Clough Hebrews Lesson 71

Breaking with Legalism – Hebrews 13:9-16

Hebrews 13 deals with the concluding phases of the local church. Remember chapter 13 is the final exhortation and it gets into the specifics of the local church so that when we complete Hebrews we will transition to a short series just on the details of the local church itself. But chapter 13 covers some of these details. Now verses 1-6 we have found deals with the topic of phileo, phileo delphia, which is the brotherly love, the love that Christians are to have for one another and it gives a very, very practical way or how to that this love comes about. It doesn’t come about by manufactured gimmicks, it doesn’t come about because we appoint three men to glad-hand everyone at the door; it comes about because individual believers are relaxed and have enough confidence in the Lord that the personal friendships don’t threaten them. That’s why in verse 6 we have the promise, “The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.” And that’s the promise. If people have faith to by that promise and use it then you can have stable friendships, stable relationships, which will be examples of brotherly love.

It goes back to the simple point that we tried to get over again and again here and that is that nothing can be done towards genuine Christian experience unless there is a doctrinal base that is credible. If there is no doctrinal base that is credible I don’t care how wealthy an organization you have, how much equipment you have, how many intelligent people you have, you cannot stimulate the work of the Holy Spirit. No way! So this just being the case there’s only one way and that is through the use of the faith technique.

We dealt with verses 7-8 last time, dealt with respect for the local church. This means that those believers are to recall that Jesus Christ worked in the same way at the beginning of the Church Age in the first generation as He was doing in their generation. Jesus Christ in the first generation worked through and by means of the local church. The fact, therefore, that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever,” means that today, in the 20^th century, the Holy Spirit is primarily working through the local church. During prayer meeting we had a good illustration of that and that was during the items of praise we noticed that the praises in certain areas that were coming are praises that are based upon individuals in this congregation who have over the years been training in the Word and now that opportunities are opening up they are the individuals that are taking over, quite naturally, without my having to arm twist, or organizations having to arm twist, these people have quietly assumed the responsibility themselves before the Lord and are doing a fine job. And the reason they’re doing a fine job is because for months and months and months and years they took in the Word of God. So that’s the difference and the only place where you have a stable place to take in the Word of God is the local church. Organizations that are evangelistic are fine for evangelism. We need them for evangelism but they are not the place where you gain your sanctification, your growth; that is the local church. You want to keep in mind that difference.

Tonight we start a new section, from verses 9-16 and the subject, the topic of these verses is breaking through the legalism barrier. Legalism is always one of the great enemies of the local church. Legalism is very predominate in this city; legalism in this city is responsible for a lot of church splits, it’s responsible for the immobilization of hundreds of believers who could be doing wonderful for the Lord and they’re not because they’re fouled up with legalism. It’s a tragedy; this town has enough believers in it to completely dominate the area. But only a very tiny fraction of these believers know what they’re doing. And the reason is because they’re tied up in knots with legalism.

To start off with we want to define legalism and it’s opposite. Those of you who are going through the family training program this terminology will not seem at all unusual, it shouldn’t seem unusual, I hope. Divine viewpoint; we’ll take antinomianism, that’s the nice word for hell raising; and legalism is a common word for nomism, nomism is the worship of the law, antinomianism is against the law, and then there’s the divine viewpoint balance. Now the story of the Christian life is trying to keep all these things in balance. We have two concepts, two means of sanctification, law and grace, and we’re always in danger of shifting from one side to the other side on this thing. So in antinomianism we have no law, and grace is distorted. Then divine viewpoint we have both law and grace. And then on legalism we have no grace but we have law distorted. Now those are three positions, and all of us are in a state of vacillation between one or the other; in some areas of our life we may tend toward legalism; in other areas of our life we may tend toward antinomianism.

