Heb No.25 Keeping Company with Jesus Ch13

I'd be glad if you'd have your Bibles open at Hebrews in chapter 13. If you ever wish that you lived in the days of Whitfield and Wesley, or go further back in history to the days of Calvin and Luther, those were days when extraordinary things were happening, the whole of the continent shaken by Luther's ministry, a man possessed by the Spirit of God, just an ordinary monk, or so it seemed as you study the first part of his life, and then that ordinary monk became filled with the Spirit of God, came to a realization of what it meant to be justified by faith, and then there was no holding, Luther. He was like a powerful horse that was all muscle, and nothing could stop him from galloping along.

There seemed to be no force in Europe itself that had any ability to prevent Luther from exercising tremendous influence as he shared with others what God had done for him. The same, of course, could be said of John Calvin, and of, later on, George Whitfield and the Wesleys, and other great men of God like Daniel Rowlands, a Welsh preacher, or a man who was featured on a religious program last Sunday evening on the television with the strange name of Christmas Evans, and to being called Christmas Evans, being a Roman Catholic priest, he'd done well as a father, I would think, work that one out yourself. These were men who really knew the power of the Holy Spirit, and when they preached, it seemed as though people were slain in front of them, and I suppose it's my absorption with history and the history of revivals that always makes me a little bit careful in trying to evaluate modern movements claimed to be of the Holy Spirit, just to ensure that there is the same possibilities, the same potential released through the ministry that was seen in the experiences of these great men of God of decades ago.

Don't misunderstand me. I believe in revival. I believe in the power of the Spirit of God.

I yearn each day that I might know more of God's own power in my life and accompanying the ministry that I endeavor to exercise, but I would be a liar if I suggested to you that in the relatively short life that I've lived so far, I have come across anything that was quite like those days of which I have read in the ministry of the Reformers and those who led the evangelical awakening a couple of centuries ago. Now because of that, and because of my own temperament, it's quite easy to get dispirited and depressed. Oh Lord, this seems to be a day of small things.

Only four percent of people attending church on a Sunday in this country, according to a recent survey, and areas where there seem to be big congregations, they're somewhat far and few between, and sometimes it's not a question of revival but a redistribution of the saints who've all come to one particular meeting place. Oh God, that you might do something like you did centuries ago, but it hasn't in my lifetime done it, as far as I can gather. Not certainly in the West, not here in the United Kingdom.

And the tendency is to get dispirited. The tendency is to look for something else that's less than the real. You say, why am I saying this? Well, in one sense, the people who received the letter of the Hebrews were not exactly opposite to ourselves.

I mean by that, that they lived in the generation after the apostles had died. That becomes perfectly obvious when you read the second chapter of Hebrews, references made to the signs of the apostles, the great wonders that were performed through the miraculous ministry of the ones used by God in the founding of the church. But the momentum hadn't been maintained.

The great leaders had gone. Peter was dead. John was dead.

Men who had been used in a remarkable fashion, they'd gone on to glory. And here were this struggling Hebrew community, a second generation example of the Christian church. And there was a tendency for them to get dispirited.

There was a tendency for them to go back on their faith. There was a tendency to compare what they were experiencing to what they had read about and to become utterly dissatisfied and to go off at a tangent or to go back to the Judaism from which they had emerged. Now, in that respect, I say, I identify with this readership and I can understand some of their problems because they're part of my problems as I confess having a somewhat impetuous temperament.

I want to see God work in all his power and all his glory. I want to be able to preach the gospel of God out in the open air so that hundreds will come and listen and so that they'll be slain by the power of the Holy Spirit. I want to see men and women turn to God in their tens of thousands.

And because one doesn't see this, there is a tendency, I say, to be dispirited. Now, it was with this thought in mind that the anonymous writer of this epistle writes to these dispirited Christians and he says, cast not away your confidence. Do you remember that particular injunction later on? Don't get over-dispirited.

Don't take up your anchor, another metaphor that he uses. Hold on to the faith and let me inject further confidence in you. Well, how does he do that? What keeps me going in the Christian faith when I don't see the results from the ministry that I exercise that I would like to see? What drags me back into the tabernacle pulpit on one Sunday, having felt the previous one, that I really made an absolute mess of trying to expound the Scriptures and preach the gospel? Well, it's simply this, getting a fresh look at Jesus Christ.

Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in his wonderful face, and the things of earth grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. Keep your eyes upon Jesus. Let nobody else take his place, so that hour by hour you might know his power until you have run the great race.

