Teach Me The Bible
Hebrews: The Changeless Christ, God-Pleasing Sacrifices, Benediction (Chapter 13)
After twelve chapters of spelling out his case, the author of Hebrews then turned to practical application. In Hebrews 13, instruction was given concerning how the readers were to live in the midst of the persecution.
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After twelve chapters of spelling out his case, the author of Hebrews then turned to practical application. In Hebrews 13, instruction was given concerning how the readers were to live in the midst of the persecution.
Stay engaged with new and up-to-date content, including newsletters, articles, podcasts, etc. Download the Teach Me the Bible App from any app store or Apple TV/Roku device.
You're listening to Teach Me the Bible podcast, where we unpack the meaning of books, passages and themes from Scripture. Join us each week as Dr David Klingler walks us through God's Word and teaches the Bible. Each episode has a study guide available in the show notes. This is Teach Me the Bible podcast.
Speaker 2:Hey everybody, welcome back to Teach Me the Bible podcast. We are in Hebrews, chapter 13 today, which means we're wrapping up the book of Hebrews, and so we've been for these last 12 chapters. This author has been building his theological argument and, as we said, in this last chapter, he gets to his application. We're going to kind of see what that is today and how this book sort of wraps up, and we're hoping that it's making sense to you. But if it's not, don't hesitate to reach out, ask us any questions. We want to help you understand it. That's what we're really about here. So, anyways, you want to dive into chapter 13 and see where it takes us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so this is the structure of all epistles. Let me make that general statement and then think to see if it's true. There may be exceptions, you know I'm thinking of a couple but for the most part, particularly in Pauline epistles and you get a lot of theology at the beginning, and then you get to the end of the letter and says, okay, what do we do with this? And so you're not going to get a lot of imperatives until the author explains what it is that you're supposed to believe. What's the issue, what needs to be addressed and how does it need to be addressed?
Speaker 2:It might have all this yeah.
Speaker 3:So, really, he sums it up Well, therefore, this is at the end of chapter 12. Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude by which we may offer to God an acceptable service, with fear and all reverence and all, for our God is a consuming fire. Okay, so if, after reading those 12 chapters and the first 27 verses, you don't get to that conclusion, you need to go back. Our God is a consuming fire.
Speaker 2:You don't need to worry about them over there who?
Speaker 3:are trying to persecute you. You need to worry about the Lord, who will discipline you, and you need to offer acceptable service, with fear and all to him, because he's a consuming fire. So what does that look like? What does acceptable service to the Lord look like? Well, here we go, let us let the love of the brethren continue. You want to say, well, how do I serve the Lord? Well I go. Oh, no, that's not it. I'm going to start a church. You don't have to pass your church Basic stuff right, let the love of the brethren continue.
Speaker 3:Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without knowing it. You know I'm thinking about about lot, right, but remember the prisoners. They're those who are persecuted for the faith who are being in prison. Remember them as though in prison with them, and those who are ill treated, since you yourselves also are in the body, right. So those who are ill treated because of Christ, those are. See, it's easy when you see someone persecuted because Christ is just like. Well, you know, it's not my place.
Speaker 3:It's not no, you jump in there and you stand beside him. Let marriage be held in honor among all. There's a way to offer acceptable service to the Lord, right, it's through marriage, you know. Let the marriage bed be under file for fornicators and adulterers. God will judge.
Speaker 3:Let your character be free from the love of money. This is a big one. So often people think that coming to the Lord is going to, you know, bring reward, bring financial, you know, stability, whatever. That's not the case. So let your character be free from the love of money, being content with what you have. For he himself has said I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you. Now, how does the Lord not desert or forsake? Well, I'm going to go to the Lord. I'm going to go to the Lord. I'm going to go to the Lord because, in the body, the body cares for the other parts of the body, right, and so it goes back to, you know. Remember the prisoners, remember the old. Treated the love of the brethren, continue, don't neglect to show hospitality, right. And so so this, this love of money that goes back to Luke, chapter 16, right For the Pharisees who are lovers of money. We're listening to these things and scoffing at him, and so he tells him this parable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this was a big theological issue in the amongst the Jews at that time. That you know we're blessed by the Lord because we keep the law, all these things, which is what these guys are tempted to go back to. Yeah, right, so yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and so so much of what drives, unfortunately drives so much of what happens in the church is finances, and most of, if you think about it, most of what the church is called to do requires no money. It doesn't cost any money for people to gather. It doesn't cost money to care for one another. It doesn't cost money to show love for the brethren. It doesn't show a cost money to show hospitality. It doesn't cost money to remember prisoners. It doesn't cost money to hold marriage in honor, and none of these things cost money.
Speaker 3:Right, the body of Christ ought to operate that way. And you know so. You know so that we confidently say this verse six the Lord is my helper, I shall not fear. What can man do to me Right Now? This goes back to your theology, which you know, which says I'm going to serve the Lord, and I'm thinking here of, you know, peter's argument, and first Peter. You know, you know that if it fits the Lord's desire that you just suffer, so be it Right. But you know so, so much of this stuff we get, we get astray.
