Rev. Nicole Unice: Good morning, Church. Good morning. So good to be with you. Good morning those who are joining us online. I'm so glad for all of us to get a chance to be together.
You guys all came out. Is it because it's May? Everybody comes out because the sun came out. I love it. I'm glad to see you guys.
I also noticed something different on my way from the airport. I was I was driving in yesterday. I'm from Richmond, Virginia. I come up here. I get to be part of this teaching faculty for really the past, I think, six six years.
It's been wonderful to be with you guys. And but I was driving yesterday and I noticed boats. People had boats on trailers. I know they say that this is a water wonderland, so you guys are proving it. Do I have any boat people in the room?
Any boat people? Don't be shy. Not one? Okay. If you see someone holding their hand up around you, pray for them.
Pray for them. Boat people enjoy a certain kind of self inflicted punishment. Problem. Boats are very finicky. We have a boat.
Our family has a boat. We have a boat that is older than the hills. It's an old pontoon boat. Don't if you know they got the two tube things on the side that make the thing float. It's basically two tube things and a piece of plywood that also is covered with carpet.
I'm not sure who designed the pontoon boat with carpet, but that is what it is. And this thing is nasty. And the boat though is a great place to learn a lot about yourself and about your family. If you've ever been on a boat with your family, if you've had anyone drive a boat with your family, I will tell you there are two things that are true about a boat. First of all, boats are finicky.
The second thing is that boats need power, and they need an anchor. If you try to park a boat without power, if you're not like powering into the dock, you will drift with the current. If you power too hard, you will hit the dock, which everyone in my family has also done. But you need power. The second thing you need is an anchor because a boat will never stay still.
If you turn a boat off, you will begin to drift immediately with the wind or with the current. We know this even if you've been on a boogie board or a kayak or a paddle board that if you're on something in the water and you're not paying attention, you will drift from where you were. There's no such thing as staying still in a boat. And I think this morning, the truth is that we are a little bit like boats. We are finicky and we also are drifty people.
We are people for whom we drift frequently. And we don't drift because we're bad people. We drift because we're distracted people, and distraction over time is its own kind of danger. We are constantly being pulled somewhere by something, whether that thing is anxiety or ambition or an algorithm, And most of us don't notice until we feel pretty far from shore and lost in our hearts. And the Bible tells us that our souls need an anchor.
That because we are by nature, drifty people, we need an anchor to sustain us, and only an anchor that's strong enough to hold the value of our soul. The series that we're in is called Anchored, and we're looking at a study of the book of Hebrews. And we get this idea from this idea that our souls need an anchor, and that we find this anchor in the person of Jesus Christ. And the book of Hebrews is all about the ways that Jesus is supreme, that he he satisfies every need that our hearts have. He satisfies every need that requires for sin to be undone, for us to be restored as people.
And it says in scripture in Hebrews two one, it said, must pay the most careful attention, therefore, to what we have heard so that we do not drift away. You see, there's actually an action required for us to experience Jesus, and that action is the way that we pay attention. I brought you this magnifying glass this morning so you would have a visual of what it looks like because the scriptures in another translation say, we must peer intensely. We must put our attention toward this salvation, toward this Jesus, toward our understanding of what Jesus has done, or if not, we will drift away. And I don't know about you, but if I was gonna think about the magnifying glass of my attention, of my soul, I would confess to you that I spend much more time peering into my problems, peering into my concerns, into my worries, really checking them out very closely to try to find the solution for whatever that thing is.
And yet in the way of Jesus, which is often so counter to the way of our own understanding, the scriptures tell us again and again that actually, the way that this problem is gonna be solved is in the way that you peer intently into who Jesus is. It's been about a month since pastor Scott's death. This is my first time back here at Ward since his death, and I joined you online for the memorial. It was beautiful. And as I'm here and reminded of that, I think about peering into even our grief.
And that I think pastor Scott would want us to remember that death actually gives us a great perspective on life. And that when we find ourselves distracted, it's actually these bigger things in life, these things that force us to confront the reality of life and death and of what's temporary and what's eternal that actually can give us the attention that we need, the attention to peer intently into who Jesus is. So let's do that this morning as we look at chapter two, which is very rich, very full. We're gonna do our best to walk through it together. So the first thing that I want you to know is that we're held by this Jesus, and that we're given a framework for what that holding looks like in the book of Hebrews.
