Don't get carried away
Notes
Transcript
Hebrews background - Jewish believers being persecuted, and tempted to go back to Jewish religious practices
Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by eating ceremonial foods, which is of no benefit to those who do so.
We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat.
The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp.
And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood.
Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore.
For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.
Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.
Remember and Consider your leaders
Remember and Consider your leaders
Remember - likely speaking to past leaders who had shared the gospel with them, who had set the example of living by faith in this world.
Consider the outcome of their way of life — Think carefully about, examine
They endured hardship - how did they handle it?
Imitate them
Like Hebrews 11 saints, they died in faith
How did they handle life in this world?
When they did not know what to do? Daniel prayed.
When they were afraid? Esther prayed. Nehamiah prayed.
When they were concerned for their relatives? Abraham prayed.
When disaster or calamity struck? The disciples in the storm went to Jesus.
When they needed food? Moses prayed.
When they had sinned? David prayed.
As those saints who went before us, those who shared the gospel with us, how did they handle life, uncertainty and fear in this world? They prayed. Like Habakkuk, they asked God questions.
Where did they find the answers? From God. They trusted God.
How did they find peace for their soul as they longed for eternal life? Martin Luther, The just will live by Faith
Where did they turn when they were spiritually hungry, and wanting more? Hudson Taylor turned to God’s word and learned to trust the promise, John 6:35 “Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
William Carey, Hudson Taylor, George Mueller, Dwight Moody, Richard Wurmbrand, and so many of out leaders down through the ages have prayed, and trusted God. They made it through life by their faith, their confidence in the Lord God Almighty to accomplish what He has said!
Imitate their faith
Imitate their faith
Live as they did...
Each generation seems to think they know so much more than the previous, and wants to break with the old and pave a new way
While we may have grown in our understanding of Creation, and how to use the materials God has provided to make new machines, electronic devices, satellites, planes, helicopters, cars, batteries, and so much more, and while we may have grown in our understanding of the body in many ways, starting to learn more and more of DNA,
We think we know better than previous generations
We are more enlightened than previous generations
And yet, we are more depressed, more isolated, more hateful…
Could our new moral enlightenment really be our undoing? It is.
Our attitudes of knowing better, of having greater insights are nothing but the pride of life.
Haughty eyes and a proud heart— the unplowed field of the wicked—produce sin.
Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.
We cannot give into the pride of life that says we are better, we know better, we have a greater understanding than those in previous generations.
We should imitate those who have gone before… as far as they have followed Christ...
Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ.
While there are technological advances, right is still right, wrong is still wrong.
How to deal with the difficulties of life has not changed.
The temptations we face have not changed… sexual immorality, greed, lies, pride
The way to deal with those temptations has not changed.
We need to not break from previous generations, we need to learn from them.
We need to do as they did, Trust and Obey
Why?
Jesus has not changed, and walking with Jesus has not changed.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Jesus Christ is the same
Jesus Christ is the same
Doctrine of Christ, Christology - Jesus is God
But you remain the same, and your years will never end.
God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he promise and not fulfill?
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.
Jesus is God! Now back to the main point.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Heb 1.2 - heir of all things
Heb 1.3 - radiance of God’s glory, sustainer of all things
Heb 1.4 - the one who provided purification, seated at the right hand of God
Heb 1.8 - Scepter of justice
Heb 1.9 - loving righteousness and hating wickedness
Heb 2.11 - one who makes us holy
Heb 2.14 - sharing our humanity
Heb 2.17 - merciful faithful high priest
Heb 3 - ever faithful, who expects us to be faithful
Heb 4 - the one who offers us rest
Heb 4 - the one who gives us the word that judges the thoughts and attitudes of our hearts
Heb 4 - the high priest who empathizes with our weakness and gives us grace and mercy in our time of need
Heb 5 - he can deal gently with us, the source of our salvation
Heb 6 - unchanging in his purpose to purify for himself a people
Heb 7 -8 - the high priest and guarantor of a better covenant that gives life; the sacrifice for our sins
Heb 9 - the better sacrifice, setting us free from every sin, coming to bring us salvation
Heb 10 - made the way for us to approach the throne of God with confidence
Heb 11 - the root of faith, the one in whom we can have the utmost confidence to do what He has said, so we can live by faith, trusting in him, obeying him
Heb 12 - the author and perfector of our faith who for the joy set before him endured the cross, showing us that we can also endure hardship and discipline in Him
For we need discipline. We are not given grace to free us from just the penalty of our sin, he gives us grace to be free from the power and practice of sin.
He is still the same, yesterday, today and forever, hating sin, and the judge who is a consuming fire. Hence the warnings to not trample underfoot the Son of God
Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by eating ceremonial foods, which is of no benefit to those who do so.
Do not be carried away
Do not be carried away
Theology proper - God, only new testament God, not wrathful
Bibliology - The Bible, not all is inerrant, Creation, Flood, literal interpretation
Christology - Jesus, was a good example
Pneumatology - The Spirit, the force, the power we tap into
Satanology, Demonology - witchcraft isn’t that big of a deal, astrology is ok, christian astrologists?
Anthropology - man, we are getting better
Hamartiology - Sin, that’s not sin anymore,
Soteriology - Salvation - substitutionary atonement
Ecclesiology - we don’t need a church, they are just full of hypocrites, church hopping
Eschatology - God is done with Israel, we don’t need to believe all of the prophecies, they aren’t literally going to be true, I don’t see how it can be true, so it must not be that way
Be Strengthened by Grace
Be Strengthened by Grace
be strengthened by Grace - Gal 2 21
I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”
So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him,
rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.
See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ.
For in Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form,
and in Christ you have been brought to fullness. He is the head over every power and authority.
In him you were also circumcised with a circumcision not performed by human hands. Your whole self ruled by the flesh was put off when you were circumcised by Christ,
having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through your faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins,
having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.
And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day.
These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.
Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind.
They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.
Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules:
“Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”?
These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings.
Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.
We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat.
Remember the Altar from which we eat
Remember the Altar from which we eat
Not rituals, but Christ… more about that next week