Now don’t think any person is particularly prone to one of these in all areas of life. Usually you’ll find that there’s a split; people who tend to be very licentious sometimes are very legalistic in the strangest of areas, and conversely, people who are legalistic and are uptight they’ll just be completely antinomian when it come to certain areas. I’ll give you an example of this; in areas of fundamentalism where you touch a drop of wine, the roof caves in, where when John 2 is taught, Jesus made grape juice, he had a box of Kool-aid in His hip pocket and dropped some flavoring in water and they called it wine, and a few other idiotic systems of exegesis; the plain text of the New Testament is calling it wine, and there’s no other way around it. Wine! And no Christians through the Middle Ages or the Reformation had trouble with this. One has to remember that Martin Luther obtained A Mighty Fortress is our God, the song, from a German tavern where they drank beer. So down through the ages Christians haven’t been too particularly uptight, except a few Americans.

Now it’s true that some Americans have a reason for this because they have seen alcoholism in their family. And this is a tragedy but it’s a worse tragedy when these people then take their personal prejudices and they may have very strong convictions on their own and then they try to impress the Church with these. I know of a school tonight where people’s jobs are in jeopardy, a Christian school, where people’s jobs are in jeopardy because they might have been seen taking a drink of wine some place. And yet at this very same Christian school we have theistic evolution taught. Now that’s what I’m talking about, you have legalism in one area total antinomianism in the other. They have legalism over one area, and then they turn right and are as antinomian as possible when it comes to the content of the classroom. It just doesn’t make sense. And then you can use other illustrations but those are ones that are particularly painful because they’re so close.

Antinomianism has various types or versions of it. Some antinomians are crude and others are very refined, very pious. Normally when we think of licentiousness you think of the crude kind. But let me just hasten to show that there is also a very refined, dignified antinomianism, and particularly those who are well-educated are prone to this. Whenever you see a well-educated person approaching his field of specialty apart from the Word of God you’ve got at antinomian on your hands in that area because he views his particular subject, his particular field, as a neutral ground over which the Word of God has no authority, and he’s being an antinomian in that area; that is, no law, the Word of God does not apply to my backyard; I got my doctorate here, I know the stuff and I don’t want any interference from God. Now that’s antinomianism of the very dignified type.

Another kind of antinomianism of a religious type is the charismatic movement where the norms and standards of Scripture are not respected; the norms and standards of experience are elevated over the norms and standards of the Bible and then you’ve got antinomianism and this is religious antinomianism. So when I use the word “antinomianism” don’t just think of the crude forms of it; there are far more subtle forms of antinomianism than just the crude form. That just stands out and is easy to see but the others are still there.

Now legalism also has its crude forms and its refined forms. Legalism can be adding things, see, there’s no grace, when grace is rejected no one can stand the full weights of the demands God lays upon them so what does the legalist do with God’s law? What always has he done; the Pharisees were legalists. What do you wind up doing once you abandon the grace enablement? What happens to the law? You bring the law down to something that you can do, so the Pharisees took “thou shalt not murder,” which Jesus tried over and over to explain to them, had to do with mental attitude as well as overt murder, and what did the Pharisees do to that commandment? They said according to Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, don’t kill someone because the police will catch you. That was the total content to them of “thou shalt not kill.”

See what they had done? They had evacuated all contents from the term, reduced it down to something trivial. Now you have to do this because once you giver up grace you lose your power of enablement, you lose the filling of the Holy Spirit, and when you don’t have the filling of the Holy Spirit you don’t have any strength to obey God’s law so to live with yourself you have to bring it down to something you can do, so therefore we have people who bring… for example, they’ll come down hard on drinking or down hard on smoking and they personally may never have a problem with it. And then they’ll become very intolerant to another believer who does happen to have a problem in this area. And legalists are always this way. They usually pick some area of life over which they don’t have any problem and then use back to compare with other believers who have problems and if you run your game that way you’re always going to come out the winner. And it develops into self-righteousness.

