SPEAKER_00: We as a church have been going through Hebrews 13.
SPEAKER_00: We only have two weeks left to do this this week and the following.
SPEAKER_00: Not next week, but the week after, we'll wrap up Hebrews 13, which is gonna be fun.
SPEAKER_00: If you need a Bible, do we have any extra Bibles, Lee?
SPEAKER_00: Are we anybody need a Bible?
SPEAKER_00: Because the way we do Bible, the sermon is we like go just kind of through the verses.
SPEAKER_00: So it's helpful to have it in front of you.
SPEAKER_00: And uh so usually we have some free ones kind of on the table, and um Lee can Lee can pass them out.
SPEAKER_00: Um thank you, Lee.
SPEAKER_00: Appreciate it.
SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
SPEAKER_00: So Hebrews 13, chapter 7.
SPEAKER_00: You can turn there.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna put it up on the screen in a minute.
SPEAKER_00: Um last week we began uh chapter 13, and I and I compared it to the idea of when you're going out the door, when you're going to school, kids, your mom yells at you, grab your backpack, right?
SPEAKER_00: Don't forget your coat.
SPEAKER_00: Don't forget this, don't forget that, right?
SPEAKER_00: As you're going out the door.
SPEAKER_00: So Hebrews 13 is like that because this letter is getting wrapped up.
SPEAKER_00: And this pastor spent a bunch of time trying to teach these Christians, trying to encourage them to be tethered, just like that song we were singing, being tethered to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Just really finding that, you know, hey, we're not gonna move.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna be anchored, we're gonna be secure, we're gonna walk with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: So this morning we're gonna look at some more of these types of instructions.
SPEAKER_00: There's five.
SPEAKER_00: Five instructions.
SPEAKER_00: I would say these are a little bit better related to one another than what we looked at last week.
SPEAKER_00: Um, but they are really practical, just like, hey, do this, do this, do this, make sure you're like not, you know, getting getting lost in the weeds.
SPEAKER_00: So, Hebrews 13.
SPEAKER_00: Let's look at this.
SPEAKER_00: I'll put it up here on the screen.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna read it, and then we'll go through it uh section by section.
SPEAKER_00: He says this Remember your leaders who have spoken God's word to you, as you carefully observe the outcome of their lives, imitate their faith.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
SPEAKER_00: Don't be led astray by various kinds of strange teachings, for it's good for the heart to be established by grace and not by food regulations, since those who observe them have not benefited.
SPEAKER_00: We have an altar from which those who worship at the tabernacle do not have a right to eat.
SPEAKER_00: For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the most holy place by the high priests as a sin offering are burned outside the camp.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, Jesus also suffered outside the gate, so that he might sanctify the people by his own blood.
SPEAKER_00: Let us then go to him outside the camp, bearing his disgrace.
SPEAKER_00: For we do not have an enduring city here.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, we seek the one to come.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, through him, let us continually offer up to God a sacrifice of praise, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name.
SPEAKER_00: Don't neglect to do what is good and to share, for God is pleased with such sacrifices.
SPEAKER_00: Obey your leaders and submit to them, since they keep watch over your souls, as those who will give an account, so that they can do this with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you.
SPEAKER_00: Pray for us, for we are convinced that we have a clear conscience, wanting to conduct ourselves honorably in everything.
SPEAKER_00: And I urge you all the more to pray that I may be restored to you very soon.
SPEAKER_00: Very soon.
SPEAKER_00: All right, let's pray and ask the Lord to speak to us through the text.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we um thank you for this passage that we get to study together.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, somehow, by your Holy Spirit, there's got to be this intersection between Bible, your spirit, and our lives.
SPEAKER_00: And God, you know exactly what happened this last week.
SPEAKER_00: You know at where we're at in our lives, you know the season that we're in.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, we pray and ask that you, by your spirit, would speak to us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: We want to hear from you, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: It's easy to be distracted and it's easy to um just kind of get caught up in our memories from things happening this week or to kind of running through the list of things happening this next week.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, we just pray that you would powerfully capture our attention and that you would speak surgically into our lives.
SPEAKER_00: We pray this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So let's look at this text together.
SPEAKER_00: Five five parts.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna look at verses seven through nine and um, or really seven through eight, seven and eight, and verse seventeen.
SPEAKER_00: This first section is um your leaders.
SPEAKER_00: You see that he mentions this here in verse seven.
