Chapter 13:18-25

“Pray for us; for we are confident that we have a good conscience, in all things desiring to live honorably. ¹⁹ But I especially urge you to do this, that I may be restored to you the sooner. ²⁰ Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, ²¹ make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

²² And I appeal to you, brethren, bear with the word of exhortation, for I have written to you in few words. ²³ Know that our brother Timothy has been set free, with whom I shall see you if he comes shortly. ²⁴ Greet all those who rule over you, and all the saints. Those from Italy greet you. ²⁵ Grace be with you all. Amen.”

I am thankful for all of the responses to the lessons. Wow, it is good to know that they are being read, and it thrills me! If you had told me 13 years ago, when we began this as a ministry of our church, that God would take us across the world and we would meet Christians via email from every corner of the world, I would have laughed and wondered. But God is great; He takes the little that we do, and He makes it bigger than we could ever imagine.

As we come to the end of the Hebrew series, I am a bit sad; I love this book. It opens an understanding of the Old Testament that, sadly, too many Christians do not get. We can understand what the sacrifices are about, and with that knowledge, we can better understand why Jesus died, how He died, why He died when He did, the power of His death, the importance of His sayings on the cross, and more importantly His role, not as our sacrifice but as our High Priest who intercedes for us daily.

Unlike human high priests who are fallible, Jesus is perfect, and as such, His sacrifice is perfect, and that perfection is offered to us freely in Him. Unlike human high priests, Jesus, via the indwelling Holy Spirit, is with us all the time and walks alongside us to help us (Hebrews 4:14-16).

We find Jesus in Genesis 14, the High Priest of Salem, the King of Salem, the King of Peace (all the same person), who meets Abraham, receives tithes from him, and offers him bread and wine. We can see Jesus in the entire narrative as we understand the book of Hebrews more and more. Unfortunately, we have a lack of exegetical teaching in many of our pulpits. There are a lot of encouragement and self-affirming messages, but few get into the nitty-gritty of the scriptures and challenge us to be holy, like God is Holy.

Paul asks his readers to ‘bear with the word of exhortation,’ put up with me calling out to you. Please hold on and take seriously what I am telling you. Don’t hate me; take the message from God through the power of the Holy Spirit and live it out. Too many Christians leave church mad at the pastor for preaching the truth because it hits too close to home, but it is God doing it, not the preacher. God knows your secrets, not the preacher. All too often, the preacher is dealing with his own sinfulness and weaknesses; he has no clue what yours are.

The whole idea of Hebrews was to show the Jews that Jesus is God, the Messiah, and that He was and is the One they were looking for. He is the One we are looking for as well. Our Savior, our Friend, our Redeemer, and our High Priest. Jesus is the answer.

If you got nothing else out of the study in Hebrews, I hope that you got this: Jesus is your salvation; He has bought and secured your eternity forever. The plan was never a ‘b’ but has always been the plan. Jesus came to die and resurrect for your sins, not His own, but yours and mine. There are no options for salvation, Jesus and Jesus alone.

Live your life to please Jesus; all else will flow from this. If you seek Him and His glory first, He will do things in your life and reveal Himself to you in ways that cannot be forgotten. He will show Himself in ways that show you His majesty and power but never diminish His kind and gentle love for you. Jesus will be your friend in the real and tangible sense of the word. Too many Christians do not have a true friendship with Jesus; He is their friend, but they are not His. They still view Him as this distant Savior, not an intimate and close friend, one to whom they need not ‘try’ to hide anything. See John 15:14-16,

“You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not understand what his master is doing. But I have called you friends, because everything I have learned from My Father, I have made known to you. You did not choose Me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit—fruit that will remain—so that whatever you ask the Father in My name, He will give you….”

Jesus longs to treat you and me as friends and to have that kind of intimacy with us. That begins with obedience to His words, and obedience begins with an honest and deep appreciation for the redemption we have in Jesus. An appreciation for the price that was paid, an appreciation for the violence He suffered on our behalf, and an appreciation for the hundreds of years of God superintending the free will of man to make sure Jesus came at the right time, to satisfy the wrath of God so that you and I can be redeemed.

The last thing I want to mention – and this is a response to a conversation with people who say they trust Jesus as Savior but do not see the importance of Israel in the end times – is what I say: Jesus is an Israelite. He is the legal King of the Jews, and as such, God cannot be done with the Jews. Jesus will return as a Jewish King to a Jewish people who will receive Him this time, and He will reign over the whole world from the throne of David in Jerusalem, Israel. There is simply no way around that conclusion except that you read something into the scriptures or take something away.

Live to please God; this should be our sole objective.

