Hebrews 13 A Potpourri of the Practical

The speaker reminisces about their time teaching Sunday school, sharing anecdotes about transitioning to a new teacher, finding a replacement, and the significance of the book of Hebrews. They discuss the practical advice given in the 13th chapter, emphasizing the importance of living out one's beliefs and behaving towards others. The importance of unity in the church is highlighted, referencing Jesus' teachings on unity and the church's history of forgiveness and unity. The speaker emphasizes the need for believers to act in unity and love towards one another. Well, good morning. Good to see all of you. We had a good crowd this morning in church. Here in the open house. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that's right. All right. Well, first of all, Carolina, I want to thank you for the Christmas gift. We've not had a chance to do that since Christmas. You're very generous. I never thought I'd like to teach in Sunday school class. I've always preached in church, but I don't think I'd want to be a Sunday school teacher. Then we came in here when we retired and Jack Terry's the best teacher I ever heard. I learned something new every week from him, still do. And so when he tried to quit on us, it didn't work. He called me, he said, well, look, I'll go halftime if you'll go halftime. So that's been what, about five years now, I guess. We enjoy it every week. It's like a smaller church. Everybody knows everybody and it's really important. Then one day I looked at Jack and I said, you know, you're 91 and I'm going to be 90 pretty soon. We could both be gone in a week. So then we looked for a younger guy and found John Mann. And that's going to, something happens to us, it's all new, John. It's been a good time and enjoyed so much doing it. And the book of Hebrews is, you know, the book of Hebrews is the first book I preached through verse by verse when I was at First Baptist Dallas. We've been there several months. And did I tell you all this? I did. Okay, I don't need to tell you anyway. Well, I just wanted to show you God has a sense of humor. I never had preached expository through a book and getting to pray about it. And God said, well, you need to preach through Hebrews. That's probably the hardest book in the New Testament to preach through. So I did that at First Dallas. And so it was my first story in the series. It's a great book. And we're going to wind it up today. And when I did chapter 13 before, I called it a potpourri of the practical. And I need to explain that a little bit. Paul Harvey was my favorite radio broadcaster. A little bit of the news and a lot of bit of philosophy and always excellent. He was a fixture in American radio for 57 years. Had daily radio broadcast. We met at noontime. And then he had a special broadcast on Saturday. Probably most famous for the fact that he had a segment he always called the rest of the story. Now you know the rest of the story. And from 1951 to 2000 and something, his programs reached as many as 24 million people every week. He was heard on 100,000 and 200 radio stations in America, 400 American Forces network stations, read in 300 newspapers. And he always ended his broadcast with what he called a potpourri of today's news. And so I looked at the 13th chapter and what we have here is a potpourri of Hebrews. It's sort of a this and that. Here are instructions, various things about the book of Hebrews. Now the word potpourri first appeared as far as we can tell in 1749. Now initially it referred to a mixture of flowers and herbs and then later on it became referenced a mixture of informative and humorous and unusual information. So you get a mixture of any miscellaneous type stuff. That's a potpourri and that's what we have in this 13th chapter. Now I have to tell you just a little bit about my relationship with Paul Harvey. I graduated from Southwestern Seminary in January of 1961 and pastored the Temple Baptist Church in Tyler. When I got to Tyler, it's a great town, 40,000 people. I think now it's got more like 200,000 but it's 40,000 people. A lot of service clubs, Kiwanis Club and the Lions Club and all that. But there was one little service organization called the Optimist Club and there wasn't about 25 of us in the opposite club. But I joined the Optimist Club and in that first year we decided to have an essay contest for the 4th of July about America. They asked me to be in charge of that. So we did that and the winner was a 13-year-old girl in middle school in Tyler. Well, I was hooked on Paul Harvey already so I contacted his office and sent him a copy of the girl's essay. Well, he promptly took it and made a whole broadcast out of it and did a great job with it. Then years later I called and asked him if he would come and preach at Easter at our church in Dale City, Oklahoma. And he agreed to come. So he came on Easter in 1972 and the next day devoted his whole program to his trip to our church. When we were meeting on Easter our auditorium was not big enough to