SPEAKER_00: Um, remember your leaders who have spoken God's word to you.
SPEAKER_00: So who do you think he's talking about here?
SPEAKER_00: He's talking, thank you, smiley.
SPEAKER_00: That's yes.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, these guys had a pastor, right?
SPEAKER_00: That was probably teaching them.
SPEAKER_00: They hopefully had a few different elders in the church that were their Bible teachers.
SPEAKER_00: Remember your leaders who have spoken God's word to you as you carefully observe the outcome of their lives, imitate their faith.
SPEAKER_00: And then he says, look what he says.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
SPEAKER_00: We oftentimes read and hear that verse in isolation, that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that verse is used even in your systematic theology to prove about the um that God is unchanging, that he's consistent, and by implication, he is reliable.
SPEAKER_00: But notice that this passage comes up in the context where the pastor is um asking the um the this church, look at the leaders around you, observe the outcome of their life, and imitate their faith.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in verse in verse 17, he returns to this theme and he says, Obey your leaders, submit to them, since they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account, so that they can do this with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you.
SPEAKER_00: Just in passing, there are three marks of a good pastor.
SPEAKER_00: And let's be honest, you're not always gonna be a part of this church, but hopefully you're a part of some church, and as you're making a decision about what church to be a part of, and by implication participating and submitting yourself and your spiritual care to a spiritual leader, you want to pick good leadership, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so, out of these three verses, I think that there are at least three qualities that would mark a good elder, good spiritual leader.
SPEAKER_00: They have spoken God's word to you.
SPEAKER_00: Like you need to find a church where the pastor and the leaders in that church they talk about the Bible, they love the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible isn't just kind of the backdrop for their kind of thing they want to, just their hobby horse that they want to talk about, but literally the Bible is driving the conversation.
SPEAKER_00: That's safe because the winds of change change.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there let me just kind of tell you there's some other types of churches that are out there.
SPEAKER_00: There's churches that really want to talk about maybe you getting wealthy and being healthy, and they're teaching kind of like a prosperity gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And while they may use kind of Christian language, it isn't really a teaching rooted in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: There's other churches that are heavily, heavily involved in politics.
SPEAKER_00: And what you hear on Sunday morning or a Wednesday night Bible study is just a heavy agenda of the U.S., American politics and why this side of the aisle is right, or this side of the aisle.
SPEAKER_00: And here this pastor is saying, look, you you really need to remember your leaders.
SPEAKER_00: He's upholding this leadership idea.
SPEAKER_00: And he's saying, these are the ones who have spoken God's word to you.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing that we see here is they have a faith that can be imitated, a faith that can be imitated, right?
SPEAKER_00: So in this text here, he says, I want you to look at these leaders, carefully observe the outcome of their life, and imitate their faith.
SPEAKER_00: Imitate their faith.
SPEAKER_00: So when you are looking at leaders and pastors and yeah, these spiritual leaders that God's put in your life, or you're you're wondering, God, have you put this person in my life?
SPEAKER_00: The question is, is do they have a faith that can be imitated?
SPEAKER_00: Do they have a faith that can be imitated?
SPEAKER_00: And the third thing here is found in that verse 17.
SPEAKER_00: He says, they keep watch over your souls as those who will give an account.
SPEAKER_00: That's a fascinating um picture.
SPEAKER_00: It's as if in their leadership role, there's a stewardship that they bear for your soul.
SPEAKER_00: And they're watching out, they're keeping watch for your soul.
SPEAKER_00: Again, I would say this relates to good Bible teaching.
SPEAKER_00: You know, that they're they're teaching something that lines up with scripture, that they're um aware of what's going on in your life, they're willing to warn you when, hey, maybe you're off track here, or they're willing to say, hey, I think that this is really good.
SPEAKER_00: There's there's just care that they demonstrate.
SPEAKER_00: That's why I love that term pastor, right?
SPEAKER_00: Pastor is just the it's a word for being a shepherd, taking care of the sheep, right?
SPEAKER_00: A good church leader is gonna be one who's gonna come in and is going to care and watch over your souls.
SPEAKER_00: Um, there's a lot that is here besides those three qualities, but I want to tell you a story about how I interact with these three verses in my own personal life.
SPEAKER_00: In 2007, I um started a job at a new church and placed myself under a spiritual leader that I really thought he was like the coolest Christian I had ever met.
SPEAKER_00: And I got a few months into my time there at this church, and I realized that there might be some problems that were there.
