Hebrews Lesson
215 October 2010
NKJ Philippians
4:6 Be anxious for nothing, but in
everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be
made known to God;
We are in Hebrews 13. Last time we began the chapter
and I pointed out that this begins a series of commands or exhortations in the
first person sense. “Let us do
such and so.” That's a first person command known as a hortatory subjunctive. Or,
it may be just a basic second person plural or second person singular command.
These begin in verse 1. The primary command in verse 1 was to let brotherly
love continue. That is sort of the thematic statement for these imperatives
(these mandates) all the way down through verse 17.
We broke this section into two parts: the first six
verses and then verses 7 to 17.
NKJ Hebrews 13:7 Remember those who rule over you, who have spoken the
word of God to you, whose faith follow, considering the outcome of their conduct.
That should be translated “those who ruled over you.” The
focus is in the past tense, those who were their leaders, those who were the
evangelists and pastors who explained the gospel to them initially when they
were saved, when they trusted in Jesus as their Messiah.
Then once we get down to verse 17, it is a present
tense command: "obey those who currently rule over you". So there is a bracketing of these
commands in between by these two emphasis on the relationship to the
leadership.
NIV Hebrews 13:7
Remember your leaders,
NKJ Hebrews
13:17 Obey those who rule over you, and
be submissive, for they watch out for your souls…
I pointed out last time as we developed our way
through verses 7 down through 14 that the emphasis here was again on (primarily
on) the completed work of Jesus Christ. That’s what we’ve seen all the way
through Hebrews. What we need to remember now as we bring Hebrews to a close is
the focal point of this letter to these Jewish Christians in the first century
was to encourage them not to give up, not to fold, not to go back into Judaism,
not to give up on of the their Christian life because they were encountering
some persecution, some opposition and some rejection.
But the idea was to focus on all that we have as
believers in Jesus Christ positionally, all that has
been provided for us because of the superiority of Jesus Christ as a sacrifice
over the sacrifices of the Old Testament, and that the sacrifices of the Old
Testament had to be performed again and again and again, the Day of Atonement
was year after year after year but it only sufficed for a year. Whenever there
was a sin, then there had to be burnt offering or sin offering, trespass
offering again and again and again that the Mosaic sacrifices, the Mosaic Covenant
was a temporary covenant; that it was designed to teach and illustrate
principles related to sin and the necessity of cleansing from sin and the
payment of the sin penalty as illustrated in these sacrifices.
But all the sacrifices pointed to a future, final
sacrifice that would be the complete sacrifice and there would be no need for a
subsequent sacrifice. That was fulfilled in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ
when He died on the cross and paid the penalty (the complete penalty) for sin. So
because of that, the writer then in verse 8 shifts to Jesus Christ. The command
is to first of all to remember those who ruled over you, to look back on how
they handled the opposition, how they handled difficulty, stress, adversity in
life, so that they would be an example. Again, the same idea as we have at the
beginning of chapter 12 that we’re surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses
to remember those who rule over you, who spoke or taught the Word of God to
you. Follow their faith. Consider the outcome of their conduct. Follow their
example.
NKJ Hebrews 13:8 Jesus Christ is
the same yesterday, today, and forever.
I said this statement isn’t written as a statement on
His immutability although that is certainly there. It is written to remind the
readers that the Jesus Christ who yesterday was faithful in providing stability
and hope for the older generation that had now passed from the scene was the
same Jesus Christ who in their present circumstances would sustain them and
would also sustain them in the future.
Then starting in verse 9 there is a shift that begins
with a focus on the Old Testament sacrifices focusing on the fact for example
in verse 10 that we now have an altar from which those who serve the Tabernacle
have no right to eat. It is a spiritual altar. The altar is not a reference to
something that’s in front of the church. That's a statement that always
bothered me. In the Roman Catholic Church, of course, they do have an altar up
in the front because they have a sacrifice, a literal sacrifice that occurs
week after week after week when they celebrate the Mass. What happens in the
Roman Catholic Church, they don't have a communion or the Lord’s Table as
Protestants do. They believe that there is a literal transformation of the
elements that occurs when they celebrate Mass. When the priest waves his hand
over the bread and over the wine then it is transformed in terms of its very
substance below the level of what we observe. It is transformed into the
literal body and the literal blood of Christ.
