Cranmer’s Curate has never undertaken an expository sermon series on the epistle to the Hebrews. He suspects that would be beyond his capabilities.
But your curate thanks God that William Tyndale sacrificed his life to translate the Bible into English and that Archbishop Cranmer took such pains to ensure that parish churches had their own copies of the English Bible.
In short, your curate is enormously grateful that he can read the Word of God written in his own tongue.
In the course of his normal morning Bible reading, he has been reading the epistle to the Hebrews and stumbled across some wonderful verses in chapter 6 that really hit him between the eyes:
‘We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek’ (Hebrews 6v19-20 – RSV).
Loyal readers of the youth group can read for themselves about the eternal Melchizedekian priesthood of our Lord Jesus Christ in Hebrews chapter 7. It is wonderfully inspiring.
As Cranmer's Curate takes some time out of the blogosphere for half-term week, he leaves the loyal readers of the youth group, who no doubt have trials and tribulations of their own, with that lovely nautical picture of the Christian's ‘sure and steadfast anchor of the soul’ in Hebrews 6v19.
The Evangelical work going on in the small northern parish church your curate and his remarkable wife serve is a very fragile one. We face enemies within the visible Church and without – armed thugs terrorising the village; political correctness in the secular culture; theological liberalism in the church culture; mega-church megalomania; church plant poaching; apathy and negativism among professing Christians.
Sometimes Cranmer’s Curate doesn’t know which direction the scuds are coming from.
But in the midst of our temporal troubles, the Holy Spirit says Christian believers have ‘a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul,’ namely our Christian hope of entering God’s heavenly rest where we will dwell in peace and safety for ever with the Lord Jesus, our forerunner.
That hope is based on the forgiveness of sins our eternal and permanent Melchizedekian high priest achieved for his believing people through his own blood sacrificially shed.
Your curate’s sins forgiven? Now, that is amazing.
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Hebrews is so rich a book.
ReplyDeleteIt is worth noting that "passing behind the curtain" is not just symbolism. It begins literally at Mark 15:37-38. As Jesus dies on the cross, "the curtain of the temple was torn in two." The Greek root is for "torn" is "schizo", a violent ripping and fragmenting. Mark also uses this verb at the baptism of the Lord - "the heavens were torn open."
God burst through the "veil" to save our sinful world by the preaching ministry of Christ; and Christ's atoning death on the cross opens the way into the Holy of Holies, preparing the way for those who will follow Him by faith.
Have a good break from blogging... may the shield of faith knock down all scuds coming your way.