SPEAKER_00: And I was concerned about what was going on in this in this church.
SPEAKER_00: And I began to have a critical spirit.
SPEAKER_00: I was frustrated about some different patterns that I was seeing kind of cropping up in the church.
SPEAKER_00: And in my morning quiet time, I read this passage, and it was that intersection of where there's life and the things kind of like bubbling up in our lives, and God just ordained that I would interact with this passage at that time.
SPEAKER_00: And and what it did for me was it it caused me to be patient, to step back a bit and say, you know what?
SPEAKER_00: This this guy has this role in my life for this moment, and I'm gonna let I don't know everything that's going on rather than being this hothead, I was 25 at the time.
SPEAKER_00: So being rather than being this hot-headed 25-year-old critic, you know, that would be like, hey, you're doing it wrong, just step back and let it play itself out.
SPEAKER_00: And it did.
SPEAKER_00: It played itself out, and it ended up being pretty much a cult leader.
SPEAKER_00: But I appreciate, I appreciate the decision I made in 2007 to obey the Bible and suspend judgment for a little bit of time as I had a little bit more time to evaluate it because it was not the things that I was critical of that in that moment were actually not the things that really needed to surface a couple years later.
SPEAKER_00: And God allowed me to be a part of that church and to call him to account with a bunch of other leaders and to really say, hey, this is not right.
SPEAKER_00: He was he was a leader who was unrepentant, and it was a crazy story.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you have heard of kind of all that's happened in that setting.
SPEAKER_00: But there is a the way that the Holy Spirit used these three verses in my own life was to give me some patience.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that that's healthy.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's healthy, but I also think that as this pastor is writing this and and upholding this idea of spiritual leadership, he's saying, here's what good leadership looks like.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what a good pastor will be doing.
SPEAKER_00: He's gonna be teaching the Bible, they're gonna be watching out for your souls.
SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, this pastor was not watching for the souls of his sheep.
SPEAKER_00: He was it was this pattern that was very detrimental.
SPEAKER_00: So, an interesting text.
SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll show you one other um passage like this.
SPEAKER_00: In Ephesians chapter 4, it says that Jesus gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason why Jesus gifts some people to take on these roles, these leadership roles in the church, is what?
SPEAKER_00: To get rich and to no to drive a Mercedes, to have everybody call him pastor.
SPEAKER_00: Is that why?
SPEAKER_00: No, is that why, Siddiq?
SPEAKER_00: No, no, what does it say in verse?
SPEAKER_00: Look right here.
SPEAKER_00: What's the why does Jesus give them to the church?
SPEAKER_00: To equip the saints for the work of the ministry to build up the body of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, Jesus says, Hey, you are called.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna call this person to be a pastor, this person to be an apostle, this person to be an evangelist, this person to be a teacher, this person to be a prophet.
SPEAKER_00: I'm calling them not so that they can have notoriety or fame or standing in the church, but to be a servant to the church so that the church can operate and fulfill its calling in the place where it's at.
SPEAKER_00: So there should, there is very much in scripture this idea of leadership where God calls some to lead in the church, but they're called to lead so that the church, so that the church can be the church that Jesus wants it to be.
SPEAKER_00: To equip, to equip the saints.
SPEAKER_00: Just really quickly, that word equip.
SPEAKER_00: When we ordained Tony, I shared about that, that's that's the word to take broken fishnets and mend them back together.
SPEAKER_00: That's that's what pastors, spiritual leaders do.
SPEAKER_00: They take you all as if you're a as if you're a fishnet, and they sew you back together where they're ripped so that you can keep doing what God's called you to do.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go to the that's the first section, is is your leaders, talking, talking about your leaders.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing here is various kinds of strange teachings.
SPEAKER_00: So good teachers are teaching the Bible, but then we get into this idea that there are strange teachings, and he says this don't be led astray by various kinds of strange teachings.
SPEAKER_00: For it is good for the heart to be established by grace and not by food regulations, since those who observe them have not benefited.
SPEAKER_00: So it is possible, and some of you have been in different church settings where there's bad teaching, and that's the spiritual leader's putting the bad teaching out there, hoping that you're going to build the foundation of your life off of bowed teaching.
SPEAKER_00: Here he's referring to the legalists that are trying to enforce Levitical food laws.
SPEAKER_00: Don't eat bacon, you know, don't eat the things with the cleved foot and they chew the cud.