In a word, you dear faithful friends who followed these expositions from this epistle to the Hebrews, in a word, what is it that our author has been doing? He's been turning his readership to Jesus, has he not? He's been giving them a fresh glimpse of the man who died on the cross. He has been relating the person and the achievements of Jesus to all the great personalities of the Old Testament. He's placed the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross over against all the sacrifices of the Old Testament era.

And time and time again he's come back to that conclusion that Jesus Christ is incomparable. We have a great high priest. We have a man in the glory who's interceding for us.

We have the promise of the Christ that one day he will come back to this world. He will shake the universe. All right, you may live in the second century.

You might be a second generation Christian. You might feel that you don't know the power of the Holy Spirit as they knew its operation in an age gone by. But you've got so much to stimulate you that any thought of going back to Judaism, any thought of renouncing your faith, of becoming apostate, let alone heretical, should be banished from your mind.

We have a great high priest. Cast not, therefore, away your confidence. Now, isn't that the message of Hebrews? The message to dispirited Christians? Don't lose hope.

And even this business of power being experienced a generation, or in our case, centuries ago, that you have not experienced, don't get over-dispirited about that. Remember the sovereignty of God and recall the fact that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And what he's done in the past, he can do in the present, and he can do in the future within his purposes.

Our task is to remain true, to preach the gospel, and to await the sovereignty of God in determining the great movements of revival with which sometimes he has favoured his church. Well, then, we come to this 13th and final chapter. And perhaps at first we're a little astonished to discover, as we scan it quickly, that according to the writer, he's written just a brief letter.

We may wonder what he calls a long letter, if this is a short one. But basic to the fact, or rather compared with the fact of the amount of information that is in this epistle, it's not unduly long, you know? I've been in London most of the day, and coming back on the train, it's always an astonishment to people when you take out a Bible on the train. Have you noticed that? You'll go all coy, as though you're a bit weird.

Anyway, I got out my Bible and started to read through Hebrews. Actually, I commenced when I got to... You commuters know the time of the train. I think I was at Gatwick when I started.

So, I guess the train had been going for about a quarter of an hour or 20 minutes, maybe half an hour before we got to Gatwick. And I was virtually through this epistle by the time we got to Worthing. Not such a long epistle.

And when you think, as I say, of all that is in it, it's a relatively brief track, but compressed into it are some marvelous truths, as we have discovered. So, in the final verses, the writer tells us not only about the brief little letter that he has written, he also tells us one or two things about himself, and he brings together several seemingly miscellaneous comments, practical teachings that he wants to share with his readership. And it's not easy in one study to hold all this together in front of you.

But I think that I alighted in my deliberations on this chapter earlier this week one way in which to do it. Let me show you what is the main part of this chapter, what the whole thing swings on. And if you can follow my reasoning, I reckon in between the 9th verse right through to the 15th verse, you've got the pivot of the whole chapter.

As I said, there are going to be some miscellaneous comments that precede these verses, and there will be one or two additional remarks which follow. But from the 11th to the 16th verses, there is compressed a little bit more teaching, which is in effect a recap on what has gone before. Here from the 11th verse onwards, the writer speaks once again about the Old Testament and the high priest and the offering of sacrifices.

He tells us, as we remember from a past study, in the 9th and 10th verses and 11th verse, how the high priest used to take the blood of an animal into the holy place in the sanctuary, and there he would paint the blood on the Ark of the Covenant. But he goes on to tell us something that he didn't refer to in an earlier chapter. He tells us what happened to the body of the animal from which the blood was collected.

The bodies, he says, in the latter part of the 11th verse, the bodies are burnt outside the camp. You see, outside where the Israelites stayed was reckoned to be unholy ground, and there the animal that had shed its blood was burnt. Now here our writer says something that's amazing.

It's fresh to all that he has said so far. He likens what happened to that animal to our Lord Jesus Christ, because if you remember, as indeed you most certainly do, when he died on the cross of Calvary, it was outside the city, outside Jerusalem itself, where he was offered as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. Look at verse 12.

So Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. So have you got the picture? Here we are halfway through this epistle, or rather halfway through this chapter, and our writer once again goes back to Jesus. He can't stop himself.

He's intoxicated with Jesus Christ and with the consequence of his death and later on, as you will see, his resurrection. All right, he said. You know about the Old Testament and the sacrificial system.

I've taken you to the holy place. We've seen the blood of the animal applied to the Ark of the Covenant. Now watch this.

