that weakness. That’s the purpose of his incarnation. So Jesus, in his incarnation, brings us that help. And there, on the basis of that, we’re to come boldly to the throne of grace.

And we’ll discuss the implications of that more next week.

Now the way I’ve structured the next section then is these matching pairs.

“Every high priest taken among men is appointed for men in things pertaining to God.” Matching that: “So also Christ did not glorify himself to become high priest. He who said to him, ‘You are my son today I have begotten you.’”

So you know, the very first thing it says about the Aaronic priesthood is they’re taken from among men. They don’t do it themselves. And the first thing it says about Jesus is taken as well and appointed by God. And it draws this connection between Jesus and Aaron.

B-sections: “That he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.” The sacrifices—these are two different kinds of offerings. The offering system of the Old Testament could be summarized in this way: gifts, like tribute gifts to God; sacrifices, like the ascension offering. He can offer both those things. There’s this doubling up.

And connected to that, Jesus Christ “in the days of his flesh when he had offered up prayers and supplications with vehement cries and tears.” Doubling, doubling.

Now, see the word “offer” here that we see in both of these sections. This is a somewhat distinct word. This is a word that explicitly has reference to the ministration of the priesthood. This word is used 16 times in Hebrews to draw near. Doug H.—I don’t know where he got it, but he said the summary of Hebrews is “how to draw near to God without becoming crispy critters.” Well, 16 times, the word meaning to offer, to draw near, you see, to God is used. You know, often Paul uses it in his epistles—not once. There’s a case against Pauline authorship. But it stresses, again, what this book is about: it’s about this offering and what Jesus does.

I think in parallel fashion to the offering of gifts and sacrifices, he certainly does that. But see, it expands that out to be his whole life, in addition to the cross. Again, this is an area of controversy today: the active and passive obedience of Jesus Christ. But you see, when we see this parallelism—in his flesh days, his incarnation days, all 30-plus years of them—he “had offered up prayers and supplications with cries and tears.” Jesus’s life was one of prayers and supplications. And this sermon puts that in parallel fashion to the high priest offering up gifts and sacrifices. Jesus’s entire life is one of ministration and work for us as the mediator between God and man.

And you see, it’s put in a sense that makes us see the compassion, the suffering, the endurance he had in his flesh days, because that’s the point of this part of the text: he’s sympathetic. He’s like us.

See the C-sections. The Aaronic priesthood could have compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray. Now notice it doesn’t say compassion on everyone. Compassion on those who are ignorant and going astray—certain kinds of sins, falling short of the mark. Not the sin of lawlessness, which we’ve seen before. Lawlessness in the Bible is a synonym to wickedness. To not adhere to the law of God is wickedness. And he’s not talking about having compassion on wickedness. He’s talking about having compassion on those who are ignorant and who sin through weakness. Different kind of deal.

But on those, the high priest has compassion because he’s a man just like them. And the same matching section: “Though he was a son, yet he learned obedience for the things which he suffered.” He suffered for us, and perfected obedience is for us. So his compassion—in those matching sections.

“Because of this, the high priest is required to offer not for himself but to offer sacrifices for sins for himself and the congregation.” And D: “Jesus Christ, having been perfected—that is, qualified for office—he became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey him.” Aaronic priesthood offering sacrifices repeatedly. He’ll make this case later in the sermon in Hebrews. Jesus affects eternal salvation. So he’s compared to the Aaronic priesthood, but he’s contrasted with them as well. And the contrast is that he is now ushered in eternal salvation.

And then at the end of the first section, the E section: “No man takes his honor to himself, but he was called by God just as Aaron was. Jesus is called by God as high priest according to the order of Melchizedek.” And this is going to be quite important—this contrast now with the Aaronic priesthood.

Jesus is not a priest of the order of Aaron. Jesus is a priest of the order of Melchizedek. Change of priesthood. Hebrews will tell us: change of law in terms of the administration of the system. And so things will change, but their change is not wholesale. Their change is a transformation of the old, not a rejection of it. It’s not “Moses is bad or to be left behind and Jesus is good.” Aaron was bad and Jesus is good. No, Jesus is a transformation of the Mosaic order, a transformation of the Aaronic priesthood, a transformation of that worship system that was set up.

Aaron himself was a change of priesthood, requiring a new law, because he wasn’t the first priest. Melchizedek was the first priest mentioned in the Bible as a priest. Melchizedek antedates Aaron, and that will be quite important for the argument of the author of the sermon to the Hebrews as well.

