This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome back to our look at Hebrews chapter 13. This is day three. We're going
to focus on verses 7 to 17 today because they go together talking about how you
and I respond to the spiritual leaders in our lives.

We're really in a list of six specific things that you and I are to do because
we're followers of Jesus. We're to love fellow believers like family. We're to
be hospitable to strangers.

We're to care for prisoners and those who are mistreated. We're to honor
marriage. Yesterday we talked about we're to live with contentment and now
number six, we're to have a good relationship with our leaders.

It is good for your spiritual health to have a good relationship with spiritual
leaders in your life, the leaders of God's church, the leaders of what God is
doing in his kingdom in this world. Now how do you do that? How do you have a
good relationship with your leaders?

Well, three specific things are talked about here. You consider the outcome of
their way of life. You don't be carried away by strange teachings and you follow
their leadership.

You obey, you submit to their spiritual authority. Let's look at all three of
those. First, you consider the outcome of their way of life.

Verse seven, "Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Consider
the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. " One of the ways to
have a good relationship with a spiritual leader is to watch their life, the
direction that they're going, and imitate their faith.

Now all of us are not perfect. This doesn't say imitate everything about their
life. There are some things that they struggle with just like you struggle with
things.

But if somebody's a spiritual leader, that means they're leading out in faith.
They have something worth imitating. So what is it about their faith that you
can imitate?

The way that they think about their family or the way they think about their
money or the way that they pray or the way that they think about this world or
the places that they go. It could be a hundred different things. It depends on
the person.

That's why God has given us a multitude of leaders. In any church you have
pastors who are leaders. You have Sunday school teachers or small group leaders
who are leaders.

You have in any church just people who maybe don't have an official role, but
spiritually they are ahead of other people in some ways. And people go to them
for leadership. God has put many spiritual leaders into your life.

So you look at their life and you see, "Oh, that's working for them. " Instead
of feeling jealous about it, you imitate it. You say, "I'm going to follow that.

" The way that you and I grow in faith is by having people we can follow. We
want to follow Jesus, but other people help us to do that. So you consider the
outcome of their way of life and you imitate their faith.

That's one way to have a good relationship with a spiritual leader. Second way
is to not be carried away by strange teachings. Let me read these verses for
you.

Verses 8-16. "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, 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 ceremonial foods,
which are of no value to those who eat them. 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.

Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise,
the fruit of lips that confess his name. And do not forget to do good and to
share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased. " These verses have
much in them that as I read them, they make you scratch your head a little bit.

What's he talking about here? Outside the camp, inside the camp, ceremonial
foods. What's this all about?

He's really talking about false teachings. As we work through these verses,
we're going to see answers to the three main reasons people, I believe, fall
into false teaching. First reason I believe people fall into false teaching is
they need something new.

They want to hear some new teaching. They don't want to hear something people
have believed for 2,000 years. They want something that appeals to their
spiritual pride.

They want to feel like, "I'm the first one who learned this. No one else knows
this. I know something no one else knows.

I know something you don't know. I understand it better than you do. " That
pride causes us to want something new.

And that desire for something new can lead us into all kinds of strange
teachings. Listen, if it hasn't been taught in the last 2,000 years by faithful
believers, somebody's come up with the idea just brand new today, something is
wrong. I'm just telling you, something is wrong.

If you want to say 2,000 years of believers were wrong and couldn't follow
Jesus, then there really is a pride issue in your life. Now what's the answer to
the "something is new"? The answer is Jesus.

Jesus is the same. Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever in verse 8.
So don't follow these people who appeal to something new, who appeal to your
pride.

A second cause of people falling into false teaching is trying to grow by
keeping rules. We fall into false teaching because we want some rule. We don't
feel comfortable with grace.

It just feels so much like a gift. If you just give me some rule so I can feel
like I'm doing something and make me feel better about myself, it'd make me feel
more sure of my salvation because I did it and I can check it off a checklist. I
just encourage you to, in your mind, say this three times slowly.

If you're all by yourself right now, you might even say it out loud. Rules
cannot produce growth. Rules cannot produce growth.

Rules cannot produce growth. Rules control things, and sometimes things need to
be controlled, but they can't create growth. Grace produces growth.

These verses say it's good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by
ceremonial foods. We're strengthened by God's grace. We're strengthened by what
God has done, not what we do.

God has things for us to do, but that's not what gets us saved. People fall into
false teaching when they feel like what they do gets them saved or keeps them
saved. That's how you fall into false teaching.

Let me tell you what happens to us sometimes when we try to keep ourselves saved
or to feel that we're keeping ourselves saved. You wouldn't say it that way
because you know that's false, but you do things to feel like you're keeping
yourself saved by what you eat or don't eat or how often you attend church or
how often you have your quiet time or don't have your quiet time. You have this
list of rules, and my picture of that is it's like your life is a tiny rowboat
in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, and you're out there all by yourself.

You're lost. You know it's useless. You're never going to be found.

You're never going to get to land, but you're rowing as hard and fast as you
can, hoping that something good happens. You're working hard to try to save
yourself, and all of a sudden on the horizon you see this gigantic cruise liner.
Let's call it God's grace.

That's its name. And this cruise liner pulls up beside you, and God expresses
his willingness to save you. Now, you were lost, and now you're found.

And you say, "Yes, I need your salvation. " He brings you on his boat. The
question is, what are you going to do on that boat?

