Across the Bargaining Table — How the Incarnation Bought Our Trust

Central Image

Union and management across a bargaining table in an inflation year: the picture of what it looks like to face God from a low-trust position, convinced he doesn't have your best interest at heart.

The Turn

We assume the main thing Christmas accomplished is salvation - but the incarnation is a separate act that bought something different: not a transaction, but a relationship where we know God understands from the inside.

Outline

The Problem Is Trust, and Hard Times Make It Worse

Toby's dad was an eager Teamster at Weber Aircraft in Gainesville, Texas starting in 1977 - built the plane parts passengers actually touch. He didn't trust management, and management didn't trust the union. Add the inflation of the late 70s, the gas lines, the economic squeeze, and the distrust only deepened. That's the pattern: the harder things get, the lower trust goes, because when your pocketbook is hurting, you stop believing the person across the table has your best interest at heart. The question the sermon is asking is whether that dynamic is what we bring to God.

The People Hebrews Was Written To Were Facing the Real Apocalypse

The letter was written into the run-up to 70 AD - the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, which killed hundreds of thousands of Jews and leveled the temple. At the scale of the Empire's population, that's what 9/11 would look like if it had killed 30 million Americans. The audience were Jewish Christians whose non-believing families were telling them they were traitors, no longer sons and daughters, dead to them. Christianity was about to lose its status as a legal religion in Rome. The author's call to "hold fast to your confession" wasn't a pep talk - it was addressed to people on the edge of something that earned the word apocalypse.

The Author's Move: The Priesthood (Which Nobody Would Have Chosen)

To reach people in that situation, the author of Hebrews spends chapters on the high priesthood - which is not where Toby says his own mind would go. The argument is careful: the earthly high priest is called, not self-appointed; he can sympathize with weakness because he's weak himself; he has to sacrifice for his own sins, so he knows the inside of the human condition. He can understand you because he's one of you. But his sympathy has a ceiling.

Jesus as High Priest: What He Actually Offered

Jesus was called - "You are my son, today I have begotten you, a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek" - a higher order and a permanent one. The key move is what his offering was. The earthly priest brings an animal. Jesus, "in the days of his flesh," offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death. That's his sacrifice. He was heard because of his reverence - that Old Testament fear of the Lord, trembling awe before God. The proof that he was heard is Sunday: the resurrection is the answer to the garden. And because he was heard, we can approach the throne of grace with confidence - a Greek word that meant the right to speak freely, as equals, the way freed men deliberated in their own assembly. Jesus offered God his tears so that we could walk in and talk.

The Incarnation Bought Something the Cross Didn't

The cross accomplished salvation. But Christmas - God taking on human flesh - bought something different: trust. Jesus didn't visit human nature and hand it back. He kept it. He is still a man. For all of eternity, he is both God and man. Even though he never sinned, when God imputed our sin to him he knew from the inside what it feels like to carry shame and hopelessness and the sense that nothing could ever be right again. There is no point in a human life where we can look at God and say he doesn't understand - because the baby who was born is God, and he knows every step of it.

The Landing

God, who owed us nothing, bought our trust - which means we can walk into anything, including the apocalypse itself, and know that when we cry out, we are heard.

1. Toby's dad came home from Weber Aircraft griping about management, and the basic problem was simple: each side assumed the other one didn't have their best interest at heart. When have you been in a relationship - a job, a family situation, anything - where hard times convinced you the other person was working against you, even if they probably weren't?
2. The author of Hebrews wanted people standing on the edge of a real catastrophe - families disowning them, their religion about to become illegal, a war that would kill hundreds of thousands - to hold onto their faith. He did it by talking about the high priesthood. What was he actually arguing, and why would that work on that particular crowd?
3. The sermon pointed out that what Jesus offered as high priest wasn't an animal - it was "prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears." What does it change to think of that as his priestly sacrifice?
4. Toby said it straight: the harder things get, the lower your trust goes. When has a genuinely hard stretch made you trust God less - not because of anything he did, but just because of the pressure you were under?
5. The sermon drew a line between two separate things: the cross bought our salvation, and the incarnation bought our trust. When you're in the middle of something difficult - not in a sermon, but in your actual life - which one do you reach for?
6. Jesus cried out with loud cries and tears, and the sermon says he was heard - the resurrection is the proof. But he was still crucified. What does it actually mean to be heard by God if being heard doesn't mean being spared?
7. The people Hebrews was written to were being pulled back toward the temple by their own families telling them they were traitors. When this church hits a hard stretch together, what does that pull look like for us - and where does it take us?
8. Before this week is out, name one specific place in your life where you've been treating God like he's on the other side of the table - and bring it to him directly, not in general terms, but that one thing.