handle an Easter crowd so we went to the high school basketball arena which would seat 5,000 people and we were going to have one big service there. So we get there and he comes in and he asked me, he says, now where do you want me to wait until I speak? I said, I'll just wait backstage here, you know. I said, no, no, I want you to sit on the platform with me. And so he said, okay. So he sat on the platform with me and as always did a great job with the message. But the next day when he made the broadcast about his trip to Dale City he was taken away with the music. He said, oh, could they sing? And he talked about the singing and our people were singing people in Dale City. I missed the singing that we did there. It was spontaneous, it was energetic. When we welcomed visitors we preached coming again, he's coming again, maybe morning, maybe noon, maybe evening. And we changed it instead of maybe soon, we'll be soon. Everybody stood. It was a singing show. He was all captivated by that. But because listening to his radio broadcast he always ended up with a potpourri of today's news. So what we have here in the 13th chapter of Hebrews is a potpourri of the book of Hebrews. He still focuses on Jesus Christ. That's the main focus. But he's telling the people, now as a result of everything we talked about, here's what you're supposed to do. And they're simple instructions. You look at it, they're just simple. It's just a variety of things. Let brotherly love continue. Don't neglect to show hospitality. Remember those in prison. Marriage is honored by all. Keep your life free from the love of money. Oh, and just things like that. Remember your leaders who have spoken God's word to you. And he gives us instructions of how we relate to each other, how we relate to the church, to our leaders in the church. It's just a general, here's a how-to. Now we've had 12 chapters, now here's how you're supposed to live. It's interesting that the Bible always assumes that what you believe is going to make a difference in how you live. And it should. We're new people, new creatures. John talked about that this morning. You know, sometimes people do something that's not very appropriate. And they'll say, well, that's just the way I am. I can't help it. Well, stop being the way you am. If you're in Christ, you're not the way you used to be. And the book of Hebrews, in the 13th chapter, he's coming back to say, now you know all of this. You know all this about our great high priest, all this about what we've been talking about throughout the book of Hebrews. Now, here's how you're supposed to live it out. And so it's a very practical chapter that we have. And it is just a reminder to us that the Lord has called us to himself, and that ought to make a difference in our lives. And he still focuses here on the Lord Jesus Christ because of the mighty, but the truth is because of the mighty things that God has done, there's some way that we can respond to how God has already responded. Let brotherly love continue. Don't neglect hospitality. And just simple, practical things. He tells believers that here's the kind of life that you ought to live. He's telling them they can't say one thing and live another. And we have to reach back actually into the 28th verse of the 12th chapter to get something of a context for this verse. Therefore, remember Dr. Terrell always tells us, you know, therefore means what he just said. And based on what we just said, therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful. By it, we may serve God acceptably with reverence and awe for our God is a consuming fire. He's telling us now that everything we've been learning, everything this epistle has been directing us to, now that's past, now we've got to live it out. Here's how you behave. And I just stopped long enough because God's very interested in how we act toward each other. And I'd have to say we often in Christian community don't do well with that. I've never had an atheist threaten my life. I've had a few church members that weren't very happy and one who was unhappy with me and his brother called and threatened my life. The police had me picking the kids up at school and we lived back towards a wooded area. But it wasn't somebody who you'd expect to hear from, it was someone that claimed to be a believer. You know, it just shouldn't be that way. We shouldn't be known by our disunity. Remember that Jesus in John chapter 17 at least five times spoke about the unity he expected of the church and he prayed for that and he prayed for us. He said, and for all of those who are going to believe because of the witness of these disciples, that includes us, here's how you're to be united together. You're to be one, even as we're one, as God and Christ and the Holy Spirit are one. He said, I want my church to be like that. We ought to work hard at keeping unity. That's a whole other sermon, but the good thing about this church to me, it's always been a strong unified church. It's had a number of splits in the last hundred years, several