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What To Do With Decent Christian Leaders

Hebrews 13:7–17

Listen or read the following transcript as D. A. Carson speaks on the topic of Pastoral Ministry from Hebrews 13:7-17


“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 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. 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.”

So reads the Word of God.

Consider two churches: First Baptist Fundamentalist Way of Truth Church located in Straightville, just to the right on the map of the town of Attila in Hun County, Texas. Pastor Billy Joe Bob has been the pastor there for about 25 years. When he says, “Jump,” you jump and ask, “How high?” on the way up.

In recent years, he has gotten into television ministry and has achieved something of a broader acceptance. Unfortunately he has also picked up a mistress on the side, which has just been exposed to the glare of the public media. Nevertheless, after three months of public repentance, it’s all right. “He is back in the pulpit again because, after all, he is the pastor. We are to obey him. Christianity is about love and forgiveness anyway, isn’t it?”

The second church is Love Street Congregational Assembly. It’s located in the town of Libertyville. Country freedom. This church not only holds to democracy but to a peculiar form of it. In this vision of government, democracy and congregationalism mean everybody in the congregation basically has the right to tell the pastor where to step off.

“I mean, we’re all equally priests, aren’t we? In the congregation of Jesus Christ, no one has any special inside track. We are all members of the body of Christ. We’re all royal kings. We’re all priests. What does he think he is doing when he stands up there and tells me what to do? I mean, if he wants to share, that’s all right. But if he wants to lead, I would like to remind him this is a congregational church, and every voice has equal weight in this assembly.”

Consider two more churches. This one is in Corinth. In this church, the apostle Paul dares to write to the assembly and basically tells them to get rid of certain leaders. He calls them “false apostles” masquerading, if you please, as angels of light. He lays it on them to get rid of them before he gets there. But if they don’t, when he gets there, he will get rid of them. Do they want it gently or do they want it tough?

The second church is the assembly that is addressed by this letter to the Hebrews. “Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account.” Obey them. It gets a bit confusing, doesn’t it? When are we mandated to follow our spiritual leaders, and when, in fact, are we commanded to disobey them?

Now the passage before us clearly addresses some of these matters. It begins and ends with this injunction regarding leaders. On the one hand (verse 7), “Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.” On the back end (verse 17), “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.”

Many commentators and preachers over the years have recognized that by bracketing this section with references to leaders, these two verses constitute an inclusion. That is, a kind of literary packet that embraces everything in certain respects under the theme of leadership. Let me give you a clear example from elsewhere so you will see what I mean.

You recall the Beatitudes the Lord himself gives at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. The first beatitude in Matthew, chapter 5, is, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” There are a whole lot of other beatitudes. Then the eighth beatitude in verse 10 is, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Now all of the other beatitudes between these two have some other blessing. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled.” Or, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” But the first and the last have the same blessing. “Blessed are those who are spiritually bankrupt, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” and, “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

This inclusion thus becomes a way of saying, “All of these beatitudes are bracketed under the theme the kingdom of heaven.” Here are the norms of the kingdom. It’s an inclusion. So also here there is a kind of wholeness of thought. These are not merely isolated gems strung out like individual pearls on a string. There is a flow of thought to this whole unit which has a bearing on Christian leadership. We will understand it best, I think, if we follow it through in two main points.

1. Remember your Christian leaders and imitate them.

That’s the burden of verse 7. Remember your Christian leaders and imitate them. The text says, “Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.” The passage is clearly referring to Christian leaders, not political leaders. After all, these are the people who spoke the word of God to the Hebrews.

Moreover, they were personally known to at least some of the congregation, for this congregation is told to imitate them. Probably at the time of writing, these leaders (though not the leaders in verse 17) are dead. By the time you get to verse 17, the leaders who are in view are those who are now to be obeyed. We’re told of these leaders, “Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.” There’s been a whole pattern now that is to be obeyed retrospectively. In particular …

A. Remember your Christian leaders and imitate them in the stability and transforming effect of their faith.

See, verse 8 at first blush sounds out of place. You’re talking about Christian leaders. Then you skip verse 8, and then verse 9 says, “Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings.” In between the two, this one-line sentence: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” What’s that doing there?

I have a relative of somewhat enthusiastic persuasion who has argued with me along these lines. During the days of his flesh, the Lord Jesus never failed to heal those who persistently came to him. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Conclusion: Today also Jesus will never fail to heal those who persistently come to him.

