The Weekend Word
Hebrews 13:4-144 Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.
- Honor marriage
- Why do we wear a wedding ring other than it is less painful than branding? So people know.
- An honorable institution set by God. Today many think it is being destroyed by the Gay Community.
- Although it rings true, does divorce bother anyone? Living together? Any behavior? It seems like no one thinks God will judge.
- It seems that we have only one sexual sin left today … pedophilia.
5 Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”
- From the LOVE of money – not money itself
- “Be content” is probably one of the hardest commands we have to follow
- Is God speaking against the rich as if it is sinful to be rich? No – Is God advocating poverty as if there is some virtue? No!
- I will be with you always – Joshua 1:5
- “No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you.
6 So we say with confidence, “The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?”
- Knowing Jesus – Knowing God’s word = confidence in what you can proclaim for not only yourself, but the body of Christ.
- Go back now and read V.1-6 together a one section.
7 Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.
- Your church leaders – do you work at imitating the faith of your pastor?
- Spoke the word of God to you – probably a definer of who qualifies as one of your leaders.
- Probably the original leaders – now dead – but look at their life in its entirety – they made it to the end. Are you helping your pastor to make it successfully to the finish line?
- Or is he no more than a talking head to you on Sunday mornings? Do you have any skin in his pastoral work? If not – why not?
8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
- Church leaders come and church leaders go – some more righteously than others. No matter how – Remember Jesus.
- This is probably one of the most or worst applied verses. I find it amazing how folks will twist a verse to make a point.
- It does not mean that Jesus does not change his mind or do things differently. It means that Jesus is a rock we can lean on and trust.
9 Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by eating ceremonial foods, which is of no benefit to those who do so.
- There is never a shortage of strange teachings in Christian circles
- God’s grace should suffice … but so often we look elsewhere
- To “ceremonial” anything
- But here he speaks of ceremonial foods
- What does Jesus say in Mark 7? 14 – 23
- It’s not what goes in that defiles us – or to the same extent makes us good
- It is what is already in us.
10 We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat.
- Jews becoming Christians – the old Jewish family would say “you do not have a place at the altar – you don’t have a sacrifice.
- Oh yes we do – we have the ultimate and continuing place at the altar and we have the ultimate sacrifice.
- The Jewish priest on the other hand cannot eat from our altar.
11 The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp.
- Who was led outside the gate to be killed? Jesus
- Leviticus 16 covers the Day of Atonement
12 And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood.
- I think this verse makes it very clear that the death of Jesus was orchestrated by the Father (perhaps by the Trinity) to be an exact sacrifice to end all sacrifices.
13 Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore.
- I am sure that there is an application here for us today – but it’s fuzzy to me.
- We are to go to him.
- Exodus 33:7 “Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the LORD would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp.”
- Today we are to go to him where he has promised to be; in the waters of baptism, in the bread and the wine, and in his spoken and written word.
14 For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.
- That heavenly city – the New Jerusalem
“And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.”
this brings to mind some confusion that lurks in the back of my mind… what does it mean to pray for the peace of Jerusalem?
do we pray for them to be at peace? … or … do we pray for the peace that will come down from heaven at our Lord’s return?
Em – It’s Psalm 122 – I think it’s just peace for the inhabitants.
“Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by eating ceremonial foods, which is of no benefit to those who do so.”
I’m afraid that American Christianity, with a very few exceptions, has lost faith in the power of grace to strengthen the heart. What is the contemporary equivalent of eating ceremonial foods in American Christianity?