Right before this, pastor Terence preached last week about the bigness of the sun, the supremacy of the sun, this big place that Jesus holds in the universe. And then the author says, we need to understand that, right, so that we can move forward. So
Mark Ordus: I'm giving
Rev. Nicole Unice: us a line here to describe chapter two, and here it is. That in this chapter, we learn about a great salvation achieved through a surprising plan for a perfect identity. The passage tells us that this salvation is so great. It says in verse two, for since the message spoken through angels was binding and every violation and disobedience received is just punishment, How shall we escape if we ignore so great a salvation? And then the scripture moves on to describe for us what is so great about this salvation, but immediately, if we were to read it and we were focusing intently upon what it's saying to us, we would immediately be paused at verse 10.
Because verse 10 says, in order to bring many sons and daughters to glory, okay, tracking, that sounds good to us. We're the sons and daughters. Okay. In order to get to glory, it's fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation, listen to this, perfect through what he suffered. Now, why in the world is suffering required for this great salvation?
Now, you may give a Sunday school answer, you may give an answer that you've heard from in church, but I'm gonna ask you that right now. I'm not asking you for someone else's answer. I think that in to order to understand the mysteries about and I can't even pretend to believe that I could fully comprehend the mysteries of our God, but he does call us to try. He does say, pay attention, and as you do, I will reveal things to you. The Bible invites us to have questions and to bring those questions to the scriptures.
And so all week, as I've been preparing, I'm like, why is the salvation great? Because of what he suffered. And so I wanna do my best to walk us through that together. The first thing that we know about Jesus, his humanity, that he came, was that he gets us. It says in verse 17, Jesus became fully human in every way, which means he gets us.
He understands us. It says in this passage that humans were crowned with glory and honor. So this there there's this beauty and and real majesty to this idea that God has called us to bear his image, that we are men and women in his creation bearing God's image. That's a lofty, like a lofty label if you think about it. But at the same time, Jesus also gets us.
In John chapter two, this is the beginning of Jesus' ministry, and he does his first miracle, if you remember the miracle where he turns water into wine at a wedding, And it's really the launch of his public ministry. Right after that, he also clears the tables in Jerusalem. So we were kind of getting this picture that Jesus is not a common rabbi. Jesus is more than just a miracle worker. We're beginning to see that in John chapter two.
But as this is happening, it says near the end of the chapter that the people were believing in Jesus because of the signs that he could do. And then it says this kind of mysterious sentence. John chapter two verse 24, 25. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them for he knew all people. He did not need any testimony about mankind for he knew what was in each person.
Now news flash, this is not like the good stuff in people. What he meant here was that he knew the fickleness of people. He knew that the people who were trusting him because of the signs he did were going about to fall away two chapters later. He knew that his disciples who said, I'll follow you to death, we're gonna betray him at the cross. He knew what was in people.
Now you may think, Nicole, why is this good news? Well, I'll tell you why it's good news. Because Jesus doesn't need us to explain ourselves to him. Jesus accepts us for who we really are. It's actually quite freeing that Jesus knows who we are even when we ourselves don't.
Jesus knows what we don't what we do even when we ourselves don't. Jesus understands our fears, our doubts, our pride, our insecurity. He understands who we really are. As human beings, we have an incredible capacity for self deception, and we are really good at thinking that we can cover who we really are. When I'm not here with you, the other work that I do is coaching leaders, senior pastors, senior leaders in companies.
And part of that work often is me as a coach sort of having conversations in many relationships in their life, direct reports, bosses, family members, etcetera. And over and over again, I am so amazed at how often people think that they're better at covering up who they really are than anyone who loves them knows. Everyone who loves them knows who they really are. And it's only they themselves who don't actually believe the things that are either good or or difficult about them. And I know I'm exactly the same way.
We think that we're covering, but Jesus knows us. He knows us. He gets us. He accepts us. The book of Hebrews says he faced all temptation but never gave in.