So this entire section focuses on the compassion of the Lord Jesus Christ and compares him with Aaron and also in some ways contrasts him with Aaron as well.

You know, it’s pretty important. In verse 2, “he can have compassion on those who are ignorant.” Compassion there—that word is one that the Greeks despised. A man who had compassion—their ideal was stoic indifference to their own personal sufferings and the sufferings of others. And because we are a blend of Christianity and Greek thought, we’re the same way. We tend towards stoicism—indifference to suffering is the way to handle it, to wall ourselves off from sufferings and to one another.

But Jesus isn’t like that. Jesus isn’t the other side of the coin, all romantic, sentimental care. This word has within it the connotation of having controlled anger or controlled emotions relative to a situation. Jesus understands the difficulties. He understands that we’ve sinned, but he has compassion upon us in our sin. He can help us, you see. And that’s the opposite of the Greek view—that indifference and emotional detachment is what it’s all about. No, Jesus cares deeply—more deeply than you can understand—for you. Jesus cares for you.

You know, in the epistles it says: “Cast all your cares upon him, knowing that he cares for you.” That word “cares for you”—is he thinks upon you. God is perpetually caring for you, thinking on you. That it is so important for the Hebrews in their time of difficulty, and us in our times of difficulty, to recognize that Jesus cares deeply about us.

Well, this is first fruits stuff. This is third section, third day, first fruits stuff. We don’t know that in the abstract. The word of God doesn’t come to us in the abstract. It’s not just me and Jesus, me and my Bible somewhere. The text told us that we’re to exhort one another. And it put that in parallel fashion to hearing the voice of God. Well, the implication is quite clear for compassion, is it not?

How do you know that Jesus cares for you? You know, when the body of Christ cares for you—when individual people in the body of Christ care for you—you may think you care about other people, but if it never finds itself in explicit manifestation toward individuals, you may have some abstract care and concern that looks more like the stoic indifference of the Greeks than it does the compassion, the caring of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Just as we hear the voice of Christ—and the Spirit moves in the context of the word as those truths are brought in voices, audible things that make little bones in our ears move—so the truth is, as well, that we know the compassion of Jesus not just in this way, but probably very preeminently in this way: by knowing the care of his people. We’re ministers one to the other. We can minister grace to each other—compassion and care.

In time of need, the compassion of Jesus Christ is what’s emphasized in this text. That’s what’s emphasized to us.

All right. Now, we can go back to the front page of the outline, and I have some summary statements based upon this passage and its structure.

Looking at 4:15-5:10, we note:

Jesus, because of his flesh days, his incarnation, is compassionate and sympathetic with us. So we can be confident that he will help us. That’s the point of this entire section.

Secondly, Jesus is compared and contrasted with the Aaronic priesthood. Like the Aaronic priesthood, Jesus is humble. He didn’t take the office to himself. Unlike the Aaronic priesthood, Jesus’s whole faithful life was a mediation for sinners. He offered up not just his life on the cross—sacrifice and gift for sin. He offers up prayers and tears throughout the course of his life for humanity. Jesus’s entire life, entire faithful life was a mediation for sinners.

Like the Aaronic priesthood, Jesus is compassionate. They had to be compassionate. They were like men. Jesus becomes incarnated as a man, and he is compassionate—tied to that incarnation. You know, this is so important when these idiotic perversions of the Trinity are about in our land today—that Jesus wasn’t really a man, well, we lose the entire thrust of this sermon to the Hebrews if Jesus is not really a man, and he wasn’t raised in a body. The point is he does have a body. He’s brought humanity into the trinitarian life of God. And in his body, in his real manhood, Jesus linked to his compassion for us.

For, unlike the Aaronic priesthood, Jesus affected eternal salvation for all that obey him. Notice that he affects eternal salvation for who? For everybody? No. For those who obey him. You see, he’s warning them. Even while he’s giving this great, wonderful news that Jesus loves them, he’s warning them that Jesus’s love affects eternal salvation for those who are obedient. He’s sympathizing with their struggles. He’s sympathizing with their trials and temptations because Jesus does. But he’s also commanding them to obey Jesus Christ. He brings eternal salvation to all that obey him.

Fifth, Jesus is not of the Aaronic order, but is of the order of Melchizedek.

