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HOLY HELP FOR THE HOPELESSWHO BELIEVE THE GOSPEL DELIVERED BY THE APOSTLESHebrews 13:7-14INTRODUCTION Many years ago our church was trying to help a man who was in trouble. He became dissatisfied with our efforts and told me that he would rather see a sermon than listen to a sermon. He was insinuating that our walk did not match our talk; that we were hypocrites because while we talked about the gospel we did not live out the gospel as we ought; at least as far as he was concerned. In his bitterness he was stating an ancient controversy that has beset the church of Jesus since its founding. Is the true church of Jesus recognized by what she does or by what she professes to believe? Throughout the history of the church teachers and movements have repeatedly arisen seeking to reform the church in the direction of action and away from “dead orthodoxy” and then other men and movements have arisen to restore the church to its true doctrine and away from zealous action that is devoid of the true knowledge of God. We also live in such a day. There has arisen within the past decade within the evangelical church a movement broadly called “the emerging church”. While the variety within this movement is large there are a few things that characterize every form of it. Scot McKnight who is a professor of religious studies at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago, an evangelical Christian and an avowed member of the emerging church identifies five “streams that feed into the lake that is the emerging church” in an article for Christianity Today. He identifies at the heart of the emerging movement an attempt to move the church more towards action than towards belief. He quotes Peter Rollins who says, “orthodoxy is no longer (mis)understood as the opposite of heresy but rather is understood as a term that signals a way of being in the world rather than a means of believing things about the world." In other words the true church of Jesus is recognized by what we do: how we worship, how we love each other, how we live in the world, how we treat the poor, rather than by what we believe. While most emerging church leaders continue to say that they believe the Bible and the truth about Jesus, yet they have a very strong dislike for absolute statements of doctrine and truth regarding the gospel. They prefer to talk about the "conversation" that we are to have about what God has revealed to us in the Bible about Jesus. McKnight describes it this way, “the emerging movement loves ideas and theology. It just doesn't have an airtight system or statement of faith. We believe the Great Tradition offers various ways for telling the truth about God's redemption in Christ, but we don't believe any one theology gets it absolutely right.” Let me assure you that while the controversy that exists within the Protestant, evangelical church due to the emerging church has a few new wrinkles due to the influence of postmodern philosophy, yet it is simply another reincarnation of an ancient controversy. This is why we need the Bible. It is so balanced. We saw last week that the work of Jesus as our high priest and sacrifice has created a community of people who, out of their joy in being the recipients of a kingdom that cannot be shaken, love to love one another, including the strangers God sends and those who are suffering, love to honor marriage and love to trust God and not money. In other words what 13:1-6 describes is a community that acts in certain ways. However, in vv. 7-14 we are going to see that we are also a community that is fiercely committed to the truth about Jesus that was first taught by his apostles and that has been faithfully taught through the centuries by called and gifted teachers in his church. So the church is to be marked both by an unswerving commitment to true doctrine and by an unwavering lifestyle of love and purity and hard work and generosity. It must always be both and the church that emphasizes one over the other is a church that is on a path that leads away from God. The emphasis in these 8 verses is this: MAIN POINT We must hold fast to the gospel that the apostles, as recorded in the NT, taught to us because…I. We can see the outcome of that gospel in the lives of its teachers (v. 7) After telling this local church of formerly Jewish Christians how the God who saved them wants them to live he commands them to remember those individuals who formerly preached the gospel to them and who are now dead. We know they are dead because of the past tense verb: “who spoke the word of God to you” and because they are to "consider the outcome of their way of life" which requires that their lives be over. You cannot know the outcome of a person's life unless that life is over. We do not know whether these former leaders are only the founding leaders of this local church or all those who have died since the church began because we do not know the timeline of this church’s existence. Look back to 2:3 which says, “… how shall we escape if we ignore such a great salvation? This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him.” Jesus announced the gospel which saves and then some of those who heard him announced this salvation to the author and the other members of this church. So at least some of those who are to be remembered are those who first announced the gospel to them who were among the eyewitnesses of Jesus himself. Let me be sure you don’t miss that the primary characteristic of these leaders is that they preached the word of God to them. The source of their authority was not in whom they were but in whom they represented. Their authority came from the message they preached not their personality or their preaching ability or their education or their economic status or any other human consideration. These individuals were leaders because of their message, the word of God. What in particular are they to remember? They are to keep on remembering or keep on considering the outcome of their way of life and as a result of this memory to imitate their faith. So it is the exhibition of faith in the lives of these dead teachers that is to be remembered. Faith, as stated in 11:1 and then illustrated in that