As you are, please open your Bibles to Hebrews 3. Hebrews 3, and we will be in verse 1 today. I will read the verse for you before we pray. Hebrews 3:1, hear the word of God. I read the word. Therefore, holy brothers, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider the apostle and high priest of our confession, Jesus. Our God in heaven, we have gathered here today to see Jesus, to hear Jesus, to consider Jesus, to exalt Jesus, to exalt in Jesus, to meditate upon Jesus, to praise Jesus, to hear Jesus. Everything we have gathered here today to do to feed upon Jesus. Everything, Lord, that we have gathered here to do today is centered upon your son, the apostle and the high priest of our confession, Jesus himself. And so, Lord, I pray on this fourth day and advent and during this season that you would not allow us to miss Christ for all that should point to Christ. That you would not allow us to miss Jesus for all the gifts and types and lights and trees and things that are intended to direct us to Him. But there would simply be more of Christ because of more of the pointers, more of the helps, and more of the season.

But our hearts, our hearts, Lord, do not need what is in the boxes that are at home. Our hearts need what is in the box of Your word open for us today. And so I pray that you will do that for us by Your Spirit, that you will show us Your son, and we will find in Him rest for our souls and life renewed and light for the day ahead. We pray all of this in Jesus name and Amen. In his Christmas oratorio, W. H. Auden, has a small section where he writes about the days that follow Christmas morning. I want you to see if you can identify with this. Well, so that is that. Now we must dismantle the tree, putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes. Some have gotten broken. And carrying them up to the attic, we go. The holly and the missile toe must be taken down and burnt, and the children got ready for school. Lord have mercy. There are enough leftovers to do, warmed up for the rest of the week. Not that we have much of an appetite. Having drunk such a lot, stayed up so late, attempted quite unsuccessfully to love all of our relatives, and in general, overestimated grossly our powers.

And then this line, Once again, as in previous years, we have seen the actual vision and failed to do more than entertain it. Once more, we have seen the vision of Christ. And the only effect that is done is for us to entertain it, and then it is gone. Like the Christmas tree is gone. Let it not be that way for us as a family here at Solie. As a matter of fact, the writer of this letter to the Hebrews will not allow it to be that way for us. As I've told you before, this letter is actually a sermon. If you look at chapter 13 with me, if you turn back to the end of the letter, he actually says this. I finally think this is a little bit hilarious, actually, what he says. In Hebrews 13:22, he tells us what he considers this letter to be, this 13-chapter letter. He says this in 13:22, But I urge you brothers, bear with this word of exhortation. That's the sermon. He considers this letter to be a word of exhortation, a sermon to the people that he's writing to. Now, this is a 13-chapter sermon, and I want you to see, like all preachers, he's confused.

Because every preacher who's ever preached thinks that their sermon is too short. Look at what he says. But I urge you, brothers, bear with this word of exhortation, for I've written to you briefly. He has the same problem every other preacher does. He thinks all of his sermons are brief and all of his sermons are short. You're thinking, have you ever read through Hebrews before? Nothing short about this. So all preachers, by the way, we're all a little bit messed up in that way. We all think our sermons are brief whether or not they are. But this is a sermon that is being delivered to Jewish Christians who are being lulled back into the old life of the old world. They're being persecuted back to the temple. They're being persecuted back to the old covenant. They are being told that Christ himself is not enough that they need what the old covenant had in all of its old covenant and Old World ways. The writer of Hebrews is writing to a persecuted people who are struggling to stay with Christ, who are struggling to continue to walk by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. There is the real concern that he has that there might be some who actually apostatize from the faith if they will not stay on Jesus.

Look at what he says in verse 12 of chapter 3, See to it, brothers, that there not be in any one of you, you brothers, on evil, unbelieving heart, that you fall away from the living God, but encourage one another day after day, as long as it's still called today, so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. You see, we have to be up in each other's grilles. We have to be up in each other's lives as a faithful community because of the deceitfulness of sin and the way the deceitfulness of sin can get into the lives of one another. And some people, our brothers and sisters, can get lost in that deceitfulness. And so we have to be up in their grill, but we have to be up in their grill about who? Christ. About Christ. Verse 14 says, For we have become partakers of Christ if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end. ' This sermon is given by this whoever preaches it, and many believe it's Paul, for the purpose of a persevering faith and those who are struggling to remain faithful to the Lord in the face of persecution and challenges for their faithfulfulness.