Now legalism has the crude way of the taboos, which are often parroted, but then there are more refined forms of legalism. And again we have to be careful we remember these. There are refined legalists. And it takes certain things such as people who come from churches who have a certain style. Now we’re all used to certain church customs. During the communion service when we have the elements you’ll hear me say it is our custom that each one retain the elements till all have been served. By saying this I’m saying that nowhere in the Word of God does it say it has to be that way, it’s just our particular custom of Lubbock Bible Church, that’s the way we have communion. But I don’t mean to say that that’s always the way you have to have it. You can have it all sorts of ways but that’s just the way we’ve chosen and to make sure that people understand that we say this is our custom. If you want to stuff your face first you’re not going to violate any of God’s law, it may look impolite and rude but nowhere in the New Testament does it say that you have to retain the elements till all have been served. We don’t know what happened at the last supper, maybe Jesus passed it out and Peter just ate and maybe Matthew down at the end of the table waited. We don’t know because the New Testament doesn’t give us those details.

So distinguish between custom and what the Word teaches. Now here’s what happens; people grow up all their lives in a particular church with a particular liturgy, certain style of music and so on, and that becomes so ingrained in them that that becomes more precious than the Word of God itself. So that when they have to choose, and you’ll see this time and again, when they have to choose between giving up a traditional form of worship or giving up a traditional style of dress, or a traditional something else that they’re used to in order to associate with believers that are teaching the Word and study the Word, they can’t make it, they get all bent out of shape. And they wind up going back to tradition.

And so these believers are very much like the people we find in chapter 13; these are Hebrew Christians who are very, very accustomed to operating as Jews, not as Christians. And now they’re called to come outside the camp, now they’re called to firmly identify themselves with Messiah, with Christos, this new movement that Imperial Rome does not recognize. Up to this time these people have been sheltered because up to this time Judaism is a legal religion inside the Roman Empire. By Imperial law Jews were recognized as having the right to worship in their way. Christians were not so recognized and so when these people to whom this epistle was originally written, they were facing this problem; do I openly meet with the Christians because when I do I run the risk that the State no longer approves this religion. And I run the risk of condemnation, I run the risk of family reprisal. Certain people, and Jewish families are very close, certain people would maybe excommunicate me from the home, have a funeral for me. These are the kind of pressures that Hebrews Christians run into. So we have to recognize the original base of chapter 13.

Hebrews 13:9, here are a series of admonitions; we’ve given the principle of antinomianism and legalism. “Be not carried about with diverse and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace, and not with meat [food,] which has not profited them which have been occupied therein. [10] We have an altar, of which they have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle. [11] For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp. [12] Wherefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate. [13] Let us go forth, therefore, unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach. [14] For here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come. [15] By Him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name. [16] But to do good and to communicate forget not; for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.”

Well, obviously this is all set in the imagery of Old Testament worship, we’ve got sacrifices, blood, the animal outside the camp, Jesus fulfilling this type, the altar, the sacrifices given on the altar and so you can see the imagery is the setting of the Old Testament. All right, Hebrews 13:9, “Be not carried about with diverse and foreign doctrine.” The word “strange” means foreign, something that does not pertain to true orthodoxy; legalism is a doctrine that is strange to the Word of God. The word is foreign, it doesn’t fit. And when you have various forms of legalism, such as, a church has to have a certain liturgy, such as Christians have to dress a certain way, such as certain kinds of music have to be played, without recognition of the interfacing between music and doctrine, I’m not talking about that. With these kinds of things, these extras, these are strange doctrines and he says stop being carried around with them and it’s a negative present imperative which nine times out of ten in the New Testament connotes the fact they already are, in fact, being carried away, and now stop it; they are in the process of being carried away by many, many … notice also the word “diverse” which is the Greek word which means many, “many and foreign doctrines.” In other words, legalism has thousands of different brands, thousands of different brands. You want to keep peace and you move into a group of Christians, usually you learn their brand of legalism, mimic it and everything is fine. The minute you start to buck the system and go with the Word alone and grace you’re in trouble.

