Fix Your Thoughts on Jesus!

21st Sunday after Pentecost, 10/18/15
Hebrews 3:1-6


Fix Your Thoughts on Jesus!


The number of people diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder or Attention Deficit Disorder is on the rise and experts aren’t sure why. They do know that, like so many other disorders, genetics, the environment and the use of drugs or alcohol by the mother during pregnancy can lead to ADHD or ADD. We also know that it affects four times as many boys as girls. The difficult part, in some cases, is making sure the child is properly diagnosed. It’s not that the child is forgetful. It’s not that the child’s intelligence is lower than average. The poor little guy simply can’t focus on one thing at a time. There are all sorts of thoughts and sounds and sights coming at him all at the same time and he can’t filter out the distractions.

Distractions. Even if you don’t suffer from ADHD or ADD, distractions are a problem. And all too often, we chose them. Texting while driving has reached epidemic proportions. Drivers simply ignore the facts that texting while driving is not only dangerous, it can be deadly. For some reason, they just can’t refrain from reading or, worse, replying to that text message right now. And all the while, their eyes aren’t on the road.

Distractions. We face them in our spiritual lives as well. I’m not implying that you need to keep your nose in your Bible every second of every day. We have other things that we need to do. It’s one of the reasons our Lord placed us on this earth. We have responsibilities that need our daily, if not hourly, attention. But when priorities in our lives become skewed, when our spiritual lives begin to take a back seat to the rest of life, our spiritual attention has been diverted. We’re unable to focus on what we need to. We suffer from spiritual ADD. And the results can be spiritually deadly.

Did you catch the distraction presented in this morning’s reading from Hebrews 3? Maybe not. You probably do recall that there was quite a bit of information comparing Moses with Jesus, but probably not anything about distractions. So let’s take a closer look.

The reason that the Holy Spirit caused this book of Hebrews to be written is that Jewish people who came to faith in Jesus as their Savior were suffering persecution. It’s quite possible that these words were originally written to Jewish Christians living in Rome. From your study of history you probably recall what happened to Christians in Rome. Eventually, Nero began putting them to death. Prior to that, however, the Christians suffered less deadly forms of persecution.

So, they tried not to attract so much attention. They put their Christianity under wraps. In fact, they began to look and act and talk more like Jewish people who weren’t Christians. They were tempted to go back to the faith that they practiced before coming to faith in Jesus—the sacrifices demanded in the Old Testament, observing the Sabbath day, eating kosher. It was a common false teaching among Jewish Christians at this time to require faith in Jesus and observance of Old Testament laws, regulations, and celebrations. And since Judaism was a legal religion in the Roman Empire, Jews weren’t persecuted for their faith.

That’s what the writer is referring to when he mentions Moses in this morning’s text. Moses was the one through whom God gave the Jews all the religious and civil laws that regulated Jewish life for more than 1,000 years. There was no greater prophet in the Old Testament than Moses. The Lord spoke directly to him. Moses spent 40 days on Mt. Sinai in the presence of the Lord. The Lord himself commended Moses for being his faithful prophet during a very difficult portion of Jewish history. So, these Christians began to encourage each other, “Let’s go back to Moses.”

The writer tells them in no uncertain terms how foolish that would be. Don’t miss the significance of the opening words of our text. The writer refers to his readers as “holy brothers.” Why would he do that? To remind them of what Christ had made them. All the Jewish sacrifices in the world couldn’t remove a single sin. No amount of money could buy their forgiveness. But they were holy, washed clean in the blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. They were holy before the holy God and had been set apart from the world as his people, just like we are.

He refers to them as “brothers” because he wants to remind that that faith in Jesus is what brings us into the family of God. Too often the Jews felt that just being Jewish automatically made them members of God’s family. The writer wanted to remind them that isn’t the case at all. That took Jesus. He redeemed us. He bought us back and made us members of God’s kingdom.

