Hebrews 10:5-10 (NRSV)
Read Hebrews 10:5-10 on biblegateway.com
Verse 5Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, "Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me; Verse 6in burnt offerings and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure.
Verse 7Then I said, 'See, God, I have come to do your will, O God' (in the scroll of the book it is written of me)." Verse 8When he said above, "You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings" (these are offered according to the law), Verse 9then he added, "See, I have come to do your will." He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. Verse 10And it is by God's will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.
Devotion
I have had two conversations these past three days with peers who have grown up in the church. The first one shared that she and her husband no longer attend worship in any church. “I just don’t agree with many of the things the church says we should believe,” she said. “The church seems to be on the wrong side of social issues. Many church people don’t act like they profess to believe.”
The second woman goes to church, but probably wouldn’t go as regularly if it weren’t for her husband. They deeply love each other, but “I have many more questions than he has,” she related. “I have a hard time with how loosely Christians talk about the Bible as the Word of God. I don’t agree with the passages in the Old Testament where God is said to order his people to kill women and children, or passages in the New Testament where Jesus says that divorced women who remarry are guilty of adultery.”
Hebrews portrays Jesus as saying that he has come to eliminate all superficial practices of religion. He would probably agree with much of what these two women were saying. “I have come to do the will of God,” said Jesus, “and the will of God is that I reveal the love of God, even to the point of giving my life for God’s children.”
The older I get, the more convinced I am that we need to get to the core of the Gospel message: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”
Prayer
Give us the faith and courage to say yes to your love, Lord Jesus. We wait this season for a fresh taste of your love. Amen!