Clough Hebrews Lesson 70
Respect
for
Last time we left off with Hebrews 13:6 and we had noticed that at the beginning of chapter 13 we have a new section, the last section, which is the section dealing with details in the local church. This is the section where cover some specifics, it’s a good ending to the epistle and proves, incidentally, that it was an epistle written to local believers, not just some treatise, sort of like the Christian gospel. We said that in the first six verses of chapter 13 we have a teaching on the practical manifestation of the filling of the Holy Spirit among believers, and there were some very interesting principles that came out of those first six verses so we’ll review again.
Hebrews 13:1 dealt with brotherly love. Then verses 2-5 developed four illustrations of that brotherly love in operation, and then verse 6 gave us the “how to.” The four illustrations of the brotherly love, verse 2 was first of all an emergency hotel system that believers operated for other believers in the ancient world. And I think verse 2, by way of principle certainly would hold true if local congregations in our day developed disaster preparedness plans as a congregation. A disaster preparedness plan would be a plan that would deal with the maximum utilizations of the local congregation’s resources to meet an economic emergency, a natural disaster or nuclear war.
And in such disasters we would face kind of a similar situation that the early Christians faced. The early Christians faced a situation in which they had no structure which was friendly to supply needs, and in a mass disaster, the country being the way it is today, we can readily see how anarchy would break out in many areas, and if we had an anarchy type situation, obviously your property is involved, but worse than that, no highly technological society can operate in anarchy conditions, and obviously very shortly after anarchy burst out you’d have the voting in of a coup and a dictatorship. People would gladly trade their freedom today for order simply because there’s a highly technological society, we can’t have electric power, we can’t have water, we can’t have the necessities of life apart from a functioning technology. And technologies don’t function under anarchy type conditions. So if there were anarchy after disaster it wouldn’t last for long. People would be intolerant toward it and you’d have an absolute dictatorship.
In either case you would still have needs for Christians giving practical aid for one another and down through history it’s always been the principle that when the fourth divine institution cracked, and when government can no longer hold the line, that the Church is the only other authority structure left in society, and so when the Roman Empire fell it was the Church that basically took on the authority, took on a lot of practical things. It took on, for all intents and purpose civil government in the power vacuum created by the collapse of the fourth divine institution. So the local church, though obviously about 1% as powerful today as it has been in the past, would be a likely area for believers who are mature enough to work together. So verse 2, the emergency hotel system, is the precedent for setting up temporary functioning Christian systems for dealing with social problems and problems, not, I mean in the general welfare sense, but problems in just survival. And the early hotel system mentioned in verse 2 was one attempt to cope with the problem. The church just simply organized itself into a system.
Then Hebrews 13:3, the third verse dealt with, again, an emergency kind of situation and gives a second illustration of the precedence we have in church history for believers banding together for specialized function, in this case, prison relief. In the ancient prisons people were not fed unless their friends came and fed them, and so on. There were needs that these prisoners had. So the Christians developed a system involving bribe, bribery of officers in high places as well as expanse of dissertation. So there’s a second illustration of Christians coping with their immediate type situation through a temporary thing. Nothing in verses 2-3 teach that the hotel system is a permanent part of the Church. Nothing in verse 3 teaches that the prison relief system is a permanent part of the church. These aren’t permanent parts of the church. The principles are though, and the principles are that when Christians face disaster, collectively they respond with some sort of system.
In Hebrews 13:4 we had the admonition to keep the second divine institution tight, and verse 5 the admonition to keep the first divine institution functioning, particularly in the area of economics. Now all these are manifestations of brotherly love. And verse 6 leaves us with a promise and tells us how, how does this proceed? And it proceeds only in one way and that way is the faith technique. In order for brotherly love to function you have to first have believers who know doctrine and move and more than just knowing it, they are convinced that it is true; they have thought it through enough, to the point where they are assured of its truthfulness. And therefore they’re able to believe. “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”
This teaches, then, that you cannot have brotherly love and you can’t have all this handholding and all the rest of stuff that goes on in the name of Jesus today unless you first have hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of teaching of the Word of God, because the only way people can naturally function in a relaxed way and do the kind of things they’re doing here in verses 2-5, the only way that can happen is through a maximum number of believers trusting the Lord with the problem, and if people are going to be uptight and if people are going to be hunting around for human viewpoint gimmicks, then obviously we have a problem with any kind of brotherly love. Brotherly love, in other words, is a fruit or a result of prior faith. That’s the point of this passage.
