Hebrews 13:15-25 Salutations and Goodbyes: by Pastor Mike Gunn

Preached by Pastor Michael Gunn on July 9, 2006

Today we end our study in the last few verses of this great book. Hebrews 13 has been chock full of admonition for us as followers of Jesus. Verses 1-3 admonished our relationship with one another, verses 4-9 admonishes us in relation to our selves, and verses 10-21 gives us insight into our relationship with our Lord.

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Hebrews 13:1-14: The Importance of Our Relationships in the Preeminence of Christ by Pastor Mike Gunn

Preached by Pastor Michael Gunn on July 2, 2006

We are warned today in our passage not to reject Jesus because He is the righteous judge, but that acceptance of Him is to be like Him, which is manifested in His love.. Our author warns us to listen and act upon these words knowing that God is the judge and has the holy and just right to judge this earth, and that we ought to be grateful for all of what God has brought to us through the cross of Jesus. It is in understanding the holiness of God and His grace that allows us to fall at His feet and worship Him as the proper response to “knowing” Him.

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Hebrews 12:12-29: Warning #6 (Gratitude)

Preached by Pastor Michael Gunn on June 25, 2006

We are called to be a people of Peace and Holiness to all people. We are to fear GOD but understand that HE has given us HIS Grace to come to HIM through Jesus Christ and his work on the cross on our behalf. Because of this fact, as believers we should live in gratitude knowing GOD has the right to destroy us but he chooses to save and glorify us with HIS son. Our understanding of our place on earth is important to our understanding of purpose here in life. We are not of this word, but we are called to live in it and seek its welfare.

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Hebrews 12:4-11: The Discipline of Our Father

Preached by Pastor Michael Gunn on June 18, 2006

The bible is clear that we are to discipline our children and as dads we cannot be absent from this process. We as dads play a significant role in the identity of our child. Discipline does seem unpleasant, but its produce is so sweet. It produces both righteousness and peace in our lives. This includes a legal acquittal from our sin, and a transfer of God’s righteousness in our lives, as well as makes us whole.

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Hebrews 12:1-3: Jesus, The Object of Our Faith

Preached by Pastor Michael Gunn on June 11, 2006

God has called us, and given us a new heart to love Him and love others. The faith that He gives us changes our hearts, and informs our decisions. We now exist to treasure Him and do His will. The Christian life is not easy. It is a struggle. Killing sin off in our flesh takes an effort. Getting into the spiritual disciplines is hard work. Easy believism has led way too many to believe that they are saved because they said a prayer or that because they go to church, but nothing has ever happened to indicate by their lives that they are born by the Spirit of God.

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Hebrews 11:7-40: The Hall of Faith

Preached by Pastor Michael Gunn on June 4, 2006

This chapter is to show how God uses very ordinary people to do extraordinary things in light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Men and women, who have been transformed by the love of God, have ostensibly done the irrational and placed their lives on the line for the sake of the gospel. This chapter is to show us that it has been done, and can be done. God does change lives, and people have reacted differently than the world’s way of living and loving.

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Hebrews 10:32-11:6: The Preeminence of Faith in Christ

Preached by Pastor Mike Gunn on Sunday May 28, 2006

What if we have been taught to think a certain way since birth, and now we assume that this way of thinking is ultimate? What if this way of thinking is not ultimate, but it is penultimate? One of the dominate expression of our western worldview is that science knows by dealing with the “Facts,” while religious knowledge is derived by dealing in “Faith.” Is this true? As a matter of fact not only is this a dominate way of thinking in our culture, but the following quote (From Ambrose Bierce author of the Devil’s Dictionary) is all too often accepted as a definition for faith: “Faith is a belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge of things without parallel.”

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Hebrews 10:26-31: Warning #5

Preached by Pastor Mike Gunn on Sunday May 7, 2006

When we begin with a weak gospel, we have to create a weak theology around it. The fact is God is just in His anger. It is righteous, and connected beautifully to the rest of His attributes and character. The question is what is this passage teaching us? In a day when it is not vogue to talk about the wrath of God, it is important that we do, in order to remind all of us of the whole God, and the gravity of our situation apart from Christ.