Now on Tuesday night I mentioned this Pew Research
Poll that came out in the last month or so. They asked about 30 questions of an
audience of folks that were from different religious backgrounds. There were 3
or 4 Buddhists and several atheists and agnostics and 2 or 3 Jews and maybe a
third of them were Roman Catholic and the rest were Protestant. One of the
results is that 40% of the Roman Catholic folks who participated in that survey
did not understand that what actually was going on at the front the church when
they went to Roman Catholic Mass what that the bread and the wine was being
transformed into the literal body and the literal blood of Christ. I found that
just to be amazing.
I always find it ironic when I hear of the Roman
Catholic Church singing A Mighty Fortress
is our God, which was written by Martin Luther who's the father of the
Protestant Reformation. That's the way the Roman Catholic Church has always
been. They just sort of co-opt everything and assimilate everything and absorb everything
into their system. So it’s just a hodge-podge at the local church level, at the
cutting edge of their expansion.
So in the Roman Catholic Church there really is an
altar. This is not a biblical. This is the result of the influence of
Aristotelian thought into medieval theology. The very term transubstantiation:
“tran” means change and “substantiation” from
substance meaning the substance of the elements is transformed. But this is a technical use of the word
substance. You think of substances as matter. In Aristotelian thought everything
had substance, which usually wasn't anything you could perceive, and then it
had various accidents. The accidents were the things that described the
substance such as its height and weight and color and shape. Those things were
the accidents. So what you see when you look at something, for example, if I
hold up a Bible here. All you see are the accidents. You see the color. You see
the shape. You see the weight. But you don't see the substance. The substance
is something that is only given shape by the accidents. That’s at the
foundation of Roman Catholic view of the Mass is that the substance is changed.
But you don't ever see the substance. You just see the accidents. The accidents
don’t change. Therefore you can take the bread and you can take it into the
laboratory afterwards and it's still going to come out looking like bread. But
the substance changed. That is where we get our word hocus
pocus. Literally, Hoc est corpus was the Latin for
“this is my body.” In Medieval times when people didn’t know Latin and they saw
the priest wave his hand over the bread and said, Hoc est corpus.
They said, “Well, it sounds like hocus pocus.” That’s where that phrase came
from in terms of magic. That's the Roman Catholic view.
Then in the Protestant Reformation they struggled with
this. It was a big struggle. Part of it was as much a problem as you had with
baptism because these ideas of transubstantiation and how you view the Lord’s
Table and baptism were linked to how good a member of the church you were. If
you disagreed with the Roman Catholic Church's view of these doctrines then you
were a heretic. If you were a heretic, it wasn’t as bad as being a heretic
today because if you were a heretic in the Middle Ages because of the unity of
the church and state you were also traitor. That meant off with your head and
you were in serious trouble.
This whole doctrine starts to take shape during the
Protestant Reformation. Luther who started the Reformation goes from a Roman
Catholic view here... Let’s say
over here is a full blown Protestant view. Luther moves about this far. He gets
justification by faith right. We're justified by faith alone, not by works. But
his view of the Lord's Table was called consubstantiation. I always thought it
was kind of a con job. Consubstantiation: the Latin prefix and preposition
“con” means with. It's not that the substance is transformed into the body and
blood of Christ, but that somehow mystically the body and blood of Christ are with the substance. It is kind of a half
away position from the memorial view, which we have of the Lord’s Table, and
the Roman Catholic view. Those are
the polar opposites. So you have the Roman Catholic view of transubstantiation
where the bread and the wine become the literal body and blood of Christ. Then
you have the Lutheran view that the body and blood of Christ are with the
substance in some sense.
