The Book of Hebrews, 13:7-9 Strengthened by grace

So my dad is in Nevada today celebrating my younger brother's 35th birthday. Mike's recovering from heart surgery and Roger's been super busy. And I, some time ago, knowing that the elders were all busy and knowing my dad needed to go visit his parents, said, hey, I'll volunteer to teach.

Now that may be a disappointment to you but I did do it and so this week he said would you like to teach the Hebrews passage or would you like to teach something else and I opened up my Bible and I read the Hebrews 13 7 through 9 that Courtney just read for us and I said that I want to teach that. It's topics that are near and dear to my heart and hopefully As you listen this morning and you follow along in your Bibles, it will be something that you're just as excited about as I am.

Before we get started, I want to talk about a few details ahead of time. If we don't cover these things first, there could be confusion. And I always like to reduce confusion as much as I can. So the first thing is I want to talk about logical imperatives.

Logical imperatives, we don't live under the law. So when Paul or the author of Hebrews or Peter or John makes an absolute statement that sounds like somebody might have to do something, and we're not under a law, we better understand what's the context. And so logical imperatives are that thing. So the first thing is that logical imperatives have heavenly qualities.

Because our position is with Christ and the heavenlies, That changes things. We might have expectations. But because we're here on the earth, it also has earthly qualities. We're looking for things that are true of us in the heavenlies to have an impact on our lives here in the day-to-day. They have a tie to the past. Logical imperatives have a tie to the past. If you believe the gospel, that's a point in your life where your history is now Christ's history. So there's a historical quality of the logical imperatives.

But they also leave a legacy. I didn't go down the line and ask each one of the kids, who told you the gospel? But I guarantee you that they would have, in this body, knowing the parents of the kids that are up here, many of them would have talked about their parents, but they also would have been able to talk about their Sunday school teachers. that they would be able to reiterate those things. There's a legacy in the church that when we share the gospel with our children, when we live a life in front of them, when we respond to God's word and who we are in Him, there's a legacy.

But it's not legalism. If you hear anything that comes out of my mouth that you think for just a second might be a rule, that's not what I'm trying to say. Come talk to me after the church service is over and say, Randy, you said this really goofy thing, and I'll apologize to you. But we're not talking about legalism.

The other thing that I want to talk about is spiritual growth. Spiritual growth is progressive. So, how many of you have heard of churches and denominations where once you're saved they expect you to live a really pure and good life? None of you. No hand-raising whatsoever. Woo! We got hand-raisers. Okay, good. All right. So spiritual growth, it means that all of us at some point in time, once we respond to the gospel, show up in diapers. And we're on the scene in diapers, and we're really sloppy and messy, and we need a lot of attention, and we really don't know that much from God's Word.

But as we grow in God's Word, as we mature, we're going to age and mature into believers that understand God's Word better. We're going to grow, but there is not perfection this side of heaven's gates. And so spiritual growth is progressive. And I want to make sure that everybody's comfortable with that, because we're going to see how that matters in just a second. The next thing is that spiritual growth is about relationship. There's a vertical relationship between ourselves and our Lord, and there's a horizontal relationship where we strengthen one another, where we encourage one another. Thirdly, and this is definitely one of the most important ones of the list here, is that spiritual growth happens when we understand what is already true of us in Christ. We don't grow by doing spiritual push-ups, as has been said so many times. We grow by understanding what is true of us in Christ.

So, with that being said, let's take a look at Hebrews 13.7.

Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you, and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith. So remember, and I have an elephant here because you would not believe how few people have pictures of strings on fingers on the internet anymore. Plus I took the picture of the elephant, which means I didn't have to worry about copyright issues. Those who came and led this group of believers that are receiving Hebrews probably came in not looking like the televangelists.

Right? How many of you have recently seen the kerfuffle on Facebook about that Osteen family and how they did something crazy again? But they all look so pretty. They always look so nice. And I guarantee you the people that came in and shared the gospel here Having formerly been persecuted on their way there, they probably had not a lot of possessions, they probably didn't look really awesome, and they may have been pretty tired and weary. But they came with the gospel. They came and they shared the gospel. Remember, those who led you, that shared the gospel.

