St. Matthew Lutheran Church

Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost
November 18, 2018

“Drawing Near” (Hebrews 10:11-25)

“The day is surely drawing near,” we sang in our opening hymn. And our Epistle reading today, from Hebrews 10, closes with similar words: “as you see the Day drawing near.” “The Day”? What day? Notice, it’s “the” Day. Sounds important. So let’s find out what that “day” is. And let’s also consider what the implications are for us as we see that day approaching. For our text also tells us about another type of “drawing near.” It says that we should “draw near.” “Let us draw near,” it says. Thus our theme this morning: “Drawing Near.”

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Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost
November 15, 2015

“Therefore Let Us Draw Near, Hold Fast, and Stir Up” (Hebrews 10:11-25)

Last week we looked at Hebrews 9, where we are told that Christ is our high priest. Today we continue on into Hebrews 10, where the writer expands on what it means that Christ is our high priest and then goes on to say what the implications of that are for our life. And we can sum those up this morning in three ways. Since Christ is our high priest, “Therefore Let Us Draw Near, Hold Fast, and Stir Up.”

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Twenty-fourth Sunday after Pentecost
November 8, 2015

“Christ Is Our High Priest” (Hebrews 9:24-28)

Our Epistle reading today from the Book of Hebrews talks about a high priest entering into holy places made with hands. It talks about this high priest entering these holy places every year with blood not his own. And when we hear these kinds of references, which are all over the place in the Book of Hebrews, we may be asking ourselves, “What is all this ‘high priest’ business? Where are these ‘holy places’? And what does this have to do with me?” Well, hang on, we’ll explain these things and what they have to do with us, because the point that Hebrews is making is that “Christ Is Our High Priest.”

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Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost
October 18, 2015

“Entering His Rest” (Hebrews 4:1-13)

If you’ve ever had to work and work and work, if you’ve ever been worn out and exhausted, when you feel like you can’t go on but you have to, when you’re drained and tired and spent–at times like those, you know how refreshing it is, and what a relief it is, to finally get a rest.

Rest: It can be such a welcome word. To be able to just kick back and relax. The pressure is off, the burden is lifted. Take a load off and chillax, bro! A little R & R is so welcome after an arduous ordeal.

And so our Epistle reading for today, from Hebrews 4, is about being able to get that kind of a rest. In fact, it’s about an even greater kind of rest. God’s rest. The rest that he has for us, in Christ. And so our theme this morning: “Entering His Rest.”

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Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost
November 18, 2012

“Jesus Is Our Great High Priest–Now What?” (Hebrews 10:11-25)

Today is the seventh straight Sunday when the assigned Epistle for the day comes from the Letter of Hebrews. We lost a couple of those readings due to observing Reformation and All Saints, but even so, we’ve been hearing a lot of Hebrews. I used Hebrews as a sermon text a couple of times back in October, once on the verse, “Today, if you hear his voice,” and once on Jesus as our Sabbath rest. But there is a major aspect of this epistle I haven’t touched on yet, and that is, Jesus as our great high priest. I’ve been saving up that for today.

That Jesus is our high priest is indeed a major theme in the Epistle of Hebrews. The word “priest” occurs over thirty times in Hebrews, whereas it occurs maybe three times, total, in all the other epistles of the New Testament combined.

Now since we 21st century Gentiles are not as familiar with the office of the high priest as Jews in the first century would have been, and since we didn’t touch on this topic earlier, let’s now get up to speed by looking at how Hebrews has been describing Jesus as our great high priest. Please turn to your insert, where you’ll see a few excerpts from the previous weeks’ readings, concluding with our reading for today.

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