The Source of Strengthening Grace (Hebrews 13:9-10) | Worship Service

Welcome to Kootenai Community Church. Would you please stand as we begin our service this morning with our call to worship from the book of 1 Chronicles chapter 16 verses 23 to 25. Sing to Yahweh all the earth, proclaim good news of his salvation from day to day, recount his glory among the nations, his wondrous deeds among all the peoples.

For great is Yahweh and greatly to be praised and he is more fearsome than all the gods. This morning let's begin our worship service by singing together come praise and glorify. You are the God who gives us grace, washed away, redeemed, truth in him God has.

You are the God who says and glorify our God for we believe the word and through our faith we have a seal the spirit of the Lord. The spirit guarantees our hope until redemption come endless praise to God the free and one.

To the praise of your glory, to the praise of your mercy and grace, to the praise of your glory, you are the God who say. To the praise of your glory, to the praise of your mercy and grace, to the praise of your glory, you are the God who say.

O praise the Lord, bright and pleasant for his saints to tell his praise, how bright their wounds, by name the star, brings the wind to shine the sea.

Scripture Reading, Announcements, and Prayer Before Hebrews 13

Try it again. Turn to Colossians chapter 2 for the scripture reading. I'll just remind you of two announcements while you're turning there. First, in a couple of weeks we have a membership class coming up, so we encourage you if you want information about Kootenai Community Church to sign up to attend that.

It's on a Saturday, two weeks from yesterday. And then also please consider registering for the equipping conference in June, which is dealing with creation and gender and human sexuality and all of the things that are connected with that that we are facing in our age.

We have Owen Strand coming here to teach us through that Friday, Saturday, and then he'll be preaching on that Sunday. Colossians chapter 2, I'm going to read together this entire chapter. I never shy away from long scripture readings, simply because it is the best part of the service.

It has the potential to be the most perfect part of the service, provided that I don't screw it up because it's God's Word. And so I just love reading it and it should be something that we delight in.

So Colossians chapter 2, and we'll read together the entire chapter. For I want you to know how great a struggle I have on your behalf and for those who are at Laodicea, and for all those who have not personally seen my face, that their hearts may be encouraged, having been knit together in love and attaining to all the wealth that comes from the full assurance of understanding, resulting in a true knowledge of God's mystery, that is Christ Himself, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

I say this so that no one will delude you with persuasive argument. For even though I am absent in body, nevertheless I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good discipline and the stability of your faith in Christ.

Therefore, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you were instructed and overflowing with gratitude.

See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ.

For in Him all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form. And in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over all rule and authority. And in Him you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.

When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having canceled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us.

And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. When He had disarmed the rulers and authorities, He made a public display of them, having triumphed over them through Him. Therefore, no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day, things which are a mere shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

Let no one keep defrauding you of your prize by delighting in self-abasement and the worship of the angels, taking a stand on visions which he has seen, inflated without cause by his fleshly mind and not holding fast to the head from whom the entire body being supplied and held together by the joints and ligaments grows with a growth which is from God.

If you have died with Christ to the elementary principles of the world, why, as if you were living in the world, do you submit yourself to decrees such as, do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, which all refer to things destined to perish with use in accordance with the commandments and teachings of men?

These are matters which have to be sure the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence. Will you stand with me as we pray?

Let's bow our heads. Our Father, we have just read here in Your Word a description of the fullness that we have in Christ. We have read of a salvation that has taken away all of our sins, all of our transgressions and our iniquity.

Every charge that was due Your wrath for our sin has been laid upon Christ on the cross, and You have made satisfaction for our sin, and He has suffered in our stead, and by that You have delivered us from the kingdom of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of Your Son.

In our Savior dwells all the fullness of deity in bodily form, and so all of the infinite wrath that was due to us for our sin, You have laid upon Him, and all of His perfect righteousness, You have made ours by repentance and faith.

And so we thank You for this great gift of salvation, and we thank You that You have set us free from the decrees and the man-made traditions, as well as setting us free from the requirements of the law which we could never fulfill.