But he doesn't stop there, he says, remember those because they were abiding and they were living by faith. Remember those people, they were abiding and living by faith. In my own life, I am so, so grateful for the elders that we have here at Holly Hills because I've watched them living by faith. I don't have to remember somebody that was just coming and had to leave. The Lord has blessed us with elders here at Holly Hills that are constantly here walking by faith in our midst. The other thing that he says to remember about these people is that they taught God's Word. Here at Holly Hills, we're a bit obsessed with that. You may have noticed, right? This is God's Word. Why are we here? We're here to study God's Word. We're going to have fellowship.

There's sugar in the back room and coffee if you get there early enough. But you're not here for the sugar and coffee, are you? That's like the worst reason to come to church. And you're not here because we have a great rock band. I'm trying, just kidding.

But you're here to hear God's Word taught, and the believers that the author of Hebrews is writing to can look back and he knows with confidence that they will remember the Gospel being taught, and they will remember God's Word being taught. And he wants them to remember them because they're supermodels of the faith. And this is a picture of my daughter's back there, I'm pretty sure, hiding, going, good Lord, Dad, what were you thinking? This is actually her at the Doyles' house. I think she'd gotten into some kind of markers or face paint or something, and she's very proud of herself in that picture. But it's not that kind of supermodel.

The elders and the godly leaders in the case of this writing were supermodels. After talking about the Old Testament saints in the earlier parts of the book of Hebrews, those were saints who modeled faith. The author spends quite a bit of time writing about the faith of Abraham and the faith of Moses, and he's writing about this faith issue, but he's talking about something that's very relevant to them in their own lives. there is a 100% chance, statistically speaking, I'm not really big on statistics, but there's a 100% chance that none of them had met Abraham or Moses, right? But they could go back and they could remember the godly believers that the Lord had brought in their lives.

Now in this picture here, I'm apparently going to give you guys a crash course on people in my family. In that picture are my grandma, my grandpa, and my dad. He's looking pretty sporty with a backwards hat. My grandma's dad, my great-grandpa Jennison, was an Assemblies of God preacher. Opinions about Assemblies of God aside, my dad grew up spending time with his grandpa studying God's Word. They would go over and they would spend time at the grandparents' place and my dad tells story after story after story of getting to grandpa's house and then going into grandpa's room and grandpa would pull Bible study materials off the shelf and they just open it up and it would be laid out all over their bed. I'm hoping it wasn't like one of those micro-IKEA beds. Right? This big bed. That's how I always imagined it.

And they had tools for studying God's Word and my dad grew up hearing about missionaries who were going out and preaching the gospel and preaching the Word. And his heroes and his supermodels were those missionaries. So my grandma's there. My grandpa, to her side, also a Bible teacher. Also a pastor. Spent years preaching God's Word and teaching God's Word.

And I would go out with him. He had a farm. And he would, between times when he was using the chainsaw, they're very hard to talk over, between times when he would be cutting trees down with the chainsaw, we would talk about spiritual things. And those were important things to me. Obviously you know the guy with the backwards hat. He's kind of in love with Jesus too.

So there's these models of the faith that the author talks about are actually also still in our lives today. The other thing about these supermodels of the faith is that the day-to-day life lessons in the way that they live their lives also teach us just as important as the lessons they teach with words. If the author of Hebrews says, remember these people and imitate their faith, you'd kind of have to spend time with them day to day. So these teachers were coming in and they were living in the lives of the people that were there.

And how many of you have ever had a meal with one of the elders? hand-raising, sweet, most of you, okay? So a lot of people have, if you haven't, run into them, they're awesome folks. They also eat food, besides teaching God's Word, right? So you could probably get together for a meal with them, have them over, you go to their place, don't invite yourself, that's rude, right?

But that day-to-day living is awesome. Now my family, my wife has this real love of travel. I just don't earn enough money." But if she could, she would travel every month, 29 days out of the month. And then we could be home for one day of the month to justify the mortgage, right? But she loves to travel. Well, one of the times that we took a vacation, we went out to the East Coast.

And Brian and Julia White, who used to go to church here, now live out in Atlanta. But we met them. And we went out with the Doyles, Mike and Donna. And we spent time with them. And it was so awesome to be able to get up in the morning and have breakfast with my brothers and sisters in Christ, one of them being the elder, and spend time with them and just watch their lives reflect what the Lord had taught them. We also had good donuts.

I'm not going to complain about that. But we had time with the elders and it was really cool. If you get the chance to spend time with one or all or multiple of the elders and get to know them, that's a tremendous thing because as it turns out, the result of their walk with the Lord is that their life has something also that the author of Hebrew talks about and he says imitate their faith.