He has lots of things for you to do on that boat, incredible things, ways to
serve, ways to make a difference in this world. All over that ship he's got
things for you to do. What we do sometimes is we remember our old way of living.

We remember the rowboat, how hard we were working. And we want to work hard on
our own behalf again for our own salvation to keep ourselves saved. So it's as
if we go down into the water, we get that old rowboat back, we put it up on that
cruise liner on the deck, we sit in it with our oars, and we row as fast as we
can, thinking that somehow we're keeping ourselves saved.

It's God's grace that's keeping you saved. It'll keep you saved if you do that
or not. Begin to live that way, you've fallen into a false teaching that keeps
you from doing the other things that God has for you to do on that boat.

God's saying, "I've got a new way for you to live. I've got new things for you
to do. " So start living that new way, start doing those new things.

Now, there's a third reason that people fall into false teaching, and I think
it's one of the most powerful ones today, actually. It's not because they want
something new, it's not because they want to keep the rules, it's because they
feel ashamed of their faith. The idea that somebody gives to you that
Christianity seems so exclusive, it seems so judgmental, and that makes you feel
bad, because you don't want to be exclusive, you don't want to be judgmental.

Now, the truth is, the truth God has told us, and I trust him, is he will judge
our sins. Not just my sins and your sins, all of our sins. Some people don't
like that, especially if you haven't gone to him for forgiveness, of course you
don't like that.

But the truth also is, Jesus opens the door to all. God's grace is open to
everybody. There's nothing exclusive about it.

Now, these verses that we read about outside the camp, inside the camp, that's
what this is all about. You see, they were feeling ashamed of their faith. They
were feeling ashamed of just trusting in Jesus.

And it was a disgrace for some of them in their families or in their
communities. And the writer of the book of Hebrews says, "Go to him who's
outside the camp. " It's okay if it's a disgrace.

It was a disgrace for Jesus to die on the cross. It was a disgrace for him to
die outside the city. And he goes on and he says in these verses, he takes the
idea of city and he takes it one step further, and he says, "This isn't the city
we're looking for anyway, some city on this earth.

" What he's saying there is, you're not looking for the approval of people on
this earth. That's not the city we live in. We're looking for the enduring city
that we're going to live in with God.

So if it's a disgrace to live for Jesus with the friends, the office, the people
that you're around today, just realize you're standing right there with Jesus,
outside the camp. And yes, it will be a disgrace to some, but the truth of the
matter is, that's not what you're living for. That's not what you're living for.

Now, we're walking through how you and I are to respond to our spiritual
leaders. We've talked about the need to follow their example and the need to not
fall to false teaching. There's one final thing very briefly, and that is, you
need to obey them and submit to their authority.

Verse 17 says, "Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch
over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a
joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.

" Now, this is a little difficult for us because the idea of obeying another
person is really difficult in our society. Even though we do more than we
realize, we just don't put that word to it. The Bible word obey has an idea of
honor in it.

It doesn't mean you give up your will. It means that you respect their
authority. We respect what God has given for them to do.

Follow their leadership for the greater health of the church, for your own
greater spiritual health. Let me give you a picture of this. The church is a
body, and the body has to have a head.

And the head of the church is, no, it's not the pastor. The head of the church
is Jesus. And as the pastors and the leaders of a church lead that church in the
direction that Jesus wants it to go, his body's going to be glorified.

Now, if you're in a place where the leaders aren't leading in the direction of
Jesus, I wouldn't even call it a church because a church has to have Jesus as
the head. Get in a church, find a church. But if you're in a church where
there's a concerted effort, there's a real desire to follow Jesus, you're not
going to always agree with your leaders, with your pastors.

They may not even always agree with themselves. They're going to change their
ideas, opinions sometimes. But what you can do is follow.

Now, follow doesn't mean you can't share your own opinion. In fact, in most
churches, it's the opinion of those who are in the church and the body out of
which the direction comes. But follow means that once we say as a church,
"Here's where we're going.

We're going to try and reach this community. Here's where we're going. We're
going to start a new church here," that we get in line together, and then you
see the power of the body working together.

That's why you follow, because the body of Christ needs to work together. When
we're separated, doing it all alone, there's little power. There's a little
power, but there's little power.

When we're working together in the body of Christ, there is enormous power. And
one of the disciplines you and I have to have in order for that to happen is to
follow the vision of the leader, spiritual leadership, knowing that that vision
is taking us in a direction that Jesus wants us to go. Now, this idea of follow
the leader that we've talked about today, it's an opportunity you and I have in
everyday life.

And I want to pray for you, for me, that God would give us the strength to let
go of some things and to hold on to some things. Our Father, we pray today, and
pray for myself, for every one of us. Help us to let go of our spiritual pride,
which says we've got to figure it all out ourselves, and help us to hold on to
the spiritual truth that you've put leaders into our lives, other people to whom
we can be accountable, who can provide a vision, provide a direction.

I pray for those who are listening to this as leaders, because many are, that
you would give them your vision and your direction. But I also pray for all of
us who are listening to this as followers, because we all are followers. You're
the head of the Church, Jesus.

Help us to look to you for vision, for direction, whether it's through our
leaders directly in our prayer life, help us to look to you in every moment of
our lives. Thank you for leading us. In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen. Tomorrow we're going to look together at Paul's simple prayer for
spiritual power. Thank you.