Pastor Scott Jonas
Greater than Doctrine
Hebrews 6
9/9/18
Imagine
that you met someone and fell in love.
The person wrote you a love letter.
The letter from your lover says things like
“The voice of my beloved!
Behold, my beloved
comes,
leaping over the mountains,
bounding over the
hills.
9 My beloved is like a gazelle
or a young stag.
Behold, there my beloved stands
behind our wall,
gazing through the windows,
looking through
the lattice.
10 My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my beautiful one,
and come away,
11 for behold, the winter is past;
the rain is over
and gone.
12 The flowers appear on the earth,
the time of
singing[d] has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
is heard in our
land.
13 The fig tree ripens its figs,
and the vines are
in blossom;
they give forth
fragrance.
Arise, my love, my beautiful one,
and come away.”
That
letter is very important to you. It is
proof that of your love’s devotion to you.
You cherish it. You read it over
and over. In fact, you memorize
it. You share the letter with your
friends and family. Everyone who reads
it can feel the love between the two of you.
Then you analyze
the letter, parsing every sentence, every word.
You write notes, reflecting on the letter. You interpret phrases like “my beautiful
one.” What does the author mean by
that? What does my beloved mean by “Come
away.” Come away, where? Come away when. You also begin crafting your own letter of
response to your beloved.
Once you have
interpreted every line and word you take it up a notch. You systematize the letter. You put the truth of the letter into
categories. Here are the parts where my
beloved tells me to do something. Here
are the parts where my beloved describes the relationship. Here is where my beloved tells me how special
I am. You create a system for
understanding your beloved, your beloved’s opinion of you and the terms of your
relationship. Your response letter is
getting longer and more complicated, but it is certainly done with devotion.
But you don’t stop
there. You also come up with a practical
plan to share the news of your relationship.
You learn to write 15 minute speeches with the letter as the central topic. You practice sharing the letter with those
who need that kind of love: the sick,
the poor, the lonely
Finally, over
time, you document your history of sharing the letter with all the different
people and circumstances . Your response
letter never seems to quite be finished.
Hebrews 6:1 “Therefore let us leave the elementary
doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity.”
One way of looking at doctrine, is that it is our response letter to
God. The Lord has given us the Bible
which is a love letter to humanity. The
words I read earlier were from Song of Songs which is literally a gushy, sappy
ode to love from the Lord to you. He
calls the church “his beloved.” He is
crazy about us and he wants everyone to know it. The rest of scripture is not that gushy but
at it’s core it is a letter from God expressing his desire to be with you
forever.
Doctrine is where
we examine God’s love letter and try to summarize it. At the seminary, we have four
departments: the exegetical, the
systematic, the practical and the historical.
The exegetical professors looks at the Bible’s words, phrases, literary
genres and writes down what God is saying.
The systematic professors take what God is saying and puts that truth
into categories like law and Gospel. The
practical department plots ways for
pastors to share the good news of the letter with others through sermons,
teaching, counseling, outreach and more.
The historical professors like Paul Robinson, teach the history of God’s
church interpreting and witnessing to the Lord’s letter. All of the church’s doctrine is our attempt
to understand the love of God, document it, and write him back.
In Hebrews chapter
5 and 6, the author was exasperated with the church. They should be teachers of the words of God
but instead they are stuck on the basic things.
They aren’t growing. What are the
basic things? Hebrews points to
teachings on repentance, baptism, prayer, resurrection of the dead and eternal
judgement. We point to the elementary
doctrines whenever we recite the creeds, the Lord’s prayer, the ten commandments,
confession, and the sacraments. The
author is compelling us to go beyond the elementary teachings and know the
deeper lessons of the Bible.
The Bible is full
of hard sayings. A few we went over in
bible class. Hebrews 2:10 says that “For
it was fitting that the Father for whom all things exist, in bringing many sons
to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through
suffering.” That is no elementary
teaching. What does it mean that Jesus
was made perfect through suffering? Does
it mean that he wasn’t perfect before?
Does it mean he had a flaw? We
dug deep by reading the greek, and cross references and commentaries and asking
questions. We discovered in Bible class
that the sentence is saying that Jesus became the perfect sacrifice. He was always sinless but he was prepared for
the cross through suffering. Deep
doctrine.
We Lutherans are
proud of our doctrine. We take it
seriously. We have the world’s best
theologians and seminary. Our
denomination was founded on the doctrine of Martin Luther and the reformers who
wrote extensively and carefully. As Dr.
Robinson will highlight in Bible class today, our doctrine is a blessing that
should be cherished and preserved.
But we have
something greater than doctrine. We have
Jesus Christ. Doctrine is our response
to God’s words. In seminary we talk
about pure doctrine. Sometimes our
doctrine is not so pure. We can get
things wrong. We are human. Sometimes I get things wrong. The original love letter of Jesus never gets things
wrong. It is full of promises that are
guarantees. Hebrews 6 says, “So when God
desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable
character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, 18 so that by two
unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled
for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before
us. 19 We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that
enters into the inner place behind the curtain, 20 where Jesus has gone as a
forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order
of Melchizedek.” That is pure
Gospel. That is pure Jesus.
We must never
value doctrine more than Christ. Anymore
than you would value a love letter more than your beloved. How ridiculous would that be? Imagine not spending time with your spouse
and choosing to focus on a description of your spouse. Crazy.
We don’t have an abstract concept of God; we have Christ himself who
died and rose for you. We do recite
doctrine in our service and that is necessary and good. But it is better to receive your beloved’s
body and blood at the altar. That is
something beyond words. God is
present.
He wrote you a
love letter spelling the whole thing out.
Did you get it? Have you read
it? It is from the great one to you.