Then there was the view of John Calvin, which was
called the spiritual sacrifice view. In Calvin’s view there is a mystical presence
of Christ at the table. But that’s not really defined very well. You just had
this mystical spiritual presence of Christ at the table. Ulrich Zwingli the
reformer from Zurich was the first to clearly articulate a memorial view: that
there's no presence of Christ in the table. You don't feed on Christ in a
mystical or spiritual sense. It is a memorial.
There is a significance to
the eating of the bread and drinking the cup. The significance is that when you
eat something, every human being has utility to eat. The analogy is that every
human being has the ability to believe. When you eat something, you are making
it a part of your life. When you believe something, you are making it a part of
your belief system about life. Eating and drinking were used as an analogy or a
picture of belief. This is what Jesus meant when He talked metaphorically about
eating His body and the drinking His flesh. “Those who feed on Me will have eternal life.” He was not talking about in the
literal, cannibalistic sense. Neither was He talking about it in the mystical
sense. He was merely talking about it in an analogy or analogical sense.
So there's no altar. If you go to a Baptist church,
sometimes you go to a Methodist church, you will hear them talk about “come to
the altar and pray.” When I was in a Baptist church it used to always bother me
because I wanted to know where the altar was. It wasn't the pulpit. But we get
this language among Christians that’s like “holy” and a few other words like
“altar” and we just assign this twilight zone kind of meaning to them and
nobody ever questions it. We all
have to come to the altar and pray and lay it all upon the altar. This was very
popular terminology in the 19th century. It sounds all holy and
good, but when you start asking, “Well, what does that mean and how do you
support that from the Bible?” things began to kind of fall apart a little
bit.
The only altar that the New Testament talks about is
the altar where “the sacrifice” took place which is the sacrifice of Jesus
Christ on the cross when He paid the penalty for the sins of the world as the
Lamb of God, the antitype or the ultimate picture to which all of the Old
Testament sacrifices pointed.
NKJ Hebrews
13:10 We have an
altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat.
…that is talking
about the death of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Then there's the contrast between the bodies of the
animals whose blood was brought into the sanctuary that that had limited
efficacy, as I said. It was good for a ritual cleansing, but not for spiritual
cleansing as we covered that in the chapters 8 and 9.
NKJ Hebrews
13:12 Therefore Jesus also, that He might
sanctify
Or set apart
the people with His own blood,
Literally it should be by means of His own blood,
always understanding that whenever you refer to the blood of Christ it is just
a metaphor for the death of Christ so that we can get a better sense of what
that means by saying:
NKJ Hebrews
13:12 Therefore Jesus also, that He might
sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate.
I went back to Leviticus 16 last time pointing out
that on the Day of Atonement there were two focal points of the activity (the
ritual) on the Day of Atonement. One was the sacrifice of one of the goats. Two
goats were taken. The sacrifice of one had his blood splattered on the Ark of
the Covenant (on The Mercy Seat). Both goats were identified with the sin of
the nation when the high priest put his hands upon the goats. The one was
sacrificed. He pays the penalty. The other one is taken out and released into
the wilderness depicting the complete removal of that sin. It's no longer
brought up. It’s no longer an issue.
NKJ Psalm 103:12 As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us.
That’s that picture; that one goat is taken out into
the wilderness as far, far away as he can be taken, and he’s released so he
can’t find his way back. Then afterward the flesh and everything left of the
animals, the goat that was sacrificed, is taken outside of the camp where it is
all burned completely.
Then the priest who performs
that action had to be completely bathed, put on clean clothes and comes back
into the camp. That is the picture that is being used here is that Jesus also
was sacrificed outside the camp so that the people could be sanctified. He
suffered outside the gate.
I showed you the map of where Golgotha was located
outside of the wall that existed at that time.
Then we have a conclusion.
NKJ Hebrews 13:13 Therefore let us go forth to Him, outside the camp,
bearing His reproach.
The challenge to the audience that he's writing to is:
you need to stay separate from the legalistic religions of the world, and focus
on following Jesus, the same thing he said earlier at the beginning of chapter
12, i.e. keeping our eyes focused on Jesus the author and completer of our
faith.
NKJ Hebrews
13:14 For here we have no continuing
city, but we seek the one to come.
Now he connects it to the future hope of the believer.