Is that a good argument? Doesn’t the text say, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever”? If that’s what he did during the days of his flesh.… Oh, of course, some had to push a little bit, like the Syrophoenician woman had to really push before he came across. On the other hand, he never did fail to heal bodily those who actually persisted with him. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

Is it a good argument? Oh no, it’s not. A text without a context becomes a pretext for a proof text. You could equally argue Jesus Christ hung on the cross. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Therefore, he is still hanging on a cross. Formally, it’s exactly the same argument. There’s a context, you see, in which this is given.

It doesn’t follow that for Jesus to be an unchanging person in principle must mean he endures or he suffers or he undertakes or does or performs in every respect exactly how he does at all other times. It would make a mockery of his living and existing in space-time history. During the days of his flesh, he was mortal. He is not still mortal. He has a resurrection body, and he is immortal. That’s a change! This is not saying there is no change whatsoever.

The context. The context! How are we to understand this passage in its context? Well, first of all, verse 7 flows into verse 8 in the light of the whole argument of the epistle to the Hebrews. You see, by this time, the first readers have carefully read all of the other chapters. We have plunged right into chapter 13 without taking account of what has come before.

“Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. […] Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Now you’re coming up to the end of this book. How does the book begin? Back in chapter 1 in the opening prologue, we find another comment on the word of God, on the words of God.

“In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken unto us [literally] in Son.” That is, not by the Son, as if the Son were one more prophet stringing along, but in the past he spoke to the Fathers through the prophets in various ways and at various times. In these last days, he has given us the Son revelation. This is the culminating word of God, as it were.

This is very close to the language of John 1. “In the beginning was the Word …” God’s own self-expression. “… and this Word was with God, and this Word was God.” This Word of God was God’s own fellow in eternity past. This Word of God was God’s own self in eternity past. He was with God, and he was God. He is God’s self-expression, his final word, his last word, his disclosure. All through this book then, the author has been insistent on this theme: Jesus is better.

When I was in undergraduate at McGill University 30 years ago, I stayed in a men’s dorm called Molson Hall. You can tell who provided the money. There were three of these dorms up on the top of the mountain: Gardner, Molson, and McConnell. We vied for all kinds of awards and prizes and things.

At Christmas, we always vied for who would decorate the building the best. One particular Christmas there in my second or third year, in fact, our group didn’t do very much. There were 220 of us in this dorm, but we had slipped and got behind things. McConnell was all lit up, and Douglas was spectacular. We were boringly dull.

Then one night in the middle of the night, a number of students (whose identity shall remain forever hidden) went down the hill halfway to the front of the Montreal Neurological Institute, which had a huge outdoor Christmas tree that had been dumped in front of their place the day before. The branches were still tied up. It was a tree that was about six stories tall. Somehow these students managed to cart it up the mountain, backed this whole thing in to the lounge, and then shoved the front end up the stairwell.

Now this was a seven-floor dorm. This was a six-floor tree. They got it up the stairwell so the top of the tree was at floor six. Then they cut the rope. All the branches went down. Then they draped across the front of the building a huge banner “Molson is better.” Now, of course, in Canada that was an ad for the booze, in any case, at the time: “Molson is better.”

I think there was sort of a consensus around the campus that we won that year. McConnell, I think it was, then put up a sign afterward, saying, “McConnell is best.” Well, it’s true their grammar gave them the edge. The superlative is better than the comparative, but in terms of the tone, in terms of the sting, we won … hands down. “Molson is better.”

One of the favorite words in this entire book is better. It comes up again and again and again. In chapter 1, Jesus is better than the angels. He is the supreme Son. They have all kinds of glorious functions, but Jesus is better. In chapter 3, Moses was a faithful servant in his own house. He obeyed God, but Jesus is better. He is not simply a servant in the house of God; he is the Son par excellence.

In chapter 5, Aaron was the great high priest under the ancient covenant, but Jesus is better. His high priesthood brings about an access to God that ancient sacrificial system could never achieve. As you go through the book, you discover his covenant is better, his sacrifice is better, and his death is better. The sanctuary he approaches before the very presence of the living God is better. Everything about Jesus is better.

You see, this was a congregation of devout Jews who had become Christians and then under the social pressures was inclined to slip back and practice all of the old rituals of ancient Judaism so they could avoid some of the pressures and sometimes even persecutions of their ancient communities. At a certain level, you could understand it.

