HE'S SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS Hebrews 7:26-8:13

Hebrews 7:26-8:13

Our family did not grow up going to movies. The incongruity…the inconsistency…of that fact was to my sisters and myself beyond comprehension. Now, the stated reason we did not go to the movies was because (to quote my mom), "We don't want to support the Hollywood lifestyle." Ha! What a joke! I speak of incongruity and inconsistency because while we wouldn't GO TO the movies, we sure let them COME INTO our home! Indeed, WE INVITED THEM INTO OUR HOME!

• We had a televisions both upstairs and downstairs when I was growing up…and they were on a LOT! • Come Saturday mornings, my two sisters and I would sit (way too close, I am sure) in front of the t.v. and watch show after show after show. • Saturday afternoons were my introduction to monster movies. • And each day, during the school year, we would run home during the lunch break and recess (we lived close to the elementary school) to eat lunch and watch television.

But it wasn't until I was well into my teen years that my parents FINALLY buckled and agreed to let us go to the movies. I don't recall them ever admitting that there had been a gross inconsistency on their part. I just remember them finally agreeing to let us go. By then it was the era of like The Sound of Music and .

My older sister somehow ended up owning an l.p. of the music from the Mary Poppins . (For you who are younger, those two letters (l.p.) stood for LONG PLAY…the distinction of records that revolved at 33 1/3 revolutions per minutes on the turntable as opposed to 45 or 78 revolutions per minute.) And because she owned that record, we listened to it constantly, including the song "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious"…which, as Julie Andrews notes on the record, can be said backwards, which is docialiexpisticfragilcalirupes! She then says, "But I think that's going a bit too far, don't you?" To which Burt (played by Dick VanDyke) says, "Indubitably." But WHO was Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious? Why it was none other than Mary Poppins…that's who!

Well Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious was an unknown description to the author of the book of Hebrews, but if he had known it, I think he would have added it to his long list of noted attributes of our Savior Jesus. For if Mary Poppins was Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, then most certainly Jesus was even more so.

This morning, along with the Heartbeat (our church bulletin), the ushers handed out two different handouts listing names and titles ascribed to Jesus in the Bible. One handout mentions 235 such names; the other names over 600 (and you almost need a magnifying glass to read it!) But it is unlikely that even the longer list is exhaustive. For if the whole creation cries out…if even the rocks can or will cry out…then who knows by what other names the Creator of the Cosmos and Savior of the World might be called?

Now, it is natural that we should compare our leader, our Savior, with other spiritual giants who have lived on this earth. And so we might speak of the wisdom of Confucius, or the self-abandonment of Buddha; we might rightly note the ability of Mohammed to rally people to a cause. • But is there any other Savior of the world? • John the Baptist said of Jesus, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." Has anyone ever said that of anyone other than Jesus? • Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead. Who else did that? • C.S. Lewis, in his classic work, Mere Christianity wrote, "I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Jesus: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claims to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." (p.52, Mere Christianity)

So this GREAT SAVIOR…this Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Savior…who defies the imagination and who is beyond description…this blessed Jesus came to earth to redeem the earth…to save the planet. And how did he do it? With strength that he had gained from an alien planet…like Superman? No, he did it by laying down his life for sinners, and by that death bringing about a transformation of the one species on earth that could change the earth: mankind.

Some time ago I was talking to our son, Daniel…the son who has turned away from God. And at that time Daniel made the most interesting comment regarding one of the reasons for his rejection of the Bible and the God of the Bible. He said something to the effect that if God was so all knowing, why would he have spent so much time in the Bible rehashing the sins and failures of the human race? Daniel's point was that there are great mysteries regarding the universe that science is busy exploring and gaining greater and greater understanding about. God could have made that much easier for us by explaining some of these mysteries in the Bible but instead he seems bogged down dealing with mankind's sins. In truth, when Daniel gave me that critique it almost made me laugh out loud. For if there is ONE THING that after all these centuries the human race has not yet gotten straight it is how to live a good, holy, healthy, non-destructive sort of life. Yes the scriptures ARE bogged down dealing with mankind's sin because until that SIN issue gets resolved, mankind may explore the far reaches of the universe alright, be he will do so only to bring his hateful, envious, jealous, self-centered destructive ways with him. We may land on Mars, and even colonize Mars, but in the end we'll destroy Mars like we're destroying Earth unless there is a change in who we are. So the Bible is concerned with seeing us change. And the only way that it shows for us to change is through Jesus.

