Do you remember the old slogan for Avis Car Rental? Hertz, apparently, had taken the top spot on the list - and of course, they let people know: “We’re #1!” Avis’ approach was intriguing to me. They were like: “We’re #2…BUT WE TRY HARDER.”

While there’s something to the idea of trying your best, in my experience I have found that by adopting this motto in our spiritual growth, more often than not what you end up with is frustration and guilt and at times the feeling like it’s not worth it and the temptation to just walk away and give up.

You see the symptoms of folks teetering on that edge. They neglect time with God. They stay away from God’s people. Worship is - at best - an afterthought. 

That very well may come from a lack of understanding what GRACE is, specifically what the PURPOSE of grace is.

We’ve talked a lot about grace recently. And ultimately we understand grace to be the thing that saves us. But is there something else grace does? We’ve touched on this a bit before, but what I, as your pastor, am excited to show you today is how grace is the thing that helps us BE who God designed us to be - How to be SAVED and how to BE saved. and WITHOUT doing the Avis thing, trying harder in our own power.

As we begin, I want to make sure you know a truth about this book, the Bible): this isn’t A book; this is 66 books with over 40 authors, written over a period of 1500 years on 3 continents - and yet there is amazing harmony throughout. And scripture helps us interpret and understand scripture; when you get to one passage that may be difficult to understand, you can be sure that there’s most likely a few other passages that deal with the same subject that can shed light on how the difficult passage should be interpreted.

There are a few books, in addition, that give us a clue as to WHY it was written. The Gospel of John, for instance, has a purpose that John tells his readers. John 20:30-31 “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But THESE are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

This is why, by the way, the Gospel of John is made available by many churches and Christian organizations and given out to those who are seeking spiritual truth. John hand-picked the events in Jesus’ ministry and the teachings he heard for the purpose of showing people that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God - AND that in seeing that truth, one could come to faith and eternal life.

So it’s nice when a book from the Bible actually tells us what it’s about.

So that’s why I LOVE this next section of the book of Hebrews because there is a whole lot that the Author lays out for us, here in the second part of chapter 7 and going through the first part of chapter 10. In fact, there is SO much that I probably don’t have to read every verse of that section, cuz if I DID, we would go much longer than we even did last week. 🙂

I mean, we WILL look at sections of this passage, but I was excited, as I read through chapters 7-10, to see one particular verse - Hebrews 8:1 - which, once you read it, you’ll see how helpful that one verse is. So let’s go to Hebrews 8.

We don’t know a whole lot about him, and what we do know is buried in mystery. We know that he was the King of Salem, we know that he was a priest of the Most High God, we know that he had a funny name and we know that Abraham thought enough of him that he made an offering of ten percent of everything he owned to him.

He is fairly obscure. He’s first mentioned in Genesis 14 where he is given a total of three verses. He’s not mentioned again until Psalm 110:4 where David makes reference to the coming Messiah and writes: “The LORD has taken an oath and will not break his vow: ‘You are a priest forever in the line of Melchizedek.’”

And then nothing, not in Proverbs, or Ecclesiastes, none of the prophets mention him. Melchizedek’s name doesn’t come up in any of the gospels or the book of Acts. Paul doesn’t mention him - but then, all of a sudden, the Author of Hebrews writes  17 verses about this mystery monarch.

We actually have preached a couple of times in the past year about Melchizedek. Last summer we studied the life of Abraham, where we first encountered him, and earlier in our study in the book of Hebrews we talked about the priesthood of Jesus being like Melchizedek and not like Aaron and his descendants.

Today I want to focus on yet another aspect of these verses - one that is perhaps not as obvious, but definitely is worth stopping and taking note, especially because the story found in Genesis 14 is the first recorded instance of somebody sacrificing financially to provide for the work of God in some way. Before Genesis 14, there were definitely sacrifices made by individuals as a way to honor and worship God, but this event in the life of Abraham is the first time a priest of God is given a portion of someone’s resources.

One of the greatest problems we face today is a loss of trust. It used to be that in the past a man’s word was a sacred bond. Contracts would be signed with a handshake and one’s word. There was little need for lawyers or documents. If a person promised to do something, their honor depended upon them following through with their pledge.

Not so much today. Today we have grown cynical and question everyone’s motives. You can’t trust the media, or the government, or corporations, or the educational system, or even pastors! At least, that’s where our cynicism has led us to believe. And no wonder - because scandals and lies and crime happens in so many arenas of our world today.

And you know where this cynicism lands us? With the inability to trust anyone but ourselves! The only one I can really trust is ME. And when THAT happens for too many people, we see the damage that is done to what was used to be known as community. It’s bad. And for many, there seems to be no answer…

In the midst of this cynicism there IS a clear voice that cuts through for those who have come to believe in Jesus as Lord and Savior:

“Trust in the LORD, and do good; dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness. Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart..” (Psalm 37:3-4)

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and He will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5-6)

Throughout our sacred Scriptures there is this voice that tells us we can trust God… But sometimes I wonder if our cynicism has spilled over into our relationship with God. I have seen people who have been burned by so many systems be EXTREMELY cautious when it comes to putting their trust in ANYTHING outside of themselves — EVEN GOD.

