Let’s take our Bibles together and turn to the Book of Hebrews. We are down to the wire in our study of this book. And we come today to another section that is chock full of bossy, preachy, Christ-glorifying commandments. But these commandments are quintessentially the Book of Hebrews. The author of this book doesn’t just say, “Don’t be legalistic about foods!” He says, “Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods… We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat…” (13:9-11). 

The author doesn’t just say, “Press on through persecution!” He says, “So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured” (13:12-13).

He doesn’t just say, “Let’s worship the Lord, Hallelujah!” He says, “Through him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name” (13:15). And all this might strike us as circuitous and overly creative. It’s almost Shakesperean the way he communicates. But we’ve been looking at the book of Hebrews for almost a year. We are familiar now with this author’s literary style and literary art. He’s an artist. He’s artistic and creative. And he is steeped in the OT, and he loves to work OT imagery and OT ideas into his arguments. 

But at bare bones, this section of Scripture is a package of commands. Do this. Don’t do that. Not commands given so that we might be saved by Christ. But commands given to be obeyed, because we are saved by Christ. This passage isn’t about salvation through Christ, it’s about obedience to Christ. And one of the hallmarks of the Christian faith is “long obedience in the same direction.”   

Go ahead and write this down as #1. Long obedience in the same direction. What does that mean? What does that look like for the Christian? Well, it means staying faithful to apostolic teaching. 

For a Christian, long obedience in the same direction means…

1) Staying faithful to apostolic teaching (13:9-11)

What’s apostolic teaching? It’s the teaching of the apostles: Peter, James, John, Paul, Matthew, etc. It’s the teaching of the apostles that emphasized that Christ is sufficient for salvation. It’s salvation “by faith alone” and “by grace alone” and “by Christ alone.” Those refrains weren’t invented by the Protestant Reformers. That’s the teaching of the NT. And before that teaching was written down and canonized as Scripture, it was passed from the apostles to the churches.  

And ever since the beginning of the church, there has been an active attempt to undermine this teaching. There have been attempts to say, “Yes, Jesus plus this other thing; that’s how salvation works.” It’s the oldest and most virulent heresy. You might call it “the Jesus plus heresy.” And what’s interesting to me is how often the “plus” in that Jesus plus heresy involves food. 

For instance, there were certain Judaizers in Paul’s day that were saying, “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch.” Paul says, in Colossians 2:20-21, “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations— ‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch.’” Paul says, “These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh” (2:23). 

Paul said in that same section of Scripture, “[L]et no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ” (Col 2:16-17). Paul said in Romans 14:17, “the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” And he said in 1 Corinthians 8:8, “Food will not commend us to God. We are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do.”

Paul also warned in 1 Timothy about a certain kind of asceticism that was spreading in the church. He talked about liars with seared consciences “who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth” (1 Tim 4:2-3). In just about every one of Paul’s epistles in the NT there is something about food and there is something about the dangers of legalism.

Something like this must have been happening in this church—the church to whom the author of Hebrews is writing! There were false teachers proliferating false teachings. And their false teaching wasn’t like, “Don’t eat pork or shellfish because it’s not healthy.” It wasn’t even, “Don’t eat pork or shellfish because it’s not good for your spiritual life.” It was more like this: “Don’t eat pork or shellfish because if you do you will make God angry and compromise your salvation.” It was that insidious! Why else would the author say this in verse 9? 

9 Do not be led away by diverse and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, which have not benefited those devoted to them.

Salvation is by grace not by grub! Salvation is by faith not by food. And it’s not faith plus food either. It’s faith alone. It’s grace alone. It’s Christ alone. It’s interesting to me here that the first in this list of dos and don’ts in verse 9 is a statement about avoiding dos and don’ts. Don’t be led astray by the wrong list of dos and don’ts. 

And this statement in verse 9 is in perfect contrast to what the author just said in verse 8. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” And that was right after he told them to remember those leaders who had taught them the Word of God in verse 7. So here he’s saying, Stick with the Word of God that was taught to you by your leaders. Don’t be led astray by diverse and strange teaching. Stick with the Word of God and stick with Jesus. His truth is unchanging, because he is unchanging. 