And if that prior faith isn’t there you can talk love all you want to and you do not have it. Now what passes for love in Christian circles is not true New Testament love. Now what usually passes is the glad hand committee at the door, you come to church and everybody is going to crawl all over you and send you material and badger you, making you think that you are the greatest person on earth and that the local church would just die without your presence. And when you have your ego flattered this way you call it love. Now that is not Biblical love and yet we still have people expecting that kind of treatment. Well, they’re not going to get it in this congregation, that’s for sure. And I hope you don’t ever get it, frankly, because it’s dangerous; that is not New Testament love. The kind of love that the New Testament is talking about is not ego inflating. The kind of love the New Testament is talking about is just these practical things right here.
And in order for any one of these things to happen the person to believe and overcome a natural fear. All of these events that he picks out are illustrations of fear, a human viewpoint fear. And let’s go through the list and see where the fear comes out. Well, obviously we said in verse 2, “be not forgetful to entertain strangers,” the emergency hotel system, this was the fear of being ripped off, this is a fear Abraham had. And he met it by faith. These three guys show up at his tent and want to know where his wife is. Well, it’s a suspicious type thing and Abraham trusted the Lord to provide in that situation. So in order for the emergency hotel system to operate there has to first be a neutralization of the fear of theft, and the neutralization of the fear of theft cannot occur until the faith technique functions. So obviously the emergency hotel system is no better than the faith power of the believers, which in turn is no better than the doctrine that they know. So again we are back to our theme song and that is that it all depends on how much of the Word of God you’re exposed to and how much you trust.
Then in verse 3 there’s a fear of being arrested, there’s a fear of being identified with imprisoned believers under the persecuting state, that you yourself are going to run risk of being arrested. And so there’s a natural fear there, and so how will the prison release system work? How are these families going to help? How are the pastors going to infiltrate the jails? How are some of the elders going to do this? Well, the only way they can do it is if they are first relaxed and saying well, if I get arrested, that’s the Lord’s will, I’m going to place it in the Lord’s hands and let Him carry the ball and we’re going to take care of our brethren and let the chips fall. Now that’s the Biblical attitude.
That’s, by the way, the attitude that the
Israeli’s had in this recent hotel raid.
And everybody thought it was very cruel that these Arabs had come in and
held these tourists hostage and
Now verse 4, the respect for marriage is a fear that God will not provide the
best man or the best woman for you and so you’ve got to kind of do your own
exploring. And that basically is a lack
of trust, God is a meany, God is going to pick somebody out and give them ugly
pills and then bring them to you. That’s
the kind of provision that God is going to make because He hates you, see, and
He’s going to try to stick you with somebody that you’ll be unhappy with the
rest of your life, they’re the worst possible person you can imagine He has
waiting for you. And so therefore since that’s the case, you can’t trust the
Lord for that so you’re going to explore on your own. All right, so verse 4 deals with a fear, a
fear that God will not provide my needs, when Philippians
And verse 5 is a similar fear, a fear that God isn’t going to provide security, financial security, and that’s why he says, not ask the King James, “Let your lifestyle be without lust for money,” it doesn’t mean don’t try to be wealthy. That’s not an inhibition to gather and produce wealth. It is an inhibition against the wrong attitude toward wealth, not toward wealth itself. So we have a fear about God providing properly.
So every one of these items, these four illustrations, deal with a fear that must first be overcome with the faith technique. And there’s a lesson in that, and that is you cannot produce the fruit of Christian fellowship in any group, any church, apart from the teaching of the Word of God. Now what happens is this, and I know because I’ve been in Christian work long enough to know what the pressure is. You go on, you teach the Word and you get kind of a mediocre response and the temptation is to say okay, the teaching of the Word isn’t enough, we got to add something, we’ve got to compete and we’ve got to have a bigger glad hand committee than the church down the block, we’ve got to pester the people more than they pester the people, we have to get out tithing cards and pledge cards and all the rest, got to get people involved. So and so doesn’t come regularly, fine, let’s appoint them to the board. So and so doesn’t come regularly so let’s appoint him to head a committee. So and so doesn’t come regularly so let’s have him teach Sunday School, then he’ll have to be here.