They are being persecuted away from the faith and they're being lured away from the faith. They're being persecuted away from the faith by those who will have none of Christ. They're being lured away from the faith because it is their old ways, the comfortable ways of the temple and the Old Covenant. So they're being pushed there and they're being lured there. And this sermon was written to put before them the supremacy of Christ. That Christ is better than everything that came before, you see. Christ is better than the angels and He's better than Adam and He's better than Moses and He's better than Abraham. He's better than everything that came before. Why would you go back when what you have in Christ is not only the fulfillment of everything that came before, but the better of everything that came before. And all the way on through, Christ is better. He's a better priest. He's a better prophet. He's a better king. He is in every way being exalted in this letter and set before... Listen, the vision of Christ is being set before the people so that they will not fulfill what W. H. Auden said.

So that they will not behold the vision of Christ. And then it just go away. And then it just go away. So over and over and over and over and over. And we're going to see it next week. Christ, the Supreme High priest, as Pastor John preaches into the following Lord's Day, as Pastor Nois preaches, Christ, the only one who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, the only certain place in the world is Jesus Christ Himself. What I want you to see from our passage this morning is that as this is a sermon, and up to this point in the sermon, the writer has been exalting Christ, been putting Christ out there for their faith to be locked onto and held onto. And not just any Christ, but the incarnate son of God. The son of God in his incarnation. Book of Hebrews is a Christmas sermon. It's a sermon about God become man. It's a sermon about the son of God taking our flesh to himself. And what we don't find, and this is important, what we don't find in chapter one is any command to do anything. No commands. Just Jesus. What we don't find in chapter two is any command.

Don't do anything, just Jesus. It's here in chapter three and verse 1, where we find the first command in this sermon. Two chapters in. Maybe preachers could do well to learn to spend a little bit more time just on Jesus for a while before we're told what to do in regards to Jesus for a while. Put the vision before our faith. Tell us who our Jesus is, who the Lord Christ is for our faith and for our life. But I want you to notice that what He tells us to do is actually more of Christ. The first command that He gives us is not to do something for Christ, but is to actually spend more time with Christ. In other words, He knows that what they need more than anything else is to be locked in to Christ. Christ must always be before them, you see. And look at what he says in verse 1, Therefore, holy brothers, partakers of a heavenly calling. And then here's the command, consider. The first command in this book, consider. Consider who? Consider the apostle and high priest of our confession, Jesus. The first thing he tells us to do is look to Christ.

He doesn't tell us to go out and do something for Jesus. He tells us to consider Jesus. To consider Jesus in His offices, two offices, interestingly. And then He tells us who we are as the people who are giving consideration to Jesus. So first, the command. He tells us to consider Jesus. This word in the Greek is extraordinarily important. Because this word in the Greek requires the absence of distraction. It requires silence. It requires space. It requires time. In our day, it would require us putting our digital away, fasting from the digital connection that we have. This is a word that actually requires thought, requires meditation, requires rumination. Because you see, we are looking here at the unseen Christ. We are communing here with one who is unseen to us. And so it's important that we understand that there's a certain communion that takes place with an unseen Christ, and it requires us to give thought time. Thought time. Musing time. Ruminating time. Meditative time, prayerful time. It requires us to be able to disconnect from the myriad of distractions in life and to give our minds attention... Our hearts, affection, and our heart's affection, and our body's direction to Jesus Christ for a time.

We have to do this in our lives. We have to do this in our lives. If you have a if you have a busy life and you have children in your life and you have jobs in your life and you have a marriage in your life, right? What is one of the things that you have to do in order to keep your marriage where it needs to be with all of the things that pull from it, right? You've got to date your wife. The purpose of dating your wife is not so that the two of you can get away from everything so that you can come together at a nice restaurant and spend the evenings on your phones not talking to each other. That's stupid. The purpose of that is to be able to say that this relationship requires a certain consideration and nurture because it, on its own, is itself, you see. It is what it is on its own, and it needs its own nurture. You come away to come together. You do that for a reason, and you give considerable time to the exchange of one another in communion and the like.