We spend a lot of time in our lives putting on masks for others and maybe even putting on masks for ourselves, But Jesus understands the depths of who we are and accepts us there. I love that that verse is at the very beginning of John. So as Jesus continues to love people, we're very clear that he knew exactly what he was getting into, and that he had counted the cost and considered us worthy, not just because of the glory and honor given to us in our God given identity, but because of the sin and the failure and the reality of who we really are. It's incredibly, incredibly freeing. The second thing that we know about Jesus from this passage is that he guides us.
It says that Jesus in verse 10 is the pioneer of our faith. That word pioneer is sometimes translated author of our faith, prince, pioneer, captain. There's this sense in the word of of trailblazing that that Jesus is a trailblazer for whom we can follow. I don't know if you guys are a hiking crowd. I know you've got some great parks around here.
Maybe you gone hiking before. I love following someone when I'm hiking because number one, the person in front is the one who has to take all the cobwebs in the face. If you've ever been this person, you know that this is true. The person who goes first is is literally blazing the trail through every cobweb that was that was woven the night before. And the second thing that's true about following someone who's hiking is that especially if you're on a treacherous hike, you can actually watch as you're going up, and you can see where the person places their feet.
You could see if that foothold is going to hold before you put your foot there. Being guided on a hike is the best place to be. And Jesus says that he has gone in front of us in every possible way, in every trouble, in every temptation, in every storm, that Jesus is the pioneer who is always willing to guide us. The third thing we know from this verse is that Jesus suffers for us, and this is sort of the crux of the matter right here. This idea that it was fitting that this was the plan, that God's plan was that the pioneer of our salvation would be made perfect through what he suffered.
So why would suffering be needed for salvation? The first thing is that his suffering allows a complete reversal of sin. To love is to suffer. If you have loved someone, you know that to love is to suffer. Over this weekend, one of my children was struggling.
They're they're a young adult. They've launched out of the home, and they were struggling, and they called me on the phone, and I felt pain for my child. Even though logically I know that God uses hard things and that this is part of growing up and all those things, it doesn't change the fact that when you love someone and they struggle, you yourself struggle with them. In fact, I would actually say it would not be love if it did not have suffering in it. It would not be love if it did not have care in it.
My husband Dave and I have been married for almost thirty years. What if we just said to each other, do whatever you want? We'll just we'll be married but we I you have no no accountability to each other on anything. Would you say that was love? Or would you actually say that's apathy?
If I don't care about what anyone does, if I don't think there's any cost for any wrongdoing, if I don't think that there's any reason that I should extend myself on behalf of anyone else, that's not actually love. Love always has suffering in it. And so when Jesus suffered for us, he allowed a reversal of sin. Choosing sin is what thwarted God's purpose for man. So it's in Jesus' reversal of sin that we experience the ultimate triumph.
The problem wasn't just that we broke the covenant. The problem is that we're the very creatures made to bear God's image, and we walked away. And so the only way to redeem that was from the inside out, and the way forward brought suffering because it brought love. In Jesus' love, he also gives us his righteousness, meaning that Jesus was perfect in his obedience to his father. And so when we think about what that actually meant, that Jesus was gonna be obedient to the commands that God had laid out for what it looks like to be his people.
God said to his people, this is the way that you will live your life that will actually bear my image, my character, who I really am. And you may recall that a teacher of the law asked Jesus, what is the greatest commandment? And Jesus said, what do you say it is? He said, you'll love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and that you would love your neighbor as yourself. So it stands to reason that our righteous Jesus had to live out those commands to the full.
In order to be righteous, he had to not only love God fully, but he had to love his neighbor, you and me, his fellow man. And in order to love us in its fullness, he had to go to the cross to do for us what we would never be able to do for ourselves. It would not be love to leave us where we are. It would not be love to say, go your wayward self, just drift away because that keeps us from our greatest identity, our image, the love, the way that God's created us. It says that he was able to make us holy, that Jesus in his power, in his righteousness, in his good is he made us holy, and we who are made holy are now of the same family.
And so now our anchor becomes this Christ centered identity. Jesus is not ashamed to call us brothers and sisters. Most of us spend enormous energy managing our identity. What people think of us, whether we've done enough, whether we've been enough, whether we're just enough in general. And the gospel says that work's already been done.