When we began Hebrews, I said that this is all about focusing on the fact that
Jesus Christ as the propitiation for our sins, the one who satisfied the
Father, that He is now with the Father; but He's coming back. When He comes
back He will establish His kingdom and we will rule and reign with Him. So we
need to keep our focus upon the end game. We are being trained for something. We
are being prepared to serve with Him in the administration of His kingdom.
NKJ Hebrews
13:15 Therefore by Him let us continually
offer the sacrifice of praise to God…
This is where we begin this evening.
NKJ Hebrews
13:15 Therefore by Him
…indicating that again would
have another conclusion. This is the third “therefore”, the third conclusion in
these 4 verses – a therefore in verse 12, therefore in verse 13, and a
therefore in verse 15 – each conclusion building upon what we have
studied before.
by Him
That is, by Jesus Christ. He is the one who is the High
Priest of the Church Age. He is our High Priest. He has gone into heaven where
He is seated with the Father. He is the one who performed the eternal sacrifice
on the cross. It is by virtue of His work on the cross (His completed payment
for sin) and His presence now as our High Priest with the Father that we have
access to Him.
NKJ Hebrews 4:16 Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace…
…because of His completed work on the cross.
Here we begin:
NKJ Hebrews
13:15 Therefore by Him let us continually
offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.
What we see in verse 15 is gratitude to God and praise
to Him as a form of sacrifice. We normally think of the word sacrifice as a
literal sense in terms of taking the life of an animal in terms of that kind of
an offering. But what we find also in the Old Testament as well as in the New
for this terminology is taken right out of the Old Testament what we have is a
clear understanding that the concept of sacrifice is not to limited to be
taking the life of an animal or taking the life of the Lord Jesus Christ. Sometimes
because we speak of the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ we elevate term so
much that when we apply it to other things some people think, “Well, that's
trivializing the term. But that's not what we have here in the Scriptures. The
Scripture uses the Greek word thusia for sacrifice to apply to the sacrifice of praise,
which is related to gratitude.
The basic command here is “let us offer.” That is the
basic command. It is the Greek word anaphero.
It is the present active subjunctive, which means it is a strong first person
command where the author includes himself in the command. It means to bring
something up, to raise it up, to offer it up. So the
idea here is to continually offer this. The word phero was often used back in
Hebrews 8:9 in relation to offering of sacrifices. Here it’s anaphero.
NKJ Hebrews
13:15 Therefore by Him let us continually
offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.
Just a note about the word
sacrifice. The Greek word means the same thing the English word
does. It means a sacrifice. It’s a rather broad term that’s used to refer to both pagan sacrifices as well as Old Testament sacrifices
as well as the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.
A sacrifice is defined as the act of giving up
something of value for the sake of something that is of greater value or
importance. Now sometimes in life when we give up something for something, for
example, a parent gives up time and money and other things in order to raise
their children and in order to take care of them, if they have health problems,
they give up much more than that. But they don't think of it as a burden. Well
this term sacrifice does not have as part its core lexical meaning the idea of
something that is burdensome or that “Oh gee. I’m sacrificing something.” It
just simply means that you are doing one thing of greater value in place of
something that usually would have contributed more to something of personal
value. So we’re giving up one thing in order to do something else.
That is what we do through life. There are always
trade offs. Instead of doing one thing for ourselves, we're doing something for
someone else, and we do it because we want to. We do it because of the
transformation that has occurred in our character as we grow and mature as
believers.
So thusia is simply an act of sacrifice or sometimes it's used
for an offering, giving something to God, giving something of value to the
church or to a missionary organization or something of that nature.
But here it is linked to the word ainesis. This is the only time in
the New Testament that we have this noun; and it means praise. A verb form is
used a few times and the verb means to express gratitude, to express respect or
admiration or gratitude towards God. Praise is the expression of gratitude to
God. It is the expression of admiration or respect to God for what He has
done.
So when we read “Let us
continually offer the sacrifice of praise,” it is simply emphasizing the fact
of giving God the respect and honor for what He does in our life instead of
taking credit for it ourselves. That's simply what it means.