Now, when we talk about imitate, that's one of those dangerous words that sounds like you might have to do something. But again, we're not talking about a law, right? It's a logical imperative. Just in case you think it's just this one place where that happens, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 4.16, 1 Corinthians 11.1, Ephesians 5.1, 1 Thessalonians 1.6, and Hebrews 6.12 that we should imitate.

What Paul doesn't say in Hebrews 6.12, we don't think it's him that's the author. But this concept of imitation is there. So we better dig into it and make sure we understand what it is. Because we don't want imitation vanilla Christianity. Because that's terrible. We don't want Naugahyde Christianity. We want real leather Christianity. So we need to talk about imitation through walking in the Spirit.

So the Spirit reveals maturity in others as they are abiding and as they are beholding the Lord. And the Spirit reveals that to us. He says, hey, look at your elder, look at your brother and sister in Christ. Not everybody that you're going to grow from is going to be an elder, okay? I don't want to misstate that. And then the Spirit exposes the comparison within our own current lives as we're maturing. If I start out in diapers, I'd like to think that I'm in the pull-up stage. As we start out in diapers, the Spirit's going to expose a comparison in our own lives, and He's going to say, guess what? I'm going to grow you here. Are you doing any work yet? No. This is not about works.

This is about abiding in the Spirit directing our steps, and the Spirit showing us places where He's going to cause us to grow. And the Spirit brings direction for growth through our abiding in Him. The Spirit doesn't bring direction for us to grow with a really great to-do list. There's no to-do list that's involved with this growth.

It's not just programs. It's a moment-by-moment abiding. It's the life of Christ lived out in us. And it's not self-improvement. The self-improvement programs out there are They're available. I don't know if you've ever been to a bookstore, but they have a very large self-improvement section, and that's not what this is talking about. So, imitating their faith.

Then in this sandwich of verses, the middle here is, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever, and at first when I was preparing this, I was like, man, this is really out of place. So, I've been thinking about it, and I really don't know... I didn't know how to express this, but I'll give it my best shot. Oh, no. Just kidding, I put that in there. Okay.

So, this is the Windows notorious blue screen of death. If you don't use computers, you're blessed with every spiritual blessing and not having seen this. So this is actually a phenomenal example of Jesus Christ being the same yesterday, today, and forever. So the $5 word here is Jesus is immutable. So I'm going to go back a slide here for a second. Now that we have the $5 word of immutability, or Jesus is immutable, what happens when you get the blue screen of death, and I'm very not nerdy.

I program for a living, but I can do this without being very nerdy. The computer was expecting a piece of the computer's guts to be immutable. Like, this should never change, and this should be right where I put it. And something else went in there and dorked with it and changed it, and it stopped being immutable.

The consequence of something that's supposed to be immutable not being immutable is bad things. So we really need a Jesus that's immutable. We need a Jesus that doesn't cause our faith to have a blue screen of death. Okay, we'll just put it that way. So, immutability means unchanging, and now you have a handy theological word to bandy about as you abide, okay? So, you have an alliteration too. So, why does immutability matter? Immutability matters because Jesus created the universe.

If the creator of the universe is changing and constantly adjusting and not being himself, then the past that is there could become chaotic. Lots of chaos because suddenly the one who created things changed his mind. You know, I really don't like orange sunsets over the Rockies. Let's have more of other weird colors and polka dots.

You know, we don't have that because God doesn't change. Jesus isn't changing. Immutability matters. because he's sustaining the universe. In Colossians 1.17 it says that he holds the universe together. Jesus holds the universe together. If he's changing all the time, what if he decides he's tired of holding the universe together?

That kind of matters. And we're being transformed into his image. I'm not very good at Photoshop. Jesus is the being in whom we're being transformed into, and so it matters a lot that He's not changing. It matters significantly that the Jesus that I have been identified with in His death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Because as the first verse, in verse 7, said, hey, we're imitating this towards spiritual growth, that spiritual growth is unto, or being changed into, the image of Christ. And that's pretty significant.

And lastly, 2 Corinthians 3.18.

If I teach a class and I never mention relationship, and I teach a class and I never mention 2 Corinthians 3.18, where I'm doing verse-by-verse exposition, something is wrong. So, if you're ever in a Sunday school class that's not this Bible survey class that I've been teaching, then you'll hear me say this.