By the way, there are two words here that describe the “teachings” that we should stay away from: “diverse” and “strange.” The Greek word “diverse” is the word ποικίλος. Diversity is a great thing in the kingdom of God. I love diversity. But you don’t want diversity with the gospel. You want narrow, biblical, monolithic commitments to Christ, the gospel and to apostolic teaching. If someone comes into our church and says, “I have a different interpretation of eschatology than what the church has.” Okay, we can handle that. But if someone comes in and says, “I don’t think Christ is sufficient for salvation,” that’s a problem. Now we’ve got diverse and strange teaching that is not only unbiblical; it’s not even Christian. 

The second word here is the word “strange” which is ξένος. I mentioned this word last time when I talked about hospitality or φιλοξενία. These words are related: ξένος meaning “strange” and φιλοξενία meaning “love for strangers.” We are to show hospitality to strangers, but not to strange teaching. We are to show love to strangers, but we show no love to strange teachings and strange teachers.

And here’s why. Look at how the author of Hebrews ties in the gospel. 

10 We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat. 11 For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp.

Now if you or I were telling people to watch out for legalist food regulations that compromised the gospel, this is not how we would explain it. This is quintessentially Hebrews. And here’s the idea. We don’t need food regulations, because we have Christ! And Christ, who died on a better altar, the cross, offers a better more lasting redemption than what was offered on those OT altars by OT priests. 

The reference here is to the Day of Atonement ceremony, which has already been covered in full in this book. Once a year the High Priest would offer up a “cover-all” offering for the people of Israel. And the priest couldn’t eat that sacrifice. They had to take the bodies of the bull and the goat outside the came to be incinerated. But Christ’s altar isn’t like that.

We can metaphorically speaking eat the flesh of Christ and drink his blood as atonement for sin. Jesus speaks of this when he says, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (John 6:51). 

We commemorate that regularly here with the Lord’s Supper. And we can approach the altar with confidence as well, since Christ is a once-for-all sacrifice. Only the High Priest could go to the altar in the OT era. Only the High Priest could enter the Holy of Holies. 

But we have full access to God through the greater High Priest, Jesus Christ, who offers a better sacrifice, namely himself. And so we don’t have to worry about what we can eat and when we eat it. We don’t have to worry about OT regulations of food and dietary laws. Those things have been fulfilled in Christ. 

So there are a lot of dos and don’ts in Hebrews 13. Do love your brother. Do show hospitality. Don’t defile the marriage bed. Don’t be obsessed with money. Do remember your leaders. 

And one of the don’ts in this passage full of dos and don’ts is “Don’t get concerned with dos and don’ts involving food!” If you want to do a fancy diet, go right ahead. If you want to follow OT regulations regarding food, go right ahead. If you want to do a “Daniel fast” and eat only what Daniel ate, go right ahead. If you want to be a vegetarian, God bless you! But be careful that you don’t foist your food regulations on others. And God forbid that we would ever let our dietary regulations compete with Christ. If you do, then you are compromising the one true apostolic teaching that was passed down to us.  

Go ahead and write this down as #2. Here’s another thing that long obedience in the same direction requires. It requires… 

2) Bearing the reproach of others (13:12-14)

Look at verse 12 with me. 

12 So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood.

This is what you might call a “creative segue” by the author of Hebrews. He just talked about how the High Priest couldn’t eat the meat of the Day of Atonement ceremony. But instead, that meat was burned outside the camp. And, speaking of outside the camp, Jesus also suffered outside the camp. 

In John 19, the Apostle John makes a point of telling us that Jesus “went out” to the place called Golgotha, which means the “place of the skull” (19:16-17). John knew all about this, because John was there. And that makes sense in regard to the modus operandi of the Romans at that time. The Romans used crucifixion as a deterrent. They used crucifixion as a means of humiliation and warning: “Don’t be like this guy or you’ll end up on a cross like him.” And so, they would crucify people outside the city on the main roads leading into the city. 

That’s what happened to Jesus. He was taken outside the city gates and put to death. And so part of the indignity of the crucifixion involved this shame of being made a spectacle. “Look at this guy. Look at this troublemaker.” And they added insult to injury by adding that ironic sign, “King of the Jews” in three languages above his cross (John 19:19-22). Little did they know how true that sign was.