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

How to Connect with Us

On Facebook (live broadcast of Sunday’s Message at 11 am): https://www.facebook.com/MississaugaMissionaryBaptistChurch

Join us on Zoom every Sunday (10:30 am) for Sunday Service AND every Tuesday at 8:00 pm for Bible Study: Meeting ID: 700 794 460 Passcode: 032661; https://us02web.zoom.us/j/700794460?pwd=M3NFRG91ZW5Sa2Z3amVyWkFnYXd6QT09

Online: https://www.mmbchurch.ca

Email: support@mmbchurch.ca

Chapter 13: 18-25

^{18 “}Pray for us; for we are confident that we have a good conscience, in all things desiring to live honorably. ¹⁹ But I especially urge you to do this, that I may be restored to you the sooner. ²⁰ Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, ²¹ make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

²² And I appeal to you, brethren, bear with the word of exhortation, for I have written to you in few words. ²³ Know that our brother Timothy has been set free, with whom I shall see you if he comes shortly. ²⁴ Greet all those who rule over you, and all the saints. Those from Italy greet you. ²⁵ Grace be with you all. Amen.”

Many of us have a hard time with having a purpose in our lives. We live in a sense of ambiguity, and we are unable to settle on a life goal and purpose. However, our Lord God has a way of distilling things down to their simplest forms and making it so that we have no excuses as to why we do not obey Him.  Over the almost 40 years that I have been in ministry, one of the things that I have tried to learn myself and to help others to learn is that God does not ask us to do things that cannot be done. The Christian life is a practical life that can be lived in obedience to the Lord, and in this passage, the apostle Paul gives us some insights as to how to live to please the Lord.

• Remember what Jesus did for you, verse 20

This may sound too simple to be true, but it is that simple. Each and every day, our motivation to live pleasing to God is that we recall how we were saved. We were not saved by our own power, by our own accomplishments, by our own ability, and certainly not by our own righteousness. Jesus did it for us. We were lost, damned to Hell, the flames licking at our feet, and then Jesus joyfully came and redeemed us. He paid my price for my sin; He and He alone satisfied the righteous judgment of God, and I am now a child of God according to 1 John 3:1. This should motivate us to live to please God.

Not only did He redeem us, but it is an ‘everlasting’ redemption; no one can take it from us. We are preserved and protected by God. Jesus is our High Priest who never stops pleading on our behalf in Heaven, our Advocate and our best friend. Take the time each day to remember what Jesus did. Read about the payment that is made and begin every day in awe that you are a child of God and no longer under His wrath because of Jesus and what He did and is doing for us. As a thankful people, we should, out of rabid gratitude, live to please God in any and all ways that we can. When we fail, when we sin, and we will, we have forgiveness (1 John 1:8-9) promised to us from God.

• Complete to do His will, verse 21

God makes us able to do His work and His will. We are not able to please God in and of ourselves, even when we are saved. We still need His help every second of the day, and this is why He sent us the Holy Spirit to live in us and to empower our churches. This is so we have the leadership and the power to obey Him. He has left us without excuse. This is not about legalism and following rituals. Ours is a relationship that is as individual as any other relationship. God will lead you in ways that He will not lead another. There are fundamental things like being baptized, being a faithful member of a local church, and making a deliberate regiment of Bible study and prayer (we explored this last week).

But being religious is not a part of the walk we have with Jesus. Ours is a walk of relationship where we trust in the goodness of God and not in our accomplishments. We trust that God always has our best at heart even when it hurts and when we don’t understand, and we trust that God is our Friend and One in whom we can trust our darkest and deepest fears; God is good.

In Jesus, and only in Jesus, we have the power to ‘do His will’ and to live ‘pleasing in His sight.’ What will our life look like if we are to live pleasing to the Lord and in His will? The prophet Micah laid this out for us hundreds of years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

Micah 6:8 “He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God? (NKJV)

These things seem too easy to read, but they are lifestyles based on desiring to please God. They are lifestyles that we can only have if Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, is moving us to live. The whole complaint of God in Micah 6:1-7 was that the people were ‘serving’ God ritually but did not truly form a loving devotion to Him. They were going through religious motions and not living out in relationships. Notice that living to please God has a lot to do with how we treat others: live justly, walk humbly, and love mercy. This is all about others and how we treat them.

If we remember each day, recall as often as possible what it took to redeem us and save us, we will walk humbly, we will love to extend to others the mercy that we receive from the Lord each day, and we will live with personal integrity and live justly. These things please God, these things are His will, and these things show a true gratitude for the salvation that was so expensive to God but that is freely offered to us. May we never forget how great a salvation we have in Jesus.

1 Peter 1:18-21 “For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God” (1 Peter 1:18-21 NIV).

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

How to Connect with Us

On Facebook (live broadcast of Sunday’s Message at 11 am): https://www.facebook.com/MississaugaMissionaryBaptistChurch

Join us on Zoom every Sunday (10:30 am) for Sunday Service AND every Tuesday at 8:00 pm for Bible Study: Meeting ID: 700 794 460 Passcode: 032661; https://us02web.zoom.us/j/700794460?pwd=M3NFRG91ZW5Sa2Z3amVyWkFnYXd6QT09

Online: https://www.mmbchurch.ca

Email: support@mmbchurch.ca