Take away Jesus and you have a recipe for a global holocaust. But with Jesus, you have a Savior…a FANTASTIC REDEEMER…one who was able to bring about .

Now in our text before us, after telling us (as he has for many chapters now) how great Jesus is, the author again brings up the idea that Jesus, as a high priest of God – but of a different order than those ordained through Moses – has brought about a BETTER Covenant (verse 6). As we noted last Sunday there was a need for a new and better covenant because of a shortcoming with the old. For while the old covenant could show mankind his sins, it could not change him. Consistently, the New Testament scriptures suggest that this shortcoming with the old covenant was really a shortcoming with mankind. If mankind had been holy, the old covenant would have worked. Look at verse 8… verse 8

The text does NOT read, "He finds fault with it" or He finds fault with the old covenant." No, it reads, "He finds fault with them," meaning with the people under the old covenant. So the old covenant showed people their sin but they still remained sinful. Something needed to change. And what needed to change was that the law of God needed to become the law of man. It needed to become internalized so that people NATURALLY would obey the law rather than naturally disobey God's commands.

And then see what the author does here… He quotes from Jeremiah chapter 31…that great Old Testament prophecy about a NEW COVENANT that God was going to make with mankind. A covenant that was NOT LIKE the Old Covenant. verses 8-12

Brothers and sisters, this is the New Covenant that we are now under. This was a new covenant that was made by Jesus with the Jewish people. But because of the unbelief by so many of the Jews, we Gentiles were shown mercy and GRAFTED IN (to quote the apostle Paul in Romans 11)…grafted in. And now we are under that New Covenant.

Next Sunday we are going to address this issue in greater detail: this change in covenants. But for today you want to see a verse…no you want to UNDERLINE a verse that is about as important to underline as any you will find in the Bible. For if THE ISSUE that has divided Christians more than any other is the issue of our relationship as New Covenant believers to the Old Covenant scriptures, then see verse 13… verse 13

Brothers and sisters, we are NOT under the Old Covenant. You are NOT under the Old Covenant. Very honestly that makes life a lot more complicated. The old covenant had laws dealing with just about every aspect of living (from what you eat to what you wear to how you trim your hair). That made life fairly straightforward: you just obeyed the law. But now we are under a NEW COVENANT that is both like and unlike the old. And because of that, life is not so clear.

• Under the old covenant, one was not to have a tattoo. Today many Christians have tattoos. Is that okay? If you are still under the Old Covenant the answer is no, it is not okay. But if you are under the New Covenant, does it matter? • Under the Old Covenant, homosexuals were to be put to death. But you are under the New Covenant, does it matter? • Under the Old Covenant, you were to keep the Sabbath holy by doing absolutely NO WORK on that day. But you are under the New Covenant, does it matter? The truth is, under the New Covenant, these questions can become a bit muddy…less clear. We're going to talk about this next Sunday, but for now, see where the writer of Hebrews has brought his readers. He introduced them to a "supercalifragilisticexpialidocious high priest." That's great. But that has led to a scrapping of the law of Moses, calling it weak, useless, needing to be changed, inferior, growing old, ready to vanish away…and obsolete. For some of the first century's readers of this book, this all might have been too much to handle! But for us, even for all the muddiness that has come with it, we say, "Hallelujah…a covenant of Grace…that looks beyond my sin and shows me a Savior's love. Hallelujah, I'll take it!"