Speaker 2:So fear the Lord, keep his commands, fear man right, yeah, and don't fear man, which just kind of sums up a lot of this. That's the whole. They're fearing man, they're not fearing the Lord. They got that mixed up.
Speaker 3:That sums up most of our Christian walk. Yeah, fair point. If you fear the Lord and don't fear man, and you love the Lord and don't love the things of the world, I'd say you're like 98% of the way down the sanctification you know, walking faithfully. Trail 13, 7,. Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you, and consider the result of their conduct, imitate their faith. Paul says this all the time follow me as I follow Christ. Right, you know? And boy, we could go through all the list of Paul's letters. And, and you know, to the.
Speaker 3:I mean the Corinthians are taking issue with Paul. Why are you doing this, why aren't you doing that? And and his repeated answer is everything I do is to build up the body of Christ. I deserve to get paid. I don't get paid so that I can offer the gospel free of charge, so that you would never think that I'm doing it for the money. This is which they do, which they do right. Why aren't you married? Well, because I can, so I can fully devote myself to the, to the, you know, to the Lord and to his church, and and so everything we do and our motivation ought to be in service to the Lord. And if it's and you know it ought to cost you it's going to cost you right?
Speaker 3:So remember those who led you, who spoke the word, to imitate their conduct. Paul, I imitate their faith. That's Paul's words. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and, yes, even forever. So do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings. This is why you need to remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you, and of course this is very early in the church and of course church there's heresies that are always coming into the church. So remember the teaching the apostles and prophets, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, through which those who were thus occupied were not benefited, in other words, this whole.
Speaker 3:Why is he talking about grace and not foods? Because this whole law keeping don't eat, don't touch you know, these type of things was common in Judaism. So we have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat, for the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest and offered as a sin offering are burned outside the camp. Therefore, jesus also, that he might sanctify people through his blood suffered outside the gate. You know Christ was crucified outside the gate of the city. Hence, let us go out to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach.
Speaker 3:Well, what's you know? So you know Israel is rebelling against the Lord. They rejected the Lord, reject the rock of his Messiah as Christ, and they're persecuting those who go outside the camp. Christ was expelled from, you know, from the group, from Israel, was crucified outside the city. He said you think it's gonna be any different for you? Again, reminded of Peter's argument, you know you were called for this. You know, for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example to follow in his steps. And so it's the same thing, right. They rejected you, they're going, or rejected me, they're gonna reject you. Jesus says this in the Gospel of John up from discourse they hated me, they hated you, but fear, not right, but access to the fathers through is through the son the son, not through the Jews right, in that sense that they're claiming that it's through them.
Speaker 3:So the only access to the father is to go outside the camp where Jesus is.
Speaker 2:Now we do have to go follow Jesus.
Speaker 3:Hence we are, let us go to him outside the camp, bearing his reproach, identifying with him, identifying with his rejection, for we do not speak, for I'm sorry for, for here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come, the new Jerusalem right, the perfect Jerusalem. So, through him, then, let us continually offer up sacrifice of praise to God that is the fruit of the lips, and give thanks to his name and do not neglect doing good and sharing, for with such sacrifices God is pleased. This goes back to you know, this offering sacrifice. He's explaining what is an acceptable service, with reverence and all. What does that look like? And so you know, it looks like what he's been explaining. You're gonna have to be rejected. You're gonna go outside the camp, you're not. You're not to love money, you're not to fear what men fear, all of it. You're to obey your leaders and submit to them. Well, there's one that that we need to pay attention to.
Speaker 3:The only time that we ever talk about obedience and submission in the church, it seems as when we're trying to get those wives in line Right and I'm saying no, obey and submit, go together. They always go together. Children. Obey your father, submit to your father's. You got master. So you got three relationships that God's revealed himself in the Old Testament. It's father, sons, master servants, and husbands and wives, and in all three of those there is a leader role where the leader is to sacrificially lay down his life and love and care for those under his stead, and the one who is to obey and submit. And those go together right Obey and submit. So obey your leaders and submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account.
Speaker 3:Right? So you know we got a. You know. It seems to me that what he's saying here is you know you're going to stand there in front of the Lord and you're not going to. You know you're not going to stand in front of the Lord. He says, okay, well, klingler, explain yourself. That's not how it works. You know the pastor is going to stand in front of the Lord and say, hey, explain what Klingler is doing, right? And the pastor is going to look over and say I have no idea, right? That's what we've all been trying to figure out this whole time, yeah.
Speaker 2:And why are all those guys going over and going back to the sacrificial system? You're accountable yes.
Speaker 3:And so obey your leaders, submit to them, for they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account. Wow. So when they give an account for you, we want that, you know you want that to go well. So let them do this with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you. You know that's good and then pray for us. You know this is the Paul's group, for we are sure. Now we don't know who wrote this letter and there's all kinds of speculation about who did write this letter. But we know it's not Timothy because in verse well, it'd be weird if he said in verse 23, take notice that our brother Timothy has been released. If he's writing it, that'd be a weird thing. Take notice that your brother, you know he's speaking in the third verse.
Speaker 2:Weird things have been written, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah, maybe so.