All right. Now, looking at the entire section 3:1-5:10, we note that as Christians, we are to be faithful and compassionate. Jesus is faithful. Jesus is compassionate. And we know the implication for us as Christians—as little Jesuses running around, little Christians—is that we’re to be characterized in the same way. And that’s what’ll happen on the flip side, down in section five of this sermon, down in chapters 12. We’ll be called to exercise faith. We’ll be called to endure. And we’ll be called to help other people—to bind up the limbs that hang down. We are called to be faithful and compassionate.

Now B: This is particularly true in the perichoretic community of the church. And now we want to move and make application—not just talking about the trinitarian life itself, but we want to say that this is as well who we are to be. The church of Jesus Christ is to be one in the context of our relationships to each other. We are to be a perichoretic community. We are to live no longer in isolation, but we are to live in community.

And on the third sheet at the bottom of it, we have a little short outline of John 17:20-23.

If John portrays Jesus and the Father as indwelling one another and the Spirit as well, he also then says that this is who we are now in Jesus.

John 17:20-23: “I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe on me through their word. What does he pray for us? That they all may be one. What does it mean? As you, Father, are in me and I in you. It means perichoretic union. Not a loss of identity, but a continual openness to indwelling one another’s lives.

The unity of the church is pictured here at the center in the unity of the Trinity. What can be described as this perichoretic dance of the triune God, loving one another, serving one another, indwelling one another, opening oneself up to opportunities to be loved by the other. This is the unity of the church that they also may be one in us. The unity of the church is not something that we’re supposed to whip up or that we’re supposed to try to affect by ourselves, but it results from our dwelling in the Trinity. They also may be one in us. We cannot create this kind of community apart from a knowledge of the God who has brought us into inner trinitarian life of love and relationship.

Jesus says that they may be one—that they also may be just as they are also one in us. And so the perichoretic community of the church is being described. And then the end result: that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that you have sent me.

Is there anything more important? Is there anything more important than what this text tells us in terms of the accomplishment of the great commission? We’re postmillennials here, most of us. We expect the world to get better. How does it happen? It happens through the regeneration of people. And that happens explicitly. The text tells us, based on something—based on what? Based on us entering into that trinitarian community and experiencing that community here in the context of the earth, of the world, and our families, in our neighborhoods, preeminently in the church.

I suppose we could say this is not some side doctrine. This is central to the evangelization and discipleship of the nations of the world—this kind of intertrinitarian unity and dancing life together with each other. That’s what this text tells us.

Perichoresis in the context of Christian community is a moving out of our comfort zones and making friends with the elderly ladies, the troubled teens, the housewife, the weirdo, the shy guy, the people at McDonald’s, all kinds of people. You see, it says that we do not pull back from those relationships or opportunities, but rather we embrace them as ministry opportunities for the Lord Jesus Christ.

Freedom arises. In the freedom of Christianity, there arises a fellowship and sharing so honest and open and real that people involved can be described as dwelling in one another. That’s what Jesus says in John 17. He’s not saying “have nice little friendships and relationships,” but he’s saying to enter into relationships that can be characterized as your relationship with other people here on earth modeling the unity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And he has shown us throughout the Gospel of John: “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father,” because the Father indwells me and I indwell the Father, and the Spirit indwells us both. That’s the kind of life that Jesus is calling us to—not nice, kind of abstract, detached friendships, but an honesty and openness to one another, a ministering to one another, and a relating to one another that can be described as dwelling in one another’s lives.

You know, it’s interesting how God does sermon prep for me. Tim Roach sent me an email a month or so back—wanted to bless us in some way. What a delightful thing to hear from him. And somebody said, “Well, maybe you could help us get the electrical work in our remodel of our kitchen done—these good electricity.” So he came out on a Friday evening or late afternoon and began the work. Took a lot longer than he or we thought it would because it had been so many months since Ben and Asa had laid those lines and then sheetrocked them in. We didn’t know where the lines were anymore.

So Tim and Caleb had to spend, you know, hours just figuring out what lines went where, down below. And then they came out this last week. And God is preparing me for my sermon. Last Monday, they came out and spent—they stayed the night Sunday night after prayer meeting, and then worked on the electrical on Monday during the day. And you know, they probably thought, “In the morning we’ll be done.” But they were there till dinnertime—7:00 by the time they finally left. Big long job. They probably weren’t prepared to spend that much time there. I wasn’t prepared to have them be there that much. My day off, you know, what am I supposed to do? I feel very uncomfortable because I got two guys working away doing great work, but I can’t help him. I can’t see. And if I could, I’d probably just connect wires and burn things up or something.