The difficulty was they were projecting an image that said, in effect, “We do not believe Jesus is a sufficient and exclusive Savior who alone gives us access to God.” They didn’t really believe Jesus is better. Or they believed it at a certain superficial level, but at another level, they wanted to go back and make sure they incorporated in all of their Christian rights all of these Jewish rights and so on as well, because at the end of the day, they weren’t quite comfortable with the proposition that Jesus is exclusively sufficient.

The author begins, “In the past God did speak to the fathers by the prophets at various times and in many ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us in the Son revelation.” This is the high point. This is the culmination. This is the direction to which all the rest lead. Now he says, “Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God.… Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” Indeed, verse 9: “Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings.”

In other words, what Jesus has brought in the gospel is indubitably wonderful. It is implacably glorious. It is unchangeably superlative. It is good, past imagining. Do not try to add to it. Do not try to take away from it. Do not think that it is superseded. Indeed, “Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.” Ah! Imitate their faith.

In this book, their faith is not only their faithfulness, their faithful allegiance to what God has disclosed, but the kind of faithful allegiance that tends always toward perseverance. That’s the lesson of Hebrews, chapter 11. All those Old Testament saints likewise had exercised their faith and who, in consequence, persevered and persevered and persevered and persevered, for Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Consider their faith and imitate them.

Several years ago, I was in a country in the Far East speaking to several hundred missionaries for a Bible conference. In the course of this series I made a sloppy, dismissive reference to rebirthing techniques. Now in case you haven’t come across rebirthing techniques, let me briefly explain what they are since it is necessary for the point.

Rebirthing techniques were developed in American psychology to address the problems of those who had been abused as children. This has been taken over in some branches of evangelicalism so there’s a kind of Christian version of rebirthing technique. In this Christianized version of rebirthing technique, you’re taken into a small group, and you’re asked to close your eyes. As the leader talks you through this, you are to imagine you are being born again.

I don’t mean born again in a John 3 sense. I mean, literally born again. There you are coming out your mother’s birth canal. You are to imagine it. As you emerge from your mother’s birth canal, there is Jesus who is helping you come free. He is the one who slips you out of the womb. He is the one who clamps the umbilical cord and cuts it. He is the one who holds you up by the legs and slaps your bottom so you take in the first breath of life. He is the one who wipes the yuck off your face and cuddles you and so forth.

Those who have been through this sometimes have a cathartic experience of 30 minutes of crying, and they realize deep down that Jesus loved them. I had made some dismissive reference about rebirthing techniques, and this couple caught me afterward and said, “We need to talk.” It sounded more like a threat than a promise, but in any case, we did talk. It turned out this chap who was then in his early thirties was a classic case. He had been sodomized by both his father and his uncle. For him, father was a dirty word.

Somehow he had gotten into a Christian church at the age of 17 and then was genuinely converted. Some years later, he met this young woman, and they got married. In due course, he went off to seminary. Here he was on the mission field, and he said he had had a struggle coming to terms with the image of God as father. For him, father was not a term with a lot of positive overtones. At a certain kind of level, nevertheless, he had come to accept that God loved him, that Jesus loved him, and so on, but it was more a creedal point.

Then somebody had gone through this place and had taken him just six months earlier through one of these rebirthing techniques. He said, “I wept for 40 minutes. For the first time, I felt as if Jesus really did love me from the very beginning. He was there even when I was going through all my terrible experiences of early youth. He loved me from the very beginning.”

In consequence of all of that, he said, “I feel so much better. I’m emotionally more integrated. I love my wife more freely. I receive her love more happily. I love Jesus better. Who are you to tell me it’s wrong?” I said to him, “My dear brother, if you really do love Jesus better and are better able both to give and receive love with your wife, I’m not going to begin by throwing a lot of stones. But do you really want a genuinely biblical answer even if it might hurt?”

He said, “Yes.” I said, “All right. Then you have to answer me two questions. First, where, according to the Scripture, is Jesus’ love most spectacularly manifested?” “Oh,” he said, “undoubtedly in the cross. Undoubtedly!” I said, “I assumed you would say that, but I didn’t know, and I wanted to hear it from your own lips.