So “Be not carried about with diverse and strange doctrines,” stop being carried along. Now why does verse 9 come first; why does he start his attack on legalism here? Because legalism separates the believer from truth. This is why legalism is an enemy of true spirituality. While someone is in legalism they are following false doctrine, strange doctrine, and while you are following strange doctrine you obviously can’t follow the true doctrine. Legalism prevents some Christians from studying portions of the Word of God; there are some passages in the New Testament, not just the Old Testament, but there are some passages in the New Testament that some legalists cannot stand, one of which is in Galatians and there’s a couple in Philippians that legalists can’t stand. Why? Because these passages are outside, they transgress all these legalistic standards. But how ironic, it we find the Holy Spirit transgressing the standards what does that tell you about the standard? Obviously the standard can’t be from the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit isn’t going to transgress His own standard. So this is why we have to be careful in our fight for absolute truth, be careful that we don’t make false absolutes and that’s legalism; always adding something to what the Bible says.

Now verse 9 is an attack upon legalism; verses 10-12 is going to be an argument that Christ alone is sufficient, and verses 13-16 is an admonition to—so start acting like it. So verse 9, legalism is no good, “stop being carried around with all these different strange doctrines. or it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace,” now “be established” is a perfect tense which means established with results which continue and it’s talking about a person who is in the Word and in the Word, and he reaches a level of maturity. Now it doesn’t mean that he’s guaranteed to stay at this level but it does mean that all this time that is spent taking in the Word patiently, day in, day out, week after week, month after month, then you lay the basis for maturity. When maturity is reached that is the stabilization spoken of. The heart is stabilized by grace and that’s the good thing.

Now what do we mean when it says that the heart “s stabilized by grace?” Again using our diagram that we often use of the soul, this is what it means; stabilized by grace means that the divine viewpoint framework is solidly lodged in the mentality of the soul. This means that the person can sit down without opening the Bible and list off to you the major events of Scripture, at least picture them in his mind, just run them through like a film strip in his mind. It means that that person will have a command, not of the details necessarily, but at least have command of the major basic doctrine. So far in the family training program, as difficult as it has been for some people, and granted, we have our rough spots in it, but I hope you all realize that that is the most elementary, that’s elementary doctrine, that doesn’t even touch the fine details; comes nowhere near touching any of the fine details in the family training program. None of the framework pamphlets touch any of the fine details of doctrine. All those framework pamphlets are are a collation of data on those major overall themes, nothing else.

So this heart, having been stabilized means that we have a divine viewpoint, not necessarily everything known, but that you do have a basic divine viewpoint framework. In the conscience we have a maximum of God-consciousness, the Holy Spirit has taken the Word of God and made the Word of God and made the person very sensitive to God’s will. As a person knows and learns the content of revelation the person’s conscience is sensitized and it is strengthened so it can make accurate decisions about things in life. Another characteristic of a stable heart is the fact that the mind rules the emotions, not the emotions the mind. Whenever you have emotions ruling the mind you have instability; when you have the mind ruling the emotions you have stability. It doesn’t mean that you have no emotions; the Holy Spirit uses emotions.

Emotions are like a flywheel. In a gasoline engine you usually have a big flywheel with several cylinders. The reason for that is that because the power being applied to the rotating shaft in the gasoline engine is not constant. If you wanted to graph the power being applied to the rotating shaft of the car, it’s going on, off, on, off, on, off, on, off, on, off, and you have a flywheel that smoothes out the delivery of power. And there are various other kinds of acting like this, in electricity. You can see it more in a fluorescent tube but even in incandescent light there’s not steady light; that light is flicking on and off 50 times a second, so it isn’t steady; what gives it the appearance of steadiness is the fact the filaments delay some of the cooling and the heating and your eye can’t catch it. But there are these delays, these smoothing processes operative and this is why emotions are necessary. Emotions carry weight; you may be tired one day and your emotions can gear you up to handle something. So emotions are useful; don’t ever interpret what we teach as saying emotions are not important. All we’re saying is do emotions respond to what you think or our emotions leading you in what you think; that’s the issue, just get them in the proper perspective. All right, that’s the heart that is stabilized in grace. The body, of course, has developed overt patterns of behavior conformable with the Word of God.

