Authority. Who gets to say which course gets changed? And where do they get that authority?

“You’re not the boss of me” “You can’t tell me what to do.” Especially in Western culture, where we are used to having the right to do what we want to do, it’s difficult to submit to authority.

But as Christians, the whole idea of Lordship involves submitting with the correct perspective of authority:

Matthew 7:28-29 When Jesus had finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching, for he taught with real authority— quite unlike their teachers of religious law.

In other words, there is a kind of authority that is not Tyrannical, but actually beneficial for those who are being led. The kind of authority Jesus talked with was different, obviously different than the religious rulers of the day. And in the next few chapters in Matthew flesh out this idea and show Jesus’ authority over sickness, over nature, and over demons. Then in chapter 8, we get the big picture about authority:

Matthew 8:5-10,13 When Jesus returned to Capernaum, a Roman officer came and pleaded with him, “Lord, my young servant lies in bed, paralyzed and in terrible pain.

Jesus said, “I will come and heal him.” But the officer said, “Lord, I am not worthy to have you come into my home. Just say the word from where you are, and my servant will be healed. I know this because I am under the authority of my superior officers, and I have authority over my soldiers. I only need to say, ‘Go,’ and they go, or ‘Come,’ and they come. And if I say to my slaves, ‘Do this,’ they do it.”

When Jesus heard this, he was amazed. Turning to those who were following him, he said, “I tell you the truth, I haven’t seen faith like this in all Israel!... Then Jesus said to the Roman officer, “Go back home. Because you believed, it has happened.” And the young servant was healed that same hour.

Authority matters. The officer understood it. HE had authority over soldiers and could command them to accomplish certain tasks, and so Jesus was able to perform miracles because all things are under his leadership. He is the ultimate authority – not just in this world but in the spiritual world as well.

Reading through Scripture, there is a correct way to embrace authority in our lives…

A 5-year-old girl was sitting at the breakfast table one morning and, in between bites of sugary cereal, she sang with one hand in the air and the other cradling her spoon. Her mom asked her what she was doing. “I’m praising God, Mama.” Then, in a huff of overly dramatized exhaustion, she dropped her hand on the table saying, “But sometimes praising God is hard. My arms get sooooo tired.”

Do you realize how true that statement is? There are definitely times when praising God is easy… Blessings are realized, we feel close to God, there’s so much good things going on.

But then there are times when it is almost exhausting to lift up praises to God. Life wears us down, people are taken away from us, things seem to end up in failure. Maybe you are in a season right now when praise just gets stuck in your throat and, like that little girl, you drop your arms on the table, crying out: “It's too hard!”

We are coming to the conclusion of this amazing letter to the Hebrew believers. And in the midst of the doctrine it teaches, we can see that ultimately what the Author is demonstrating is how the new covenant through the death and resurrection of Jesus is actually designed to lead God’s people into a new way of worship. Previously the Hebrews had been burdened with fulfilling the Mosaic Law, but by his sacrifice and resurrection, Jesus fulfilled those impossible standards and opened the way for the Holy Spirit to indwell believers and write the Divine Law on their hearts.

And if this is a new way of worship, then through that same Holy Spirit at work in our lives to get rid of the old self, the sinful nature, we are led into this lifestyle of worship.

A couple of weeks ago, as I was gearing up for the children’s performance down in Bend, I had a conversation with one of the dads of the kids in the theater group. He is a film-maker and he and I started up this conversation about potential collaborations. And in the course of the conversation it was brought up that he was a Jew - but he was quick to point out he wasn’t a “practicing Jew.” Now, I THINK I know what he meant. But it got me to thinking about the first part of Hebrews 13, and the practicality of how the Author of Hebrews is ending his letter.

Remember the letter is about encouraging the Hebrew believers to stay the course and to not go back to an inferior system of being made right with God. It’s a giant commercial for Jesus, if you recall. There hasn’t been a lot of practical application - more just teaching about correct doctrine and God’s plan for salvation. But now we are heading into this passage that is VERY practical. And connecting it with the conversation I had with this Jewish man who was not a “practicing Jew,” I look at today’s passage as a way to help us determine what is a “practicing Christian.”

And to be honest, I have come to a strong belief that true believers can ONLY describe themselves as “practicing Christians,” or in other words, Christians who put their faith into practice; not just leaving it as abstract theological thoughts and discussions. But truly life-changing faith that HAS to be put into practice in order to grasp faith that God has called us into...living your faith out loud.

In today’s passage, we have a good list — it’s definitely not the exhaustive complete list, but a good list nonetheless about what living out loud looks like for a Christian. Let’s read the passage and then talk about five pieces of evidence that would convict us if being a Christian were outlawed. These are some of the main marks of living our faith out loud.

