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Hi, this is Pastor Tom and I want to welcome you to Hebrews chapter 3. This is
day one of our look through this great chapter of Scripture, a chapter that's
all about faithfulness, how it can happen in our lives and our daily lives.
Today, as we begin this chapter, we're going to focus just on verse 1 because
verse 1 tells us where to focus.

Hebrews chapter 3 verse 1 says, "Therefore, holy brothers, who share in the
heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom
we confess. " As we talk this week about what it takes to be faithful, how do I
live the kind of Christian life, the kind of faith that isn't just for a few
minutes or a few days or a few months or even a few years. How do I live the
kind of Christian life where I sense I'm faithful to what God's asked me to do,
to his calling in my life throughout my life.

I'm not perfect, but I'm faithful. It's not that I never struggle, but I'm
faithful. I keep coming back to faith.

I keep doing what he's asked me to do and I do that for a lifetime. How do you
do that? How do you live that kind of life?

Some people who try to do that get worn out very, very quickly and God doesn't
mean it to be that way. Faith should be energizing. It should add life to us,
not take life away from us.

So to understand what it takes to be faithful, this chapter which in the middle
of it talks about the faithfulness of Moses and of Jesus. Throughout this
chapter helps us to understand here's the principles for living an energized
life of faithfulness and it begins with this in verse 1, "To be faithful, I must
focus on Jesus. " I must focus on Jesus.

Now you might have noticed as we're going through Hebrews, there's this back and
forth that's going on between who Jesus is and what I should do about it. We're
talking about who Jesus is again and again, who he's greater than and who he is
and we see that even in these verses. But then we also see what we should do
about it.

Here this verse begins by saying, "We share in a heavenly calling. " And the
first question you have to ask yourself is, "Do I have that? " In order to be
faithful, you have to be living out a heavenly calling, not your own calling.

You've got to be faithful to something. We're faithful to Jesus in this heavenly
calling. It's heavenly.

It comes from God and it's a calling. It's to be lived out in my daily life. And
notice from the very beginning he says, "We share in this heavenly calling.

" It's something that we're doing together. The idea here is we partake together
in it. We don't have this calling alone.

No one does. No believer does. We're going to get to this later in this chapter.

We share in this calling together. And if I'm going to share in this calling, if
I'm going to live out a faithful life, it starts with fixing my thoughts on
Jesus. You've got to think about him, who he is, through your daily life.

If I fix my thoughts on the wrong thing, I'm going to be drawn towards the wrong
thing. In fact, the truth of the matter is in life, I tend to go after, I tend
to even drift towards whatever I fix my thoughts on. If you fix your eyes, if
you fix your thoughts on a certain thing, a certain person, a certain idea, you
will drift in that direction.

You will go in that direction. So to stay faithful, you fix your thoughts on
Jesus. And he immediately tells us a couple of things about Jesus, two specific
directions to fix our thoughts.

Who is Jesus? He's our apostle, and he's our high priest. This is the only time
in all the Bible that Jesus is called an apostle, and that might sound strange
to you.

This isn't saying he's one of the first twelve apostles. It's the meaning behind
the word that's meant here. And the meaning behind the word apostle is one who's
sent, one who's sent with a commission.

Jesus was sent into this world, God so loved the world that he gave his only
begotten Son. He sent him into this world to give his life for us. He's our
apostle, and he's our high priest.

A high priest is one who goes between man and God. In fact, we're going to
reveal more and more about who Jesus is as a high priest as we walk through the
book of Hebrews together. As apostle, Jesus represents God to men.

As high priest, he represents man before God. As apostle, he is sent from God to
represent to us who God is. He's God in human flesh.

And as high priest, he's sitting at the right hand of the throne of God right
now representing us, representing us as forgiven, as saints, as called in his
sight. So if I want to be faithful for the rest of my life, I've got to fix my
eyes on Jesus. I can't fix my eyes on my circumstances.

I can't fix my eyes on my successes. I can't fix my eyes on my failures. I can't
fix my eyes on the world around me.

All of that is going to take me away from a life of faithfulness because there's
so much discouragement to be found there. There's so much weariness to be found
there. You start by fixing your eyes on him.

Now behind that, there's a second idea of what it takes to be faithful, the idea
of fixing your eyes on Jesus. To be faithful, number two, I must make a choice.
It's volitional.