And this is our savior, people! This is our king! Our king was humiliatingly punished and put to death outside the city of Jerusalem! They hated him, and the killed him. Why would we expect people to love and admire us for following him?  

That’s why the author of Hebrews says in verse 13:

13 Therefore let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. 

In other words, we are the outsiders. We are reproach-bearers. Get used to it! Quit thinking that Christianity is a gravy train to make all your wildest dreams come true. Quit thinking that Jesus is here to give you your best life now. That’s not how Christianity works, and that’s not how Christianity has ever worked. 

And I can imagine in the first century, this church full of Jewish Christians being like, “What gives, man? I came to Christ. I believed the gospel. But all I got for it was suffering and persecution. They took my property. They put my friends in prison. My Jewish friends and family have disowned me. Best life now? My life (humanly speaking) was better when I was a Jew without Christ!” 

I have this really twisted fantasy with prosperity preachers who preach all this crazy stuff about Jesus making you rich and wealthy and well-loved. I’d love to just put them in a time machine and drop them off in the first century and see what kind of traction they get in that world. Can you imagine the Apostle Paul talking to those guys? He’d probably say, “What world are you guys living in?” Actually he’d probably say, “Let him be accursed who preaches another gospel than what we have preached to you” (Gal 1:8).

Does Christ give us peace and joy? Yes, he does. Does Christ bring fulfillment and contentment into our lives? Yes, he does. Does Christ meet the deepest needs of our heart? Yes, he does. If that’s what you mean by “your best life now” than I agree with that. But belonging to Christ also means bearing the reproach that he endured.

When I was in high school, I was always that “weird Christian kid.” It was this stigma that I couldn’t shake. And then I got into college and into the work world and I was that guy who actually believes what the Bible says. What a weirdo! And I didn’t like being stigmatized like that. But eventually I got used to it. And I just accepted it. “Okay, I’ll be the weirdo.”

And here’s why we can do that. This is hard for us to handle emotionally, but it’s true.   

14 For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.

I’ll be honest with all of you, I love San Antonio. I love this city. I love the Alamo. I love the San Antonio Spurs. I love my neighborhood on the north-side of town. I love being back in Texas after spending twenty years as a sojourner in another land. And it pains me to say this, but it’s true—this city isn’t my eternal home.

14 For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.

My permanent residency isn’t San Antonio; it’s the New Jerusalem. And so it shouldn’t shock me, or you, when people on this side of the New Jerusalem don’t like us. Part of our duty as Christians following Christ is bearing the reproach of others. 

And there was a time when being a Christian in our country wasn’t as hard as it is now. There was a time when being a follower of Christ didn’t involve the same level of stigmatization. (And by the way, I think it’s going to get harder in the days ahead). And as our country and our world grows more and more antagonistic towards Christianity, we’re learning who among our ranks is really a follower of Christ, and who was just walking a path of least resistance. Some Christians get freaked out when they see “confessing Christians” de-convert or walk away from their faith. That doesn’t surprise me. I don’t like it. But it doesn’t shock me anymore.  

And those who persevere, those who are genuinely saved, they understand that here, we have no lasting city. We seek the city that is to come.

Write this down as #3. Here’s another thing that long obedience in the same direction requires. 1) Staying faithful to apostolic teaching. 2) Bearing the reproach of others. And…

3) Offering up sacrifices of praise (13:15)

So here’s some more creativity with our author. He’s been circling this sacrificial imagery since verse 10. And he’s used it creatively to talk about grace not food. The high priest couldn’t eat the food of the sacrifice on the Day of Atonement, but we can. He’s used it creatively to talk about bearing reproach. Christ was sacrificed outside of the gates of the city, so we should bear the reproach that he did. And now he uses it to talk about two kinds of sacrifices that we can offer up to God: 1) A sacrifice of praise and 2) A sacrifice of generosity. Let’s talk first about the sacrifice of praise.

Look at verse 15.