SPEAKER_00: All of those Levitical laws that are there.
SPEAKER_00: And this passage is saying, no, no, no.
SPEAKER_00: You need to have your hearts established by grace.
SPEAKER_00: The new covenant should be the thing that establishes your heart.
SPEAKER_00: Note the connection that this passage makes between teaching and our hearts.
SPEAKER_00: That we learn and believe to be, uh what we learn to be true, interacts with the center of our person.
SPEAKER_00: So here he's taking and he's contrasting the good for the heart, the good for the heart to be established versus the um food regulations that were going on.
SPEAKER_00: You have, here's what's going on: the grace that establishes your heart versus the food regulations.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know for you what establishes your heart.
SPEAKER_00: But this pastor is saying, listen, you may be prone to this or to take a left turn here or a right turn here, but you need it to be grace.
SPEAKER_00: Let it be grace that establishes your heart.
SPEAKER_00: What teaching is it?
SPEAKER_00: I think that it's we have access to so many different influences, and then we get we have this idea of stability in our life, of like, okay, yeah, I have peace in my life, I have clarity in my life, I have a sense of direction and purpose and fulfillment.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's the idea of being established.
SPEAKER_00: But man, if you establish your your heart on something that's not God's grace, then it is like that parable that Jesus talked about of where the the winds and the storms crash in against our foundation, and that foundation deteriorates over time.
SPEAKER_00: So make sure, he says, make sure that your heart is established by grace.
SPEAKER_00: Now, the third thing that he's going to teach tacks on to this because he's going to elaborate on the food regulations in this longer section.
SPEAKER_00: And it's um starting in verse 10.
SPEAKER_00: Starting in verse 10, we have an altar.
SPEAKER_00: He says, We have an altar from which those who worship at the tabernacle do not have a right to eat.
SPEAKER_00: For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the most holy place by the high priests as a sin offering are burned outside the camp.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, Jesus also suffered outside the gate so that he might sanctify the people by his own blood.
SPEAKER_00: So verses 10 through 13 are this parenthetical note that are kind of thrown in there to contrast the strange teaching that might exist.
SPEAKER_00: And he's walking them through some material that's found in Leviticus.
SPEAKER_00: I'll show this to you in just a second.
SPEAKER_00: But he's driving at this point, which is what I want to get to.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Let us then go to him.
SPEAKER_00: That's Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Let us then go to him, being Jesus, outside the camp, bearing his disgrace, for we do not have an enduring city here.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, we seek one to come.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, through him, and then here's the second command, let us continually offer up to God a sacrifice of praise.
SPEAKER_00: So the pastor, again, all throughout Hebrews, he's been talking about how Jesus is better, and he's saying, listen, you need to go back to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You need to, you need to leave off the Levitical priesthood and the messiness of and the old covenant, the Levitical priesthood and the tabernacle, all of that stuff.
SPEAKER_00: You need to leave it and you need to head towards Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Head in the direction of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And you need to be worshiping, continually offering to God a sacrifice of praise.
SPEAKER_00: So second thing he said is don't be established by, don't let your heart be relying or established by strange teaching.
SPEAKER_00: He goes into this whole idea out of Leviticus 16 27 that Jesus is, he was taken, he was a sacrifice taken outside.
SPEAKER_00: Of the camp.
SPEAKER_00: He fulfilled this picture from Leviticus.
SPEAKER_00: And the pastor is saying, look, don't be there's a temptation to for these Jewish Christians to try to stay in the camp, to stay in the Jewish community.
SPEAKER_00: And he's like, Listen, you got to be ready to go with Jesus outside the camp.
SPEAKER_00: Just like this sin offering was taken outside of the camp.
SPEAKER_00: Then he goes and he switches over to this idea of sacrifice and praise.
SPEAKER_00: And the fourth, the fourth thing is this is to do what is good.
SPEAKER_00: Do what is good.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 16, don't neglect to do what is good and to share, for God is pleased with such sacrifices.
SPEAKER_00: So for the Levit for the Levites and for the Jews, the children of Israel, their religious practice was to go and offer sacrifices in the temple on a daily basis.
SPEAKER_00: Do you know how that correlates to your life?
SPEAKER_00: What does it look like to worship God tomorrow morning?
SPEAKER_00: Here's what it looks like: do what is good and share.
SPEAKER_00: Just like there was this pattern of, like, hey, I'm going to go and offer these sacrifices in the tabernacle, that's what the children of Israel did.