of them, three or four. But in each instance, this church at some point brought back those who split off and saved their church from going under and ministered to it. This church has always had a forgiving spirit. It's not a gossipy church. There are some things that happened that I experienced when we first got here that were really despicable, but no one ever knew about it. Oh, the mayor knew about it. The police chief knew about it. A number of people in the community responsibility knew that, but it never went through the church. It never got to be an issue in the church because, well, let me just say, it's not a gossipy church. It never has been, and that's why I think you'll hear me say that I think the church is better now than it's ever been. It's always been good, but it's a good church because it's a unified church. We're not fussing about anybody. Nobody's griping about one thing or the other. I had one deacon when we went to two services, to an 830 service. It was Ralph Roberts, so those of you who know Ralph Roberts, sweet Ralph, one of my dearest friends. He was my dentist at the time I was here. I broke a tooth when I was preaching one night at a rally in Denver, Colorado. I just broke half off, and I got nothing but air blowing through a tooth with all the nerve and had to speak with that. I called Ralph and said, look, I'm coming in. I'm going to be there at 1030. He said, can you meet me at your office and fix my tooth, and he did. So, we were good friends, but he stopped me when I said, who decided we're going to go to two services? I said, well, I guess I did. He said, oh, okay. We were good enough friends, but he said, well, that's okay then. We worked together well. Church always has been like that. Well, that's what he's trying to do here in the 13th chapter. Look, you know all of this about our great high priest. You know all the stuff we've been talking about. Therefore, here's how you ought to live. Here's what you ought to do about it. So, it's a potpourri of practical instructions, keeping the focus on the Lord Jesus Christ, and just practical things. By the way, most of them are in the imperative. And if they're not in the imperative, they're in a form in the original language that implies that they are imperative. In other words, these are not suggestions. These are things you ought to be doing. And I went through and just checked in my Bible, but don't neglect showing hospitality. Let brotherly love continue. Remember those in prison. Our church had a great prison ministry. Glenn Kinney's still doing that. He says, I'm the one that got him to prison. And we had a great prison. Well, that's right here. He said, remember those who are in prison. Marriage is to be honored. The Jewish religion back in that century had a liberal and a conservative end. Both involved in it. And there was a lot of compromise and debate about marriage. And divorce was being made more easy by the more liberal group. And anyway, almost to the point of just if a man wanted to divorce his wife for any reason, she burned the toast. Well, that's enough. He could do a divorce. A lot of straying away from the honor of marriage. Marriage was so important that Paul likened our relationship as a church to Christ as a bride and a groom. And marriage always is to be honored, respected, treated. He puts out just simple practices. He just reminds marriages to be honored by all and sexual immorality and adultery. These things, you know, don't don't do that. Don't don't don't let that happen. Don't love money. You love God, but you're not supposed to love money. Be satisfied with what you have. Simple suggestions. Then I guess he's getting pretty realized that he's getting a little meddling a little bit. So he pauses and says, God himself said, I will never leave you nor abandon you. Therefore, we may boldly say the Lord is my helper. I'll not be afraid. What can men do for me? Then he goes right on. Remember your leaders. Then he said, don't be led astray by various strange doctrine. Then he said, we have an altar speaking of the cross. And what Jesus has done is it's a tabernacle that we can worship God. The cross makes it possible to do that. Then he talks about, he's just going to let us go then to those outside the camp. Christ was crucified outside the city walls. And he used that as an illustration of how we not be content to dwell within the walls of our theology and our experience. We need to go outside the camp. And, and so he talks about us going outside the camp here. He talked about, we don't have an enduring city. We seek one to come. Therefore, let us continue to offer the sacrifice of praise. Obey your leaders, submit to them over you because they must watch over your souls. Pray for us. But we're convinced we have a clear conscience and, and, and, and pray to him that I'll be restored in every way for the minute. And just simple practical suggestions. It's a potpourri of just practical things. Here's, here's how you ought to do it. And so he is, he's doing it in an encouraging