And we thank You that You have fulfilled all of that in Your Son and set us free unto life eternal in Him. It is a blessing, therefore, and a joy to gather together as Your people and to worship and to celebrate our great salvation, to reflect upon the great treasure that is in Christ and all the fullness that we have in Him, the mystery of Your will made known, and salvation eternal and life eternal.

And so we thank You for that, for our confidence, for our hope, and for the joy and the blessing that is to gather here freely and openly to worship and praise You, our great God, who has done all of this through Your Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and then brought us into the fullness of it in the person of the Spirit.

We thank You for in the name of our great God and our King Christ. Amen.

Verse Thessalonians 4, 15 through 18. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven without shout, and with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with Him in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.

The Danger of False Teaching and the Need for Discernment

And turn now, if you will please, to Hebrews chapter 13. Hebrews chapter 13. And let's pray together before we begin. Our Father, we come now to Your Word and pray that You would use Your Word and Your truth to sanctify us, to make us a holy people, to conform us to the image of Christ.

This is what You have predestined us to. And so we pray that as we pursue understanding in Your Word that You would send Your Spirit to be our teacher and our guide in it, so that our conformity to the image of Christ may be the goal and the effect of our time here together today.

We point our hearts and our minds and our affections to Him that we may give honor and glory to our blessed and triune God who has redeemed us from the pit and saved us for Himself. So we pray this in the name of Christ and for the glory of our God, Yahweh.

Amen. Every New Testament book warns of the dangers of false teaching and false teachers except for one. It is the book of Philemon, that short little personal epistle that Paul wrote to one individual person.

And I'm convinced that if Paul had gone on for 20 or 30 more verses that he might have mentioned false teachers at some point in there. But being short as it is, it stands unique as the only New Testament book that does not warn us of the danger of error.

Jesus warned of the dangers of false prophets whom He called ravenous wolves who come in sheep's clothing. He warned of false Christs and false prophets in Matthew 24. Paul warned the church in Ephesus when he met with the elders of that church in Acts 20 of the danger of ravenous wolves when he said to them, be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.

I know that after my departure, savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock. With the only exception being Philemon, every one of Paul's letters mentions these dangers. His footsteps were hounded by false teachers.

No sooner had his shadow left the regions of Galatia in Asia Minor than Judaizers swept in with another gospel that wooed the believers there after a different teaching. We are warned in the New Testament of false doctrine, doctrines of demons, man-made philosophies, science falsely so-called, strange teachings, empty talkers, dogs, not literal canines, but another word for these Judaizers, false prophets, false teachers, false apostles, false Christ, false signs, false miracles, false wonders, deceivers, impostors, and I could triple that list without duplicating any of those things with all of the other descriptions that are given in the New Testament.

In fact, two books are entirely given over to the subject, the book of Jude and the book of 2 Peter. And sometimes it is appropriate to name names. It is not appropriate or sufficient for a shepherd of the church to simply stand up and say, look, there's a lot of wacky beliefs out there and you need to be really careful about believing some of those wacky beliefs.

They could poison and kill your soul. Now, bye-bye, have a good day, go out into the world and do your best to navigate all of that. That's not sufficient. Sometimes a shepherd has to name names so we know, in order to obey Romans 16, 17, and 18, who to mark and avoid.

We have to know who it is that we mark as dangerous or false, as poisonous. Paul did this in 1 Timothy chapter 1 verse 20 when he named Hymenaeus and Alexander, who had made shipwreck of the faith. He did this again in 2 Timothy chapter 4 when he talked about Alexander the coppersmith who resisted his teaching.

And it may or may not be the same Alexander that he mentions in the first epistle to Timothy. I suspect it was a different Alexander since he singles him out as being Alexander the coppersmith. The devil is a deceiver and his most effective ruse is to make error seem rational and reasonable and even appealing.

And by doing so, he gets us sidetracked, believing things that are untrue, and gets us believing the lies that he promotes as truth. This has the effect of stunting us in our sanctification and our growth.