As the priest burns the body of the animal that was slain outside the camp, see Jesus Christ at Calvary. There he is outside the city. He's at an accursed place, for Calvary is reckoned to be unholy, impure, and it's there that Jesus makes an atonement for the likes of you and me.

Jesus was rejected by the inhabitants of Jerusalem. He came unto his own, but his own received him not, and ultimately their rejection is made absolute as Christ hauls his cross up that skull-shaped hill and in the place of rejection, in the place that he's accursed, he dies for you and for me. Now if you've got that in mind, there's a fresh bit of teaching which our author is going to smuggle in.

If Jesus would not be accepted in Jerusalem, if that is thought as an ungodly society and he goes to the place outside the city, should not you, should not I, who follow Christ, renounce the city of this world, the ungodliness of the 1st century and 20th century lifestyles, shouldn't we go to him? Should not we live alongside the Lord Jesus? Should we not keep company with the Saviour? Well my friend, if you will accept the fact that that passage is the pivot on which everything else swings, then you'll be able to gather together the miscellaneous comments that precede this passage and follow it. The Christian, I say, is called, like Moses was to leave Egypt, to leave the city of this world. The materialism, the lifestyle of sinful people, we're to go out from the world, so to speak.

We're going to take our stand alongside Jesus Christ and if we keep company with Jesus, then there will be certain things that will differentiate us from anybody else. Let me go over the latter part of that application for a moment, in case you've missed me, at least in case you've missed the point. The Christian per se, in himself, is a follower of Jesus.

He is in the world, but he's not of the world. That doesn't mean to say that everyone who is a believer becomes monastic in their lifestyle. That was the error that crept into the church in the third centuries and exclusivism has been one of the heresies of the church down the centuries.

You see, our Lord Jesus Christ, in his earthly life, showed that he was different from ordinary people. He was in the world, but he was not of it. He didn't accept the low standards of the publicans and of the sinners.

It was obvious that he was different. Similarly, ourselves, we're called to live as Jesus lived, in the world, but not of it. You remember, and perhaps this clears the point up better, you remember how Jesus said of the church that it is the salt of the earth.

Now, what does salt do? Well, it savors. I cannot abide fish and chips without salt, but I don't pop a cube of salt into my mouth and then have the meal. Neither do I have the meal and then take the salt.

Rather, and I'm an expert at eating that English dish, I sprinkle the salt on the fish and on the chips. Similarly, Jesus said that the church is salt to the world. Not everybody federated together in one monastery.

That would be absurd. But rather scattered amongst the nations, but living in a way that marks the Christian off from his fellow unbelieving citizen. Keeping company with Jesus spiritually, ensuring that he's living out the Christian ethic.

So, if you will accept that those verses I've just indicated, right from the 9th to the 16th, are the pivot on which this chapter swings. If you will believe, and I don't see how you can argue against it, that your calling is to go and stand alongside the Lord Jesus Christ, then we will discover in these verses that precede this passage and the verses that follow what the practicalities of all this are. Because our writer is a very practical preacher.

Now, if I stand shoulder to shoulder with Jesus Christ, it's going to affect the way that I indulge in any relationship that I have. And it's to that that reference is made between the first and the third verses. If I stand shoulder to shoulder with Jesus Christ, then how about this for touching on taboo subjects, it's going to affect my attitude to sex and my attitude to money.

If I am standing shoulder to shoulder with Jesus Christ, then it's going to affect the way that I acknowledge the leadership of the church and the local churches which Jesus has established. You see how practical then this teaching is? Here is a Christian, and he's different from the worldling. How is he different? Well, he's different because of the way he relates to certain situations as he goes through this world.

Let's look at the first three verses. If I stand shoulder to shoulder with Jesus, if I go out and follow him, then it's going to affect the way I treat, verse 1, my brother, verse 2, the stranger that passes through the town in which I'm living, and also verse 3, my attitude to believers who are suffering for Christ's sake. Jesus was a man of love.

He told us that God is love. And wherever you see Jesus in action, you see Agape illustrated. He left a command to his church, this is my commandment, that you love one another.

Now I am stimulated to love my brother and sister in Christ simply because they are in Christ, and because he left a tremendous example. It is a contradiction to say that you're standing shoulder to shoulder with Jesus, you're keeping company with him, and not having Agape love towards your fellow believer. And it's on that practical test that the church has often collapsed as far as its witness has gone.

Because very often, instead of being a united loving community of brothers and sisters, local churches have become places in which there are a variety of opinions, sometimes strongly held. There have been squirrels and bite-bitings, and anything but Agape love. Well, that in itself is a contradiction.