Now the author says, “stabilized by grace, not by foods,” which evidently means that the people he’s writing to were preoccupied with certain legalistic things on their diet. In the Old Testament you have what we’ll call a spiritual dimension and the physical dimension. You would have offerings made in the Old Testament; certain things would be done to those offerings in the Old Testament. Some of them would be eaten by the priests and so on, so you would have food used in the Old Testament to illustrate a spiritual truth. Now in the New Testament the food isn’t used but the spiritual truth remains. So what these people were doing, instead of this, they were operating over here by taking the food over and missing the spiritual truth.

They were holding on to the very element that had been rendered obsolete by Christ’s work. It was no good to play with a photograph of Jesus if you could see Him. Now if you have the choice of seeing a photograph of the person of Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ Himself, obviously you’d choose Jesus Christ Himself. So the point is, why hold the photograph and put it in an expensive and exotic frame and go through all this when the real person is there. Now that’s the point of the author of Hebrews, why go to all this food business, when it was a picture of what Christ was going to do, since Christ has come and has done what the picture pictures, why play with the picture any more. That’s what he’s saying. In other words, be established with grace. There’s the operation of God the Holy Spirit and not with the food, “which has not profited them that have been occupied therein.”

In other words, he says no Old Testament saint was ever benefited by the actual food that was used in these sacrifices. He didn’t get his health and vigor from the heifer’s remains that he ate after the sacrifice. He got his vigor from following the other parts of the Mosaic and so on, but certainly not by just eating the sacrifices. His benefit in the Old Testament was due to the anticipated work of Jesus. And because the Old Testament saints… how did the Old Testament saint get saved? Well, he got saved by looking forward to something in the future. God didn’t give him all the details but this man knew that he was a sinner; that much is known in the Old Testament. He also knows that God alone can provide his salvation. So when in the Old Testament a man would say all right, and he would pray to Yahweh, oh Yahweh, now at this moment I trust you to save me forever, that was his decision to accept Christ as Savior, though he didn’t know all the details and the content of what was to come, he had believed genuinely; that was his salvation. Similarly, when he confessed his sin he was using 1 John 1:9, “If we confess our sins He is faithful and just,” while he was acting it out, he was acting it out and confessing at the same time, but the act wasn’t what was cleansing him from his sin, it was his confession done during the act; that was the point.

Now, he’s saying that none of this helped those people. They got help but it wasn’t from the food. Now why, then, do you persist in playing around with this food business? Verse 10, he goes on; verse 9, in other words, is a refutation on the face of legalism; he refutes it by showing this system has never done anybody any good, so what makes you think it’s going to do any good today. Now his argument in verses 10-12 is the Christ alone is sufficient, that Jesus Christ alone is sufficient.

Hebrews 13:10, “We have an altar,” now that was a fantastic statement in the ancient world and to understand why he made that statement we have to remember one important historical fact about early Christians. Early Christians had many names, one of which was “Christians,” another one was “Nazarene,” another one was just “believers,” but another one was given to them by the Roman pagans, a name of ridicule given to early Christians, “atheists.” And the reason that early Christians were called “atheists” was that they had no visible, physical altar and they made no visible sacrifice. And the Roman citizen could not understand what is going on. This is why we have all the rumors about something physical had to be done about these Christians, they met together so these stories got started that they cut up children and they were sacrificing children. Those were some of the stories going around about Christians. Christians were the object of tremendous maligning and gossip by people who never understood the issue. Of course that’s always true, people who gossip and malign never understand the issue anyway. And in that time it was no exception, they never understood what the issue was all about, and so they called the Christians atheists, atheists, atheists, atheists, you have no altar, you have no sacrifice, what do you do? You don’t believe in any deity, I don’t see them, namely I don’t see any idols. So the Christians were known as ancient atheists.