SPEAKER_00: We have our religious ritual, which is do good.
SPEAKER_00: Now, in the New Testament epistles, when either Peter or this writer says, Do what is good, that should be in your head, that should be like a hyperlink that goes back to the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7, where Jesus taught this is what it means to do what is good.
SPEAKER_00: This is what that person looks like.
SPEAKER_00: The person who goes the extra mile, the person that turns their cheek, the person that prays in their prayer closet and is rewarded openly, the person that gives their alms to the poor, the person that is forgiving, the person that is not uh storing up treasures on earth, but storing up their treasures in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: All of that is do good.
SPEAKER_00: As you're doing that, you're a worshiper.
SPEAKER_00: You're a worshiper.
SPEAKER_00: Now, we call what we're doing right now a worship service, right?
SPEAKER_00: This is a worship service.
SPEAKER_00: And then we then like shrink that down even more, and we call the music worship music.
SPEAKER_00: But that, I don't think that does a disservice to our faith, our faith, because the idea of worship, of offering sacrifices, is this idea of living out a life as a follower of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And if we regulate or relegate worship to Sunday morning for an hour and 20 minutes, then we are living out an anemic faith.
SPEAKER_00: The things that Jesus taught in the Sermon of the Mount were not for Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_00: They were for doing your life when you're at work and relating to your family and relating to your neighbors.
SPEAKER_00: All of those things are what it means to worship God.
SPEAKER_00: So he says, Do not neglect to do what is good and to share, for God is pleased with such sacrifices.
SPEAKER_00: And then this last thing here, number five, is pray.
SPEAKER_00: Pray.
SPEAKER_00: Verses 18 and 19.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Pray for us, for we are convinced that we have a clear conscience, wanting to conduct ourselves honorably in everything.
SPEAKER_00: And I urge you all the more to pray that I may be restored to you very soon.
SPEAKER_00: So by implicit, we we've said at the beginning of our study, we've said throughout that we don't know who wrote this letter.
SPEAKER_00: It has similar themes that Paul wrote about, but it's written in a very different way from Paul's writing.
SPEAKER_00: So it's it fits in the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it was Apollos, maybe it was a Barnabas, but it and it seems as if he had a relationship with this church, and he is asking that they would pray that he could be restored to them very soon.
SPEAKER_00: I love how in this text he is inviting them to pray for him.
SPEAKER_00: And that's one of the things that I like about this church is just some of you call me in the week and say, Hey, I want to pray for you.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what I want to pray for you about.
SPEAKER_00: And throughout Paul's writings, he would say, Hey, listen, you guys, here's what I'm praying for you about, but here's what I want you to specifically pray for me about.
SPEAKER_00: Now, we as a church are more casual, can you tell?
SPEAKER_00: We're more casual church, right?
SPEAKER_00: Which I like.
SPEAKER_00: We call that low church.
SPEAKER_00: So there's other styles of church that are very like high church, where the pastor comes in a robe and a big hat, and you know, it's kind of like fancy.
SPEAKER_00: Those are all different ways to do church.
SPEAKER_00: In our low church model, oftentimes the prayers that we pray are um extemporaneous.
SPEAKER_00: They're not written down, right?
SPEAKER_00: They're just kind of like, here's what comes to mind.
SPEAKER_00: If you go into the high church, oftentimes it's a prayer that has been thought out and written down.
SPEAKER_00: Both are good.
SPEAKER_00: I would encourage you, while I appreciate the extemporaneous prayer, just as God's like putting things on our heart, it is it is probably helpful to actually think through, like this pastor has done here.
SPEAKER_00: If I was going to like write out what should you pray for me about, have you ever gotten that question?
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: And it's like, I know generally like the needs, but like what is the actual request?
SPEAKER_00: I think somebody did that to me yesterday or the day before someone, maybe it was Marvin, was asking me, like, hey, what can I pray for you about?
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, man, I don't like that question because I was like, what?
SPEAKER_00: I know what I am worried about, but then like, what is the exact request?
SPEAKER_00: But here this pastor says, pray for us, for we're convinced we have a clean conscience, wanting to conduct ourselves honorably.
SPEAKER_00: I urge you all the more to pray that I may be restored to you very soon.
SPEAKER_00: It's a specific thing.
SPEAKER_00: Uh here's what I want you to pray for.
SPEAKER_00: When you look at the prayers of Paul, like Ephesians chapter 1, he says, I pray that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of your calling, and the power that he has towards us.