way. And we, he's not, he's not being mean about it. He's being very kind, but very specific saying, this is how you ought to live. Hebrews is, is filled with great declarations. And the 13th chapter here is basically all written as, as an imperative pattern that we need to express. This is how we ought to live based upon the, the fact that Christ is our high priest and, and it's, it's in chapter 13 where theology moves into ethics and where doctrine transforms itself into behavior. He tells us what, how we ought to respond to what God has already done. How we as believers ought to treat each other and respect one another and, and respect and follow our spiritual leaders. And, and after speaking about the priestly sacrifice of Christ, he calls the believers to follow that example and says, imitate, imitate your leaders. You, you follow them and, and they serve me. And you, you, you need to imitate the, the, the word mimic comes from the Greek word imitate there in this chapter. You need to, to mimic their example, follow their example. As they serve God, you're to serve God. And that they show you a pattern of how you ought to live. When a pure light strikes a prism, it is broken down into the primary colors of the spectrum. They range from deep purples to bright yellows. And, and the book of Hebrews takes the bright light of God's mighty ax and breaks it down into the colors of everyday life. These are the great doctrines. These we ought to believe. Now, what does that mean? Well, here's how you express it. Here's how you're supposed to live. You know, the Bible was not given to us for information. And we get a lot of information in it, but it was given to us for action. A sermon, a lesson cannot be effective if we don't know what to do now that we've heard that. And so whatever we studied today in this lesson ought to help us this week, help us know how to relate to one another, how to treat one another, how to serve the Lord with confidence and to honor him and how to live the life that he planned for us to live. It's full of social and personal and religious duties that the writer of Hebrews wanted to be sure that people understood. He gives them counsel about relating to one another and about relating to their leaders. And it gives us a valuable picture of the early church. It's what the early church was like. I've preached my first sermon 76 years ago. I've preached in over a thousand churches and it's rare to find a happy church because people don't live what they know to do. Many churches are split and arguing and fighting over many things, none of which are important. You don't find any churches in the evangelical world fighting over the virgin birth or the substitutionary atonement. No, they're fighting over whether to put hat racks in the vestibule or what color the carpet ought to be or how many stalls you ought to have in the restroom. These are things that are absolutely insignificant to the purpose of the church. They're important to us, but we ought not to be torn apart. We ought to be together. And the writer of Hebrews said, look, now that you know all of this, show it in your life. Show it in your life. Christ is our high priest. The new covenant has been brought into view and is a practical reality now. And so here we have a chapter that basically is telling us this is what you must do now that you know all that you know. Now that you know all that you know. So, Hebrews is important. It's a very Jewish book, but let's just look at it quickly here. Practical duties in daily life, that's the basic thrust of this chapter, the first 19 verses. There are social duties. Let brotherly love continue. Now that may look like a pretty simple thing, but the Jews practiced fraternal love with other Jews. I mean, they were nice to each other. They loved their fellow Jews, but the Christians crossed that street and left it way behind and said we need to love everybody. We need to treat everybody with kindness. The mood and the tense of the verse suggests that that love might be missing a little bit in the church that the Hebrews were part of. Someone once said, to dwell in love with saints above, that will be glory. To dwell below with some of the saints I know, that's a different story. Christians are like porcupines. The closer they get together, the more they needle one another. You got an impetuous Peter, a thoughtful John, a dull-witted Philip, he never seemed to know what was going on, a doubting Thomas, but every one of them had their place in the apostolic group. I mean, we're all different. We're different. We're not all alike. We don't look alike. We have distinct personalities and appearances. We're not all alike. Why should we think all alike, agree on everything? No, the early disciples, as close as they were to Jesus, Luke chapter 22 tells us they came into the upper room arguing about who was the greatest. These are the guys that have been with Jesus three years. You don't have to train us to be selfish and self-centered. We're already that way. We need to