Secondly, if someone had come along with a passage such as Ephesians, chapter 3, verses 17 to 21 (‘And I pray that together with all the saints, you might have power … to grasp how long and wide and high and deep is the love of God in Christ Jesus, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge …’), all in the framework of the gospel and the cross, where you yourself acknowledge Jesus’ love is most spectacularly manifest and applied it to you closely and intimately in your life, can you imagine that you might have had the same cathartic experience?”

He said, “Oh yes. I can imagine, but my point is that’s not the way it happened to me. My point is this is the way it happened to me.” I said, “But now you’ve conceded everything I need, because the Devil is not going to come to you, a missionary in training, about to do translation work in a remote tribe, and say, ‘Here is a great big load of intellectual, theological codswallop. Swallow it.’

He is going to come to you instead and say, ‘You poor, suffering chap. I know the gospel has been helpful to you but, you know, you need something else. You need a kind of psychological healing that’s going to revolutionize your life.’ Then he’ll present you an image of Jesus, which will take you away about five degrees. That’s all. In fact, much of the time, you’ll think it’s the same Jesus.

But what I want to know is when the next person comes to you with the same problem, will you direct him to the Jesus of the cross or to the Jesus who stands between your mother’s legs and wipes the yuck off your face? Because one Jesus demonstrated his love on the cross. That is the historical Jesus, the real Jesus, bound up with the real gospel, and you, yourself, acknowledge had this gospel been applied to you in an appropriate way, it could have given you all the healing you got in some other way.

I’m not denying this has been cathartically useful to you. I want to ask on the long haul if this five degrees of divergence will lead you to the Jesus who is really there, the Jesus of the gospel, the Jesus of the cross, or will it lead you finally to a psychological Jesus who wipes the yuck off your face?” Find biblical teachers who will bring you back to the center all the time.

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” The gospel doesn’t change. The Devil isn’t stupid. He is not going to come along and dangle in front of your eyes some esoteric heresy that you embrace by saying, “I love heresy.” That’s not the way most of us think. But he will introduce you to a Jesus Christ who is not the same yesterday and today and forever.

“Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God.… Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.” Burdening toward perseverance. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings.” Remember your Christian leaders, and imitate them in particular in the stability and transforming effect of their faith.

B. Remember your leaders and imitate them, in particular, in the Christ centeredness and new covenant maturity of their faith.

This overlaps with the last one but stretches beyond it. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teaching. 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.”

Now, of course, in the context of the particular tensions this church faced, these Christian believers were tempted to go back to the kosher food laws and the particular sacrificial structures of the ancient covenant. What the writer said is, “It’s good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not strengthened by ceremonial foods.” There is a kind of strengthening that does come to people from ritual. There is a kind of social strengthening, personal strengthening, that comes to people from ritual, especially if it’s a ritual of long-standing.

“We always sing the doxology with a pipe organ.” Well, I’m sure it’s strengthening. There is a sense in which it is strengthening. I don’t disagree. There are entire structural traditions that are strengthening. On the other hand, if they’re ever made to stand over against the sufficiency of the grace of God, sooner or later, we who cherish being freed from human tradition have to come to them.

I live in a part of Illinois where there are many Jews and, as a result, quite a number of Jewish messianic congregations. Some of them are flourishing, doing a great job of winning other Jews to the Lord Jesus. We have in any year any number of Jewish believers at the seminary among the student body. We have two Jews on our faculty.

What is very interesting, however, in watching these Jewish messianic assemblies is the tension that sometimes they face as for how they understand their own tradition. You see, if they are saying, “We want to observe kosher food laws in our community because this helps us to reach some of the Orthodox Jews in the community,” that’s one thing.

If, instead, they say, “Well, we’re Christians. We really do believe Jesus is the Messiah (or Yeshua is the Messiah), and we have come to trust him truly. But because we’re Jews, we should also be kosher,” then somewhere along the line I want to raise the question, “Is Yeshua a sufficient base for all godly acceptance before our heavenly Father? Or, in addition to his sacrifice on the cross, do you sort of get an inside track with God provided you maintain a kosher table? If that’s the case for Jews, is it not the same for Gentiles?”

Then I think I’m hearing overtones of Galatians coming back again. Now, of course, those traditions stand out a little more because they’re directly addressed by Scripture, but we can establish traditions in any culture where we feel safe and, in some ways, strengthened, can’t we? They’re not all bad, but if they compete with the exclusive sufficiency of the grace of God, 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.