Those who belong to the Lord Jesus Christ are to ensure that they keep on loving each other as brothers do, taking their stimulus from the Lord Jesus Christ. One of the great motives, or rather one of the great reasons why the early church was so successful was because the heathen had to comment on how these Christians loved one another. So if you keep company with Jesus by the cross, if you stand shoulder to shoulder with him, then you will have such a love for your fellow that you will indeed look upon him as beloved in the Lord.

That doesn't necessarily mean that you join a sort of hug-a-minute club. There are many ways in which you show love. Physically, yes.

Sometimes an embrace is a very desirable and a very Christian thing. But there are deeper, more consistent ways of showing Agape love than just the gushing, immediate embrace when two people meet. Agape love demands the opening of our homes to those who need, legitimately, our hospitality.

Agape love means, verse 3, associating myself with the situation of those who are suffering, whether in prison or in other circumstances, for the cause of Christ, and to suffer in such a degree that it's just as though I myself were in pain. That's what Jesus did. When Paul is stopped on the Damascus Road, Jesus says to Paul, Why persecute you me? And by me, Jesus was referring to the church which was being pained by Paul's persecution.

Oh, to feel for my fellow brother to the extent that when he's in distress, it really does hurt me. You can't pretend to do that. You can't act it out theatrically.

But it's possible to know such a deep emotional relationship with our fellow brothers and sisters that we're pained when they're pained. We're happy when they're happy. And that's what Jesus said was the ideal, even though we must confess, I included, many of us here don't attain to it.

If I stand shoulder to shoulder with Jesus Christ, then it affects my attitude secondly, to my family, in terms of the marital relationship, in terms of sexual behavior, in terms also of how I handle my money in the domestic situation or otherwise. You see, again, the Bible never blushes in touching on such things. The Bible cannot be accused of being Victorian because it was written before the Victorian age ever came onto the stage of history.

The Bible deals sensibly with relationships, be they physical or be they emotional. The Bible will touch on sex and tell us that it is pure within the context as it was designed by God. But the Bible will come down very, very heavily on adultery and homosexuality and all the various perversions.

And the man who stands shoulder to shoulder with Jesus, the woman who stands shoulder to shoulder with Jesus, will handle that area of their life rightly and will esteem that gift that God has granted within the context that He designed, and in the very business of money. Well, says our writer, keep yourself free from the love of money, and echoing the teaching of John the Baptist, he says, be content with what you have. It would have been a brave man who preached that in Brighton last week.

It would be a brave man who preached that in... It wasn't Brighton, was it? Blackpool? No, it wasn't, it was Brighton. Anyway, you know what I'm referring to. That will have fooled everyone who's listening to the tape later on.

The need of this teaching, of course, is relevant today, how we handle our money, being content with what we have, and recognizing that that is not impractical because the Christian lives at a higher level than the unbeliever. Here are the promises of God, first of all given to Joshua, and repeated again in the Old Testament. Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.

God does provide for those who trust Him. And the psalmist gets up, and he gives his example. He testifies to the grace of God.

The Lord is my helper. I will not be afraid. What can man do to me? Standing shoulder to shoulder with Jesus Christ means that in my family life, in my whole attitude to sexual relationship, in my whole attitude to money, I handle these things well because I apply the teaching of Jesus.

I've gone out and I've stood with Him. But not only that, our author is going to be even more practical. He's going to talk to us about our conduct in the Church, and he's going to refer to the great Christian pioneers that the Church of these Hebrew Christians have.

Look at the 7th verse. Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Well, these were remarkable men.

We made reference to that when commenting in chapter 2 on the greatness and the God-inspired ministries that these men exercised. Now our writer says their example should stimulate you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.

And remember that Jesus Christ who provided the leadership in days gone by is the same yesterday and today and forever. You had good leaders in the past, aye, he says, and you've got good leaders now. So we go to the 17th verse.

Obey your leaders. Submit to their authority. Was there a tendency to anarchy in this Hebrew community? I don't know.

We're not told. But it was important apparently for the writer of the epistle at least to put down this injunction, look, obey your present leaders. I acknowledge that they too are a gift from God.

And they are men who have a specific responsibility which is brought out even more clearly in the Authorized Version of the Bible. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account, an account for your souls. Obey them so that their work will be a joy and not a burden for that would be of no advantage to you.