That’s just an old religious con game that goes on and certain denominations are well known for this, they specialize in it. And you cannot do this because you’re using coercion, is what you’re doing, and you’re not allowing faith to operate it and these people are doing it out of a false motive, just doing it because they want to earn points or something, or they feel sorry for you and so they’re doing it out of sympathy for you. Well, that’s the wrong motive; the right motive is shown in these verses. The right motive is you teach the Word and those who finally respond down here eventually they get enough doctrine, wipe out a lot of the human viewpoint that they’ve had, sometimes it takes one or two years, and they come down here in time and finally they’re ready and then they emerge. And that’s the way it operates.
So now we start with Hebrews 13:7; in verse 7 we go to another detail. The first six verses dealt with brotherly love, or the grease that makes a local church function. Now verses 7-8 deal with the authority structure of the church and this is always something that sticks in some people’s craw and they never can seem to get it down and that is the local church is just as much a sphere of authority as any divine institution. Now the divine institutions are valid for believer and unbeliever alike; the Church is valid only for believers. But even though the Church is valid only for believers, there are certain laws and certain principles which if violated make the whole thing topple, every single time. And one of the key elements of the local church, one of the key functions is authority. There’s got to be some sort of authority. See there’s an authority in the first divine institution and that is the authority of volition. The authority means the right to choose; every member of the human race has the right to choose. Every member of the human race has the right to have his own area of privacy in response to the Word of God.
This is why in a large assembly worship you should be the most relaxed that you ever would be because you can hide behind the person in front of you, you can put on the straight face and pretend you’re enjoying it when you’re not, you can studiously follow the old poker game and not let anybody know, keep them guessing, you can play all sorts of game sitting there in the pew. Now the point is, whatever game you play, that’s your choice. See, my responsibility is to communicate the Word; that ends there. Your responsibility is do with it what you want to. But you have that right; that’s the first divine institution.
The second divine institution has an area of authority and that’s the berith of marriage; the third divine institution has authority and that’s the parents; parents have authority over children. It’s the elementary part of authority in a society. The fourth institution has the authority of civil law, where the government has the authority to take life, capital punishment is the basis of the fourth divine institution’s authority. The fifth divine institution or the tribal diversity of the human race, the authority there is an inbred authority that God has so worked it out that you can never get everybody together under the same culture and the same language. It just won’t work; it’s sort of kind of like holds on a ship; one hold may flood out, one segment of the world’s society may go apostate but the whole ship won’t sink.
Now in the church there’s a similar thing and there is an authority structure in the church. And this is why three times in this chapter this authority structure is going to come out. And it comes out first in verse 7, “Remember them who have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the Word of God, whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation,” the word “conversation” is learned behavior patterns. Now the word “remember” is a present imperative, this means it’s a constant way of life; this is to be a lifestyle of mature believers in the local church, but we come upon an interpretation problem with the next phrase.
“…who have the rule over you,” now that phrase, “who rule over you” really, occurs three times; it occurs here in verse 7, verse 17 and verse 24; same word, each time it refers obviously to the office. But in verse 7 it appears to be referring to those who have gone on to be with the Lord. These are not the leaders that are present. The leaders present are in verse 17 and verse 24, but in verse 7 these are ones who have spoken unto you the Word, in time past, “whose faith follow, considering the end of their life,” “… the end of their life,” which must mean that they have died or they have fell victim as martyrs to the Roman persecution. So verse 7 looks backward in time to certain believers of the first generation Christian church.
Who these people are, apparently are the
same ones who may have been present at Pentecost and after Pentecost, this is
the
Turn to Hebrews 2:3 you see that the readers of this epistle were second generation, not first generation believers. By that w mean that these people did not trust in Jesus Christ right after the crucifixion. They trusted in Christ years and years and years later and the reason they trusted years and years later is because years later the first believers had become mature enough to witness. And when they were witnessing and leading people to Christ, these are the people that were led to Christ. So the recipients of Hebrews are second generation believers. Notice the last part of verse 3, “which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord,” that is before 30 AD. Around 30 AD Jesus message went forth from Jesus own lips. And then he says, “it was confirmed to us by them that heard.” Heard what? Heard Jesus. So the people that these people learned from were eyewitnesses to Jesus Christ. Verse 4 says, “God bearing them witness,” and so on, and in verse 4, by the way, is one of the proofs of the decline of the spectacular gifts. By the second generation apparently these gifts were no longer functioning because it’s aorist tense in verse 3, they were spoken and they were confirmed, and during that earlier period in the Church the gospel was confirmed by miraculous signs. So Hebrews 2:3-4 deals with these people whoever, the emissaries of the gospel, the evangelists, the people who planted churches throughout the Mediterranean world.