We're beholding Him. If the God whom we're betrothed to is changing and we're beholding Him, that would be really weird. When I was beholding my bride, I was really glad she wasn't changing there on the stage when we got married. but our Savior is not changing. The universe is sustained. The one whom we have an intimate, deep relationship with is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

So, the last of the three verses here, Do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods through which those who were so occupied were not benefited. We're going to go over this backwards. We're going to talk about the food first. Food in the Jewish culture was really important. It was part of the law. It was part of obedience. It was part of who they were. Daniel gets taken into captivity. And what does he do?

He denies all of the other food but the vegetables. Okay, so the Jews were really big into food and they didn't have Instagram. So it was so only half of you understand that. Okay, so they didn't take pictures of it and put on the internet all the time. But hey, that laid out differently. And it clipped my word there. Sorry. But the food wouldn't grow them and strengthen them spiritually. It was just for compliance.

So the food We're going to just take a look at that briefly. The food was a big deal to the Hebrews at that point in time, but the author of Hebrews says this is actually a bigger deal. This other stuff that's not the food is a bigger deal. Going back to the beginning of the verse, he talks about varying and strange doctrines.

So I want to take a minute. This chart is really tiny on your handout. I'm sorry. My dad does amazing things with the handouts, and I am not amazing with handouts. Also, PowerPoint, not amazing at that either. So you'll forgive me that it's so small on your handout. But I want to talk about the two pendulum swings of error.

We have legalism and liberalism. and the biblical truth that is what we should be resting in. So, varying and strange doctrines. The liberal idea in one case is ecumenicalism. Let's all agree to disagree. Let's all just ignore our differences and we'll hold hands and we'll sing Kumbaya and nobody has to be wrong.

Which sounds great, unless you have a brain thinking about what is true, because I really care about true. That's not so good. On the other side, you get personality cult. That's easy to fall into because you find somebody who has strong opinions and you follow them and you don't ever have to worry about whether you're right or wrong. You just regurgitate what so and so said. Both of those produce a sense of unity. Right? We're all unified under this cult leader. Or we're all unified because we don't care. But the biblical truth is that there's unity in Christ, and we should have our faith in Christ be the primary focus.

The next item I've got on here is carnal behavior. I have liberty to do whatever I want. I've run into folks who take that to a whole new level. It doesn't matter what I do. It's covered in grace. And while it is true, it doesn't matter what you do. It's covered in grace.

There's also a bit of an expectation that you probably shouldn't go on a shooting spree. just probably a good idea not to do that. Or the other side, instead of carnal behavior where you're selfish and you're gluttonous and terrible in various liberty sort of ways, the legalistic behavior. You can't have fun.

There was one church that I heard about in Reno when I was growing up. When you live near Reno, you hear about a lot of Reno churches, so I don't have a big diverse story of churches outside of Reno. They didn't want to have a band come through and play at their church because on the front of the CD, the band members weren't smiling. I don't know how your faith is reliant on one microsecond in time when a camera was snapping a picture, but that was it. Like, no way, a band can't come. That's the kind of weird legalistic behavior that is bizarre to me.

But the truth is that biblically we need to have abiding behavior. As my dad has said, and I've heard the other elders restate or state themselves, the law only asks 613 things, but the Spirit may lead us somewhere that the law didn't. The Spirit may tell us to do amazing things in our car that the law doesn't address. The Spirit may tell us to do something technologically, that the law could never address.

And so, abiding behavior is life-abundant. Abiding behavior is resting. The next one here, on one pendulum, the sense of pride. And the other direction, the sense of inferiority. I came from a charismatic, semi-legalistic background, and in that background, I was never good enough for God. So the inferiority side, that was my direction. That was what I was familiar with.

But then you've got other people today that tell you to go get them because you're awesome and you're amazing in Jesus. You are amazing in Jesus, but who you are is in Christ. Your value is in Christ, not in you. Not in how awesome you are. Don't tell T.D. Jakes. He disagrees with me.

All right. Lastly here, Both sides, you'll notice, are motivated by the flesh. If you're being liberal, you're trying to do things in the flesh to bring unity, and if you're being legalistic, you're motivated by the flesh to make yourself more righteous by pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. And it's very cruel, by the way, if you're ever a Sunday school teacher, and you run into a little kid, and they have boots on, and you ask them to do that, and you tell them they can do that. I know from personal experience you can't, and it was very mean. So anyways, no pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. Don't do it. You didn't need to know that. So anyways, lastly in this varying and strange doctrines, get grounded in proper Bible study techniques to debunk error.