Now again, you see, this is another area in which you can test yourself if you're standing side by side with Jesus. It's Jesus who gives agape love for you to apply to your brothers and sisters. Are you using that love? Then our Lord Jesus is pleased.

It's Jesus who gives the gift of relationships to some at one level or at another level to all. Are we handling these all right? Then the Lord Jesus is pleased with us. Our money, the way we cope with the domestic scene, materialism.

Are we applying Christian principles? Then as we stand side by side, Jesus too is pleased with us because these are part of the gifts that he has granted. But even in the church, my friend, the very leadership that is there is a God-given blessing. This is what Paul says in Ephesians 4. God gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors, some teachers.

God gives. Therefore, if a man or if a group of men have honestly indicated that they are part of God's equipment for the church, then if you stand side by side with Jesus, you acknowledge this and you thank God for them as long as they are leading you in the ways of truth. You see, a church which throws overboard its leadership slips back into anarchy.

That's why the apostle Paul, wherever he went in Asia Minor, on his second visits, having established churches on his first visits, appoints elders and deacons because he wants the churches to be run properly. And Jesus Christ, we're told in Hebrews, is pleased when the leadership that he has bestowed in his church is recognized by the church community. So then, you see how very wonderfully all this miscellaneous teaching locks into place when you first of all drop down, as we did at the beginning of our study, to that passage which highlights our attention on the Lord Jesus and says that we're standing side by side with him.

Well, what are we to do next? Well, just very briefly, to go through the concluding comments. And from the 18th verse and onwards, he makes personal reference, does our writer. He needs to be prayed for.

What a wonderful thing is this. The only self-disclosure that there is in the book of Hebrews is when the writer says, will you pray for me? And just to show that he really means it, that this is no appeal to a false modesty, he repeats it in the 19th verse. I particularly urge you to pray so that I may be restored to you soon.

You see, this was no man who was cracking the whip. This was no Egyptian taskmaster taking joy in writing a pretty stiff, somber letter to these Hebrews. He was one of them.

And he was concerned that they may be corrected in the faith. And he identifies himself with them. And so he says, pray for me, as very often we find him using a plural pronoun in earlier chapters, again identifying himself with the readership.

And then he says, look, you pray for me. Here's a bargain, I'll pray for you. Well, he doesn't quite put it as crudely as that, but very, very beautifully breaks out into one of the most lovely prayers in the whole of Scripture from the 20th verse, that great benediction.

May the God of peace, of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant, back again with blood, you see. He's got this on his mind because Calvary is always at the forefront of his thinking. Through the eternal covenant brought back from the dead, our Lord Jesus Christ.

The first time that the resurrection is touched on here in Hebrews, he keeps it right to the end. God brought this man back from the grave. Not just Jesus, the Lord Jesus Christ, that great shepherd of the sheep, the one who has given elders, pastors, shepherds.

He's the greatest shepherd of all. Now may he keep you. May he equip you.

May he give you the ability to love one another, to be faithful in marriage, to be faithful in handling finance, to be faithful to your leadership. May he equip you in every work that is pleasing to him through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. And then again, another urge.

You see, this man is so concerned. He knows that what he's written is from God. Some of you here are preachers, so you will understand what I'm saying.

Some of you have been members of a congregation and have benefited by far superior ministries to the one that you're hearing this evening. But you will know that there are times when when a man is preaching, he knows that what he is saying is from God. That seems a very bold comment, and it would not be understood by the unbeliever.

But there are times when you know that what you are saying is from God. Call that prophecy. I don't know.

I'm not bothered about arguing over these terms. But I tell you myself, humbly, not with false piety, there are times when I know that what I have to say comes not from me, but from God above. And in a superlative fashion, this man knows that his ministry encapsuled in these chapters, it's not from himself, it's from God.

So he says, take it, brothers, even if it hurts you, take it, because I've written it to you for your benefit. And then one or two just little comments to show that he is very human. Timothy, well, let me tell you, he's been released.

He's got out of prison, and he's going to come to you. And if he gets before, then I promise you, I'll come and see you as well. I want you to greet all your leaders, all God's people, give them my greetings, because obviously the people who received this letter knew who the author was.

And then he says, where I've been writing from, wherever that may have been, there are some Italian Christians, and they sent greetings to you. And his final comment, grace be with you all. So you see how that last chapter is not just a collection of comments that don't hang together.

It's a chapter that has as its pivot the thought of standing where Jesus stands. And when you do that, then every area of your life is altered, because you live for Jesus, a salt bringing savor to the world. May God have blessed this series to you.

Amen.