realize in Christ that makes a difference. I'm not what I used to be. When I left here to go to Nashville, we were at 35,000 feet flying to Nashville. It dawned on me I am not what I've always been. I always said I'm a pastor. I was no longer a pastor. I got there and thought I could pastor the Sunday school board. Two weeks after I got there, I realized they all had pastors. They didn't need a pastor, they needed a president. I just left and I thought, have I been betrayed my call? I always thought God called me to preach. I've said this to you before, but I say God has a plan for all of our lives, but it's not what we do. Our relationship with God means that He calls us to Himself, and because He calls us to Himself, He can tell us what He wants us to do. If He wants me to preach, I can preach. I've preached over 12,000 sermons in my ministry. That's part of my calling to God, but I was called not to preach, I was called to Him. Same way when you became a Christian, you were called to a relationship to God Himself, a relationship with God, and it ought to make a difference in your life. You're in a relationship with God and you belong to Him, and He ought to do what He tells you to do. I've told you this before, but it's something that's as precious as the day it happened. Before Carolyn and I married, we prayed a prayer and said, Lord, whatever happens in days ahead, our answer is yes. Whatever the question is, whatever you tell us to do, whatever you want us to do, the answer is yes, whatever that means. We're telling you today, for the rest of our lives, the answer is yes. If that hadn't been true, I would have never left here. I was 55 years old when I left here. I never had a single business class. I had one math class, general math, in the ninth grade. That was the only math class I'd ever had until I got to Baylor and had to have five courses of Greek to graduate or trigonometry. So I took trigonometry. Fortunately enough, it was like a foreign language that I could learn enough of it to get out. But I never had any leadership training, never had any business training, and all of a sudden I find myself president of a $180 million corporation, which became a $450 million corporation in 15 years. You know, I learned some things. I learned that business decisions are not hard to make if you have good information. The problem is people make mistakes when they don't have good information. You have good information, as I said in the last little book, it's not rocket science. I mean, making business decisions or personal decisions is not rocket science, just common sense. And God expects us to live our lives as a reflection of our relationship with him. Now, that's what he's talking about in this 13th chapter. The hospitality, that you might entertain angels and not even know that you're entertaining angels. Some are in prison, and you need to not forget them. Paul produced many of his letters as a prisoner. Most of the letters he wrote for me, the letters he wrote in the New Testament, he was in prison. John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim's Progress when he was in bed for jail in London. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote his Cost of Discipleship and Life Together Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote his Cost of Discipleship and Life Together from a German prison. On the other hand, Adolf Hitler was embittered as a prisoner and while in prison wrote Mein Kampf, the book which contained the philosophy that killed 20 million people. That's about one life for every word in his book that he wrote in prison. What if there had been a Christian witness to Adolf Hitler while he was in prison? So it's important. It's important enough that the writer of Hebrews said, don't forget those who are in prison. I'm in the process right now of almost daily contact with a man who's in prison. We ought to remember those who are in prison. So these are practical suggestions. Then there are personal responsibilities and duties. He talks about marriage. The more liberal school of Hillel had increased the liberty for divorce to where almost any reason the liberal group would encourage divorce. But Hebrews warned against that policy, against that being practiced. And it's in the imperative tense rather than a simple declaration, let all honor marriage, it should be honored in all ways. Preserved not only from gross violations but also from anything that could rob it of its dignity. Listen, marriage is something. Marriage is not man's idea. It's God's plan. And it's an awesome institution. It's an awesome experience. It's an awesome relationship. The family relationships are significant. And so he just said, look, it ought to be honored in every way. God intended for Christ to be the unseen partner in every marriage, every Christian marriage. That's God's ideal. And the apostle Paul likened marriage to the relationship between Christ and the church. So you've got a personal responsibility within your home, within your life. If you're single, he