Big Shock Chapter

Hebrews 3 is a Big Shock Chapter for its original recipients. It has been where everything in the book has been building to so far, and everything else in Hebrews flows out of it. Chapter 3 demands a complete reorientation of mind for its first audience: they trusted Moses, they considered themselves "in Moses", they thought that Moses was the high point of the nation's relationship with God and the revelation of God through Moses was the highest, clearest and most important words that would ever be communicated from God. Moses, Moses, Moses. Our writer's argument is: Jesus is greater that Old Testament prophets (of which Moses was the supreme one) Jesus is superior to angels (who mediated the Law to Moses) Therefore Jesus is greater than Moses (and, he will go on to say, greater than the Law of Moses) Put yourself in their shoes. They had been taught for 1400 years that following Moses and obeying the Law was the exclusive way to know and be accepted by God. No Moses, no relationship with God. This is a HUGE claim that Hebrews 3 is making.
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New Collections

Added 2 new collections of favourite posts on church and leadership.

I recommend any regular blogger to try this. Its frustrating having a large back catalogue of material that may never get read after the first few days but is still good stuff. Collections make slightly older material permanently accessible

Life is Short

It doesn't matter how much you think you have life sorted out, it just isn't that predictable. There are a million, million factors every day that we aren't in control of. Here is a quick video of the luckiest man in Russia yesterday, who was just quick enough when a bus's breaks failed. He didn't expect to die yesterday, but he nearly did. I don't expect to die today, but I might. I don't want to live blind to that possibility. What happens then effects how I live today in every imaginable way.
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Jesus is Supreme - So What? Hebrews 2:5-18

To sum it up: because Jesus is supreme and everything is under him for this world and the next: * He will get us to heaven if we turn to him * He will take away the terror of death because he died for us * We don't need to fear the devil because Jesus has beaten him and destroyed his power * We don't have to fear that we will get condemned for being sinners because he mediates for us * We can know God's comfort in suffering or temptation because our high priest draws near and he knows exactly what it is like
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