Your identity isn't something you earn or protect. It was given to you at a great cost, and it will never be taken away. Jesus' suffering not only allows us to experience a great salvation, but Jesus' suffering matters to us on Tuesday morning. Or when you're peering into your problems or when you're struggling or distressed, Jesus' suffering also matters for us there. Jesus' suffering allows our comfort because there is no human condition that he does not understand.
There is no place that you can walk that Jesus himself has not walked first. It is a mind blowing reality that it says in the book of Hebrews that Jesus was tempted in every way, but did not sin. You see, Jesus actually does get us. He gets the allure of the world. He gets the drift.
He knows what it feels like to live in a body, and he knows what it feels like to experience the range of human existence. He knows love, and he knows betrayal, and he knows discouragement, and he knows darkness, and he knows. He meets us in our suffering, and we can be comforted to know that there is no place that he would ever allow you to walk that he has not walked himself. One of the most famous psalms, Psalm 23 said, yet though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Do you know that you never have to walk through the valley of shadow of death without Jesus?
Jesus walked alone through the valley of the shadow of death so that we never have to walk alone. The shadow remains. Death remains. But isolation is never and never never never part of our story because Jesus says he walks with us. His suffering gives our pain meaning.
Understanding how pain works in our lives may be something that you've thought about and maybe not, but when you have the pain, you will think about it. There was an author named Viktor Frankl. He was born in a Jewish family in the nineteen hundreds. One of my favorite one of my favorite books written is by Viktor Frankl. And I didn't know this until I was studying for this for this message that he actually was totally totally obsessed with understanding the concept of the meaning of life since he was an early teenager.
In his twenties, he actually designed this is in the early nineteen hundreds. In his twenties, he designed an anti suicide intervention for young men his age that was incredibly successful. Somehow, in God's design, this man was so passionate and just driven by a philosophy of like what brings life meaning. In September 1942, Victor and his wife Tilly were arrested and with his parents were deported to a concentration camp where his mother was immediately murdered in the gas chamber. His wife Tilly was moved to another concentration camp where she died.
He lost his father at that same concentration camp and his brother at Oswich. He lost nearly everything. And yet through these experiences, loss of dignity, loss of lives, his philosophy about the search for the meaning for life continued. His drive behind human behavior was confirmed and deepened in the dirty, dark despair of a concentration camp. He said he lost everything that could be taken from a prisoner except one thing, and this is a quote.
The last of the human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstance circumstances is can never be taken away. After the war, he was released, and he dictated a book in nine days that went on to sell millions of copies in dozens of languages. It's the book I'm referring to, Man's Search for Meaning. The reality of living in our fallen world is that suffering is inevitable. But what Frankl decided and discovered was that the higher meaning than suffering was love, And that hope is what gives us the ability to avoid despair.
In fact, he said despair is suffering without meaning. It's in meaning that we discover fruitful life. And I believe that the fingerprints of God are all over Frankel's work, but as Christians, we know that love like this has a body and a face and a name, and his name is Jesus. Love is stronger than suffering and stronger than death, and we find that out in the person of Jesus. And it is so often that we experience in our trouble the comfort of Christ in ways that otherwise we would not, in ways that otherwise we would drift.
So we are anchored because of this great love. Hebrews six eighteen through 19, sort of our key verse for the series says this, God did this so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie. We who have fled to take hold of the hope set before us may be greatly encouraged. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. Notice that there are two actions in this passage.
The first action is actually we who have fled. That there is an action we take where where we've been peering into our problems and we actually turn away from that and we say, I'm not gonna hold on to this as the way that I define myself. I've been peering into my identity. I'm not gonna hold on to that as the way to define myself. It says in scripture, we who have fled take hold.
And that's the second action, is that we are invited to take hold of this anchor. We are anchored, and this salvation is greatly encouraging. And this is the joy of the truth of peering into the goodness of Jesus is that when we do that, we find ourselves encouraged. The circumstances have not changed since you entered this building. And yet as we peer intently into the great salvation of Jesus, our hearts are stirred to joy.
Our perspective is lifted and deepened. We can experience great encouragement. So as I close, I wanna address those today who might be feeling a little drifty in their lives. First, for those of us who are feeling a little lost or overwhelmed, Whatever the circumstances are that have brought you to that place, you just sense in yourself a little bit of feeling like the problems are coming up and you're not quite staying above water. And I wanna invite you to take comfort in the person of Peter.