addresses that and honors the singleness. Some are called to singleness. Right now, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, who followed Charles Stanley, is a single man. God honors the singleness. You know, God doesn't want everybody necessarily to be married, but every one of us has a responsibility to use whatever condition we find ourselves in in a way that would honor Christ, would honor him. So that is a responsibility. He mentions the place of material life under God. He talks about the love of gold, that you shouldn't love gold. And it's kind of interesting that right in the middle of all that, he says that I'll never leave you nor forsake you. And the images that he uses when he talks about that verse in verses five and six about never leaving us or forsaking us, it's an image of God not leaving us on the field of battle of a soldier that, you know, the soldiers have a motto that we leave no one behind. We'll always bring those who are wounded or whatever. We don't leave them behind. God says, I'm not going to leave you behind. I'm not going to leave you out there by yourself. And it is an incredible thing for us. We get so wrapped up in money. Someone asked about Bertram and I wonder how much he left. The answer is everything. You never saw a U-Haul behind a hearse. He's not going to take anything with you. Now, I know we resist that. Dr. Criswell told me one day if he couldn't take it with him, he wouldn't go. But don't make money to go because everything you own now, somebody else is going to own when you're gone. I have a good friend that worked with us for a while. We were in Nashville at Lifeway who died yesterday. He was a publisher. He and his good friend helped us in doing publishing and formed their own company. But he died. Methuselah lived 960 so years, but he died. I mean, what we own today, somebody else is going to own tomorrow. So don't get caught up in it. Be satisfied with what you have. And that's what he says in this passage. So, you know, keep your life free from the love of money. Be satisfied with what you have for he himself said I'll never leave you or abandon you. So you may not have all that you want, but you'll have all that you need if you honor God with your life. And if God's people are doing what they ought to do, there will be a unity about supplying the needs of people who don't have all that they need. And he talks about that they were to imitate the faith of their leaders who had led them. That imitate word is our English word mimic from. They were literally to mimic the faith of the great believers who had led them. They had been led by leaders of the old covenant and now leaders of the new covenant and remember these leaders and imitate their lives, imitate their influence. Christians should reflect on the lives of great Christian leaders, both in history and those they've known personally. There's an enormous power in a living example. Consideration lies in Augustine, Martin Luther, John Cowley, John Knox, Ulrich Zwingli, John and Charles Wesley, Dwight Moody, Charles Ferguson, Billy Graham, Bill Anderson will bring great memories and lead us on to the perfection of the plans God has for us. But listen, Christian discipline and ministry didn't begin with us. Adrian Rogers used to say, we all stand on the shoulders of others. We're not the first ones to preach the gospel. We're not the first ones to maybe to say that, you know, Adrian, we're talking one day about plagiarism, you know, we felt, by the way, which is a big temptation and a lot of preachers have gotten in trouble for actually engaging in using somebody else's messages. We had one young pastor in the last 50 years that I heard of that preached one of Adrian Rogers' sermons, even used all the illustrations as if they were his personal illustrations. You know, you don't want to do that. But the truth is, many things we say, I don't know where I got some of them. Someone else doubtless said it before me. I'm not smart enough to dream up very many cute things to say. So if I ever say anything that sounds really deep and profound, it's probably because I heard it somewhere. You know, we're dependent on that. We're depending on each other. And so this is why he pauses right in the middle in verse eight. He says, Jesus Christ, the same today for yesterday, today and forever. Things are going to change, but Jesus never changes. I'm planning to design my next Christmas card. It's going to be my last. I'm going to use, please ask these three verses, there's a time for everything. There's a time to send Christmas cards and there's a time to stop. So I'm already thinking about, you know, how I'm going to do this. But we need to realize that we're not permanent. And we're all dependent upon others. One of my vice presidents when I was at Sunday School Board, Lifeway, said, do you realize how much you quote your father? Well, I hadn't thought about it. My dad died when he was 52. I was 30. And a best friend. A lot of things we shared together as friends as well as father and