John 17, 17 says we are sanctified by truth. That is, we are made holy and strengthened to progress in holiness by the truth of God and by God's Word. And so if we know and believe and obey the truth, then that sanctifies us and makes us holy.

And if we don't know the truth and we don't believe it, and we don't practice it, then that truth cannot sanctify us. Error cannot sanctify us. No matter how fervently you believe the error, no matter how feverishly you practice the error, no matter how affectionate you feel about the error, none of that matters.

Error can do nothing to benefit us. Therefore, truth is important. And you and I have to know the truth. We have to be familiar with the truth. We have to be able to discern the truth. As Spurgeon once quipped, discernment is not the ability to tell truth from falsehood, it is the ability to tell what is true from what is almost true.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist or a theological genius to be able to tell the difference between truth and falsehood, but it does take discernment in order to be able to tell the difference between what is true and what is almost true.

And it is this concern for the spiritual growth and the increasing sanctification of the believers that the author of Hebrews was writing to when he says in verses 9 and 10 to not be carried away by strange teachings.

And verse 9 and 10, that is our text for this morning. We're going to read together beginning at verse 7, and we'll read through the end of verse 14. And I want to grab all of this context so I can tie in verses 9 and 10 to 7 and 8 and show you the difficulty that is ahead as we traverse down into and through verse 14.

Verse 7 of chapter 13, remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you, and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

Do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods through which those who were so occupied were not benefited. We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat, for the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest as an offering for sin are burned outside the camp.

Therefore, Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people through his own blood, suffered outside the gate. So let us go out to him outside the camp bearing his reproach, for here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come.

Now last time we finished up before resurrection Sunday. Last week we finished with verse 8, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And then we have this warning about false doctrine in verse 9, and we are encouraged, exhorted not to be carried away by strange and varied teachings.

That is a warning about error, and the author has in mind there a specific error. The warning about strange doctrines fits in with verse 7 and 8 because he reminds the readers in verse 7 of those who had spoken the word of God to them in the past, that is those teachers who had passed from the scenes who had faithfully communicated truth to them, a truth which by the way is based upon and relates to Christ, verse 8, who never changes.

And therefore if somebody comes along with a varied and strange teaching that doesn't match what you have had handed down from you from faithful teachers who taught you the word before, a strange teaching which does not comport with the truth of Christ which never changes, you should not be carried away with it.

So it is a concern for their spiritual well-being and their grounding in the truth that causes him in verse 9 to warn them about a serious doctrinal error. He is saying to them, to borrow the words from Paul in Colossians chapter 2, as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him.

Having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith, just as you once were instructed, so walk in Him. He is encouraging them in steadfastness, not to abandon the truth that they had been taught and not to abandon the truth that they had received.

And that is the concern here. Only one thing can strengthen the heart and encourage holiness and sanctification, and that is the truth of God. And therefore to seek after some novel doctrine, some novel teaching, some new practice, some man-made philosophy, some science falsely so-called, some doctrinal error to pursue that in the hope of having your heart strengthened and your soul strengthened and drawing in intimacy, drawing close and intimacy to the Lord, is to be carried off into some error, some doctrinal deception.

Strengthened by Grace, Not by Foods

Now this passage offers a number of difficulties in its interpretation because there's a lot going on. And I read the entire context because you get into verse 9 and 10, you have all these questions that sort of pop up.

And I want you to look down through the passage. We have an altar. What is that altar? Do we have an altar here? Have you seen an altar? Have you ever shown up to church here and seen an altar at the front?

So what is this altar that Christians have? And how is it related to this right to eat and meats and foods and grace and those who serve the tabernacle, who burned the body outside the camp? And how is Jesus related to all of that, who suffered outside the gate?

And what does it mean to go outside the gate to be with Him and to bear His reproach? And what does this lasting city have to do with any of that? There's a whole bunch of stuff that kind of comes up here in these few verses, and some of it is difficult to interpret.

John MacArthur in his commentary says this, quote, verses 10 through 14 are among the most difficult in the book of Hebrews, close quote. Now that's saying something, isn't it? Because the book of Hebrews is filled with difficult verses.