Unfortunately the fruit of our lips, praise of our
lips kind of verbiage that we get out of Scriptures is often abused in a lot of
our churches, just as the word charismatic is abused and holy is abused. Satan
is always trying to steal good biblical words and give them some kind of
different meaning and then this spins off in terms of some kind of new Christian
sect or Christian group and those words get lost because they get attached to
some sort of odd behavior.
The sacrifice of praise to God is simply recognizing
that God gets the credit for what God does in our life, and we don't take
credit for it. We express our gratitude and our thanks to God for what He has
done and what He has provided for us. This is expressed audibly, which is why
it is called in the next phrase “the fruit of our lips.” This is an appositional
phrase that defines what the sacrifice of praise is. It is something that is
stated. It is not something that is simply quietly acknowledged in silent
prayer but something that when we’re in conversation with people or we are in
certain kinds of settings with other believers where we can express verbally
and audibly our thanks, our gratitude to God for what He has done for us.
Then this is further expanded in the next phrase
“giving thanks to His name.” The phrase there for giving thanks is a participial
clause and a participial clause that is related instrumentally to the main verb
which is “let us offer.” Let us offer by – and it's not giving thanks.
That word is not there. It is a word that some of you have heard many, many
times. It is the Greek word homologeo, which
means to confess, to acknowledge, to admit something. So
what he is saying is “therefore by Him that is Christ let us continually offer
the sacrifice of praise to God that is the fruit of our lips by acknowledging
His name” – by acknowledging His name. Whenever we read something of this
nature related to His name that always relates to His character and bringing
the focal point in any situation or circumstance back to the fact that it is
God and His character of love and grace that has provided this for us.
In terms of his breaking down the meaning of text,
we've done that. But these ideas come from some other places in the Scripture. You
can imagine as many illusions as there are to the Old Testament the writer of
Hebrews is constantly connecting Old Testament doctrine, Old Testament
practices, and he is comparing and contrasting them to what we have in the Church
Age in the body of Christ. He is drawing out the fact that there is a continuity between the Old and the New Testament.
In Leviticus 7:12 we have similar language. There we
are told about the thanksgiving offering and we read:
NKJ Leviticus
7:12 'If he offers it for a thanksgiving,
then he shall offer, with the
There's our terminology.
sacrifice of thanksgiving…
This involved a literal animal sacrifice, but it is a
thanksgiving offering expressing gratitude to God. So it talks about the
sacrifice of thanksgiving, the unleavened cakes mixed with oil, unleavened wafers
anointed with oil, etc. What the writer of Hebrews is saying is that we've
moved beyond literal animal sacrifices or grain offerings to express thanks to
now what we have is a sacrifice that is expressed verbally and audibly with our
lips because the Old Testament sacrificial system, all the Levitical offerings,
found their completion in the Lord Jesus Christ.
We also have another similar phrase in Hosea 14:2
which reads:
NKJ Hosea 14:2 Take words with you, And return to the LORD. Say to
Him, "
That is saying to God.
Take away all iniquity; Receive us graciously, For we will offer the
sacrifices of our lips.
So the idea of a sacrifice being related to simply the
expression of praise to God is one that finds its source as far back as
Leviticus 7, carries through into the period just before the exile in Hosea 14
and on into the New Testament. Again and again the Scripture recognizes that
just audibly expressing our gratitude and our praise to God is identified as a
sacrifice.
Then again we also have another Old Testament passage
in Psalm 54:6 where the psalmist says:
NKJ Psalm 54:6 I will freely sacrifice to You; I will praise Your
name,
…which in the context indicates confession
O LORD, for it is good.
“I will
praise or confess or admit or acknowledge your name O Lord.”
We have that kind of phrase several times in the Old
Testament. The writer is making the shift here. He says
NKJ Hebrews
13:15 Therefore by Him
Drawing that contrast between the New Covenant sacrifice
and Old Covenant sacrifices. New Covenant sacrifice completed in Christ, Old
Covenant still repetitive with the various animal sacrifices, grain offerings;
things of that nature.
let us continually offer the
sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to
His name.