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Hebrews 10:19-25: Living Confidently In Christ

Preached by Pastor Mike Gunn on Sunday April 30, 2006

Like many New Testament books, the case is made for the why, and then the practical application of that why. Jesus Christ is simply incomparable. He is greater than any prophets, angels, Moses, the Levitical and Aaronic priesthood, the entire sacrificial system and the law, and any other religious notion known to man. He is the “Way the truth and the life,” and no one can come to the Father except through Him (John 14:6), and “There is no other name by which man can be saved (Acts 4:12).” Since this is true, and since He is the creator of the universe and God Himself, and since His work on the cross took away our sins, cleansed our conscience, and paved the way for direct access to God as His child, we now are to live a life that is worthy of the calling by which we have been called. Our passage today is a glorious exhortation of God’s truth, and our responsibility to love Him and others.

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Hebrews 10:11-18: The Sacrifice of Christ

Preached by Pastor Mike Gunn on Sunday April 23, 2006

As we have been seeing in Hebrews, and as we looked at last week during Easter, the cross of Jesus Christ has always been, and will continue to be scandalous. How are we to communicate the gory details of the bloody cross of Jesus Christ to a culture that sees the act as a mythological story of a barbaric, egotistical, and bloodthirsty god?

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Hebrews 10:1-10: The Shortcomings of the Law

Preached by Pastor Mike Gunn on Sunday April 2, 2006

We continue in our study of Hebrews with the author finishing up his long exposition of Jeremiah 31 that he started way back in chapter 8. His goal has been to show that Christ’s incarnation and subsequent work on the cross is not matched by other means. We are forgiven for our sins, and our conscious has been cleansed in the work of Jesus Christ.

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Hebrews 9:11-28: A Preeminent Tabernacle By Pastor Mike Gunn

Preached by Pastor Mike Gunn on Sunday March 26, 2006

The words of "There is a Fountain" are written by a man who was smitten to the point of suicide with deep depression and anxiety until he found Christ to deal with the guilt that was debilitating him. Most modern skeptics would judge the author of a song like this to be a madman, not a recovered manic rejoicing with the Lord over the grace that He afforded him. So it is with the gospel.

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Hebrews 9:1-10 A Look at the Old Covenant

Preached by Pastor Mike Gunn on Sunday February 26, 2006

Last week we saw that “Religion” is something that God does internally to our heart and mind, not something that we do externally. Our works our subsequent to His action. They are a result of knowing, and understanding what He has done. He has changed both our “Minds” and our “Hearts” so that we could follow Him and His will. We are not called to ritual, but to love Him, and then others out of a “Changed” heart, not out of compulsion or “Duty.” Today we take a look again at the two covenants as they were represented symbolically in the Old Testament “Tabernacle.”

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Hebrews 8:7-13 A Preeminent Covenant

Preached by Pastor Mike Gunn on Sunday February 19, 2006

Last week we saw an important nexus between the discourse on the Son's appointment (Hebrews 5:1-7:28) and His service to God "in the heavens." (Hebrews 8:3-10:18). The "New Covenant" is a hybrid of the old and the new, but it is a completed version. Jesus inaugurates a "New Covenant" because it is an eternal covenant made from the foundation of the world.

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Hebrews 8:1-6 A Preeminent Ministry

Preached by Pastor Mike Gunn on Sunday February 12, 2006

Our author summarizes his argument, reminding us of the supremacy of Jesus Christ over anything that we can imagine. As God transforms our souls, our love for Christ should expand. Being a father of two wonderful kids, it is hard to imagine loving someone more, but it is what we are commanded to do (Luke 14), and it is what will bring us the most joy here on earth. Christ's supremacy is the motivation for our affections, and the reason we would serve Him willingly.

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Hebrews 7:18-28 Drawing Nearer to Perfection

Preached by Pastor Mike Gunn on Sunday February 5, 2006

Our passage begins with its continued assault on religion and pathways to enlightenment apart from Christ. There is no doubt that all truth is God’s truth, and that many worldviews and religions have clear pointers to truth, but that truth is not complete without revelation from God Himself, and that revelation comes in the person of Jesus Christ. All truth apart from Christ is a pointer, a mere shadow to who God is.