We've talked about, we've gone through five warning passages and spent months on all of those five, not individually, well, some of them individually, but we've spent months going through all of those warning passages collectively.

And we have dealt with old covenant and new covenant and Melchizedek and the Aaronic priesthood and in chapter nine, all those symbolism with the tabernacle. And then we get near to the end and you think, okay, we're on the home stretch.

We can kind of coast to the end of the book of Hebrews. And then you open up MacArthur's commentary and say, yeah, these are the most difficult verses in the book of Hebrews. Wow. Homer Kent says verse 10 contains a clause poising considerable hermeneutical difficulty.

And if you would prefer the language of the Puritans, John Owen says this, quote, the ensuing context from hence unto the 17th verse seems obtruse and the reasoning of the apostle in it not easy to be apprehended, close quote.

Translation, this is some tough stuff, Maynard. These verses are difficult. There's a lot going on here. And you have to wonder, what is the author trying to say? One thing we do know for certain is that, this is key, there is an argument that he is making in the text, that we know.

Now we have to put together the pieces and saying, what is the argument? What is the big idea? Because scripture is not just a series of religious sounding phrases that are all kind of chunked in there in verses.

The author is making an argument. He is unfolding an idea through the text and it has to fit with what comes before. It has to fit with what comes after. I think I have nailed it, but I do want to tell you that though I would not be dogmatic on any of this, I would hold some of this loosely, but I do think we can know what the author is saying.

I do think we can know his argument, but I also want to give you a bit of a disclaimer. I'm not going to go in and trace every rabbit trail of the weird things that have been taught because of this passage.

So I'm not going to do that. I am going to try and offer you a summary of what I think the author is driving at. In verses 9 to 10, he gives them a warning about the error regarding foods. Now that is obviously connected to the sacrifice and he is contrasting the altar and the priest and the sacrifices that they made with our altar and our high priest and sacrifice that he made.

There is a contrast that is going on there, but the reference to that sacrifice keys the author off into sort of a similar but related subject in verses 11 to 12, where he says that Jesus is our sacrifice who bore our reproach.

So they have a tabernacle, they have an altar, they have a priest, they offer sacrifices, and then there is a sacrifice that they can't eat from and that is taken outside the camp and burned. Similarly, Jesus suffered for us outside the camp, taking away our sin in his own body as well.

Therefore, the author says in 13 and 14, be prepared to leave that old system and instead go out to Christ who is outside the city and suffered there and be prepared to be ostracized from the religious systems of your day, from your traditions, from your family, from your culture, from your people, from your workplace.

Be prepared to be ostracized from all of that and to receive the hostility that is due to you if you will bear his reproach and go be with him and identify with him. That I think is what the author is driving at.

So verses 9 and 10 address this error regarding foods, and as you'll see, it's an error that is easy for people to fall into. Let's look at verse 9 at this call to steadfastness. It is a call to steadfastness, verse 9.

Do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods through which those who are so occupied were not benefited. We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat.

Now, the author here is obviously describing some error related to some sort of foods, and we'll get into that here in just a moment. Notice what he says. He says, do not be carried away. He gives the imperative as a negative, do not be carried away into these varied and strange teachings.

The word that is translated carried away is a word that means driven along or carried off by force. It was used of a wind which would carry something away by force. A similar word is used in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 14, where it's the same root word, but it's a different prefix that the author there, Paul, puts on it.

Ephesians 4, 14, as a result, we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by craftiness and deceitful scheming. And there the apostle is obviously warning about deceitful men who will carry people away, toss them about by weird and deceitful teachings and false doctrines.

In the book of Hebrews, with this word, the same root word, but a different prefix, it simply means to be carried away from something as in like one direction. The wind hits and something is just swept away and it is no more.

In the book of Ephesians, it has the same kind of idea, the wind blowing something, but in the book of Ephesians, you're tossed back and forth and you come and you go and you're here and you're there and there's no stability whatsoever.