That is admitting, acknowledging, talking about what
God has done in our life.
In contrast we’re told to not do something in verse
16.
NKJ Hebrews
13:16 But do not forget to do good and to
share, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.
In verse 15 there's a focus on the sacrifice of
praise, and in verse 16 there are the two sacrifices: doing good and
sharing.
Now all of this must be understood within the
background of John 13:34-35 where Jesus said:
NKJ John 13:34 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love
one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
NKJ John 13:35 "By this all will know that you are My
disciples, if you have love for one another."
This now becomes the primary ethic for the spiritual
life. When I break down the spiritual life into spiritual infancy and childhood
and spiritual adulthood, one of the key elements that become clear is when we
get into the more advanced spiritual skills and we talk about impersonal love
for all mankind and personal love for God and occupation with Christ. Those
three all focus on developing our love and our focus for the Godhead.
As a result of that as that matures and while that is
maturing, we experience greater and greater happiness and meaning in life as we
are focusing on the end game and being prepared for our future destiny to rule
and reign with the Lord Jesus Christ.
All of this still
comes back to the idea of expressing what is stated in verse 1 of this chapter:
to let brotherly love continue. It is expressed in two categories. That is love is expressed in two
categories in the New Testament: love for God and love for others.
We’ll see this when we get into our study in Acts at
the very beginning. In Acts 2:42 after Peter’s first sermon there on the Day of
Pentecost and he has a huge response and the church began to grow in the days
afterward and then Luke writes in verse 42:
NKJ Acts 2:42 And they continued
That is all of these new believers.
steadfastly in the apostles'
doctrine and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in prayers.
Those 2 things… It looks like 4 things because it says
doctrine, fellowship, breaking of bread and prayers, but the way it’s
punctuated breaking of bread and prayer describes fellowship; fellowship toward
God. Breaking of bread is in communion, and prayer is also part of our
fellowship with God. So we have two basic elements. They are devoted to the
teaching of the apostles and fellowship with God. That is the expression of
love for God. We learn His Word. We learn what He has to say to us because that's
important. It teaches us how to think correctly about everything in life; and
that's the only way we can have real happiness and real stability.
Then in Acts 4 we see another dimension to this as it
begins to work itself out in the infant church as they now begin to share with
one another, not in a socialistic sense; but it's motivated by each
individual’s volition. That's the difference between socialism and the kind of
communal sharing that you have in the early part of Acts. In socialism somebody
like the government comes along and dictates how much you should give and who
you should give it to, and then it’s redistributed to people who didn't work.
But the New Testament has no place for those who don't work. At the end of the
1 Thessalonians, or 2 Thessalonians rather Paul says if you don't work you
don't eat, period.
There's no idea of sharing there in terms of some
higher authority like the church authority saying, “Okay, you need to give 20%
and then we’re going to take part of it and give it over here because these
poor people didn't quite achieve as much.”
That is not a biblical love. That is sort of an
anti-love. You know, like in science fiction you have matter and anti-matter. Well
socialism is really anti-love.
It’s a pseudo-love. All it does is it builds a lot of antagonism within
any culture in which it operates.
The early church was motivated by individual volition.
Now we’re going to see this some on Sunday mornings when we get into the
breakdown of the culture in Judaism. Because when we see what happens with
Isaiah and with Jeremiah as they condemn the nation for not taking care of the
widows and not taking care of the poor, and the condemnation isn’t directed to
the government. The condemnation is directed to the people because it never was
the government's responsibility under the Old Testament to take care of the
poor and the widows and orphans.
They had a very shallow safety net in the Mosaic Law
that once every three years a ten percent tithe was taken and that was used to
provide a safety net, a little bit of sustenance for the widows and
orphans.