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Hebrews 7:1-17 The Order of Melchizedek Part 2

Preached by Mike Gunn on Sunday January 29, 2006

As we saw a few weeks back in chapter five, Melchizedek is a strange figure. Genesis 14:18-20 written 4000 years ago gives us all the information we have of this person. David, writing in the Psalms (110:1-4) under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, connects Melchizedek with someone God was going to send into the future to be a “priest forever.” Who is this guy? Now in our passage we return to Melchizedek after a few weeks during Christmas, and look at the fourth warning the author levied on his people in 5:11-6:20. The Psalms passage is definitely a key to understanding Melchizedek. Psalms 110 has already been quoted by our author (Hebrews 5:6, 10), but it is also a very important verse in the early church and quoted in the New Testament books like Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, Colossians and the “synoptic” gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke). One of the key ideas that come from such a verse is that Melchizedek is both priest and king, an office not held by anyone in Israel’s history. It highlights both the regal aspect of the person and his mediatorship. Today the author unites the person of Melchizedek clearly with the person of Jesus Christ, and then continues to promulgate his identity, his greatness, and his sufficiency. The priesthood in Israel, as with priesthoods in any religion that has priests, are fallible, very human subjects. Our author is going to give us more reasoned arguments for why nothing can compare to Jesus Christ.

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Hebrews 6:4-20 Warning #4 (Part 2)

Preached by Pastor Mike Gunn on January 15, 2006

Not unlike a lot of places in scripture, we see that the author is ultimately concerned from a missional perspective. In our passage, the author is warning the people to watch out for falling away from the faith, and the falling away doesn’t happen because of a wicked lifestyle, but because of a wicked heart that ultimately rejects God’s grace, fails to join God in His mission, and fails to gain joy and sustenance from Him. He begins by giving us some hardcore truth, but mitigates it by calling his people’s attention to the fact that they have shown signs of a spiritual pulse and that they need to cultivate that and move on to growth and hope in Christ, who is an “anchor for the soul.”

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Hebrews 5:11-6:3 Warning #4 (Part 1)

Preached by Pastor Pastor Mike Gunn on Sunday January 8, 2006

Introduction After a few weeks’ Christmas hiatus, we are back into our study of Hebrews and are diving right into a two part parenthetical warning passage that may be hard to hear. Remember that there is a great deal of spiritual depression brought on by the anxiety of their situation (persecution), and their subsequent doubt as to the sufficiency of Jesus Christ in their lives. Their situation is no different than our own. We live in anxiety due to external circumstances, and many of us are anxious because we have internally begun to doubt Christ’s sufficiency in our own lives. Today’s passage outlines the cause’s of spiritual melancholy and directs us to the author’s obvious solution: Jesus Christ.

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Hebrews 5:5-10 The Order of Melchizedek Part 1

Preached by Pastor Mike Gunn on Sunday December 11, 2005

I hope we are not missing the illustrative magnificence of the book of Hebrews. Our author has shined his significant knowledge of the Old Testament as a shadow on the person of Jesus Christ our "high priest." Can you imagine the spiritual significance of Jesus being our high priest, clothed in the garments of the high priest, which are wrought with symbolism?

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Hebrews 4:14-5:4 Preeminent Over Aaron

Preached by Pastor Mike Gunn on Sunday December 4, 2005

We have been looking at the idea of God's rest, which brings the peace and joy that Jesus brings into the lives of those that trust Him. Last week we saw the importance of the word of God in that process. It is the word that truly judges us so that we will have a proper understanding of who we are, which helps us define ourselves so that we can love God and serve Him by loving others like we love ourselves (see Matthew 22:37-39)

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Hebrews 4:11-13 Warning #3 (Disobedience)

Preached by Pastor Mike Gunn on Sunday November 27, 2005

In the past two weeks we have been warned, cajoled, and promised to consider Jesus; who alone is the only one able to give rest to our weary souls. Matthew 11:28 is not a futuristic possibility, but a current reality. We can find the rest, peace, and joy that often eludes us in Christ Jesus, but we struggle to do so because it means for us to do something that is hard for sinful man to do: submit to Him. Today is another warning regarding much of the same exhortation showing us the importance and concern of the subject to this author.