And either way, whether we're talking about being carried off or swept back and forth, your feet are not firmly planted on the truth and that's the point. The author warns us about being carried away, carried off into strange teachings.

Jude 12 uses the exact same word. Speaking of false teachers, these are men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves, clouds without water, here's the word, carried along by winds, autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead and uprooted.

These are men who drift from the truth and are carried about by every doctrinal wind that blows across the church scene. Now, here's the key. The person who drifts into theological error seldom realizes that they are drifting into theological error.

That is what makes us so deceptive. That is what makes us so dangerous. All they say, I'm just pursuing this new thing, this new teacher, this new practice, this new tradition. I have found a new understanding of this passage and of this truth.

Have you heard about this program? Have you heard about this book? Have you heard about this 40 days of that? And have you heard about the purpose-driven whatsoever? Have you heard about these things?

And if we just implement all of these things, then we can draw near and we'll have intimacy with the Lord and we'll really grow our numbers and grow in sanctification. And what is ironic is that, and I've seen this over the course of 30 years of pastoral ministry, when you see sheep that are being blown astray and blown around by these things and you go to warn them as one who cares for their souls and wants them grounded in the truth, the weirdest thing in the world happens.

The sheep attack the shepherd and defend the wolves. And that just accelerates their being carried away into error. There is something about novel teachings and new ideas and weird beliefs that allures people to the point where they are willing to actually attack people who are trying to shepherd and care for their souls and to keep them out of error.

Be steadfast, the author means, stating it positively, to know the truth, to be able to discern the truth, that you will be on guard against these novel doctrines, be alert against the devil's ploy to move you away from the truth, to stand firm.

As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 16, verse 13, be on the alert, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. We do this when we sit under the preaching of the word and we respond to it. We regularly attend the means of grace and feed our souls on the truth.

When we attend prayer and corporate worship and fellowship with the local body and serve one another, love one another, pray for one another, fellowship with one another, these are the means that God uses to keep us on the truth.

1 Peter 5, verse 12, Peter says, I've written to you briefly, exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of God, stand firm in it. There's obviously a concern in the New Testament that believers would be carried about by these winds of doctrine and swept off of sure foundations by deceptive deceivers who do the devil's work in making their error look like truth.

Do not be moved, the apostle would say. And notice how he describes these teachings, varied and strange. The word varied there means multifaceted, multicolored. It's a word that is used in the Old Testament in the Septuagint of the coat that Jacob gave to Joseph, a multicolored coat, describes the variety and the robust variety of something, a multitude of errors.

The devil's arsenal of lies is quite impressive. It's quite impressive. He has lies about Christology, lies about philosophy, lies about ecclesiology, lies about soteriology, lies about eschatology. He has a multitude of lies that are designed to appeal to us.

The church landscape is littered with various teachings and sometimes it's difficult to keep up. Almost weekly, I get an email or a question from somebody somewhere asking me about some new teaching, new program, new teacher, new church, new doctrine or whatever it is.

And just about the time that I'm able to sort of get an assessment of it and get my head wrapped around it and see what it is, then another one pops up right beside it and I'm asked about another one.

It would almost be a blessing to not have the internet because it used to take decades for error to spread, but now overnight something can go viral and before long you have all of these groups popping up all over the place.

So now heresy is birthed and becomes ubiquitous in a matter of hours or days. In the early church it would take decades for nonsense to spread. Today it's just spread in chat rooms all over the place.

Acts chapter 20 verse 30 says, from among your own selves men will arise speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them. This is why Paul warned the Colossians, I say this so that no one will delude you with a persuasive argument.

Error can be persuasive, but it is error nonetheless. It's still deluding and dangerous. A variety of errors, they're all over the place. They crop up all the time. And he also calls them strange, which is an interesting word.

It's not the word that you would mean for strangers and you look strange. It just simply means foreign or like an alien. It's the same word that is at the root of the word the love of strangers or hospitality.