So the Christians were known as ancient atheists. Well, this is an attack against that. Remember, if we are correct in thinking that this epistle was written to the Jews at Rome this takes on added weight, and the author says, Oh, we have an altar, we have one. This answers the Romans that said you have not an altar and therefore you’re atheists. He says oh no, you’re wrong, we do have an altar. Now this altar is not seen, that’s true but we have an altar. Now what is the altar of the Christian? It’s what corresponds to the Holy of Holies in the Old Testament. What is it in the Church Age that corresponds to the Holy of Holies in the Old Testament? [someone answers] The third heaven, the throne room of God, Jesus Christ is at the Father’s right hand, that’s the altar, that’s the place of focus and that is why the charismatic movement and its imitators are wrong by focusing attention on the spiritual life inside the believer’s heart. That is not the focus, nowhere in the New Testament is it the focus. And that’s why liturgical churches that focus emphasis on a physical altar are also wrong. So, we have an altar but it isn’t physical in a church building and it isn’t in the believer’s heart. The altar is at the Father’s right hand. So the center of our focus is not in the church building and it is not in our hearts; it is in heaven.

“…whereof they have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle.” Now you notice “serve” is present tense and the tabernacle doesn’t exist. Now why don’t you have a past tense on serve? It’s a little fine point but it explains the verse. Anybody tell why there’s a present tense verb used there when you would think the laws of syntax would require a past tense. The tabernacle isn’t in existence, it’s been out of existence for centuries by the time this epistle was written. [someone answers] Right, these are the legalists, they’re acting as though the tabernacle is still there, even though it’s been gone for a thousand years. These idiots are acting as though it’s still three, still carrying on about the food, and they have no right to come to the altar in heaven because these are the people of Hebrews 6, they’re the people who have despised the blood of Jesus Christ. They are the people who could care less about Christ’s sacrifice, it doesn’t mean anything to them. They have no right to come to the true altar. [can’t understand word/s] yeah, the Romans are saying we don’t have an altar, we’ve got one but it’s private, open only to the initiated, those who are grace oriented, “whereof they have no right who serve the tabernacle.”

Now Hebrews 13:11, this is his final, verses 11-12, is his final argument to show how Christ is the sole sufficient means of salvation in both Old and New Testament, and he’s going to do it as this genius of an author, absolute genius, he’s going to do it right where they least expect it. See, all these legalists have been using the Old Testament text. Now they ought to have known better than to bait this man, particularly in the Old Testament, because whoever this was, whether it was Apollos or somebody that wrote the epistle to Hebrews, he was one that you should not take on in the public debate in any area of the Old Testament if you didn’t want to get publicly embarrassed. This man knew his Bible and now he’s going to show his tremendous genius. He is going to take their central claim and totally reverse it. Their central claim is that we must respect the food because the foods were consumed in the Old Testament. The sacrifice, you know they’d burn the offering, they’d take part of it and burn it and then the rest of they’d cook it and the priests would eat some and sometimes the offerer would take some. They said that’s our big point, the food did mean something, we were nourished from the altar by the food, so food does mean something.

And so this author is going to say but the key sacrifice of all the hundreds of sacrifices, the central sacrifice of Old Testament law was not eaten. And to show that turn to Leviticus 16:20-34, for those of you taking notes there’s also a parallel passage in Numbers 19. This is the central sacrifice of sacrifices because it was this sacrifice that was symbolizing the complete purging of sin for the whole nation. Leviticus 16:20, “And when he has made an end of reconciling the holy place, and the tabernacle of the congregation, and the altar, he shall bring the live goat. [21] And Aaron shall lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness,” that’s, by the way, where you get the word scapegoat. [22] “And the goat shall bear upon him all their iniquities unto a land not inhabited: and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness. [23] And Aaron shall come into the tabernacle of the congregation, and shall put off the linen garments, which he put on when he went into the holy place, and shall leave them there; [24] And he shall wash his flesh with water in the holy place, and put on his garments, and come forth, and offer his burnt offering, and the burnt offering of the people, and make an atonement for himself, and for the people.” So this is a very, very important sacrifice.