Well, this is true of our human relationships. It's true of our friendships. It's true of our families. It's true of everything in life requires due consideration. But so does Jesus. There is no communion with Jesus apart from communion with Jesus. You can't commune with Christ apart from communing with Christ. That communing with Christ is both public and private. We commune with Christ together here today because Christ is put before us here today. That's why the Lord's Day is so important. That's why in chapter 10 of this very book, the writer of Hebrews says this in verse 25, he says, We are to not forsake the assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day drawing near. You see, there were some people who were forsaking church. They were forsaking the assembling together, and it had become a habit in their lives to not gather with God's people, to have Christ put before them together. And just so that you also see, if we go back to our verse, it's therefore, holy brothers. It's the family. Holy brothers. It's the family that's been put together, that together shares in communion with the living Christ.

And the way in which the Bible presents that to us is that we share communion with the living Christ by assembling together and not having the habit of forsaking that assembling, because all of the means of grace that exists this morning with us gathering together are for the sake of communion with Jesus Christ. We're here for Christ as great as that music was, we're not here for that. That is a means to Jesus. As great of a preacher as I am, just kidding, we're not here for me. We're here for Him. As wonderful as this table is, it's not just bread and wine. It's here for Him. You see, every part of everything that we do every Lord's Day is about more of Jesus together as the holy family that He has put together in union with His incarnate self, you see. That is why we don't forsake the assembly because one of the ways that we come away from the world together as holy brothers is by synagogue-ing together, is by being the called-out people, the church, and sitting through the means of grace where Christ is presented to us. We don't develop the habit of missing that because you can't get that back anywhere else.

Podcasts don't give you that. Radio doesn't give you that. Certainly, TBN on TV is not going to give you that. You don't have the embodied character of the very body of Christ being the body of Christ with Christ himself and his body at the right-hand of the Father, you see. So as holy brothers, we consider Christ by not forsaking the assembly, but by gathering together because this is all about Jesus when we do. But secondly, this is also the opportunity for you as well. You are a son or a daughter of the King. And I asked you this morning, are you giving due consideration to communion with the living Christ, the unseen living Christ? This is the first command for us. And in fact, the first command requires we actually have to use our minds with that consideration. This is not mindless, let go and let God. This is the very application of your mind and your heart to the person and to the offices and to the work of Jesus Christ. You are setting Christ before you in the scriptures and you are considering what the scriptures revealed to you about Jesus Christ. And you are communing with him in the very revelation of himself.

That is what this word consider means and it's vital. And who's being called to this? Well, look at the verse. Therefore, holy brothers. You see, what's important about this holy brothers is, Itry to think about this week. We oftentimes call Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus the holy family. As if the holy family was over there. You want to know where the holy family is? It's right here with you. You are the Holy Family. You are as much the holy family of Jesus as Mary and Joseph were the holy family of Jesus. And in the Book of Hebrews, this holiness is a cultic holiness. And what I mean by that is the background is the Book of Leviticus. Oftentimes when we think of holiness, we think of certain types of laws. If I don't taste and I don't touch and I don't chew and I don't do this, I don't do that. Why is chew? I was involved in that. But if I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't chew, I don't go with girls who do, then somehow I'm holy. That type of nonsense. We limit it to those things, which two-thirds of which I think I do.

We're going to drink at the Lord's table this morning, so they're ouch. So all of that to say, we sometimes link holiness to these man-made laws. But the Book of Hebrews is simply an exposition of the Book of Leviticus. And in Leviticus, if you remember, holiness is not about being separated from. It's about being separated for something specific. And the background of this is the need for cleansing and for purification. And Pastor John already preached on this. If you back up to chapter one, listen to these words. Chapter one and verse three. Jesus, one, three, who is the radiance of His glory, the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power, who, having accomplished cleansing for sin, things, sat down at the right-hand of the Majesty on high. You'll notice two things there. What Jesus accomplished was a cleansing. Some of your translations have purification. What a cleansing and a purification does is it means that you are now acceptable and you are now welcome and you now have access to God. You see? What holiness means in the book of Hebrews is that you are welcomed in the presence of God.