So it was uncomfortable for me. But what was God doing? He was having us, you know, be a little perichoretic community those that day and a half. He was having our lives indwell one another. And the blessings that came out of that were multiple.

My daughter Charity spent the entire day with Bethany. And I got to spend, you know, a little time here and there with Caleb and get to know him a little bit. And then when my boys came home from work, Caleb and Ben and Elijah, and the girls played out front in a little game. They got to have interaction. They got to indwell each other’s lives. My wife got to indwell Kelly’s life and Christine’s, and taught Christine some skills that are helpful to finishing off a baby blanket she was making for Joanna. It was delightful, you see.

But we don’t like it. It upsets our routines. We don’t want that kind of closeness. I don’t think we do. You know, we live in a culture that is American, and we’re all individualized. We all have our own little thing going on. And that has not gotten better in the last 20 years. That’s gotten a lot worse. We’re the result of Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.” Goes off into his little wine cellar or wherever it was he did his thinking to separate himself from all of this great thing that forms the basis of modern epistemology. And it’s completely individualized. It’s completely isolated. It’s complete alienation. And that’s what the world moves in terms of today.

And now we have modernity and postmodernity and deconstruction. And the whole idea is you want to deconstruct every little influence anybody has had on you or somebody else and get it down to just you. And what you find out is there is no you. You’re not created completely individual.

I was with Joanna. She looks just like her mother in baby pictures. I’ve noticed—I’ve mentioned this before, but I hope this doesn’t embarrass him—I saw Kathy Schuman Tuesday night for premarital counseling, George Schuman Wednesday at elder meeting. And I kept thinking, man, she looks like George. I could see the resemblance so strongly. You know, I could see her father in her, indwelling her. And I didn’t just [catch] looks, and the way your face muscles move. It is that, of course, but it’s kind of their way of being. It’s a very mysterious thing, and it’s a thing that’s good.

Bible says this is great. This is exactly what you want to do. You want to have that kind of compassion and faithfulness. You want to exhort each other in faithfulness, not let people go off the edge. And you want to do it in compassion. You want to minister to them positively as well in community. And we just don’t like doing this. It’s hard on us. Everything in our culture leads us the other way.

There was an old Eagles song called “Desperado” that sort of picks up the mood of modern man in this. It says this: “Desperado, you ain’t getting any younger. Your pain and your hunger, they’re driving you home. And freedom—oh, freedom—that’s just some people talking. Your prison is walking through this world all alone. Don’t your feet get cold in the wintertime? The sky won’t snow and the sun won’t shine. It’s hard to tell the nighttime from the day. You’re losing all your highs and lows. Ain’t it funny how the feeling goes away? Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses? Come down from your fences. Open the gate.”

You see, open your life up. Don’t live in isolation. If there was a model of isolation in our culture in the past, it was the cowboy, the desperado, the individual out there on his horse—the Marlborough man. We’re trained to think that’s what it is to be a man. It’s not. It’s the opposite. The Bible says we do God’s purposes. Horrible damage when we become the Marlborough man, isolated—the desperado. Come down from your fences. Open the gate. It may be raining, but there’s a rainbow above you. You better let somebody love you. You better let somebody love you before it’s too late. Before it’s too late.

Yeah, that’s who we are. We tend to live in isolation, and our lives close up like a fist. Jackson Browne has a song where he talks about a heart—a jewel made like a heart—and then a hole in the wall the size of a fist. The heart becomes closed and angry. You know, they say your heart’s about the size of a fist. Well, with modern man, that’s what his heart is. It’s a closed fist. You see, all isolated and bound up within himself—not entering into this unity that Jesus Christ says is the very model of our salvation, to be called into the community life of the inner trinitarian perichoretic dance.

Modern man invariably winds up suffocating themselves in the end, wanting freedom. Wanting the openness of isolation, we end up suffocating ourselves. There’s no air and no life in a vacuum. No life in a vacuum. Well, maybe there’s—I don’t know—but I don’t think there’s any life in a vacuum. And certainly it’s a good illustration for this: When we’re locked away in the supposed safety of a fortress, it is unbearably lonely and lifeless.