I was talking with Stan right before the service, between the first hour and the service, and he mentioned the Jehovah's Witnesses. When the Jehovah's Witnesses came to his door, he was able to engage them on God's Word and in dealing with things in God's Word. If you're not grounded in proper Bible study techniques, when somebody tries to bamboozle you and they come to your door and they start talking fast and they try to overpower you, it's very easy to be confused and it's very easy to start thinking, well, maybe they have a point and now maybe you're going door-to-door. two at a time, hoping that one out of every 750 houses, you get a convert.

So understanding hermeneutics, that's the theological, that's another $5 word. There is a class at Holly Hills we've done that's hermeneutics. It's available on the website to listen to. And I know that that will be coming up in rotation over the years. Just how to do proper Bible study technique. You'll really know that it's varying and strange doctrine because you'll be able to look at God's Word and say, this is what they meant. And you'll know that the strange doctrine that somebody's telling you doesn't match up. So it's definitely something that we'd recommend. Again, not legalistically, but just it's something that's valuable for us as Saints. So the crux of the verse is that instead of growing in food, we would grow in grace.

So this story involves Mike Doyle, and I just totally stole this off of his Facebook page. I don't even know where he was at. I wasn't there. But it looked fun, so I put it on there. So, Growing in Grace, for about a decade I worked for a company out of Texas, and I worked remotely. So I had a laptop computer. And I would get on the internet and I would program and send them code down to Texas, about a thousand miles away.

And it wasn't a big deal because you just did it over the internet. Except for when the internet goes down, suddenly you can't do your job. Or I couldn't do my job. You may still be able to do your job whether the internet is down. So I went, I called Mike. I said, Mike, my internet connection is busted. I'm panicking. Can I come over to your house? And he said, Why not? So I went over, and his office was in the basement at the time, and their Wi-Fi connection was really weak, except for if you were in the basement. Since his office was in the basement, I was also working in the basement. Only I wasn't working. So if my former employer ever listens to this recording, he'll know that day I wasn't working.

Because Mike was listening to a series on Grace, and everything I thought I knew about Grace at that point in time was really just a big sin band-aid. Grace is for when I sin. I didn't have a working definition of grace like I do now, which I will now recite for you since I mentioned it. Grace is the unmerited, unlimited blessings of God due to the totally adequate work of Christ on the cross. That's way bigger. Way, way, way bigger than a sin band-aid.

You can't grow in grace if it's a covering for sin. How would you grow in grace if it's a covering for sin? Well, you'd sin more, if that's what growing in grace is, if grace is just a covering for sin. But instead, grace is an operating system of God's blessing. It's an environment for growth, and then that makes sense for growing in, when it's not legalism, when it's not a sin band-aid. It leads us to a deeper understanding of how we're called and what we're called to. Grace becomes a motivator.

And with that in mind, 2 Peter 3.18, a verse that I'm sure that if you've been around Holly Hills for too long, you've heard over and over again as well. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen. Growing in the grace is how we'll be strengthened. Growing in the grace is maturing us into the image of Christ. So with that said, that's my last slide, but there's three things I wanted to encourage you with, and these aren't on your handout or anything else, so commit them to memory. They're very, very difficult. Just kidding.

We can take a look at these three verses and we can know that it's good to be praying for the elders. I don't know if you've noticed this, but being an elder is actually, it requires a lot of commitment of personal time and it impacts their wives and their children and their families. But it also impacts the body and they do it because they love us. So be praying for the elders.

The other thing is we can pray for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ. If Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow, I'm okay with tomorrow being in the heavenlies. So we could do that. And lastly, be praying that the Lord would, through the body and through your walk with Him and your time in His Word, be growing you as you imitate the godly people the Lord has put in your lives. And since I just said you should pray, I think we should all pray together.

Heavenly Father, thank you so much for the truth of your word. Thank you that we can abide in you. Thank you that we can grow in you and that you've given us godly examples that we can spend time with and know more deeply. Lord, I just pray that you would, through your spirit, allow us to get to know you more deeply as well, since you never change. And we have an eternity to get to know you, but why not start now to know you deeper? And Lord, I just pray that we would grow in our knowledge of you and grow in grace so that we would encourage one another and love one another and live out the very life of Christ. In Jesus' name, amen.