It’s those people, if you come back to Hebrews 13:7, it’s those people that he has on his mind. He says I want you to “remember them that have the rule over you,” I want you, in other words, to dwell on those who have authority over you. There is an authority structure and believers are to think back to those who established the local church in their area. Now one of the problems that we face today is that few Christians understand the authority structure of the local church. We have competing outside groups that were raised up, I believe by God, for many good reasons, but when these organizations become something in and of themselves, when they begin to usurp the church’s position of training believers in general areas of sanctification, they have no authority to do that whatsoever, they are undermining the authority of the pastor-teacher structure of the local church. Their job is to evangelize and leave it there; their job is not to carry on the ministries of a local church. And often these people when they witness they talk about a church-less Christianity.
That is another attempt to undermine and
destroy one of God’s great functioning organizations. So where you see these people, oftentimes
they don’t mean to do this but to me it’s irrelevant whether they mean it or
not, the point is they’re doing it and they’re undermining very radically the
structure of the local church. They
carry on autonomous plans and programs without consulting the pastors of the
city and believe me, I’ve talked around to enough pastors in this city that
most of us are just fed up with most of these organizations, have nothing to do
with them. And these organizations are
saying gee, the pastors of
In all the time I have been pastor of this church, in all the many months, multiplied by 7 that I have been pastor, not, with one exception, with one exception, did one of these organizations come to me and even tell me about a meeting. Never once and yet they’re supposed to be the arm of the local church; they’re not an arm of the local church, I know nothing about them, absolutely nothing. I am never consulted, never asked, and most pastors in this town are never asked. And this is why the local churches have bad attitudes toward some of these organizations. The organizations bring it on themselves, it’s not my job as pastor to go around and find out how many organizations are in town and go up and sip coffee with all the directors and so on. I outrank them, they’re supposed to come to me, not me go to them. They don’t have rank because in the New Testament there is no rank apart from pastor-teacher, period. And when these organizations learn that then we’ll have cooperation and until they learn it we won’t have cooperation.
So, “remember them,” he says, you remember the authority structure, and “remember those who have rule over you,” those are the men who formed the local church, they were true missionaries, where they went they evangelized, there were no local churches in the area and they began local churches. And therefore they have authority because once a local church is established they have a pastor-teacher and when the pastor-teacher is there they have an elder and when the elder is there they have authority. So that’s how the word “rule” and have authority in verse 7 came to be; from these churches. It was a church, local church centered structure. And this is the hardest thing for believers to get across. This is why I urge young fellows that are going to seminary to first go in the military and get some practical military training so you understand authority. The military is the best preparation for the ministry that you can possibly have because it’s only there where you can see clearly lines of authority. And even there today it’s getting blurry. But that’s an excellent background. Otherwise you see, when you become pastor, you’ll have people, people on your board, who will never understand authority.
Since I’ve been pastor I think I’ve gone through about 8 people on the board who’ve just quit, just right up in the middle of church, congregation voted them in, congregation expected them and charged them with an act of trust to do a job and they’re quitters. Now I’m not talking about the people that moved away, they were called away, that’s fine, no problem. I’m talking about the men who got on the board and the congregation trusted them with a job to do and they didn’t do it. They quit, took off. We’ve had about one a year do that on the board, every year we usually have somebody, and it’s always over the same issue, the issue of authority in some way, shape or form.
So you see this passage is very, very important because this develops this and shows you these kind of people can’t respond to authority and the reason they can’t, they never got in the Word. We’ve had some people, and I’ve warned some of the men in this congregation, when I’m teaching the word if you’re doing a job fine, but work it out with your committee so you don’t have to be back there counting money, doing tapes, doing something else all the time. And I don’t know how many times I’ve brought this up and how many times I’ve warned the board about it and sure enough, we have a couple that have gone into it and then they’ve taken off and gone some place and the reason is that they’ve not exposed to the Word. Like one person said, we don’t understand what happens, we vote these people on and what happens to them after we vote. Well, they never had the Word in the first place.