When—the worst part of it is that we get used to it. The worst part is the aching and loneliness gets dulled over. The wound is cauterized, and then we’re of complete uselessness to God in the kingdom, and then we’re on the road to hell. It’s painful.

Why do we do this? Well, we do it, first of all, just because we’re selfish jerks. You know, we just don’t like people in our fallen state. Adam blames Eve immediately. We’re created in the image of God, male and female. We’re created in community. And the first deleterious effect of sin is the breakdown of community. And that’s who we start out as: we just like to be by ourselves.

Well, even if then we’re brought out of that and regenerated, then it’s still difficult to enter into this kind of life—to open ourselves to others, to show compassion and feelings one for the other, to have this perichoretic dance, this indwelling of each other’s lives. It’s difficult because it involves pain. It’s no fun because you’re going to get hurt, and you certainly will.

It is an accurate thing to say: If I do what Dennis says the Bible says I’m supposed to do, it’s going to create pain, because some guy’s going to betray me, or they’re not going to be nice to me, or I’m going to betray them. Whatever is going to happen, it’s going to be bad. It is painful to feel betrayed by those whom you trust, that you built relationship with. You know, over 20 years, you know, seeing people—some people leave this church, and it’s very difficult for them. That’s good. It should be hard to leave a church because what a church should be is this interrelationship of lives, a mutual indwelling of each other’s lives. And when that’s cut off, that’s not easy.

You know, James B. Jordan uses the illustration of—like web string between you and things that are covenantally bound to you. And in your family, there’s huge thick strings, and it’s just hard as can be to tear that stuff. And in the church, there’s strings of various sizes and widths depending on how well we’ve obeyed Jesus to be compassionate and faithful to one another, how well we’ve exhibited this indwelling in each other’s lives. But if we do that right, you see—to what degree we do that right—it’s going to be very difficult for people to leave. The attenuation is hard.

And then to go to a church of more nominal relationships—not all; some of them have better relationships than we do—but if you end up at a church where there’s more nominal relationships, you know, you sort of feel like, “Well, the whole thing was an illusion. It couldn’t have happened.” So it’s difficult.

We don’t like to do this because it means pain when the whole thing breaks down. So if I make friends, if I indwell others’ lives, I’ll feel pain. Lewis—C.S. Lewis—wrote this in his book The Four Loves. Of course, this is excellent sense: “Don’t put your goods in a leaky vessel. Don’t spend too much in a house you may be turned out of. There’s no man alive who responds more naturally than I,” Lewis said, “to such canny maxims. I am a safety-first creature, belt and suspenders guy. Of all arguments against love, none makes so strong an appeal to my nature as, carefully, this might result in you suffering. This might result in you suffering.”

And yet Lewis also said that he doubts there is anything in us humans that pleases God less than giving into this tendency to not indwell each other’s lives. There’s nothing, Lewis said, that is more contrary to the very nature of God, to the Trinity that we celebrate today. There’s nothing more contrary to that than this radical isolation and a failure to live in the indwelling of each other’s lives of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is who we have been regenerated to be—people. This is our identity: to dwell in each other’s lives in perichoretic union.

The divine hermit is released from his sin by relationship to God. Well, that’s only if you think of God as something other than a divine hermit. But if you think of God as high and lofty and not concerned at the affairs of men, and maybe Jesus cared, but the Father is off there somewhere—you see, that’s the way you will become. You become like the gods you serve.

But that’s not God. The Father indwelt the Son. And when we see the Son suffering for mankind and affecting their salvation and having the kind of concern and care that our text tells about, we see the Father’s heart for you. It’s not just Jesus who cares for you. It is God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. And the Spirit comes—the Spirit is this matchmaker. The Spirit is the one who brings us into unions, into the indwelling of lives. And it is to grieve the Holy Spirit to pull back from each other’s lives in that way.

You know, one person described this kind of Christian community that I’m describing in this way. He said, “Well, when one person cries, the other saint should taste the salt. When I cry, you should taste salt.” And that strikes us as a little weird, but you know, all he’s doing is restating what the Bible says. It says in the New Testament: weep with those that are weeping, and rejoice with those that are rejoicing. And if somebody’s crying, you should taste salt. You should be compassionate the way Jesus is. And this is the nature of the life that God has restored us to in Jesus Christ.

Lewis said this: “There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrong, and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one—not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries. Avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket,” Lewis said, “safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken. It’ll become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

The alternative to tragedy, or at least the risk of tragedy of interconnected lives, is damnation. The only place outside heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is hell. And that’s where our culture exists more often than not—in hell. And we do as well.