son. But I got to listening to myself. I do quote him a lot. Well, in a sense, I'm standing on his shoulders. We're all standing on someone's shoulders. And so we need to remember those who have led us. Remember back, think back to when you were saved. Who was the pastor when you got saved? Who was the minister that baptized you or who mentored you in your faith or helped you in your Christian growth and maturity? There's somebody. And so the writer of Hebrews is just saying, you need to look back to the past of those who have led you before and those that you know of in the history of your nation and mimic their lives. Be like they were. They met needs in your life. Now you go and meet the needs in others lives. That's essentially what he's saying. Whereas human leaders come and go, Christ always abides. So that's why he says, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday forever. George Truitt said, God varies the workmen, but the work goes on. The greatest preachers in any of this language lived in the last two years, two centuries in England. Some of you never heard of Alexander Maclaren, G. Campbell Morgan, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Joseph Parker is the golden age of preachers in England. They're all gone and their churches are mostly gone. But the Christ they preach is still there and always will be. And we need to realize that my Christmas cards may change from year to year, but the message never changes. It's all about Jesus. He's the reason for the season and we adore him and we have had our lives transformed. And while the way we deliver that message may be varied from time to time, it's always the same. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. Permanency of Christ. And he talks to us in verses 9 to 12, he talks to us about the peril of ritualism. There were the speculations by Jewish Christians that led to strange marriage of Christian and Jewish thought. It was characterized, someone described it as multicolored or foreign to the gospel. The same Greek word used of Joseph's coat of many colors is the word used to describe the strange doctrines going around here in Hebrews. They were literally being swept away by false teaching and the word swept away there is a verb that describes objects being taken out of sight because of a strong current. We can think again of the Guadalupe River last year with a wall of water that was as tall, almost twice as tall as the ceiling coming down that river and people being hopelessly and helplessly swept away. That's the kind of word. The church is being swept away toward another gospel and he warned against that. The Christians, we have true stability through grace but not through the instructions of the law. He says here in verse 10, we have an altar. We have an altar. It's no doubt a reference to the cross. Our great Savior gave his life on the altar at Calvary and he fulfills in his person all that was symbolized in the sacrificial system in Judaism. So we need to remember what God has done and let our lives be impacted by him. The church or religious institutions have never changed anybody's life but the gospel of Jesus Christ and his presence in our lives does change lives. And so he's urging the believers here in verses 13 and 14. He is talking to them about let us go on to him outside the camp bearing his disgrace for we do not have an enduring city here. Instead we seek a one to come. We need to devote ourselves to the present. This world is not permanent. It's all going to be taken away, burned up, transformed. I'll give you my opinion. I think heaven's going to be down here but it'll have all the evil out of it. The rose bushes won't contain thorns. Go on one of your TV channels that has scenes of all this. This is a beautiful world. We're the ones that messed it up. God's going to clean it up and New Jerusalem's going to come down. New Jerusalem may very well be somewhere in the Mideast of the United States. Who knows? It's going to be about the size of 1,500 miles cubed. That's a pretty good spot, isn't it? That's about the size of America. That's the permanence that's coming. We don't have a permanent dwelling here or city. So we're looking for a city that is permanent. And when we come to Christ we confess that there is no permanency in the visible world order. That was hard for the Jews to believe. The Temple of Herod was a huge magnificent building. Its sacrifices and its priesthood was visible, impressive, and daily. To leave all of that for a poor Christian community which had no buildings, no ornate services, and no long traditions was a tough thing for the Jews. Christianity has always called for people to come outside the gate. Get outside of the tradition. A new day has dawned. A new Savior has come. In Japan only 1% of the population is Christian in spite of all the missionary effort that has gone into the Japanese land. The Japanese wish to add Christianity to all their other other religious practices. The same is true of Indians. Indians accept the gospel, they just