Finally, he reminds them that they have a heavenly calling. Think of a two-way street. Their calling to become God’s dearly loved children by faith in Jesus came from heaven. God called us; we didn’t call ourselves. And by calling us from heaven God has also called us to heaven. What could possibly be more important than that? Like the familiar hymn states, they were but strangers here; heaven was their home.

But because of persecutions, they were being distracted. They were tempted to focus on other things for their spiritual life.

The Holy Spirit used these words to hold their spiritual faces gently and turn their attention back to Jesus. One of the ways he does that is by calling Jesus a name that is found only here in the New Testament. Did you catch it? He states, “fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle.” Wait a minute! Isn’t it disrespecting Jesus to call him an apostle? Not at all. An apostle is one who has been sent out. Jesus repeatedly referred to the fact that the Father had sent him to this earth to do the most important work in history—the work of salvation. Recall how many times Jesus stated that he had been sent.

The writer also calls Jesus a high priest, and he’ll do so many times in this book. Priests in the Old Testament did one thing: they offered sacrifices for the people, over and over again, for more than a thousand years. Jesus was far greater than all of them because he sacrificed himself once for all people. So why go back to thinking you’re obligated to make all those sacrifices again? Don’t get distracted!

That brings us to the final truth I want to place before your spiritual eyes this morning. The writer states it like this, “[Jesus] was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God’s house. Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses. Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house. But Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house.” I mentioned earlier that the Lord commended Moses for his faithfulness as God’s prophet during some difficult times to say the least. More than once the people were so rebellious that the Lord threatened to put them all to death. But Moses pleaded for the people. He faithfully led them back to the Lord. In doing so, he was serving “in God’s house.” Don’t think of a building with four walls and a roof. Think of the Church; not a Church but the Church. Moses was a member of God’s Church by faith in the promise of the Savior. He was serving people in that Church.

But Jesus is far greater. He is a son—and I would make that an upper case “S”—over God’s house. The Church is built on Christ—who he is and what he did. He is the Son of God and the world’s Savior from sin by his death and resurrection. As such he now rules over his Church. He’s the groom and the Church is his holy bride.

That’s exactly what the writer meant when he stated, “And we are his house if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.” You are the Church. You are God’s house. He lives in you and he has built you like a living stone into the invisible Holy Christian Church—a Church that will last forever. Think about it for a moment. How much of what you do each day will last eternally? Only what pertains to your spiritual life, your faith in Jesus. So, don’t get distracted! Resist spiritual ADD!

So, what distracts you? In a word…life. Life distracts you. If you’ve made it through this service today without thinking about what you will be doing or need to be doing later today or this week, you’ve accomplished quite a bit. Most of us, if not all of us, will have to admit we’ve been distracted. And if it’s not the things in our lives that distract us, it’s our responsibilities. We’re parents, we’re employees, we’ve made commitments to other people. Or it’s our goals in life—we want to make it to this point by this time and that’s going to take not only hard work but daily focus. Stress and worry distract us. Physical and mental fatigue divert our attention. We’d like to carve out a week when we can decompress, but then our focus will be on our physical and mental well-being, not so much our spiritual well-being. And if it isn’t our own endeavors that distract us, it’s the activities of our children. And all these leave precious little time to focus on the one thing needful.

So, here’s the solution. “Fix your thoughts on Jesus.” One sentence. Five words in English. But they’re packed with eternal meaning for you unlike anything else you may pay attention to. Jesus knows we’re distracted, sinfully so. That’s why he never let anything distract him from his work of being our Savior. Every second of every day his holy focus was on that work. It was on you. That focus drew him straight to Calvary’s cross where the God-man sacrificed himself for the sins of the world, including our sins of spiritual distraction. His resurrection drew us to himself and set our lives on an eternal course for life with him. In heaven, all eyes will be on Jesus and what a sight that will be! That’s where you’re headed. Ward off spiritual ADD. Fix your thoughts on the one who loves you with an eternal love. Fix your thoughts on Jesus! Amen.