It describes one who is a foreigner or a stranger. It's not describing something that is weird or bizarre or exotic or wacky or crazy. It's just describing something that is foreign to the truth, something that doesn't fit with it, it doesn't belong.

It's not native or germane to the gospel or to the truth. And here's the key, error is not always nutsy. Error is not always something that you hear, you listen to, and you think, man, that is nuts. How can anybody believe that?

That is so far out in left field. How could anybody be deceived by that? Sometimes error is that way, but not all the time. Sometimes error sounds and looks a lot like the truth, but it is nonetheless foreign to the gospel and foreign to the truth.

That's what the author is describing. There are all kinds of teachings that get Christians off their game, and just so I can make sure that if I haven't already yet that I could offend basically everybody by who might be listening, I'll give you a few of them.

Christian nationalism, that is an error. You say, who wouldn't want to be ruled by Christian princes or a Christian president, especially given the cavalcade of bond villains that seem to rule us nationally and internationally.

Now, that might be an overstatement. Bond villains are typically competent and intelligent, so maybe I would have to dial that back and retract that and say, if it were not for the lack of intelligence and lack of competence, we would look like we are ruled by a bunch of bond villains, or at least somebody who was the offspring of a bunch of bond villains in Arkham Asylum.

But who wouldn't want to be ruled by Christians instead of these people? I would. Is Christian nationalism the answer? And yet for the last two years almost, we have had nothing but intramural online debates over this issue of defining it and redefining it and then undefining it.

And whether you're in this camp or the other camp and where you come down on this issue, how much ink has been spilled, how much time has been spent mulling over this nonsense? Sabbath laws in the church, must we keep the Lord's Day like we do the Sabbath day?

Should we take the Old Testament Sabbath laws and impose them for Lord's Day worship and Lord's Day observance? The observance of feasts and festivals from the Old Testament because we see Jesus in them.

So let's go ahead and practice the Passover Seder and just point to all the places where Jesus fulfills the Passover Seder. And then we should jump on the feast of booths and the feast of this thing and the celebration of that thing.

And if it's mentioned in the Old Testament, it must point to Jesus. So therefore, we should celebrate these things and just point out where Jesus is in them. How about the idea that we can hear from God, do miracles, perform exorcisms, Bible translations that come across the scene.

That's always a fun one. King James only or Textus Receptus only. And if you read anything other than the King James translation, you're of the devil and you're promoting the devil's work. End-time speculations.

By the way, are you ready for the solar eclipse tomorrow? Speaking of end-time speculations, I hear that this is supposed to open up some portal to another world or another universe and that atoms are going to line up.

It's either that or it's just the movement of heavenly bodies that we have been able to predict ever since we figured out how to do math, and it's just another solar eclipse. Messianic Judaism, parenting programs, church growth philosophies, Daniel diet, Ezekiel diet.

Find a verse in the Scripture that mentions somebody eating food and you can build an entire diet plan around it and Lifeway will sell your books. The nonsense never ends. And people get off on these trails.

Three decades of observing this, I have watched all of these things and more come and go. And every time these winds blow across the ecclesiastical stage, Christians are swept away into them. And it's tragic and sad every time it happens.

The Day of Atonement, the Altar, and Strengthening Grace in Christ

Well, there is one error that is mentioned here and it's food laws. Something that had to do with food. Look at verse 9, it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods, through which those who were so occupied were not benefited.

There seems to be something here specifically relating to meat and the eating of meat or the eating of foods associated with the tabernacle in the temple and some of the Old Testament sacrificial system.

It seems to have something to do, the error he's warning them against, it seems to have something to do with a proper diet having a sanctifying effect. Maybe the belief that if you ate certain things at certain times or in a certain way that this could benefit your soul and grow you in your intimacy with the Lord.

Like having fish on Fridays, for instance, and on no other day of the week, or abstaining from this meat, or eating lots of this meat, or cooking your things in a certain way. These are all things related to food which the author says have no benefit to the soul.

Look at verse 10, we have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat. Again, he's talking about some sort of a food requirement. Verse 11, for the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest as an offering for sin are burned outside the camp.