All right, “Remember them who have the rule over you, whose faith follow, considering the end of their life,” the word “conversation” is life style. “whose faith mimic” in other words; it is a present imperative, it means to model those men. Now those men were evangelists and then after they were evangelists they set up pastor-teachers and formed local churches. They had an authority structure, in other words. The whole emphasis of verse 7 is on authority, and he says you mimic them, mimic their faith. In other words, follow their authority structure, that’s the point, constantly do this, over and over and over and over, present imperative, this is, again, a lifestyle type thing, it’s not a one-shot, it’s a continuous thing. Constantly mimic their faith. Now faith, you know, can’t be seen directly, it can only be seen indirectly by behavior modification, so that’s why there’s a comma, and then apposition, because he’s going to develop, what about their faith are you to mimic. What about this authority.
All right, the word “end” is a word that means the final product or, or the final reward of, so he’s looking at rewards also. “consider the reward” or the production that these men have had. As you think of the men who’ve led you to Christ, he’s saying, you think of the churches that they established in this country; you think within ten to fifteen years these men threatened the very foundations of one of the most powerful civilizations on earth, the Roman Empire, and it only took them a couple of years to do it. How? Because they followed Biblical principles. And so you are to consider their production, of their life; they are dead but their production goes on. He’s saying look at these men, when they came into our area they produced, their ministry produced, and their ministry has lasting results. The men have gone home to be with the Lord but their ministry remains; they have an enduring ministry, and again because of authority structure. “Consider,” constantly consider this as you imitate their faith, consider the production and the reward of their ministry if you want to say it that way, it’s a lifestyle but he’s talking about their ministry, consider what happened.
Now of all things, verse 8 follows and at
first when you read verse 8 you wonder what has verse 8 go to do with verse
7. If verse 7 deals with authority, why
bring “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today and forever” into the
picture. All right, let’s look. First of all, what doctrine obviously is
taught by verse 8? Immutability. All right, God is sovereign, God is
righteous, He is just, He is love, He is omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent,
immutable, and eternal. Immutability,
Jesus Christ is said to have a divine attribute. Now this is one way the New Testament has of
proving the deity of Jesus Christ. He
take on the attributes of God. Other
examples of this would be Matthew 8:23-27 where Jesus is said by the text to be
omnipotent, in other words, the illustration is one of an omnipotent God
working. John 2:7-9, Jesus is declared
to be omnipotent. In John
But there are other proofs and one of these
proofs, or the second one, is also seen in verse 8. Turn back to Hebrews 1:12 and you’ll see that
very similar language was used once before.
“As a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed; but
Thou art the same, and Thy years shall not fail.” “Thou art the same” is a quotation he took
from Psalm 102:27 and that refers to immutability, and it refers to God. So we have something interesting. Besides the first proof of the deity of
Christ is that Jesus have divine attributes; a second evidence for Jesus’ deity
is that Jesus, the word “Jesus” replaces Jehovah in Old Testament quotes. That is one of the most powerful evidences of
Jesus’ deity. Why do these monotheists…
now if it happened in
Now this is one illustration but it’s not the most graphic one. Other illustrations of this technique are: Ephesians 4:8-10, that’s the one about the gifts, He descended and He ascended and He gave gifts to men; Ephesians 4:8-10 is a re-quote of Psalm 68:18 which speaks clearly of Jehovah. But when Psalm 68:18 is re-quoted in Ephesians it’s Jesus. Jesus takes Jehovah’s place. Another evidence where this occurs is Philippians 2:10, the “every knee shall bow” passage. That is a quotation of Psalm 45:23, and there is an illustration of something that refers to Jehovah, Psalm 45:23, yet in Philippians 2:10 Jesus is referred to. Now how do you get the two together with monotheism. Either they’re denying their monotheism or Jesus must be God, one or the other.
Another illustration where this occurs is Revelation 1:17 and 2:8, when Jesus says “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last,” compared with Isaiah 44:6 and 48:12. Now in Isaiah 44:6 and 48:12 Jehovah is said to be the first and the last. But the same quote and the same words are pulled over in Revelation 1:17 and 2:8 to refer to Jesus. So we have a second line of evidence that Jesus is God. The second line is that the word “Jesus” replaces Jehovah in Old Testament quotes.