We read from the Author of Hebrews how important it is to maintain momentum in understanding and living out faith in Jesus. He said in Heb 5:11-14: “About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”

The people who were receiving this letter apparently had been Christians for awhile. We know that they are HEBREW people (Jewish people), as were the majority of the Early Church in Jerusalem. (A fact that many people don’t know - that Jews and Christians are very closely connected to each other, and what Jesus began 2000 years ago was intended to bring the Jews to the next level of relationship with their God. Some of them got it, some of them did not.)

And as we read through Hebrews, we see that these Jewish converts were having a tough go in their new-found faith in Jesus. And that’s understandable. If you grew up being taught one way, believing in a certain set of teachings, sometimes it’s difficult to embrace something new without being tempted every now and then to go back to the old ways.

So the Author of Hebrews is encouraging these Jewish Christians to keep growing, keep maturing. His point is that, if you’re not moving forward, you are in danger of falling back to your old ways.

He is reminding them throughout this book of the superiority of Jesus. In fact this whole book is one gigantic exciting commercial for faith in Jesus! The Author will tell us that Jesus is better than the Prophets, better than the Angels, better than Moses, better than the Law, better than the High Priest, and even better than the annual sacrifices proscribed in the Law. 

The old way of doing things served, he says, as a foreshadowing of a better covenant, a better connection with God - not based on our performance in adhering to the external lawbook, but in the deepening relationship we have with our Heavenly Father made possible through the work of Jesus on the cross.

Mother’s Day is probably the toughest day of the year to preach. That’s primarily because it seems that Mother’s Day is a minefield of different emotions for so many in any given church. In the 8 years I have preached here at PBCC, I have not ever preached a Mother’s Day sermon. We have taken time out of the service to honor moms, but I typically have just barreled through with the sermon series we happened to be in at the time.

And to be honest it’s a difficult subject because while there are many of us who had great moms, some people have had – or still have – painful relationships with their moms, and some have lost their moms.

And then you have the ladies who would LOVE to be moms – but for whatever reason, could not be. And there are moms who pray continually for their kids who have gone off the rails, hoping that one day they will come back to the family or come back to their faith.

So it’s tough to find the balance. And besides, how many ways can you say honor your mother? I’ve heard that one so many times when I was growing up. And it can get so trite that it really carries very little meaning!

But today, as I DO bring a Mother’s Day message, one thing we can say that we all have in common - regardless of where you might fit into the mine field I described - is that we all have mothers. Our mothers gave us life. Whether they turned out to be great moms or terrible moms, or something in between, the Bible is clear that we are to honor our mothers.

 I have long been fascinated with Western Turkey, and the area of the world where the seven churches of Revelation were located. In fact, one day, my hope is to visit that area to see for myself the places that I have studied for over 30 years now.

Of course, the actual cities where the churches that John addressed in The Book of Revelation no longer exist as they did in the First Century - but the ruins of those ancient cities can still be seen to some degree. 

The only thing that remains are the foundation stones.  You could still easily build on these foundations even today. The BUILDINGS that were on these foundations are gone - but the foundations have endured the centuries.

We have been talking about the Foundations of our Faith, according to Hebrews 6, verses 1-2. The Author of Hebrews was frustrated that the believers who, by the way, were being tempted to go back to the law to justify themselves, rather than to put their full weight on the work of Jesus for their righteousness, these believers SHOULD HAVE progressed to deeper spiritual truths - but they still were stuck on the ABCs of the Faith.

And it has been those ABCs of the Faith that we have spent the past couple of months studying, making sure WE understand the principle doctrines of Christianity - especially when we move on to the next thing the Author of Hebrews wants to talk about.

If you recall those ABCs are repentance, faith, baptism, laying on of hands (which is the work of the HS in the lives of believers), and finally the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. And it’s this last part of the Foundations that we are in the middle of talking about.

It’s been said that an essential key in life... is the wisdom to navigate life WITH THE END IN MIND. IOW, when we understand what we want our life to lead to, we are able to form a life that is consistent with that end. So it’s vital that as a believer you bear in mind WHERE are you headed? What is the end aim for your life? Is there an aim - or are you just shooting your arrows at trees and then going up and painting the target on the tree where the arrow hit?

Where are WE going? What is the end that defines our existence? Where is life ultimately headed? These are the questions we are going to explore today.  We’ve been studying the foundations of faith as outlined in Hebrews chapter 6. We talked about Repentance, and Faith, about Baptism and the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And now we come to the end of the list - “the resurrection of the dead and eternal punishment.”