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Hebrews 4:1-10 The Preeminence of His Rest

Preached by Pastor Mike Gunn on Sunday November 20, 2005

We saw last week that unbelief stemming from our dessert experiences can cause us to miss the rest of God. During our moments of temptation and trial we either turn to God, or very far away from Him. Today's passage picks up from their and reminds us that God's rest is available, accessible, and begins in trusting Him. Let's look at the hope we find in Him, and the pitfalls on the way due to our lack of trust.

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Hebrews 3:7-19 Warning #2 (Unbelief)

Preached by Pastor Mike Gunn on Sunday November 13, 2005

Last week we were exhorted to consider Jesus, to put our mind carefully on whom He is, and what He has done for us. The author moves into his second warning passage, warning us that our unbelief will negate God’s grace through His Son (Hebrews 3:19). Unbelief comes in many different forms, and is caused by a heart that is wracked with un-confessed sin, a condition of the “deceitfulness of sin” (see Hebrews 3:13). The story the author reminds us of comes from Psalm 95 and was used in liturgy in Old Testament gatherings to remind the people that not everyone who came out of Egypt with Moses entered into God’s rest (heavenly kingdom).

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Hebrews 3:1-6 Preeminent Over Moses

Preached by Pastor Mike Gunn on Sunday November 6, 2005

Last week the author of our book, Hebrews, continued his comparison of Christ with the angels but highlighted an important piece of theology about Jesus. He, being God, humbled Himself to become man so that He could suffer on behalf of mankind. He became like the first Adam for the sake of Adam’s heritage. Jesus had to come to this reality--extricating Himself from a perfect reality--in order to identify with our weaknesses for our benefit (Hebrews 2:17-18). In our passage today the author builds off Christ’s incarnation and sacrifice and reveals Christ as both an “apostle” (sent one/messenger) and “high priest” (mediator between God and man. This is a theme the author will build upon in subsequent chapters), but here he introduces Moses as a type of the future Christ.

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Hebrews 2:5-18 Christ's Incarnation Preeminent Over Man and Angels

Preached Pastor Mike Gunn on Sunday October 30, 2005

Last week the author went on a short hiatus to remind us “how great a salvation” we have in Christ. This warning would ring empty if it weren’t true. He brought us back to the law to remind us of our depravity, which either moves us toward the need for a savior and hope, or prideful rejection and despair. Jesus is so great a salvation because according to scripture there are no other options (Acts 4:12). Our passage picks up where it left off in chapter one verse thirteen, contrasting Jesus with the angels, who he says are nothing more than “ministering spirits sent out to render service for the sake of those that will inherit salvation.” Angels have been seen as created beings (created by Christ/God) and they are to worship their creator (Hebrews 1:6-7).

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Hebrews 2:1-4 Warning #1 (Neglect)

Preached by Pastor Mike Gunn on Sunday October 23, 2005

Since our passage starts with "Therefore," we need to take a quick look back, where we clearly see that Jesus is the one who reveals (speaks for) God, and is not a created being, but the creator Himself.

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Hebrews 1:4-14 Christ's Preeminence Over the Angels

Preached by Pastor Mike Gunn on October 16, 2005

Last week we took a look at the intro to Hebrews and established the main theme of the book is Christ as the “supreme revelation of who God is!” Jesus is superior to anything we can create in our own desire to make our own cultural gods. In the first three verses we see Jesus as the revelation of God, as the “Word,” as the one who defines God for us.

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Introduction to Hebrews

Preached by Pastor Mike Gunn on Sunday October 9, 2005

Hebrews stands as one of the most enigmatic books of the New Testament. Both its author and audience have been a puzzle since the early fathers of faith, and yet the church has included it in its canon with limited dispute throughout the ages. In spite of the confusion, it has remained one of the most beautiful books in the entire bible, with a strong emphasis on the person and work of Jesus Christ.

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