You have access to Him. You can draw near to Him and He will receive you as He receives His own son. Do you understand that? He will receive you as He receives His own son. And you'll notice that the son is seated here. Nate, this is for you, okay? The high priest here is seated. Why? Because the work is done. I'll leave you that next week, John. I won't say anymore. I will leave that for Pastor John next week. But you'll notice, so we are holy brothers. We are holy brothers and sisters, which means together we are welcome to draw near in the presence of the Lord. How many of you have that fear of what your daughter is going to bring home for a future husband? If you're not raising your... Thank you, brother. Yeah, thank you. Yes, if you're not raising your hand, you're lying, right? Well, look what Jesus brought home to His Father. You and me, the church. And He's even excited about it. Look at Chapter 2 and verse 13, the end of verse 13 of chapter two. This is what He says to the Father, Behold, I and the children whom you have given me, here we are.

You'd be thinking, the Father is going, That's what I gave you? That's what you brought home. But that's not what the father does. You see, the father receives us the way he receives His son. And His son brings us home to the Father. And you want to know what's true about this bringing home? He's not ashamed of it. Jesus is not ashamed to bring us, this rag-tag group of broken people, into His presence and say to the Father, here's my girl. Here's my girl. Here's my wife. He's not ashamed to do that. So if he is not ashamed of you, then you need to let your shame go. You have no right to retain a shame that He won't retain. And because He sanctified you, because through His incarnation, He took your humanity to himself. Because He did that and He sanctified you, and He is sanctifying you, you and I together are welcome in His presence. We have access. We do not have to stay away. We are not sinners in the hands of an angry God. We are not. The church is not a sinner in the hand of an angry God. The church is sinners saved in the nail-scarred hands of a loving savior who has brought us home to his father.

And he is not ashamed of us because we're united to him. You see, we belong to Him. You are the holy family. We are the holy family. And as the holy family, you look at what it says, we are partakers of a heavenly calling together. That word in the Greek is partners. We're in a partnership. It was used in Greek times and in the days of Jesus to refer to partnerships among those who went into business for one another. Peter and James and John and their families had a partnership in the fishing business. And what this is saying here is that together, the church of Jesus Christ, we are in a shared partnership. And what we share is a calling from heaven. A calling in which God dispatches from heaven. He dispatches that calling from heaven to us, and that calling comes to us, and it is effectual. It gets its man, it gets its woman, it gets its boy, it gets its girl. That calling that comes from heaven actually brings us to the son. It is not a calling that we say no to. It is a calling in which when God, the Father, calls us together, it is a calling that we say yes to because of the transformation that the son of God has made in our lives.

It is a call that we answer because it comes from heaven. You see, when God speaks, God's speaking acts. Let there be light and there will be light. Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4, that what God said on day one, He says into our hearts. He says into the darkness of your heart and the darkness of my heart, He says, 'Let there be light and there is light and we come home. We come home to the holy family, to Him, you see. ' Who is it that does the considering of Jesus? We do. The holy family. The holy family who has a holy and heavenly calling on our lives to be the very people of God. What is it that we consider? Well, let's look at the rest of the verse. Therefore, holy brothers, partakers of a heavenly calling, consider the apostle and high priest of our confession, Jesus. This is so beautiful. You'll notice something that might seem a little odd to you if you're a Bible reader, calling Jesus the Apostle. This is the only time in all of scripture, the only time in all of scripture in which Jesus is called the Apostle.

This word is reserved for the apostles of Jesus and false apostles and the rest of scripture, but of all the words that the writer of Hebrews could have chosen to communicate an office for us to consider Jesus, to give our minds, consideration, our hearts, affection to the offices to put before us that are worthy of keeping us on Christ and holding fast to our confession. He chose these two offices. The first is Jesus the Apostle. An Apostle in the Bible is someone who is authorized by God and sent by God. And Jesus is the authorized one. Jesus is the sent one. We are to give consideration to this. We are to give thought to this. We are to give affection to this. We are to give attention to this. We are to give time to this. We are to give communion to this. That Jesus is our apostle, the apostle of the church and my apostle, as well as a child of God. He is our apostle, which means he was sent to us. He was sent for us, and he was sent to be God's final word to us. He was sent from God to speak for God as God, the word of God to us who need that word of God for life, you see.