Olympics - runners. Some pretty amazing finishes! as you're running there's something that happens even in a marathon when you're completely fried when you're completely tired when you've hit the wall but then somehow when the Finish Line comes into view when when the Finish Line hits that Horizon something reinvigorates you you get that second wind you can pick up speed

In many ways it feels as though we very well may be running the last lap. We would do well, as Jesus taught in the Gospels, to live each day with the mindset that He could truly be coming back at any moment on any day. And instead of trying to figure out WHEN that day and hour will be, Jesus pretty much told us - doesn’t matter - just be doing what I want you to do when I get back.

And so, whether this is the last lap for us (or not), the Spirit of God has been given to us so that we run this race, whichever lap we are on, with all our might and our eyes FIXED on Jesus, as we saw a few weeks ago when Dad and I shared the sermon time.

What this means is that instead of focusing on the state of the decline of our culture so much, we focus solely on living as followers of Jesus. HE must be our only true passion and our only true purpose. Because, as we will be reminded in our study this morning, he is the only true destiny for those who walk by faith.

Do you remember the old slogan for Avis Car Rental? Hertz, apparently, had taken the top spot on the list - and of course, they let people know: “We’re #1!” Avis’ approach was intriguing to me. They were like: “We’re #2…BUT WE TRY HARDER.”

While there’s something to the idea of trying your best, in my experience I have found that by adopting this motto in our spiritual growth, more often than not what you end up with is frustration and guilt and at times the feeling like it’s not worth it and the temptation to just walk away and give up.

You see the symptoms of folks teetering on that edge. They neglect time with God. They stay away from God’s people. Worship is - at best - an afterthought.

That very well may come from a lack of understanding what GRACE is, specifically what the PURPOSE of grace is.

We’ve talked a lot about grace recently. And ultimately we understand grace to be the thing that saves us. But is there something else grace does? We’ve touched on this a bit before, but what I, as your pastor, am excited to show you today is how grace is the thing that helps us BE who God designed us to be - How to be SAVED and how to BE saved. and WITHOUT doing the Avis thing, trying harder in our own power.

As we begin, I want to make sure you know a truth about this book, the Bible): this isn’t A book; this is 66 books with over 40 authors, written over a period of 1500 years on 3 continents - and yet there is amazing harmony throughout. And scripture helps us interpret and understand scripture; when you get to one passage that may be difficult to understand, you can be sure that there’s most likely a few other passages that deal with the same subject that can shed light on how the difficult passage should be interpreted.

There are a few books, in addition, that give us a clue as to WHY it was written. The Gospel of John, for instance, has a purpose that John tells his readers. John 20:30-31 “Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But THESE are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

This is why, by the way, the Gospel of John is made available by many churches and Christian organizations and given out to those who are seeking spiritual truth. John hand-picked the events in Jesus’ ministry and the teachings he heard for the purpose of showing people that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God - AND that in seeing that truth, one could come to faith and eternal life.

So it’s nice when a book from the Bible actually tells us what it’s about.

So that’s why I LOVE this next section of the book of Hebrews because there is a whole lot that the Author lays out for us, here in the second part of chapter 7 and going through the first part of chapter 10. In fact, there is SO much that I probably don’t have to read every verse of that section, cuz if I DID, we would go much longer than we even did last week. 🙂

I mean, we WILL look at sections of this passage, but I was excited, as I read through chapters 7-10, to see one particular verse - Hebrews 8:1 - which, once you read it, you’ll see how helpful that one verse is. So let’s go to Hebrews 8.

We don’t know a whole lot about him, and what we do know is buried in mystery. We know that he was the King of Salem, we know that he was a priest of the Most High God, we know that he had a funny name and we know that Abraham thought enough of him that he made an offering of ten percent of everything he owned to him.

He is fairly obscure. He’s first mentioned in Genesis 14 where he is given a total of three verses. He’s not mentioned again until Psalm 110:4 where David makes reference to the coming Messiah and writes: “The LORD has taken an oath and will not break his vow: ‘You are a priest forever in the line of Melchizedek.’”

And then nothing, not in Proverbs, or Ecclesiastes, none of the prophets mention him. Melchizedek’s name doesn’t come up in any of the gospels or the book of Acts. Paul doesn’t mention him - but then, all of a sudden, the Author of Hebrews writes 17 verses about this mystery monarch.

We actually have preached a couple of times in the past year about Melchizedek. Last summer we studied the life of Abraham, where we first encountered him, and earlier in our study in the book of Hebrews we talked about the priesthood of Jesus being like Melchizedek and not like Aaron and his descendants.

Today I want to focus on yet another aspect of these verses - one that is perhaps not as obvious, but definitely is worth stopping and taking note, especially because the story found in Genesis 14 is the first recorded instance of somebody sacrificing financially to provide for the work of God in some way. Before Genesis 14, there were definitely sacrifices made by individuals as a way to honor and worship God, but this event in the life of Abraham is the first time a priest of God is given a portion of someone’s resources.