chapter, is confidence that what God has promised to do in the future because of what Christ has done in the past is an absolute certainty. This confidence or certainty in the future promises of God produces faithful actions in the present. Chapter 11 demonstrated what faith does by examining the lives of dozens of OT saints. Now the members of this church do not only have the characters described in the OT but they also, with their own eyes, have seen the outcome of the way of life of leaders who spoke the word of God to them. They have observed how these leaders came to the end of their lives holding fast to Christ, no matter what happened to them. You can be sure they watched some of these leaders endure significant persecution as whenever persecution breaks out against the church the leaders are the first ones attacked. Some of them may have been martyred for their faith. Others may not have suffered persecution but have simply lived as faithful Christians to the end of their lives in all the ups and downs that characterize our ordinary lives. There is great power in remembering the faith filled lives of now deceased Christians, especially if they are those who spoke the word of God to us. A dear friend of Jane and I told us that when she was a college student, involved in a sorority that the thing that kept her from partying and moved her to live like a Christian was the faith of her father who died when she was 13. She regularly recalled, when reading her Bible, things that he had told her as she was growing up. He spoke the word of God to her and she considered the outcome of his way of life and she imitated his faith. Every parent in here ought to have as his or her objective to so live by faith in Christ and to so speak the word of God to their children so that when you die your children can remember you and consider the outcome of your way of life and thus imitate your faith. They ought to be able to see that you lived out the gospel that you taught them. Every elder/pastor, every small group leader, every person involved in personal discipleship who is speaking the word of God to others ought to have as his or her objective to so live by faith that when you are dead those who heard you will remember you and consider the outcome of your way of life and so imitate your faith. Do you see how the truth of the gospel and the actions which that gospel produces are so united in the lives of its messengers? The means by which God keeps Christians and churches in proper balance between believing true doctrine and living a true life is through teachers who preach the true gospel and live a true Christian life. What our children need are parents who know the gospel and speak the gospel and live on the basis of the gospel. What every church needs are pastors and elders and other leaders who know the gospel and speak the gospel and who live on the basis of the gospel. We need to hear the gospel and we need to see those who teach us live out the gospel to the end of their lives if we are going to trust the gospel and be faithful to Christ to the end of our days. We must hold fast to the gospel that the apostles, as recorded in the NT, taught to us because…
II. There are many counterfeit gospels (vv. 8-9) Verse 8 appears as this statement of raw truth in the midst of these commands to remember dead teachers and not be carried away by a wide variety of strange teachings. It doesn’t, at first sight, seem to fit. Yet it is a remarkably relevant word to these people on the verge of abandoning Christ due to the threat of persecution and it is a remarkably relevant word to us who live in a world that says there are no absolute, enduring truths and that what you do matters more than what you believe. Let me give you an expanded translation of this verse. "The same Jesus who yesterday was preached to you by your former leaders and upon whom they depended is the same Jesus that I and your other current leaders are preaching to you today and upon whom we are depending and it is this same Jesus who will be our high priest and mediator and sacrifice forever." There is just one gospel message because there is only one Jesus. As P. E. Hughes says in his commentary, “If Jesus Christ is unchanging, so also is the truth concerning him.” As the apostle Paul says in Galatians 1 the only gospel that can save you is the one that came right from Jesus through his apostles and if anyone tells you a different gospel they are not talking about the same Jesus. Those who do not believe this original gospel, according to Paul in Galatians 1:6-9 is condemned to hell. What the author is claiming is that everything he has said about Jesus in his letter is what has always been true of Jesus. If you do not believe about Jesus what he has said then you do not believe in the Jesus who actually exists; the content of your faith matters. It is not enough to live like a Christian you must also believe like a Christian. And, to remind you of vv. 1-6, it is not enough to believe like a Christian you must also live like a Christian. Now notice that immediately following this strong assertion about the singular and authoritative and reliable Jesus he tells them not to be carried away by the wide variety of strange or alien teachings that abound. There is only one Jesus and one gospel of Jesus but there are an almost infinite variety of false teachings about God and Jesus and how to be made right with God. As Jesus repeatedly warned his disciples and as the apostles repeatedly warned the early church there are many false prophets, false teachers and antichrists who have gone out into the world. We live in a morass of ideas about God and Jesus that are alien or foreign to the true gospel of the unchanging Christ. The second half of v. 9 tells us that what all true and false teaching about God share in common is the promise of a strong heart. Every form of religious teaching promises to give people strong hearts, that is, hearts that are at rest, at peace with God and the world. Every religion promises happy and secure hearts that will enable people to live purposeful and meaningful lives in God’s world now and live with God forever. However, only one word of God actually delivers what it promises. All false