That's what Jesus has come to do. In these last days, God has spoken and spoken and spoken. And in these last days, He has spoken in Son. That's what the Greek is. Just in Son. Just when you look at Jesus, He's the one, he's the apostle, he's the sent one. He's the one that you look at to find out what God is like and what God is saying, you see. And so the Gospels unfold for us, Jesus. And the epistles unfold for us, Jesus. And the Old Testament points to and anticipates and is a type of Jesus. Wherever we go, we find Jesus. And so that means that all of our communion can be had anywhere in the scriptures. We could give consideration to Jesus because He's the one on that page, you see. He's the apostle, the sent one to us to speak for God, to save us as God and to bring us home to God. You see, that's who Jesus is. That's not something we could ever get over. We never stopped listening to Him. We never stopped thanking Him and praising Him for saving us. We always look forward to and anticipate drawing near to Him, you see.

Jesus in the office, the apostle, makes all those things possible because of who He is. But He's not only that, He is the apostle and high priest of our confession. I'm only going to say one thing about the high priests because I want to leave it all for Pastor John next week. But there's something about the high priest. I mentioned this to Pastor Nate last Sunday, and he responded, Well, I didn't know that. I was like, Well, if he doesn't know something, then maybe you all don't know it either. But the high priest, when he went into the Holy of Holies once a year, he wore a necklace. If you know who Flav of Flav is, it would make him, he'd be jealous of this necklace. He wore this necklace and on this necklace, he had 12 gemstones. And on these 12 gemstones, one of them, each of them represented the tribes of Israel. And then he also had those same on his shoulder as well. I can't get into all the typology and symbolism of the sermon would be too long. But this is a brief sermon anyway, so there's no worry. So he had them on his shoulder and on his chest once a year, when the high priests went into the Holy of Holies, into the presence of the glory of God at the mercy seat, all of God's people were on the breast of the high priests to be represented there in that throne room once a year in the presence of God.

Jesus, as your high priest, has your name written on Him. And as your name is written on Him, He doesn't go into the Holy of Holies once a year and take you with him. He has entered into the Holy of Holies never to leave, which means you are always home. You are always home. As long as he is there, you are there. And nothing can ever, ever separate you from that. And you see our response to that is to confess Jesus. He is the high priest of our confession. You see, church, this is why we confess creeds in this church. We confess creeds after the sermon, and hopefully it's no longer lackluster anymore after I close with this. I want you to understand that all of this comes down to a confession according to the writer of Hebrews. He is the high priest of our confession. But listen to Hebrews 4:14. It says, Let us hold fast to our confession. Listen to chapter 10 and verse 23, Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering. Listen to chapter 13, which is our Priestley calling as holy brothers together. Listen to this. Chapter 13, Through Jesus then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is the fruit of lips that confess His name.

You see, our response to this word this morning, the response of God's people in this letter, is that at every point in time, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 10, chapter 13, all the way throughout this letter, every time the apostle leads somewhere in this sermon, it always leads to a confession of faith. To confess your faith, to profess your faith, to hold your faith, to publicly and sincerely and heartily and routily confess your faith in Jesus Christ as a holy family without shame for the one who is not ashamed of us. When we are a people, we are confessing people. We are a professing people. We are a people who publicly confess our faith before the world. We publicly confess our faith before one another. We are Christ confessers that is our heavenly calling. You can't mute your way through the creed, and you can't be ashamed when we confess the creed. You've got to grab those words and you've got to take them into your soul. You've got to say, These are my words. I stand on these words. I believe in God the Father. I believe in God the Son. I believe in God the Holy Spirit.

Here I stand. I can do no other. Let's pray. Our God in heaven, lead us to confess Christ and to not be ashamed to consider and have communion with Jesus. In his name, we pray, save me from a heart attack. Amen. Amen.