What Isaiah and Jeremiah are talking about is not the
social gospel or social justice which is just a code word for Marxism. What
Isaiah and Amos and Jeremiah and the other prophets are doing is they’re
telling the people that they're just a bunch of self-absorbed, selfish greedy
individuals who aren't doing anything to help those who are in need in their
culture. It is not coming out of their own volition. The
issue isn’t the government doing it. It is the people doing it. Once you start
letting the government step in and do it, then the people can absolve
themselves of their own responsibility for taking care of those who are less
fortunate and so the responsibility gets shifted away to somebody else and the
buck gets passed to the government and government never can do anything
efficiently or well. We're seeing a lot of examples of that today. So rather
than giving you examples, just watch the news for the next week.
In Acts 4:32 we see love for others: love for God in
Acts 2:42; love for others in Acts 4:32. This is what is emphasized in these
verses. We are not to forget to do good and to share. That
is exactly what the text says: that by doing good and
sharing, this pleases God. This is an anthropopathism meaning that this is what
has value according to the character of God.
The word that is translated “doing good” is a Greek
word eupoiia, which means more than doing good; it
is rendering service to others. That is something that just seems to get
downplayed so much today. The importance of Christian service, not just within
the local church but in helping other believers. I
think we do a good job. We can always do better job, but I know that there are
people who were shut-ins, people who face problems when they have to go the
doctor they can’t drive, things of that nature. They need to be taken. There
are several people that I know of who watch live stream all the time who have
never walked through the doors of this church because they are unable to get
out and go to church or go to Bible class. Yet they are associate members of
the church and they faithfully watch. Yet I'm sure that there may be some
physical and maybe some financial needs that are there. Part of Christian
service is serving others in the body of Christ and putting others first. That
is the idea of eupoiia.
It’s doing well towards others, not just good deeds but serving others in the
body of Christ.
Then the other word translated to share is the word koinonia which has to do with a close association or the attitude of
the idea of fellowship or generosity towards others. It is the idea of
developing a close relationship with other people and understanding who they
are and knowing them, that the body of Christ isn’t just a bunch of little
atoms, little people (not Adam, but atom) not a bunch of little atoms that just
coincidentally sort of a ricochet off of each other three times a week. The
body of Christ is a personal interaction.
Go back and listen to what I taught on 1 Corinthians
12. Again and again and again Paul says we are members of one another. There is
this mutual interaction within the body of Christ. We are to be involved in
each other's lives – not everybody and not to the same depth of intimacy
that we have in every case. There
are some people we are going to be close to, some people we're not going to be
close to. There are some people that we have time to be close to; other people
we don't have the time and opportunity to be close to. But we are to be
involved in the lives of other believers and there is to be this mutuality of
ministry that takes place as we take care of them in terms of this association
of koinonia, fellowship and interaction as well as
serving one another.
The Scripture says, “Don't forget to do this.” Why? Because
it's easy to get caught up in our own lives and in the details of our own lives
and in the busyness of our schedules and to all of a sudden wake up two years
later and say, “I've been meaning to get together for lunch with that person”
or “I've been meaning to go out and give them a call and just go over and see
if there's anything I can do for them.”
The next thing you know three years went by. So it's
very easy for that to take place. We are to not forget to do good
and to share.
…for with
such sacrifices God is well pleased.
Then the last verse here states:
NKJ Hebrews 13:7 Remember those who rule over you,
“Who lead you” is actually a better way to translate
it. I always have a tendency to focus on these passages – for example the
passages related to husbands and wives; wives submit to your husbands, husbands
love your wives – more in terms of leadership than in terms of simply
obedience. When you focus on obedience as so many people do, often it comes
across as just of autocratic tyranny. But men have to lead in the home. The
leaders of the church have to be leaders, not just dictators.
I've never figured out why it is in local churches
there always seem to attract people who want to create their own little fiefdom
so that they can somehow exercise power over other people. Why don't they just
go and start a good business and contribute to the profitability of the whole
country? Then they have employees they can lord it over instead of coming to a
volunteer organization and trying to brow beat a bunch of other believers. Unfortunately
that happens. I can tell you horror stories about what happens in many
different churches. I know one church (you do too but we won’t mention any
names) where someone who is a close friend of this congregation took over this
congregation a few years ago and he was left with a bunch of folks in that
congregation who really didn't want him as their pastor. It took about three or
four years to finally encourage them to go somewhere else and for them to take
the hint. But in the meantime there was a lot of tumult in that church. He was
fortunate because things worked out well and God worked things out well for
him.