In fact, the author says, we have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat. Here, of course, he is going back to his exposition of the flow of movement in the Bible, the flow of movement in redemptive history. Yes God did give that massive sacrificial system. The high point from the perspective of the author of the epistle to the Hebrews was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

On that day, the high priest took the blood of a bull and a goat and went into the Most Holy Place in the temple in the very presence of God and sprinkled this blood on the top and down the front of this box, this ark of the covenant, both for his own sins and for the sins of the people. The carcass and the offal and what was left of the animal were taken outside the camp and burned.

Thus, on the one hand, there was the symbol of life being offered to pay for the sins of the people. On the other hand, all that was dirty and bad was taken outside the camp and burned. In chapter 9, the author works through that in great detail. He says, for example, “Does the blood of sheep and goats actually pay for sin? Give me a break!” He doesn’t say that quite, but it’s almost there.

He says, “Look, after all, those little lambs that come, those bulls, those goats, don’t say, ‘Here am I. Slaughter me. I’ll sacrifice myself.’ They’re not a sacrifice with a kind of intrinsic substitutionary value to them.” In this sense, in fact, it’s the owner of the animal who is sacrificing something. It’s not more than a picture of what points forward. In fact, the very fact that it has to be done year after year after year after year is a kind of annual reminder that it doesn’t finally work.

It says in chapter 9, by contrast, “How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God …” That is, who as an act of his own will, his own eternal being, his own eternal Spirit and will, offered himself (unlike those animals that couldn’t offer themselves) as a substitute. “How much more, then, [shall this sacrifice] cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!”

What he has done again and again through this book is shown that Jesus fulfilled all those patterns, all those types, and now should we go back to the patterns themselves as if they’re the end? Shall we maintain the final traditions as if they are as important as the cross itself as our sole basis for approaching the living God? They’re of no value, the author says. Rather, “We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat.”

We have the cross. What right did you have this morning in your prayer time to come into the presence of the living God? The fact that you’d been good yesterday? The fact that you belong to Capitol Hill Baptist Church? The fact that you had a good week? The fact that you try hard? The fact that you vote the right way? The fact that you’re upstanding? The fact that you don’t tell too many lies? The fact that you haven’t slept with the wrong person too much?

Is that the basis on which you come into the presence of the living God? We have an altar. We have Christ’s death on our behalf. That’s our hope. That’s our plea.

I need no other argument,

I need no other plea.

It is enough that Jesus died,

And that He died for me.

Remember your Christian leaders and imitate them in the stability and transforming effect of their faith. They are stable. It has transformed them, and now, in addition, we are to imitate them in the Christ-centeredness and new covenant maturity of their faith. They are Christ-centered in all of their acting and thinking and their proclamation, and they are stable in their grasp of the significance of the new covenant.

I was brought up in a pretty conservative church. I was brought up in Canada at a time when we were told sometimes, “Never drink, smoke, swear, or chew, and never go out with girls who do.” This was not the sum of all righteousness, but it was pretty close. “Chew” for those of you who are uninitiated is chew tobacco, not chew gum, although make your own application. You know, I have since come to a place in my life where if somebody from a conservative sector says to me, “You can’t be a Christian and drink alcohol,” I will say, “Pass the port.”

Now I don’t mean to offend them, and I can give you all the reasons for not drinking. In this country, because it gives me cheaper insurance, I don’t drink. Outside this country, it’s another question. In this country, I get cheaper car insurance and house insurance, a lot of other things. I don’t drink. I don’t touch the stuff.

I’ve worked enough with alcoholics on the streets of Vancouver to know what alcohol can do to you. If somebody tells me, “You can’t drink and be a Christian,” I want a glass of port, because you must not jeopardize the exclusive sufficiency of Jesus Christ. Not for anything, not for anyone, not for any tradition. Imitate then those leaders who focus on God-centeredness and new covenant maturity.

C. Remember your Christian leaders and imitate them in the self-abnegation (self-denial) and eternal focus of their faith.

Verses 11 to 14. “The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering …” We know about that. “… but the bodies are burned outside the camp.”

This is picking up from Leviticus, chapter 16, verse 27. “The bull and the goat for the sin offerings, whose blood was brought into the Most Holy Place to make atonement, must be taken outside the camp; their hides, flesh and offal are to be burned up.” That’s what the text says. They’re taken outside the camp.