add it to all the other gods and truths that they have. I could go through a whole list of this, but Christianity just can't do that. It calls for an exclusive relationship outside the gate. Not inside, outside the gate. We should take care of this in our day. Many Christians flirt with horoscopes, spiritualists, palm readers, tarot cards, and the like. Leave them alone. Come outside the gate. Christ and Christ alone saves. Leave every other form of worship and every other source that you have. The old sacrificial system is gone. What are they going to do? They no longer sacrifice animals. What are they going to do? He tells us here, the sacrifice of praise. We don't offer sacrifices for animals anymore, but God tells us to offer the sacrifice of praise. If we like something, we praise it. We ought to be praising God. God is honored by that. C.S. Lewis often spoke about the power of praise in the Christian life, what it does and why God expects it. When we value something, we praise it. We ought to praise God. Whether we are painting a picture or writing a book or developing a song, we deepen and enrich our very experience when we praise the thing that I set our attention to. The new sacrifice concludes not only praising God, but also serving and doing good. He talks about being good and sharing. He praises the fruit of our lips, giving thanksgiving to God. We are to remember the attitude of gratitude. I'll say it again. Gratitude is a great attitude. We just ought to be grateful for the little things. There are not any little things in God's sight, and there are no unimportant people in God's sight. Just be thankful. Again, I bought Carol Ann's lunch yesterday. It's been 70 years now since we met and fell in love. Guess what she said? Thank you for buying my lunch. Gratitude is a great attitude. Marriages lose their edge when husband and wife stop being outwardly grateful for each other. Same thing happens spiritually. We drift away from God when we are not grateful for God. I tell you this often, but I thank God again this morning I can still touch my toes. I can put my socks on. It's not easy. I find that my legs don't bend like they used to. I find sometimes I have to kind of throw the sock a little bit to get it over the little toe so I can start pulling it on. But I thank God every time. I say, God, thank you that I can still put my socks on. We ought to be grateful people. Anybody can be a grump. Anybody can gripe. A monkey on a bicycle can ride. Just be grateful for what you can do and what God allows you to do and for what you have and for who you know. I went through all of our Christmas cards yesterday, and there was a card from Will Graham. Now, you all probably don't even know who Will is. Will is Billy Graham's grandson. I've known Will since he was in college. What an incredible man he is. Incredible. I just want to thank you. God, thank you for Will and Kendra. They are great, great people. Thank you for letting them come into my life. We just need to be thankful. Don't find something to gripe about. Be thankful for what you have. You don't deserve any of it. If you think it's bad, you deserve worse. Just be grateful. Read again of the Apostle Paul. He's always asking for prayer. He's in prison. Gratitude. Gratitude for what people have done for him. The rite of Hebrews ends in this chapter with a reminder for us to be grateful for what we have. Now, the three relationships that he has here in this 13th chapter are to have with their leaders. Remember those who have rule over you. Obey those who have rule over you. Greet those who have rule over you. Now, those are verses that some preachers like to say, my way or the highway. No, that's not what that means. It means you respect and you believe in and you follow and you support those who are leaders. When I left here and went to Nashville, went to church at Two Rivers Baptist Church, I told Kelly one Sunday, there are not even pencils in the book rack here. How can anybody fill out a visitor's card? She nudged me. She said, not your responsibility anymore. I had to learn to be a church member. I'd never been anything but pastor. Oh, and they put me on the personnel committee. I hated it. I'd always been looking across the table at the personnel committee. Now I was on the personnel committee. I didn't like that. I don't even know how I got off on that, but anyway. Anyway, we ought to have a high view of our pastors and those who lead us. We don't hire a pastor. We call a pastor. Boy, it's 11 o'clock. We got to go. We better just quit. I'm carried away not paying attention to the time, so y'all forgive me. We're through now with Hebrews, and Brother Jack's going to lead us into Matthew next week, and we'll go on from there. God, thank you for the book of Hebrews. Thank you for the awesome depth and the incredible, magnificent truths that we find. Lord, thank you for the good every day. Here's how you live it out alive that is clearly outlined as we come through the book. Thank you for this time. In Jesus' name, amen.