My first church was sort of the poster child of the
dysfunctional church. They put the “dys” in
dysfunctional. It was one of these sort of ecumenical type churches that had
been around since the late nineteenth century. It was located down near
Galveston and there was just the situation there where there was this coterie
of older people in that church that didn't ever want to let lose of the reins
of authority go to the next generation. They had had one pastor who had been
able to keep the lid on their arrogant rebelliousness for many years. When he
retired after forty years of being their pastor (about 10 years before I became
their pastor) he left the area. He came back later on. He was a great guy. In
fact, he kept the lid on the problem I had for a long time until the Lord took
him home. But from the time he retired until the time I came the church had
split like three times in a decade. That’s just sort of a clue there. But
things were kind of being cleaned up and eventually those who were going in the
right direction in that church ended up leaving and starting a new church
rather than fighting the old crowd.
But the problem here is not ruling, it’s leadership. So
often you don't get men in positions as deacon or elders who know anything
about leadership. We have great men in this congregation. I've been privileged in last twelve
years in two churches with tremendous boards and men who really understood
leadership and how to lead a congregation. Those who are in the congregation are
to follow their leadership. If they don't want to and they should just quietly
go find a church where they can submit that the leadership and where they can
be happy rather than trying to cause a big dustup and split in the church just
because things aren’t being done the way they want them to.
There’s only one vision in any congregation that
matters, and that's the vision of the pastor. You can’t have one of these
boards where everybody's equal; and you have four or
five competing visions. That just
leads to all kinds of fragmentation. There is only one vision that matters; and
that's if God has put a man in the position of pastor-teacher of that local
congregation; his vision is the one that matters. If people
want to follow him, great. If they don't, that's also great but you
don't start a new rebellion in order to get your way. So this is one of those
strong passages on leadership in the local church.
“Obey those that lead you and be submissive.”
Why? Because they watch out for your
souls. They have a God-given responsibility that they take very
seriously to watch over the spiritual life of those in the congregation. Peter
calls us under-shepherds. The over-Shepherd is the Lord Jesus Christ. So we
have a boss that we’re answerable to. That's what the next phrase points out –
as those who must give account. Those who are in leadership position in the
local church must give an account and eventually will give an account that the
Judgment Seat of Christ for how well they led the church according to
Scripture.
So then the next statement is made, the next command.
Let them do so with joy and not with
grief,
Nothing is tougher for a pastor than to get in the
congregation and look out and say, “Lord, why don’t you just move those 10
people away.”
You go home and you’re…grief is a great word for it. You
are sad because you know the next morning the phone is going to ring and you're
going have to deal with some rebellious sheep that has some petty problem they
want you to solve because they don't understand anything and they think they
ought to be the center of attention. When that goes on for 5, 10, 15, or 20
years without the pastoral leadership dealing with it, then you have major
problems.
So the Scripture emphasizes that the leaders should be
leading with joy. Don't be a pain.
There's an interesting little disease out there that
was first identified by the Romans in the 2nd century BC. It is a
muscle spasm. They’re not really sure that it’s that. Nobody knows what it is. It
is a muscle spasm in the rear end, which is why the first term for this disease
is proctalgia. The second term is fugax, which means
they don't know what it is. So it’s an unexplained pain in the rear. Now I just
thought about it last night I thought you know that be a great nickname for a
number of people I could think of: an unexplained pain in the rear! And there
are a lot of these in local churches. We don't want them.
“Don't let the leaders rule with grief, but let them
rule with joy.”
for that would be unprofitable for
you.
That means this is a detriment to your spiritual life
when you become a proctalgia fugax in the eyes of the Lord.
All right, next time we will come back in verse 18
where we begin the final close of the book. The writer gives some parting
instructions and analysis. Next time we’ll come, we’ll close out the book of
Hebrews and then begin to do the final flyover to sort of summarize all the
things that we have learned.
Let’s close in prayer.