There’s a third evidence used in the New Testament for the deity of Christ and that is that Jesus takes over God titles. In other words, titles that are used in the Old Testament for God, Jesus assumes to Himself. For example, “I AM,” ego eimi, the Septuagint translation of the Old Testament, ego eimi always means God, Exodus 3:14 is an illustration; “I AM,” Moses says we’ll who am I going to say sent me, back to my brethren in Egypt? Just say “I AM” sent you. So Exodus 3:14 Jehovah appears and He wants to be known by the word “I AM,” but Jesus the title of Himself in John 8:58; He uses it again in John 18:5-6 and He uses it a third time in Revelation 1:8. So Jesus refers to “I AM.” Again, in a monotheistic society He’s doing this, so again, either Jesus is refuting monotheism or He’s claiming to be God.
Another title, a God title that Jesus takes
over is the word Immanuel, Matthew 1:23, God with us. And it’s not just the name Immanuel, the idea
is that I am God with you, that’s the point.
Immanuel, El, God. Jesus is called
God four times in the New Testament.
Every believer ought to know these four places. If I were you I’d write these verses down in
the front of my Bible some place. Titus
Two more evidences of Jesus’ deity is that He takes over the role of God, not just the titles, but Jesus takes over the roles of God. Now this is really what got the Jews mad at him, when he did this. They would even tolerate the titles, but when He started acting like only God Jehovah could act that was something else again; that’s when they picked up rocks. He took over the role of God as Creator, He is declared as the Creator in John 1:3 and Colossians 1:16. Jesus Christ created the universe. By the way, this is why Satan wants to destroy creationism because in so doing he can destroy and malign the character of the Creator. If Jesus had to create the universe by struggle, by death, by suffering then He cannot be a good God; it’s just that simple. But if death came after creation stops then the act of creating is not an act of evil and then therefore the Creator is good. But if you allow evolution to come in you have continual creation through death, through sorrow, through suffering, through heartache and therefore the means that the Creator uses to create are evil in themselves. And therefore God is evil. And that’s what people don’t seem to understand. Once you slide over in this area you take a lot of baggage with you.
Another role that Jesus does in the New
Testament that only God could have done was He forgave sins; Mark 2:5-7; that’s
the one that really, where the mud hit the fan, when Jesus said I forgive you
of your sin. He didn’t say your sins are
forgiven, sometimes He did but not always.
Sometimes He said I forgive you.
To a society raised on the Ten Commandments, vividly viewing
Finally, the fifth evidence, the fifth
chain of argument is that Jesus and the Father are worshipped together. Remember monotheist…monotheists are doing this, people who believe there’s only one God
but they worship the Father and Jesus together.
Passages: Matthew 28:19, the baptismal formula, I baptize you in the
name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The “name,” not names, one single name. And thus the authority is jointly shared by
the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Another
passage is a benediction in 2 Corinthians 13:14 which elevates Jesus to the
point of Father worship. There’s another
passage, Thomas looks at Jesus, “my Lord and my God,” John
Now we emphasize all during this, this happened in a monotheistic society. I keep emphasizing that because there’s two final verse references you want to be aware of so if you do get into discussion or if you want to chase this down sometime by yourself these two passages of Scripture are important because these two passages of Scripture show you how monotheists reacted to worship of the creature. In other words, it shows you this was a very, very delicate issue and you just don’t come waltzing in replacing your name with God’s name without getting some response. One passage is in Acts 14:11-15, when they try to worship Barnabas and Paul and in that situation the apostles deny the worship, they refuse to accept it. So in Acts 14:11-15 you’ve got the apostles rejecting worship of themselves. Yet you have Jesus accepting worship. You see. Did Jesus make a mistake that the apostles didn’t? Another passage is Revelation 19:10 where an angel refuses to be worshipped. The only kind of angels that accept worship today are demons but the elect angels always refuse worship and in Revelation 19:10 there’s a clear thing where the angels say you don’t worship me, I’m just an angel, I’m a fellow brethren with you; he rejects worship. So those two passages show first, men can’t be worshiped and two, angels can’t be worshiped. So that knocks it, what else you’ve got. If Jesus is worshipped either’s not a man and not an angel and must be God, or He is a man or an angel and He’s an imposter, but no longer can you say that Jesus is a good person. He’s a fake, or He’s the real thing. He’s not some sincere nitwit something in between.