teaching does not benefit those who believe it and act upon it. False teaching does not and cannot save. In the case of these Hebrew Christians the kind of strange teaching they are being tempted with is that of Judaism. They are being told that if they will abandon Christ and rejoin the Jewish faith with its regulations regarding food they will escape persecution and yet know God, have hearts strengthened by God. The promise of Judaism is that if you will eat the right foods at the right time in the right manner, then you will be pleasing to God. You can be confident that God accepts you and that you have a secure future based on what foods you eat. But, as with every strange teaching, this teaching does not and cannot benefit those who follow its regulations. In fact, it has never benefited those who lived according to these regulations. That is exactly what was said in 9:9-10, “ This is an illustration for the present time, indicating that the gifts and sacrifices being offered were not able to clear the conscience of the worshiper. They are only a matter of food and drink and various ceremonial washings-- external regulations applying until the time of the new order.” What you eat or don’t eat has no bearing upon how God feels about you or upon your future. These regulations were always shadows of the reality, which is Christ and his saving work. They were never intended as the means by which God was to be satisfied with those who practiced them. Only grace can strengthen your heart. Grace here is referring to what the author said in 2:9, Christ “…suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for all.” It is only God’s unmerited favor given to you through the death of Jesus that can give you a heart that will not fear and will not fight but be at rest in God. What the author does next is to return again to the ritual surrounding the Day of Atonement, which he has referred to several times already, to make plain this grace of God, which is the only thing that can strengthen hearts. We must hold fast to the gospel that the apostles, as recorded in the NT, taught to us because…
III. The gospel of Jesus is God's grace for sinners (vv. 10-12) Verses 10-12 belong together as a reflection upon the Day of Atonement and how it foreshadows the work of Jesus. Verse 10 is a contrast. It says that we Christians have an altar from which we have a right to eat but those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat from it. Then in v. 11 the author summarizes what happens on the Day of Atonement. It is a loose quote of several verses from Leviticus 16. Every year the high priest kills a bull and drains its blood and carries some of it into the Most Holy Place and sprinkles it on the Ark of the Covenant as a sin offering for his own sins. Then he kills a year old, unblemished, male lamb and takes its blood into the Most Holy Place and sprinkles it as a sin offering for the sins of the whole nation of Israel. Back in chapter 9 the author shows that this was a foreshadowing of how Christ entered into the actual Holy of Holies in heaven, into God’s very presence not with the blood of bulls and goats but with his own blood to make atonement not for his sins but for our sins. He is our high priest and our sacrifice who enters into heaven itself to represent us to God so that God does not burn us up in the fire of his wrath against our sin. However, this is not the point he is driving at here. What he emphasizes here is that after the blood is sprinkled on the Day of Atonement, the dead bodies of the animals are not eaten by any of the priests or the people, which is what happened to most of the bodies of the sacrificial animals. Rather, the bodies were taken outside the boundaries of the camp and burned up. Here is where he then drives home the point in v. 12. The burning up of those bodies outside the camp of Israel was a foreshadowing of the fact that Jesus Christ suffered and died outside the city gates of Jerusalem so that he might actually make his people holy by his blood which was shed outside the city. First of all let me identify the “altar” which belongs to us Christians and then describe what it means for us to “eat” from that altar. The altar is a metaphor for the cross of Jesus where he suffered and died outside of Jerusalem, just as v. 12 makes plain. "Altar" represents the death of Jesus as a sacrifice for our sins. We eat from this altar by believing that his death was our death. We come to Jesus and trust that God has accepted his perfect life and his willing death in our place so that we are counted righteous in God’s sight and free from condemnation for our sins. How do I know this? First, the author has already used the metaphor of eating as a symbol of faith back in 6:5. Second, the presumption in v. 9 is that those who eat certain foods are trusting that the food will make them right with God while those whose heart’s are strengthened by grace are trusting in Christ’s finished work. Third, in John 6 Jesus uses the metaphor of eating as a symbol of faith in him. He says in John 6:47-54, “‘ I tell you the truth, he who believes has everlasting life. I am the bread of life. Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which a man may eat and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.’” Believing in Christ is the same thing as eating his flesh. Now the fact that the priests could not eat the body of the bull and the sheep that were sacrificed on the Day of Atonement because they were to be burned outside the camp is used as a symbol of the fact that you cannot seek to approach God on the basis of the OT law, which is what all who minister in the tabernacle are doing, and at the same time enjoy the benefits of the death of Jesus which happened outside the camp. You cannot approach God successfully in the temple which is in the city and at the same time come to God through the sacrifice of Jesus which is outside the city. The only sacrifice that can actually make you holy took place outside the city of Jerusalem and so if you seek to be made holy through observing the OT law, you will not be made holy. You must “eat” the body of Christ outside the city, not in the temple, if you are going to have a heart strengthened by grace. It