Verse 12: “And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood.” Now earlier on when the writer to the Hebrews was explaining the relationship between the Old Testament pictures and the reality, he talks about the tabernacle (chapter 9) and the Most Holy Place and the ark of the covenant.

Then he says (chapter 9, verse 5), “We cannot discuss these things in detail now,” as if to suggest there’s more symbol-ladenness to all of this than he can possibly give. We’re to think about these things some more and understand how they provide pictures for who Jesus is. Now he provides another one.

In addition to the blood sprinkled in the presence of God, indicating life sacrificially offered up to pay for sin, he said there’s another part of the picture. Jesus died outside Jerusalem, despised by all, rejected by everyone, dismissed as the rubbish of society, damned, under a curse, hanging on a tree. Crucifixion was one of three or four means of execution of the Romans, and it was always connected with the shame and ignominy.

Just as those ancient beasts were taken outside the camp and burned as a kind of symbol that all that was dirty with us had to be taken outside the camp and burned, so Jesus gives us his life outside the camp, despised, a Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief, part of the very heart of the gospel.

But the uniqueness of Jesus’ death in saving us, in dealing with our sin, yet has a kind of moral pull to it as well, a moral suasion, an exemplary force. “Let us therefore go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore.” In other words, we must be willing then to bear the shame of opprobrium to a society that rejected him. That society will reject us. For here we do not have an enduring city.

That is, our whole life beat, our whole heart cry, what we long for is not fundamentally to feel well-integrated into a pagan society. We don’t have any continuing city here. The old Negro spiritual had it right. “This world is not my home. I’m just a-passing through.” This doesn’t mean, therefore, we hide from the society or we refuse to engage it or we do not try to serve as salt within it.

But at the end of the day, our lifeblood, our heart’s beat, our passion, our desire, our direction is not to be the king of the capital. Here we have no continuing city. Politicians know that anyway. We are looking for the city that is to come, an eternal perspective. Do you see? In principle, what we must also follow is to adopt a stance in which there is self-denial, willing to bear shame for Jesus’ sake, and a future orientation that is anchored into eternity, that is joining the church in every generation, and saying, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”

D. Remember your leaders and imitate them in the good work and characteristic praise of their faith.

Verses 15 and 16: “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.”

You see, within the context of the epistle to the Hebrews, the author is saying, “Under the terms of the new covenant, we don’t have a whole ongoing sacrificial system where we have to slaughter bulls and goats and so on. But there are still some sacrifices.” Here there are two mentioned: the sacrifice of praise and the sacrifice of doing good, not as means to pleasing God but the inevitable proof of knowing God.

Sometimes it takes a sacrifice of praise. Any idiot can pray when things are going well, but when you’re going through the deep, deep waters, when you’ve just lost your best friend to leukemia, when it happened to the daughter of a friend of mine.… She was a missionary and was gang-raped in the country she went out to serve.

When you lose a loved one, when economically you don’t know how you’re going to rub your next two nickels together, then it’s sometimes a little harder to pray. When you’re into a black mood of despair, it takes a sacrifice of praise. You see, the objective grounds for praise are still there. God is still good. He is still good. He is the same yesterday and today and forever. He is still good.

But it’s a willed sacrifice to praise him. Moreover, in this selfish society, it takes men and women who know God and who, in consequence of knowing God, sacrificially do good. That’s what the text said. “Do not forget to do good, to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.”

You see, in all of this then, the authority of the leaders turn then not only on faithfulness to the Word of God but on a kind of exemplary living that brings us along with it. That’s what Paul said in Philippians 3. He said, “Imitate me.” Can you imagine? How would you feel as a church if your pastor next Sunday morning got up and said to all of you, “Imitate me”? How would you feel? “This young man is getting a bit big for his britches, isn’t he?”

Isn’t there a sense in which that’s exactly what Christian leadership is to say? Paul doesn’t say it just once. He says it again in 1 Corinthians, chapter 11, as well. “Imitate me, even as I also imitate Christ.” You see, if he doesn’t say it because in our society that’s not quite cultured to be quite so explicit, there is a sense in which he must so live, and you must still follow.

Indeed, in Philippians 3 when Paul lays out this track for people, he does not say, “Imitate me, because I have arrived.” He says, rather, “Imitate me, because I forget those things which are behind me, and I press on toward the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. I do not consider myself to have attained. I am just reaching to the trailing edge of the glory that is still to be revealed. I am pressing on this pilgrim way. Imitate me.”

