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Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you.

‘There are people-more than a handful, I’d say-who find fault with me. Things I say, or don’t say, deeds I do, or don’t do, attitudes they detect in me or detect the absence of. Sometimes, I’m scorned or scolded for personality deficiencies, which-admittedly-I abound in. I am not warm and cuddly like pastor so-and-so. I am too bloody-minded, or-conversely-an incurable soft touch. I don’t preach a clear vision. I do preach a clear vision, but not a compelling one. I do preach a compelling vision, but compelling us towards the wrong ends. I talk too much about money from the pulpit. I don’t talk about it enough.’ Mark Buchanan: ‘Spiritual Rhythm’, p.79.

Just about every local church will be able to relate to the above comments. The calling can prove ever so demanding, and there are times when you feel you just can’t win. It’s interesting that the writer to the Hebrews takes a pragmatic approach here. He says, in effect, be the kind of supportive congregation your leaders will enjoy shepherding. It’s not particularly good for churches to have unhappy leaders. Those who have ”authority” over others, under God, carry an enormous responsibility, so help them all you can.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that church leaders can never be wrong, or go wrong, and there may be times when we need to challenge them in kindness and love. But if it has to be done, let it be carried out sensitively and thoughtfully. Gossiping about them, rather than going to them personally, is not the right way.

Think about how you would like to be corrected, and let this guide your approach.

PRAYER: Lord, I thank you for our leaders. I see they are your gifts to the church. Help them in their challenges and struggles today. I acknowledge that they may well be carrying burdens I know nothing about. Help me to love them, serve them, follow them and pray for them. I ask that I will be one who makes their ministry a joy.

Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise – the fruit of lips that openly profess his name. ¹⁶ And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.

When the Bible speaks of Christians offering ‘sacrifices’ to God, it does not mean atoning sacrifices. This book has made it abundantly clear that Jesus offered, once-for-all, the only sacrifice which can ever remove sin. However, our response to His final Sacrifice should be to offer sacrificial lives of worship. True worship is costly. We ought not to imagine that we can do it on the cheap (consider David’s words in 2 Sam. 24:24). It starts with giving to God our ”bodies as living sacrifices” (Rom.12:1). Everything flows from this commitment. As the church, we are a ”holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:5). Two of these are mentioned in verses 15,16, and I note a lovely balance between talk and walk, word and deed, lip and life. Christians are called to declare their allegiance to Christ in speech, but also to demonstrate their loyalty to Him in actions. True religion involves doing good and helping others (Jas.1:27).

As someone observed, there must be ‘no credibility gap’ between our talk and our walk.

Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise – the fruit of lips that openly profess his name. 

In one of John White’s many fine books, he spoke about Christian witness being about simple honesty. We are not in hiding. ‘This is who I am; this is what I believe. If you want to know, I’ll tell you. I’ll give you a reason for the hope I have’ (see 1 Peter 3:15,16).

In verses 15,16 of our chapter we have two further examples of what Christian worship entails. In the first place, it means praising God. But the implication seems to be that this is not restricted to ‘times of worship’ in Christian gatherings. It also involves the public acknowledgment of God and proclamation of His Name out in the world.

We need to remember that this exhortation was given to believers in a context of persecution, where such ”praise” would place them in the firing line and require enormous courage.

 “A good witness isn’t like a salesman, his emphasis is on a person rather than a product. A good witness is like a signpost. It doesn’t matter whether it is old, young, pretty, ugly; it has to point the right direction and be able to be understood. We are witnesses to Christ, we point to him.” John White

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. ¹² And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. ¹³ Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. ¹⁴ For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.

‘This world is not my home, I’m just a passin’ through’, sang the country and western artist Jim Reeves.

The truth is we Christians don’t belong here. We will always be outsiders. Of course, there is a natural instinct to want to be liked, loved even; and accepted: to belong. But we don’t and we won’t. We are disciples of Jesus who was treated as an outsider by the Jewish religion He actually came to fulfil. We need to recognise that, as His people, we are strangers and aliens here. We don’t fit in. We’ve been born ‘from above.’ We belong to another Kingdom. ‘Our citizenship is in heaven.’ Part of the deal in becoming a Christian is that we accept we are going to share in the scorn, insult, derision and abuse which was heaped on Christ. When people are friendly towards us, as some people will be, we are naturally grateful. But let us never forget what the true score is.