SPEAKER_00: It's this like intricate prayer.
SPEAKER_00: And he's not saying, Here's what I want to see, like you do, here's exactly he's saying like surgically, on a granular level, here's what I want to see God do specifically in your lives.
SPEAKER_00: This, then this, then this.
SPEAKER_00: He does it for the Philippians, he does it for the Colossians, he does it for the Thessalonics, and they're all different prayers, specific for their setting.
SPEAKER_00: So, all that to say, prayer is a significant part of God's economy.
SPEAKER_00: It's a little bit mysterious because we know God knows the future and God has a plan.
SPEAKER_00: So it's like, how does prayer fit into it?
SPEAKER_00: But yet Jesus prayed every morning.
SPEAKER_00: He got up early, way before the sun came up, went by himself, and he prayed.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul prayed.
SPEAKER_00: And the pastor who wrote this, he's praying.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's just a part of the economy of God's work in the world.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a part of our work.
SPEAKER_00: And so I would just take this, what he's saying here, and consider what are the specific prayer requests that you have.
SPEAKER_00: I've begun, just in my own quiet time, to kind of keep track, not just of prayer requests, but actually thinking through like, how, what should I ask for in this circumstance?
SPEAKER_00: Like, what is the right thing to ask God for?
SPEAKER_00: And then if I wanted to back that up, what is my what's the Bible say about this?
SPEAKER_00: It that for me over the last year, that's been kind of taking it to the next level, um, beyond just, you know, praying scripture or just praying my needs, but really thinking like, what does God have me praying here?
SPEAKER_00: So we've seen these five, these five different things here.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about leaders, he's talking about these strange teachings that he wants them to avoid and instead have their hearts established by grace.
SPEAKER_00: He's talking about their act of worship and what worship looks like, of just Jesus at the center.
SPEAKER_00: Then he talks about doing what is good, and finally he talks about prayer.
SPEAKER_00: Our attempt to do life is shaped significantly by the things that we are taught and what we see modeled by others.
SPEAKER_00: Here, this pastor, as he wraps up this letter, he's done a ton of teaching about the person of Jesus, and he's dealing specifically with Jewish Christians who are thinking about leaving Jesus to go back to classic Judaism.
SPEAKER_00: And he has done an eloquent job of laying out how much better Jesus is.
SPEAKER_00: But now at the end of this letter, he's talking a lot about just their life and how they do life.
SPEAKER_00: You're doing your life.
SPEAKER_00: And our life is shaped significantly by the things that we're taught, but also by the things that are modeled for us.
SPEAKER_00: It is as a Protestant church, so our tradition, our Christian tradition is comes from the Reformation when there was a split between Catholicism and these reformers who wanted, were hoping for an adjustment in the way that Christianity was practiced.
SPEAKER_00: And so we trace our tradition back to that split from the Roman Catholic Church, and you have these protesters or these Protestants.
SPEAKER_00: And um of the things that we abandoned as Protestants when there was this move away from the Catholic Church was the idea of saints.
SPEAKER_00: Protestants don't pray to the saints because we believe that Jesus is our mediator.
SPEAKER_00: We're not lighting a candle that's dedicated to a saint and hoping that a saint will intercede for us in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: That's not a, that's, we don't find that a strong foundation for that practice in Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: One of the things we lost when we moved away from the idea of saints is the idea of Christian heroes.
SPEAKER_00: Because saints in the Catholic Church are held up as examples of good working models of Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: And there is, unfortunately, this reckoning that's happening among Western Christianity where the Western Protestant church is riddled with scandal.
SPEAKER_00: Every week there's like a new scandal.
SPEAKER_00: You know, one of the one of the most difficult ones for me in the last like 10 years was Ravi Zacharias and what happened with him.
SPEAKER_00: It's just like devastating what happened as you know, eloquent uh preacher and communicator, but just a completely immoral person, and it comes out after his death.
SPEAKER_00: There is this um need for spiritual leaders who have good character, that you can look into their life and you can go, Yeah, I want to copy that person's faith.
SPEAKER_00: Now it's funny, isn't it interesting how he says, look at the outcome of their life?
SPEAKER_00: Look at the outcome of Paul's life.
SPEAKER_00: He had friends that left him.
SPEAKER_00: He was shipwrecked, beat up most of the time.
SPEAKER_00: He got a really bad eye disease where he was half blind.