There is a sense, brothers and sisters in Christ, in which any one of us who has known Christ for any time at all should be saying that sort of thing to the people who come along behind. Far from criticizing Mark for that sort of thing, we ought to be saying the same thing to those who come along behind. Thus, remember your Christian leaders and imitate them in these ways, which brings us then to the second big point, which is just summarized for us.

2. Follow your Christian leaders.

That’s what the text says. Obey your leaders. Submit to their authority. That’s what the text says. Not then in this framework because they have the job and you don’t, so when they say, “Jump,” you just do what they say.

No, you follow them precisely because they are following the gospel, because they’re teaching the Word of God, because they’re living it out, because they’re new covenant centered, because they’re self-denying, because they’re demonstrating good works. So obey. Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. You do it for two reasons.

A. Do it for their sake.

They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them, so that their work will be a joy and not a burden. If your aim in life is to make Christian leadership as miserable as possible for as many as possible, not only then do you make it difficult for them, but you make it difficult for yourself. That brings us to the second reason.

B. Do it for your sake.

“[Obey them] so that their work would be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.” Have you ever walked into a church where the whole church is in massive uproar all the time? There are two or three big bosses in the church who seem to control everything.

They’re very negative. They’re very down. They’re running down leadership all the time. The minister himself comes across as a terribly persecuted soul who is terribly troubled and is just dying for the next invitation so he can get out of there. How is that minister going to be doing any good in the congregation? How is he helping people at that stage?

He is so battered and bruised. You see, you owe Christian leadership a certain kind of obedience within the framework spelled out, for their own sake, but also for your sake. Show me a happy minister who is faithful to the gospel, and I’ll show you a happy congregation, because he is bringing them along with the gospel. Now let me close.

This week I was phoned by a pastor, a graduate of our seminary, a pastor of a church in the Dakotas. When he became pastor there a number of years ago there was sort of an in-house church boss. Eventually, the elders (for there were elders in that church) spoke to this chap about his attitude and his attempt to control and so on.

Since then, behind the scenes he has gradually been amassing church votes so that today, this Sunday, he is going to try to mount a palace coup, turf the pastor out. That’s what he is going to try and do. Why? Because the pastor was unorthodox? No. Because he was self-indulgent? No, he is exceedingly disciplined. Because he is not known for his good works? Unbelievable charge. Because he is a whiner? No. Why? Because he doesn’t like him, and he wants the power himself. That’s it. Full stop.

Consider another church that I also know about where the man has compromised the gospel, where he is always preaching some form of himself, where his whole interest is in a kind of pop psychology and not the gospel at all. In that case, the elders quietly tried to ease him out. Several in the church said, “Oh no, you can’t do that. I mean, he hasn’t slept with anybody who is the wrong person. You can’t get rid of him.”

I tell you, both are wrong. Both churches are dead wrong. In the New Testament, there is a profound and intentional tension between the authority of the church as a whole and the authority of elders and pastors. On the one hand, tell it to the church. The whole church exercises the discipline of 1 Corinthians 5. The church turfs out the blighters in 2 Corinthians 10 and following.

On the other hand, here you submit to the elders and those who rule over you. The reason why there’s a certain tension is either side can go wrong. In the New Testament, you have neither the IBM corporate model in which all the authority comes from the top, nor the democratic model in which all the authority comes from the bottom.

You have Jesus as the head of the church, and he authorizes the whole church with certain functions and roles and decisions under the Word, and he authorizes the elders with certain responsibilities and decisions and authority under the Word. That is what goes on in a well-ordered church. So hear the Word of God.

Remember your Christian leaders, and imitate them in the stability and transforming effect of their faith, in the Christ centeredness and new covenant maturity of their faith, in the self-denial and eternal focus of their faith, and in the good work and characteristic praise of their faith. When you find such thing, obey your leaders and submit to their authority, for their sake and for yours. Let us pray.

In truth, Lord God, we ask that you, the great Lord of the harvest, will raise up harvesters, ministers of the gospel, evangelists, pastor-teachers in this generation who are faithful to the gospel, who love men and women, who hunger for obedience, who live with eternity’s values in view. Give us a heart, Lord God, not only to follow them as they follow Christ but to become exemplars ourselves to a new generation. For Jesus’ sake, amen.