15 Through him [that is through Christ] then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. 

We don’t offer up animal sacrifices to the Lord anymore. Aren’t you glad about that? I’m glad, because as your spiritual leader, I don’t really want to slit the throats of animals up here and bleed them out. We have a once-for-all-time sacrifice that is eternal and sufficient. We’ve been through all that in the book of Hebrews.

But we can offer up this! We can offer up a sacrifice of praise to God. The word for “praise” here is the hapax legomenon αἴνεσις which is cognate to the verb αἰνέω meaning “to praise” or “to extoll.” The OT language of hallelujah is similar. In Hebrew hallelujah is actually a command. It’s an imperative, “Praise (hallelu) the LORD (jah)!”

“How do we do this, Pastor Tony?” “How do we praise the Lord and offer up a sacrifice of praise to God?” Well, let’s get really practical. I’ll give you two ways. 1) The first is this—get to church! Abd sing your hearts out at church! Praising God isn’t limited to singing, but I do think that singing is especially important to God’s heart, and that’s why he dedicated a whole book of the Bible (Psalms) to songs and singing. And it’s one of the ways that God has wired us to access our emotions. I could say to you right now, “It is well (it is well) // with my soul (with my soul).” But it accesses something deeper and more emotive in me if I were to sing that… especially if I were to sing that as a group with my church family! 

When the OT Israelites got together to worship, they would sing praises to God. When the early church got together they would sing praises to God. The church for two-thousand years has gathered together to sing and to praise God. You might say, “I’m not a very good singer, Pastor Tony.” That’s okay. That’s the benefit of corporately singing at church. We can drown you out!

2) Here’s a second way to offer up a sacrifice of praise to God. Obviously the author means more than just Sunday morning worship because he uses the word “continually” in verse 15. Continually means more than just on Sunday. But it doesn’t mean meaningless continual repetition either like those who repeat “Hare Krishnas” over and over again as a kind of religious mantra. No, the idea here is that praise of God is persistently on our lips. We vocalize his name. We talk about him. We testify to others about him. Look at the specificity of verse 15. 

let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge his name. 

That word for “acknowledge” is the Greek ὁμολογέω. It means to profess or to confess allegiance. You talk about God. You testify about his work in your life. This is the fruit of your lips that actually says something. 

“No, Pastor Tony. I’m one of those secret Christians. Shhh! Don’t tell anybody.” No! There’s no such thing as a “secret Christian.” Jesus said, “everyone who acknowledges (ὁμολογέω) me before men, I also will acknowledge (ὁμολογέω) before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven” (Matt 10:32). Paul said, “if you confess (ὁμολογέω) with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom 10:9). Christians are talkers. Christians are testifiers. 

Every time you talk about God with an unbeliever and get shot down for your faith, that’s a sacrifice of praise to God. Every time you lead someone to Christ by your personal testimony or your sharing of the gospel, that’s a sacrifice of praise to God. Every time you sing a song in the shower… every time you go through a hardship and say, ‘may God be praised’ … every time you eat a piece of luscious chocolate cake and shout aloud “Hallelujah, Praise the Lord!” … you are offering up a sacrifice of praise to God. 

“How often should we do that, Pastor Tony?” As often as you can.. As often as it’s true. To be honest, we could be saying “praise God” 24/7 and seven days a week, and it would never be untrue. The key is to say it and mean it, not to just say it or sing it in rote fashion like a mindless robot. 

And let me give you some advice about this. Let me get really, really practical if you are new at this. Try to accomplish this every day. Every day, do three things before you do anything else. Read God’s Word. Pray for your day. And praise God for what he’s done for you. “Pastor Tony, I get up at like 5:30am to go to work.” Okay, well do this at lunchtime or at nighttime. Or get up at 5:15am and do these three things: 1) five minutes of Scripture reading, 2) five minutes of prayer, 3) five minutes of praising God. Offer up a sacrifice of praise. Sacrifices are costly. It should cost you something. It’s better than bringing animals to the priests to have them slaughtered in front of you.

Finally, write this down as #4. One final thing for long obedience in the same direction. The author of Hebrews says in verse 16.

16 Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God. 