Now watch what happens to it. [25[ “And the fat of the sin offering shall he burn upon the altar.” So they didn’t eat that, there was no nourishment in that; that was all burned up. [26] “And he that let go the goat for the scapegoat shall wash his clothes, and bathe his flesh in water, and afterward come into the camp. [27] And the bullock for the sin offering, and the goat for the sin offering, whose blood was brought in to make atonement in the holy place, shall one carry forth without the camp; and they shall burn in the fire their skins, and their flesh, and their dung.” So it’s complete destruction and nothing was eaten of that sacrifice. So he says to the legalists, now you look at that, if there is any nourishment coming out of that sacrifice of sacrifices in the Old Testament Law, if there was any nourishment coming it couldn’t have been physical, right? The nourishment, it there was any, coming out of that sacrifice had to have been spiritual because the physical food was destroyed by fire. So that’s his argument. Now if you turn back to Hebrews 13. He presupposes we know that, we don’t so we have to review.

Let’s read verse 11, “For the bodies of those beasts, whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned outside the camp.” It’s just repetition of the passage you saw.

Now in Hebrews 13:12 he says, “Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered outside the gate,” that is the gate of Jerusalem Jesus fulfilled the typology of that sacrifice. You see, He fulfilled the typology of that sacrifice. Because He fulfilled it, he is saying, Jesus nourishes us the same way that that type spoke of. And he says that you’ve got to see that type couldn’t have been speaking of physical nourishment; it had to be speaking of a spiritual type of nourishment. That being the case Jesus fulfills the type. How does Jesus nourish us? Spiritually. So therefore where is our altar? The spiritual altar in heaven, unseen.

Now Hebrews 13:13, he goes on in verses 13-16 as an exhortation, “Let us go forth, therefore, unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach.” “Let us go forth” is present tense which means let us continue to do this; let this be a lifestyle. “Let us go forth to Him outside the camp,” obviously it’s referring to Christ, and going “to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach,” would mean identification with the Messianic community, identification with the Christians when it meant social repercussions would be forthcoming. It meant that they would have to give up their legal religion, recognized under imperial law and go over to a unrecognized religion, this new thing called Christianity, and the would have to go to Him outside the camp. That is, He’s outside the Jewish community in an unrecognized religion and we would have to bear His reproach, Jesus was despised; He was rejected by both Gentiles and Jews, and so Hebrew Christians are going to have to understand they too bear the stigma.

There is always a stigma to being a Christian, in case you haven’t noticed. There are some places where once you are identified as a Christian everybody looks at you as though you have leprosy. And if that’s the case, fine, that’s normal. Now obviously it isn’t normal if you’re being a jackass about it and people are making an issue out of it because you’re a fool, but in areas they just have to know that you’re a Christian and they’ll start in, start in their little jibes in the conversation and so on, and their little jokes and so forth. And you’ve just to learn to kind of take it with humor and learn a few jokes back; bounce it back on them, that’s all. Just play games with them, if they want to throw the ball to you, you just throw it right back. Learn to use a sense of humor, that’s the safest thing you’ve got going for you, otherwise you’re going to get up tight, all sensitive and paranoid, everybody is picking on you because you’re a believer. That’s ridiculous, it didn’t bother these people.