It's a matter of the will. Fix your eyes on Jesus. It's not tell him to force
your eyes to be fixed on him.

It's you choose to fix your eyes on him. As you would set a compass or you would
set a course, you fix your eyes on him. It's a clear choice each day.

Where will I fix my thoughts? You want a compass to work right? You fix it on
the North Star.

You want to hit the bullseye? You fix your eyes on the target. You want to drive
safely?

You fix your eyes on the road ahead. You want your mind to think straight? You
fix your thoughts on Jesus.

John Piper says about this passage, "Jesus is the North Pole of your mental life
that your mind comes back to again and again throughout the day. " That's how
you fix your eyes on him. That's how you know what direction to go in life.

Your perspective in life is determined as you walk through the New Testament,
you'll see that it's determined by where you set your heart, where you set your
mind, where you fix your eyes, where you fix your thoughts. And so these verses
say, "Fix your thoughts on Jesus. " If you fix your thoughts on others, you'll
often feel confused because some will praise you and some will condemn you.

And some or many are just about themselves, they're not thinking about you at
all. It can be very confusing to fix your thoughts on others. If you fix your
thoughts on yourself, you'll often feel inadequate, which by the way is true.

You are inadequate. Our adequacy comes from God and not from ourselves. So if I
fix my thoughts only on myself, of course I'm going to feel inadequate sometimes
because in myself, by myself, I am inadequate for the calling that God has
called me to.

You're not inadequate for what you might want to do, for your plans and dreams
in life, but you're inadequate for the greatness of His calling. Fix your
thoughts on others, it doesn't work. Fix your thoughts on yourself, it doesn't
work.

Fix your thoughts on Jesus and you'll be able to think right again. I've always
loved what Corey Ten Boom said about this. If you look at the world, you'll be
distressed.

If you look within, you'll be depressed. If you look at God, you'll be at rest.
Jane Ortland, pastor's wife, wrote a book called "Fix Your Eyes on Jesus" and in
the introduction to that book, she talked about how this plays out in our
everyday life.

Here's her story. She says, "I was chatting last Sunday with my in-laws, their
dear people. We covered this and that and we got to discussing a particular
pastor and oh so subtly, so delicately, I managed to allude to his struggles,
his perils, his possible problems.

I rattled on and suddenly I saw myself, fangs, claws and all. I was making sure
they understood that my husband and I never had such struggles, perils or
possible problems, that we obviously must be superior. I was too well-bred to
say it, I only inferred it.

My relatives are savvy people, they'd understand. The spirit stopped me cold. My
eyes weren't on Jesus, they were on my family.

To make sure that my husband and I looked good in their sight, that gave freedom
to my old nature, my familiar ugly lifelong enemy, to take control of my tongue.
And there in front of them was my exposed heart with all of its lurking pride
and jealousy. Embarrassing, discouraging.

I apologized and my sweet family made light of it and of course forgave me. But
I'm always just one step from disaster, aren't you? And there's no help, no
winning, unless we do what the book of Hebrews tells us to do.

Fix our eyes on Jesus. Fix our thoughts on Jesus. One moment at a time.

I appreciate what Anne has written because it is honest. It goes straight to the
heart of what you and I face every day of our lives. What am I going to think
about?

Am I just going to think about me? 7. 1 billion people in this world and all you
can think about is you?

Am I just going to think about others? What their needs are or even what their
thoughts are about me? It always comes back to us, doesn't it?

Or am I going to make this radical decision, this radical decision that results
in a lifetime of faithfulness, a lifetime of joy, to fix my thoughts on Jesus?
If you've ever tried to do this, you know it's not easy. You know how easily our
thoughts get brought back to this world or brought back to ourselves?

It's a decision. It's a choice that you make not just once a day but many times
throughout the day. So let's make that choice now in prayer.

Would you pray with me? Jesus, we choose right now to fix our thoughts on you,
not on our problems, not on our opportunities, not on others and not on
ourselves, but to fix our thoughts on you, the one who loves us the most, the
one who has the greatest plan for our lives, the one who is moving and working
in this world in ways that we can sometimes see and sometimes are a mystery to
us, but we can always trust. We fix our thoughts on you right now, Jesus.

And we pray as many times as it takes throughout the day that you bring us back
to this place, that we'd reset the compass of our lives by fixing our thoughts
on you. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. Tomorrow we're going to look at the
truth together that Jesus is better than Moses.