Let’s go back to the verse; we see that Jesus is immutable, one of the evidences for His deity. Jesus is immutable and He is “yesterday, today and forever.” Now in the context of this epistle, from what we’ve developed in verse 7, how do you think that congregation would have taken the word “yesterday” and “today.” What do you think they would have thought about “yesterday?” [someone answers] all right, when the Church was established in the first generation, “yesterday.” Now obviously by application it refers to all time in the past, but the immediate interpretation of this was “yesterday,” when the Church was formed. “Yesterday, today,” that’s the second generation, “and forever,” Jesus Christ the same.
Now what has verse 8, then, got to do with verse 7? Can anyone see some links here; both are linked together and we have to kind of really struggle with it until these two verses fit together; there’s a connection between them. [someone answers] All right, Jesus Christ operates in their generation as strictly as He operated in the first generation. His character has remained unchanged. Now it said in verse 7 “consider the end,” or “the production of their life,” or their ministry, consider that, he says, as you mimic their faith. Now he’s saying the Lord rewarded their lives because of what they did, they responded to the word and so on, carried it out. All right, if Jesus, who is the commander of the Church, who is in rank over them in this authority structure, promoted officers underneath Himself yesterday, He will promote them today and it’s an argument for action. He is saying look, if you would use the faith technique like these people who originally told us about the Lord, if we would do the same thing they did the Lord would bless us like the Lord blessed them. Now the Lord blessed them, that first generation, because they followed the authority structure that He had set up for the local church. Now these people are having a problem with authority. The reason we know this is because of verse 17.
Verse 17 is stuck in there because they obviously are having some problems. Let’s take a peek ahead and look at verse 17, “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves; for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief,” so apparently there were a lot of problems with the authority structure. We haven’t got down to verse 17 yet, we’re going to get there, but before he gets there he wants to establish a principle, that there’s a chain of command and it goes like this; this is inside the church: Christ, the apostles, and from the apostles down through history, through the Word, which is the New Testament written under the apostles, to believers. Now where believers cluster together inside a local church you have a kind of a small local church, this is the large overall church, this is a local church, and inside the local church you have an authority, you have and elder, and you have people sitting under that elder. That’s the way it works. This is a little tiny pyramid that’s part of the big pyramid. And you see God rules this way.
Now Jesus worked it this way, He evangelized the first generation through an established authority structure and that’s the way He’s going to do it today and that’s a message for a lot of the extra local church organizations that are functioning today. Every time you open your mail there’s more junk mail from a new organization. I know a friend that’s personally started 3 or 4 organizations; every time I hear from him the Lord led him to a new organization, to form one that is. Now it’s ridiculous. We have a plethora of organizations; we don’t need them. What we need is some vital New Testament churches is what we need, and hopefully those going to seminary won’t get sidetracked and go off into a tangent into these other ministries. Now these ministries are fine but they’re subsidiary to the local church, always remember that; don’t put the cart before the horse. But we’re very fond of doing this.
When we established the family training program here do you know what the biggest objection to the family training program was when we first started? It was that it only works for children whose parents want to work with them; now what about the children whose parents don’t want to work with them? Do you know what my answer was? My answer was very simple; I said look, our whole society is geared for the abnormal, for the exception; if I’m going to run this church based on the exception, the kid whose parents won’t teach them the Word of God, I’m out of line and I’m penalizing the parents that are doing their job. So we’re going to run along the Biblical lines and if there are exceptions, well, maybe the Lord will provide help to take up the slack, but I’m not going to punish the families that are with it just because there are a few exceptions; I’m not to blame because a kid’s parents won’t get with it and teach the kid the Word of God; that’s not my responsibility, why should I worry about it. My job is to teach the Word of God to the parents who are on the stick so they can pass it on to their children. And then we can have some trained people and then those trained people can go out, like we have some boys at the State School, and girls too, people from our congregation go out there, and that’s fine because you’re dealing with the exceptions then. But how are you able to deal with those exceptions had you not been trained in a local church. See, you never could have got to first base. The exceptions will be taken care of later, and in due time, but you first have to take care of the first priority which is the intact Christian home and Christian family. So that’s the point, instead of all the exceptions.
And this passages, in Hebrews 13:7-8, gives you the authority structure of the New Testament and the one that should be followed. Follow this and we worry about the exceptions later. We have about two more times in Hebrews and then we’ll go on a detailed study of the local church for a short series.
Father, we thank You…..