Peter who was just so aggressively vocal in his faith, and Jesus is walking to the disciples on the water. Peter's in a boat at this moment. And Peter says, I'm gonna Lord, I'm gonna come out to you. And Jesus says, come on out. And I don't know at what point in getting out of a boat have you if you've gotten out of a boat, you understand.
Getting out of a boat is no small thing. Like, I don't know if it was when Peter was standing up on the on the stern of the boat or as he's leaving the boat and he realizes, oh, the water is far away. I don't know what is the point where he maybe panicked a little bit, but the water caught him. And he found himself walking. He had enough faith to leave the boat.
He is walking on the water. And and then in that moment, he he he notices what's happening, and he his attention moves from Jesus to the waves. And as he moves his attention from his savior to the problem, he begins to sink. And he cries out for help. And and I want you to imagine yourself in those places where you're you're crying out for help, and you feel a strong, firm grip on your arm pulling you up.
Jesus didn't leave Peter down there and say, hey, Peter, let's talk through your doctrine for a moment before I pull you up. No. All Peter said was help, and then Jesus pulls him up and says, take heart. It's me. Be encouraged.
I'm right here. Be encouraged. I'm right here. Don't be afraid. This is available to all of us when we cry for help.
That strong-arm wants to lift you up when you drift. Second group of us may be experiencing some despair or discouragement creeping into our lives. Maybe you know why that's happened. Maybe you know that the burdens have been great in your life in this season. Maybe you don't know why that's happening, but for whatever reason, you're feeling doubt, you're feeling despair come into your life, you're feeling like you're drifting in this darkness.
And I want you to know about another disciple of Jesus' named Thomas. Thomas was a disciple who wasn't there when the other disciples saw the resurrected Jesus. For whatever reason, he wasn't there. And so these disciples, his friends start telling him about Jesus and they're like, we're telling you bro, he's alive. He is risen.
I saw him with my own eyes. It happened. And Thomas looks at his friends and says, unless I put my hands in his wounds, I will not believe. And you you can't fault Thomas for being honest. Right?
And a whole week goes by. And to Thomas' credit, he is still hanging out with his friends at this point. He is telling his friends, I don't believe you at all. And I'm sure that they're full of joy, and I'm sure they're full of like, what does this mean? And what's gonna happen next?
And Thomas is like, I don't believe you guys at all. But he doesn't go away. He's still hanging around. Some of us in here are just we're just still hanging around. We're we're feeling the doubt, but for whatever reason, we came to this morning.
And we know in our hearts that we're like, I'm not I'm not there right now, and yet here we are. And a full week later, Jesus appears to Thomas, and he says, touch my wounds so you can believe. He says, touch my suffering so that you will know my love. And I believe the risen living Christ offers that invitation to you this morning. If you are feeling doubt, despair, or darkness creep over you, then be like Thomas and say, Lord, I I gotta see that you're real.
And Jesus appears to him, and he says, stop doubting, Thomas. And do you know that Thomas gives the most succinct salvation message of the gospel? Because he turns to Jesus and he says, my Lord and my God. There are very few places in the gospels where Jesus is directly called God. There are many allusions to his divinity, but there are very few places where someone just worships him as God.
And it's Thomas out of his doubt. Thomas who meets the resurrected Christ, who puts his hands in his wounds, knows his love, and says, my Lord and my God, fully human and fully divine. And he experiences the joy of a resurrected Christ. So if you've been drowning or you've been doubting, I want you to know this morning that Jesus wants to meet you there. If you've been wondering or drifting, I want you to know that an anchor is available to you.
When you focus intently on Jesus, he already knows everything about us, and he's actually holding on to us. The solution is not the strength of our grip, but the strength of the anchor in which we find our help. Peer into Jesus because he already has seen you. Let's pray. God, you tell us in the book of Hebrews that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
We thank you, Jesus, that you are our unchanging God. We thank you, Jesus, that the way you appear to your disciples, you are living and ready to appear to us today, and that we can enter into a relationship of belief in you. And as we we peer into so great a salvation, we find our souls lifted. Thank you, Jesus, that you do for us what no one else could ever do, that in your love, you are willing to suffer so that we might be your brothers and sisters, that we might be children of God. In Jesus name we pray.
Amen.