is pretty difficult for us to feel how shocking the language of v. 12 would be to a Jewish person. Throughout the law the place outside the camp is the place of uncleanness. It is the place to which those who were unfit for God's presence by some contamination, such as a skin disease were banished. It is the place where the unclean bodies of the sin offerings were burned. It is the place where those guilty of law breaking were to be killed. It is the place where the dump, called Gehenna, was located. The fact that Jesus' blood, which is the only thing able to make unholy people holy, was shed in such an unholy place is shocking. It is an incredibly powerful demonstration of the fact that Christ is the fulfillment of the whole Law. There is no salvation to be found in keeping the law because the blood of Christ which makes you holy was shed in the place which the law regards as unholy. In addition, we have in Jesus' dying outside the city gates a powerful illustration of the fact that while guilty sinners cannot approach God, God, in Christ came to us in our ungodliness, into this sinful world and suffered and died here for us. We cannot go to him, so he came to us. The only way for unholy people to be made holy is to go to the altar where the Son of God who became a man was slain. That altar is the cross of Golgotha, which is outside the city of Jerusalem. It is outside the OT laws and regulations. It is outside of human performance. Those laws and regulations only existed to reveal the necessity of Christ’s death outside the city. The power to make unholy sinners holy and fit for life with God forever is found only in the death that Jesus suffered on the cross outside the city. So come sinner and feast upon the food on this altar and have your heart strengthened by the grace of God which put the Son of God upon this altar. We must hold fast to the gospel that the apostles, as recorded in the NT, taught to us because…
IV. That gospel alone provides a permanent salvation (vv. 13-14) Before we consider what vv. 13 & 14 mean for us I want to be sure you understand what they mean for the original readers of this letter. These are people who were raised Jewish and who left behind the OT law and went to Jesus outside the city but who are now, under renewed threat of persecution thinking of returning to the city, to the law, in order to escape suffering and yet claim to know God. The author is clearly telling them that they must not do this. They must continue going to Jesus outside the camp of Judaism even though it will require that they bear the same reproach and suffering from men that he endured. But they should do it because the earthly Jerusalem and its religious system is doomed to perish. Christ ended it by his life and death and one day every vestige of it will be wiped from this earth and the unshakable kingdom of Christ will replace it. There is an enduring, eternal city called Mt. Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem which is coming and which can only be entered by those who left behind the earthly Jerusalem, the law which never made anyone righteous but was only the shadow of the reality which is Christ and his kingdom. You have to leave behind Mt. Sinai, which is the earthly Jerusalem in order to come to Mt. Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have to leave behind Egypt with its idolatrous system in order to enter into the Land of Promise. P. E. Hughes describes this leaving behind the camp and going to Jesus outside the camp in this way, "It means… separation from the old unregenerate life which seeks the acceptance of men in the camp and separation to Christ… who, despised and rejected was crucified outside the gate." This is simply repeating with a different metaphor what Jesus said, "If anyone would come after me he must deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life in this world will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world and yet lose or forfeit his very self?" We must leave behind the world of human goodness and human strength and human acceptance and go to Christ where we discover God's strength and God's goodness and God's acceptance in a crucified savior. Coming to Jesus the one who became king through suffering is to enter into a world that is the opposite of the world in which we were born. In his kingdom, life is found through death, strength through an open acknowledgement of our weakness, joy comes through sorrow and exaltation is experienced only through humiliation. We join in the "fellowship of sharing in his sufferings," that is, a life where we give up our rights to be treated with respect and to live in comfort here in order to serve and love others. We enter into a cross centered life, a life where we die daily to our demand to have life here in order that we may pursue life with Christ in that eternal city forever. We care nothing for the respect and admiration of this world but only that we might be welcomed by our crucified king into his enduring city with the words, "well done, good and faithful servant." Mark this, it is only by leaving behind the city of man and going outside to the place of Christ's humiliation that we will find the city of God. It is only through reliance upon the blood of Christ shed outside the city that we are made holy so we can enter into God's holy city. But this is the point of the gospel, whatever you might lose here when you leave the city and go to Jesus, it will be more than compensated for when you finally arrive in that enduring city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem. Let today be the day you leave behind the city of man and go outside that city to Christ so that you might gain the city that endures forever. For those of you who have left that city, don't let the false promises of life or weariness in the losses lure you back. Today go to him who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising its shame and is now seated at God's right hand. Seek the enduring city in the death of Jesus and forsake the perishing city of man. We must hold fast to the gospel that the apostles, as recorded in the NT, taught to us because…
© Copyright 2007 John Swanson.
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