Moses it says in Hebrews 11:26 he bore a stigma, he bore the stigma of the Egyptian high society. Here he was, princely material, excellent education and where does he go? Low class Jewish slave, fine thing, Moses the upper class man, the ruler, the great military man, for extra biblical tradition tells us that he was a rank of general in the Egyptian army. So Moses had a tremendous background. He probably was the one who invented the alphabet for the Jews; he was a man who was well educated in jurisprudence. He was a genius and for him to sacrifice and give up a career for these ragtag band of low class slaves, that was a stigma, and Moses had to make breaks with social pressure. Now that’s the point, these believers had to make breaks with social pressure, like some believers haven’t learned to make breaks with social pressures in this city, they’re still wrapped up with some legalistic group because they can’t stand to come out and be identified with believers who are teaching the Word and they want to live in a halfway house; it never works out and they’re miserable.

David also, by the way, this same word is used of David in Psalm 69:9, and he bore the stigma of being a leader who was trying the divine viewpoint route when all his fellow politicians were dirty-playing. And Psalm 69:9 is the complaint of a leader in high office who faces the problem of following the Word of God in his office doing the best he can and constantly getting this snotty remarks passed his way by a group of human viewpoint believers. Social pressure, therefore, you could translate, buries the social pressure, go ahead he says. And the reason you can do this and the reason you can bury the social pressure “For here we have no continuing city….

Hebrews 13:14, “For here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come.” “We have no continuing city,” that means there is no part of existing social structure that one can identify as the kingdom of God. There is not a government on the face of this earth, including our own or any other government, that can be identified with God’s kingdom. That being so, there is no part of society that you can say okay, now this is what it really is, this is what it’s all about and I’m going to have my last dying breath of loyalty to this entity. No, there’s nothing in human society apart from divine institutional structure itself; there’s no particular social group or manifestation in the kingdom of man that the believe owes his total and final allegiance to. We owe our allegiance to institutions such as nation, patriotism, marriage and so on, only because of one reason; don’t ever forget it; we only owe allegiance to the nation by patriotism because that’s what Jesus tells us to do in Romans 13. If Jesus did not tell us to do that in Romans 13 we would know it. Patriotism is commanded by Jesus, but that’s the only reason, loyalty to the country and it’s a conditional loyalty, loyalty to the country assuming the country does not go against the Word of God at the point of worship. So we have then in 14a, the first part, the denial of any social structure that should commend our loyalty. So that’s why it’s easy to bear the social pressure, you can bear the social pressure if you realize that the source of the pressure is temporary. “…but we seek one to come,” in other words, we are focusing upon the city to come, that’s the eternal state, the kingdom of God.

Now in verses 15 and 16 summarize the response believers are to take. Hebrews 13;15, “By Him, therefore, let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name.” Now “by Him” means through Him, in the Greek it’s dia plus the genitive; dia plus the genitive refers to means, so “by means of Jesus Christ, let us offer the sacrifice of praise.” Now how do we do it “by the means?” That means grace, “the sacrifice of praise” in verse 15 is not a legalistic act; it is an act of gratitude and thanksgiving. We’re not buying God’s favor by this sacrifice. We’re not purchasing our salvation or approval in any way. We are giving back gratitude, it’s just a loving creature responding to his Creator. “By Him,” “By means of Jesus Christ, therefore, let us offer continually the sacrifice of praise to God,” and then, “that is, the fruit of our lips,” not giving thanks, it’s homolegeo, the same word used in 1 John 1:9, “confessing His name,” in other words, publicly identifying ourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, making a public profession of faith.

“Let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God” would include group praise, primarily, remember he’s talking about come back to the local church, come back to the Messianic movement, therefore he says this is group praise and would be in Paul’s words, in Ephesians 5, “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” That would be the result of all this, “psalms and hymns and spiritual songs.” Singing is an act of worship. That’s why we try in the morning service, and this Sunday we’re going to change things around a little bit, we’re going to try to work it out so that we have quiet in here, so believers can prepare to praise God. When you sing the first hymn in the morning service you are actually praising, you’re participating at that point. That’s “the fruit of our lips.” “Confessing His name” means to publicly declare His nature. We’re going to have a fire drill because we’re going to test the stability of our nursery to respond, so if the ushers will take position…

[16, “But to do good and to communicate forget not; for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.”]