Speaker 3:But I think it's safe to say it's not Timothy, but Timothy's in the Paul group. So it's somebody in that Paul group, and there's a lot of Paul line theology here. So back to verse 18, 13, 18,. Pray for us, for we are sure that we have a good conscience, desiring to conduct ourselves honorably in all things, and I urge you all the more to do this that I may be restored to you sooner. That's an interesting phrase.
Speaker 3:Now, the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, even Jesus, our Lord that's powerful language, if you read this letter Equip you in every good thing to do his will. Well, what's to do his will? You know, to working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, that through Christ Jesus, whom be glory forever and ever. What's pleasing as well, it's acceptable service. It's all of chapter 13. That, for the author, is what we ought to be doing, what they ought to be doing, and I'd say it's all just as applicable for us today. But I urge you, brethren, bear with this word of exhortation, for I have written to you briefly.
Speaker 3:That's briefly that's a long briefly, 13 chapters, or briefly, it's a detailed. Briefly, yeah, take notice that our brother Timothy has been released, with whom, if he comes soon, I shall see you. Greet all of your leaders and all the saints, those from Italy, greet you, grace, be with you all. And so the end of the book, and you start to see a lot of you know this Pauline theology just coming through. So if it's not Paul writing it, it's certainly someone who's right there with Paul and has walked the trail with Paul for a long time and has adopted this theology because you see, all of these same things, everything about our lives in the church ought to be for the building up of the body of Christ, and so it seems to me that chapter 13, then, is he's telling them to endure right and to not go back, to press forward, and chapter 13 is how they're going to.
Speaker 2:he wants them to do that and, would you say, that's the same way that we endure today.
Speaker 3:What ways does?
Speaker 2:that look different.
Speaker 3:Well, I think that the endure endurance always looks different given the circumstance, right. But for them, if we look at kind of what the you know the Jewish believer would have been going through, you know, he's gone through persecution, he's going through being expelled, maybe from the synagogue, you know, and that would give rise to the do not forsake the gathering of the brethren, right? So they kick you out of synagogue. It means you don't stop gathering, you go gather somewhere else, right, and that's what Ecclesia means, that's what the word church means. It means gathering. And so you can. You know the body of Christ, what you need to have church. You don't need a building, you don't need a budget, you don't need. You know multimedia, you know media, laser light show, you don't need, you know. I mean, all those things are nice and all those things are helpful. Here's what you have to have. You have to have someone to teach the word, you have to have the people and you have to, you know, partake in the sacraments and the commands that are from the Lord, and if you can do that, you can do church right. And so we've made this pretty complicated.
Speaker 3:But for them, endurance looked different. I'd say for us today, you know I go back to this Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you, and consider the result of their conduct, imitate their faith. I don't know that I'd be real excited about saying that today, because there's so much false teaching out there, and so you know, we need to get back to, you know, teaching the ones for all. Faith delivered to the saints, the gospel's been watered down. It's become a means of profit for some, and you know, and so, at least for me, I try to keep a very clear conscience about motivation, and that's not easy to do, right, but how do you endure walking faithfully in the midst of a world that is always trying to entice, always trying to lead a stray, and you know. So that's a challenge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was thinking, you know these guys can't give them a hard time, right, Because you've not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood, but they're still have this threat of persecution. We got people in modern day church that are jumping ship and they're not even threat of persecution. You know, yeah, they sign up.
Speaker 3:They you know what they've signed up for and what they've been told is it come to Jesus and all your problems go away, and they come to Jesus and their problems don't go away.
Speaker 3:And then they, you know, they jump ship Right, right, right. And so this is gonna take endurance, perseverance, and it's gonna take suffering, and all of life does. Whether you're a believer or not, you're going down the trail of suffering and trials and tribulations and then, ultimately, death. And you know, and so do you have an answer for that. And so, for the author of Hebrews, the answer is not reject Christ. Go back to the Old Testament. Partials that can't deliver from any of those things, all of those things were looking forward to the one who could deliver from those things and will deliver in the future, so that all of those examples of Old Testament faith never received what was promised, and we haven't yet either. And so let's endure, and you know, endure because Christ is the originator, author and completer, perfecter of the faith, and so let's run the race as he ran it.
Speaker 3:And so so pretty straightforward book. There was a live for something for nothing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well said, well said, Probably in there I'm pretty sure you've said that as a boy.
Speaker 3:Sounds good, I'm gonna, if I didn't, then I'm gonna start claiming it that's good, so that's good Awesome.
Speaker 2:Thank you all so much for joining us these last 13, 14 weeks. We've really enjoyed well however many weeks it's been, I don't even know at this point but I know we've enjoyed kind of going through this book and we hope that it's making sense to you and then you have a newfound appreciation for the book of Hebrews and for all of the Bible. This went through a lot of Bible story and just this one book, and so, anyways, don't hesitate, as we've said before, to reach out, ask us questions through the website or our emails. We would love to help, continue to help you understand the word of God, and so we will see you next time for the next book.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to Teach Me the Bible podcast. Our desire is to use the power of God's word to change lives. For more information, download our app. Join us next week for another episode of Teach Me the Bible.