SPEAKER_00: Um, he was imprisoned, a big chunk of the last decade of his life he spent in prison.
SPEAKER_00: He had churches that he planted, and then after the fact, people were coming and trying to undercut his ministry, and people were saying, you know, he's not a real apostle.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, here's this pastor saying, observe your spiritual leaders.
SPEAKER_00: And my question for you is if you were an observer of Paul, would he be somebody that you would be like, you know what, I really respect Paul?
SPEAKER_00: Would you be like, yeah, I want my life to look like Paul?
SPEAKER_00: I think that I don't want my life to look like Paul, but I do.
SPEAKER_00: It's like I want the fruitfulness.
SPEAKER_00: But we've got to be careful.
SPEAKER_00: We've got to be careful on what we think of like a good Christian leader's life looks like.
SPEAKER_00: That it's like this white picket fence, you know, that like they're climbing like some financial ladder in society, that they're secure.
SPEAKER_00: Man, Paul's life was a disaster.
SPEAKER_00: Not because God didn't love him or because he was disobedient.
SPEAKER_00: He was like a risk taker, and God didn't let everything work out.
SPEAKER_00: God let him have close associates that abandoned him.
SPEAKER_00: Did that mean that God didn't love him or that he was a bad leader?
SPEAKER_00: Not necessarily.
SPEAKER_00: It was tough.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that there would have been a temptation for me.
SPEAKER_00: Looking at Paul, it'd have been like, I don't know, the jury's still out on this guy.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's got these crazy letters that he writes.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, as you are, I I say all that to say, look, I'm sympathetic.
SPEAKER_00: I I've gone through my own church hurt experiences.
SPEAKER_00: I had a pastor, the pastor that I told you about hurt me deeply.
SPEAKER_00: I took a break after that, I took like a ministry break, uh, just served kind of a background position for a couple years while my heart healed from that difficult setting.
SPEAKER_00: And um so we live, we live in a difficult time where it's like the trust is really low across the board, whether it's in the church or outside of the church when it comes to leadership.
SPEAKER_00: But there are these markers that the Bible puts down of like, hey, this is what this is what you're trying to look for in terms of good fruit.
SPEAKER_00: But I'll close with this there is that verse in this passage that says, Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
SPEAKER_00: Leaders are gonna change and fail.
SPEAKER_00: Bad teaching crops up, or like this here, you have relationships that are strange just because by distance, or this guy's away, and you're just like, that's just the finite of the circumstance.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the scandal-free pastor, and he will always be the scandal-free pastor.
SPEAKER_00: And so, listen, you're not always going to be a part of this church, you'll go to different churches, and I wish I could guarantee you that you'll never be hurt by a spiritual leader again.
SPEAKER_00: But that's very unlikely.
SPEAKER_00: Christians have this weird way, humans have this weird way of hurting one another, and you add Christianity in there, and it can even get worse.
SPEAKER_00: So, listen, Jesus is the scandal-free pastor that you can hold on to.
SPEAKER_00: And as we do church together, and as these, as we, you know, are spending time with each other, man, we have to have hearts that are established by grace.
SPEAKER_00: We're loving one another, and we're holding on to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I think that the way that this works, and what it's the pastor's teaching, teaching about Jesus, and then we do life.
SPEAKER_00: And we're like, we mess up and we go back to Jesus, right?
SPEAKER_00: We learn more about being a follower of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: A learner, that's what it means to be a disciple, is you're learning, right?
SPEAKER_00: And we go back and we do life, and then we learn some more, and we go back and we do life some more.
SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, pain is a part of that process.
SPEAKER_00: But man, if you're walking with the Lord, you're tethered to the Lord, you're that branch in the vine, you're in a safe place.
SPEAKER_00: You're in a safe place with the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray together.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we thank you for securing us in our relationship with you.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, I just I pray a prayer for all of us as we interact with one another.
SPEAKER_00: I know from just personal stories that there are wounds that people bear here from really being sincere and opening themselves up to a church setting and just getting hurt.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we pray that you would heal us and that you'd help us to keep walking by faith as we love others, and help us to have more and more a sense of security as we just trust in you.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we pray that you would make us to be people of great character, that we would hurt people less and less, that it wouldn't be so costly for people to be my friend and to be around me.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, we we just ask that you would um that yeah, we could be those that others are observing and imitating because we look like you, Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: So accomplish your work in our life, we pray.
SPEAKER_00: We ask this in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.