I think ‘The Message’ expresses this very well:

” So let’s go outside, where Jesus is, where the action is—not trying to be privileged insiders, but taking our share in the abuse of Jesus. This “insider world” is not our home. We have our eyes peeled for the City about to come. Let’s take our place outside with Jesus, no longer pouring out the sacrificial blood of animals but pouring out sacrificial praises from our lips to God in Jesus’ name” (13-15)

 We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat.

Some Jews taught that it was spiritually beneficial to eat meat that had been sacrificed on the altar. But Christians have a different altar, not where the bodies of animals are offered, but where the body of Christ was sacrificed for us. To eat from Christ’s altar is to feed, by faith, on Christ Himself (John 6:53-56). Again, the superiority of the New Covenant, over the Old, is underlined. The Jewish priests were pursuing the ‘shadow’, but by God’s grace and mercy we have the Substance. How much better it is to have a personal relationship with Jesus than to be permitted to eat a particular piece of meat!

‘God has established the new covenant, and no promises remain for those who refuse its blessings.’ Tom Wright: ‘Hebrews for Everyone’, p.175.

Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by eating ceremonial foods, which is of no benefit to those who do so.

If ‘the heart of man’s problem is the problem of man’s heart’, then mere external rites and rituals will not cut it. God must do a work in the heart.

Through Ezekiel He promised:

I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. Ezekiel 36:26.

It’s not that the outside of the life is unimportant, but genuine Christianity works from the inside out. The source of the ‘river’ is located in the area of the heart, and from there it flows outward to flood every part of the personality and body – and it even goes to regions beyond, in order to refresh the world.

God does not start with the outside. He begins in the heart; and from the internal, the external is transformed.

PRAYER: Lord, I pray that out of my heart there may flow living waters.

THOUGHT: ”The revolution of Jesus is in the first place and continuously a revolution of the human heart or spirit. It did not and does not proceed by means of the formation of social institutions and laws, the outer forms of our existence, intending that these would then impose a good order of life upon people who come under their power. Rather, his is a revolution of character, which proceeds by changing people from the inside through ongoing personal relationship to God in Christ and to one another. It is one that changes their ideas, beliefs, feelings, and habits of choice, as well as their bodily tendencies and social relations. It penetrates to the deepest layers of their soul.” Dallas Willard, Renovation of the Heart: Putting On the Character of Christ

Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. ⁸ Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

‘Every pastor is an interim pastor.’ The truth of this statement dawned on me more fully and clearly as I came towards the end of my ministry in a church I had served for over 30 years.

It seems to me that a contrast is drawn in these verses, between leaders who have gone (maybe taken away by imprisonment or death?) and the Lord who never leaves; between those who are temporary and the One who is permanent. He cannot be stolen from them, nor will He abandon. He in fact, is the God who never ‘leaves’ or ‘forsakes'(5). Although the church may have many honourable leaders (and verse 7 seems to refer to such), ultimately there is only one ”Leader” we truly need. He works through people, but He’s the only One who is indispensable.

Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. 

Leadership is not only about the words you say, but about the life you lead. It’s about who you are. What these leaders said was important, but so was what they believed and how they lived.

“The authority by which the Christian leader leads is not power but love, not force but example, not coercion but reasoned persuasion. Leaders have power, but power is safe only in the hands of those who humble themselves to serve.” John Stott.

”…God has said,

“Never will I leave you;
    never will I forsake you.”

⁶ So we say with confidence,

“The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.
    What can mere mortals do to me?”

Speak in line with Scripture. Agree with God. Say what He has said. Allow His Word to change your mind and shape your perspective. I know this sounds simple and obvious, but it is so powerful when we do. We read our Bibles and we may not always feel the truth of what we see on the page, but it is important that we affirm it. Our only ground of confidence can be what ”God has said…”

‘God says it; I believe it; that settles it.’

Thought: “It often astonishes me that I did not see the importance of meditation upon Scripture earlier in my Christian life. As the outward man is not fit for work for any length of time unless he eats, so it is with the inner man. What is the food for the inner man? Not prayer, but the Word of God -not the simple reading of the Word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe. No, we must consider what we read, ponder over it, and apply it to our hearts.” George Muller