This text is a great wonder and a promise to us of the sort of life that’s to exist in the church. But it’s also a text that brings us conviction because we know how often we don’t appreciate somebody being there all day, and we don’t really want to go and spend a day in somebody else’s life ultimately. You see, we don’t like that for lots of reasons.

Yet the Bible says this is it. As another person said it—another theologian—”The liberation of the Christian takes place as he is drawn out of solitariness into fellowship. The glories and miseries of isolation, of self-dependence, of loneliness are now over for the Christian. As a witness of Jesus Christ, he has nothing more to seek or find in this dark cavern. With every step which he takes as such, he moves further out of this cavern of loneliness and isolation, leaving it behind and moving out and into fellowship—into fellowship with Jesus Christ, which at once opens up in two dimensions: fellowship with God, who also sends him out as his servant in and with Christ, and fellowship with men, to whom he is sent in and with Christ as his servant.

When he is addressed and claimed by Jesus Christ for his service, both his relationship with God and his relationship with his neighbor are personally assigned to him with superior power and force. He has ceased to be lonely. He is in any case brought into conjunction with God as his Father and his neighbor as his brother. For all the relapses into his old private being, it is once and for all established that the cavern is behind him and the open country of fellowship before him.”

This is what lies before us—the open country of fellowship. This is what’ll change the world: the demonstration of the triune perichoretic dance of the indwelling of each other’s lives lived out in the context of Christian community here and now.

High goals, high marks that Jesus puts before us today, but it’s one that we must not pull back from. This is the very reason we have been created: to live in this kind of life.

There’s a great old country and western song off an album called Lonesome Standard Time. Such love country and western songs. That song is called “Standing Knee Deep in a River (Dying of Thirst).”

You’re standing knee-deep in a river today. Are you dying of thirst? When you go home to your family, you’re standing knee-deep in a river of life of people that God has caused you to have indwell your life and your life them. Are you dying of thirst? You understand that the way to solve that is to enter into these relationships—throwing aside our selfishness, throwing aside our fears of being harmed by one another. It will happen. It will happen.

But leaving those fears behind and entering into the triune life described for us in this text from John’s gospel. We are to choose to not fold up our hearts, but rather to open them up to one another, that we may indeed mutually indwell each other.

On the outline back there, I say that we’re supposed to—in the context of this—see that interruptions are perichoretic opportunities to minister.

Jesus is on his way. The story of Jairus’s daughter—something is in the middle of it. Jairus’s daughter is dying, and Jesus is going to see her. But something happens. A woman interrupts him. She touches the hem of his garment, and he says, “I felt power flow out of me.” That’s an interruption to ministry. And it’s an interruption to an important ministry—to keep some girl from dying. But Jesus saw those interruptions not as interruptions to ministry, but as now where the focus of his ministry was to be.

He attends to the woman, brings her health and salvation, interacts with her. And while he’s doing that, Jairus’s daughter dies. And by the time Jesus gets there, she’s dead. But what does he do? He raises her back up.

The story is connected because, you know, he’s going to see her. He resurrects her. In the middle he’s got this interruption to his ministry. And at the end of that interruption, he refers to the woman who touches the hem of his garment as “daughter”—daughter, like Jairus’s daughter.

If we’re going to live in this kind of perichoretic community, we must not see interruptions to our days by little children tugging at our dresses, or people coming into our office, or people coming into your house and knocking on your door at dinnertime. We must not see those interruptions in a selfish, isolated way, but must rather instead see these as opportunities for ministry the way Jesus Christ did.

This is to live our lives allowing them to be mutually indwelt one of the other. We are to open ourselves out to one another. This is the road to wholeness, witness, and victory because this itself is the victory. This is the triune life lived out here on earth.

And then finally: This is rooted in our entrance into the trinitarian dance, our heavenly calling. This has a tremendous implication for our lives. The application should be—I hope—a topic of discussion in your home today and throughout the week. May the Lord God bring this home to you in so many ways. May my sermon preparation—of the wonderful ministry of the Roach family and our indwelling of lives for a day—may that be mirrored in your relationships this week, not as sermon preparation, but as sermon application.

The Lord God calls us together today to reassert what triune life is all about and to call us to enter into that life by living in true Christian community.

Let’s pray.