There is offering up sacrifices of praise, but there is also…

4) Offering up sacrifices of generosity (13:16) 

16 Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have,

This is a great way to practically live out the commands of φιλαδελφία and φιλοξενία. Remember those commands at the beginning of chapter 13? Love your brothers. Love strangers. How do you do that? Well you share what you have with them.

And how important would that have been in this first century world where some in the church had their property confiscated? Maybe that meant opening up your home to believers who had just had their homes commandeered by the powers-that-be. Maybe that meant sharing resources. Maybe that meant sacrificially giving to the church and to others as needed. Sacrifices should cost us something. And yet those sacrifices are pleasing to God. 

How can we do this in our twenty-first century world? How can we obey this command in Hebrews 13:16 in our day? 

Several years ago, I read a book called Christians are Hate-Filled Hypocrites… and Other Lies You’ve Been Told. It was written by a Christian researcher and sociologist named Bradley Wright. And the thesis of Wright’s book is essentially that the world has been fed an inaccurate misrepresentation of evangelical Christians, because on average evangelical Christians are more loving, more caring, more generous, more honest, more holy, and more thoughtful than people in the non-Christian world. And the author of that book puts together some significant amount of data to substantiate that claim. And I personally didn’t need a book to tell me that, because I’ve seen examples of that my entire life. And that doesn’t mean that Christians are perfect, don’t get me wrong. We’ve got our flaws. But it means that we have a motivating factor in our lives that pushes us forward in these categories.   

And why is that so? Why is that the case? Well, two reasons. First because Christians have the Spirit of the Living God dwelling inside of them pushing them to demonstrate love, mercy, generosity, holiness, etc. And secondly, it’s because we’ve got passages in the Bible like Hebrews 13:16 that say, “Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.”

Now, that doesn’t mean that we rest on our laurels. It means, we keep doing what we’ve been doing. It means that we do good when we can. It means that we show mercy when we can. It means that we share what we have, when we can. Why? Because that pleases God. 

By the way, I touched on this last time with the statements about greed and the love of money. I don’t believe that the cure for greed in our world is poverty. I personally think the poverty gospel is just as insidious and ridiculous as the prosperity gospel. The cure for greed isn’t poverty; it’s generosity. If God has given you much… if he’s entrusted you with much… then he’s given you a golden opportunity to be generous and bless the world with your finances. Most times, I don’t encourage Christians to make less money. I encourage them to make more money and give more money away.  

By the way, that word for “share” in Greek is the famous word κοινωνία. It’s a famous word in the NT. And it’s a flexible word that’s used to describe a lot of things in the Christian life. Literally what the author of Hebrews says in verse 16 is something like this, “Do not neglect do-gooding and koinonia.” And the idea here is that part of the ethos of the church, part of the fellowship that we enjoy with each other, is a spirit of generosity and goodness and care for one another. We are called to be charitable and benevolent and generous one to another. So, be generous, church! Offer up sacrifices of generosity. It should hurt a little bit when you give. It’s a sacrifice.  

Long obedience in the same direction. Long obedience in the same direction, church. Staying faithful to apostolic teaching. Bearing the reproach of others. Offering up sacrifices of praise. Offering up sacrifices of generosity. 

“That’s hard, Pastor Tony. Long obedience in the same direction is really, really difficult.” Yeah, it is. Can I offer you some encouragement in that? We’ll all be dead soon! Yeah, life is hard. And these things are difficult. But eternity is long. And look at verse 14 one more time with me: 

14 here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come.

What was the name of that city again? That city that is to come? Do you remember? 

To Jerusalem the new

Come the tried and faithful few

Back to Zion’s golden glory once again;

Highest praise our tongues employ,

With the everlasting joy,

Now a thousand voices swell the glad refrain.

Often have we heard of thee,

Blessed city of the free;

But our fathers sang thy glory far away,

Teaching us that only there,

In that world so bright and fair,

Could we hope to see thy blessed golden day. 

With thy walls of jasper bright,

Sparkling in the radiant light,

Blessed city of our God, we come to thee;

Through thy pearly gates ajar

Come the ransomed from afar,

Hear again the joyful songs of jubilee. 

Jerusalem, O Jerusalem,

Blessed city where no darkness ever falls;

Jerusalem, O Jerusalem,

Joy and peace forever be within thy walls.