Kootenai Church Morning Worship

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 twenty or thirty 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 24:24. 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” (vv. 28–29). 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 Christs, 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 1:20 when he named Hymenaeus and Alexander, who had made shipwreck of the faith. He did this again in 2 Timothy 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 verses 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:
7 Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith.
8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
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 were so occupied were not benefited.
10 We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat.
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.
12 Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate.
13 So, let us go out to Him outside the camp, bearing His reproach.
14 For here we do not have a lasting city, but we are seeking the city which is to come. (Heb. 13:7–14 NASB)
Now, last time we finished up before Resurrection Sunday last week, we finished with verse 8: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” And then we have this warning about false doctrine in verse 9, and we're 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 verses 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 to 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 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 were instructed” (vv. 6–7). 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. 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 in intimacy to the Lord, is to be carried off into some error, some doctrinal deception.
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 as you get into verses 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, “Verses 10 through 14 are among the most difficult in the book of Hebrews.” Now that's saying something, isn't it? Because the book of Hebrews is filled with difficult verses. We've gone through five warning passages and spent months on all of those, 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 9 all the symbolism with the tabernacle, and then we get near to the end and you think, “OK, 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 he says, yeah, these are the most difficult verses in the book of Hebrews. Wow. Homer Kent says verse 10 contains a clause posing considerable hermeneutical difficulty. And if you would prefer the language of the Puritans, John Owen says this, “The ensuing context from hence unto the seventeenth verse seems abstruse and the reasoning of the apostle in it not easy to be apprehended.” 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 say, 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's contrasting the altar and the priest and the sacrifices that they made with our altar and our High Priest and the sacrifice that He made. There's a contrast that's 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 verses 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. Verses 9–10: “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 by 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 4:14, 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 in 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, this word, the same root word but a different prefix, 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 and carried off into strange teachings.
Jude 12 uses the exact same word. Speaking of false teachers, “these are the 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, 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 it so deceptive. That is what makes it so dangerous. And 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 forty 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 thirty 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—that’s 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 16:13, “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 to 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. In 1 Peter 5:12, Peter says, “I have 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 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. It describes the variety, 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 20:30 says, “From among your own selves men will arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.” This is why Paul warned the Colossians, “I say this so that no one will delude you with persuasive argument” (Col. 2:4). 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 strange as in “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 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, I might have to—now let me. . . 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, 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.
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 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.” Something relating to the sacrifice and eating of the sacrifice by the priest is intended here.
Now let me offer you a little bit of a background to this, which I think is necessary for us to understand what the author is describing. In Leviticus 6:24–26, it mentions the right the priest had to eat some of the meat that was offered on the altar for a sin offering. Leviticus 6:24 says,
24 Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying,
25 “Speak to Aaron and to his sons, saying, ‘This is the law of the sin offering: in the place where the burnt offering is slain the sin offering shall be slain before the Lord; it is most holy.
26 The priest who offers it for sin shall eat it. It shall be eaten in a holy place, in the court of the tent of meeting.’” (NASB)
Now that was for the standard sin offering. If somebody just came in during the week or sometime during the year to offer a sin offering, the priest was allowed to take part of the meat that was on that sin offering and to eat it. He couldn't make jerky out of it and keep it for the weekend, for the road trip home. He couldn't take it down to the marketplace and sell it. He couldn't even take it home and eat it with his family. He had to consume it inside the temple courtyard around the tabernacle there by the tent. But they were allowed to eat some of the food that came off the altar. And it's not difficult to imagine that some of the priests may have taught that by the eating of that meat which had been wholly devoted to God, this had some sort of sanctifying effect in their lives. And if only you common folk could eat from that meat, you would be as holy and as mature and as graced as we are. But obviously you're not as sanctified because you don't get to eat the meat that is offered on the altar.
So then verse 10 of chapter 13 says, “We have an altar from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat.” Now he describes a sin offering in verse 9, a sin offering where the priests had a right to eat, but there was a sin offering offered on one day of the year at one time, and it was one sacrifice, a sin offering, from which the priest could not eat. They had no right to eat from that sin offering, and it was the offering that was made on the Day of Atonement. So Leviticus 6:30 describes that offering. Here's what it says: “No sin offering of which any of the blood is brought into the tent of meeting to make atonement in the holy place shall be eaten; it shall be burned with fire.” So on that one day of the year, the day of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, when that sacrifice was made, that blood was brought into the tent behind the holy place, applied to the ark of the covenant, to the mercy seat there on the ark of the covenant, that animal could not be eaten from the altar. It couldn't be eaten inside the courtyard at all. It had to be taken outside the city, outside the gate, and there it was burned. And of course that is a picture of our sin, for which that animal sacrifice is taken away from us to an unholy place where God is not amongst His people; that sin is taken away.
Well, that offering on the Day of Atonement the priests were not allowed to eat. So now it seems—you notice verse 11 and verse 12 liken the sacrifice of Christ to that Day of Atonement sacrifice. Verses 11–12: “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 just as on the Day of Atonement—that animal sacrifice was taken outside and burned; the priest had no right to eat from the altar at that day—so Jesus, our sacrifice, was taken outside the city, and there He was crucified, there He suffered. And here I think is the point. Those who serve the tabernacle have no more right to partake of the grace that is provided through the sacrifice of Christ, who is our altar and our sacrifice. They receive nothing from Him just as they received nothing from the shadow when that blood was offered in the tabernacle and the body was taken outside the gate. The reference to Christ suffering outside the gate and the animal being taken outside the gate, those two references are intended to connect the sacrifice of Christ with the Day of Atonement offering. And the author is saying there was one sin offering from which those priests had no right to eat or partake. Similarly, Christ, as the Day of Atonement sin offering, those priests have no right to partake of that. Why? Because they put Him outside the gate; there He suffered. They rejected Him. Therefore they are cut off from that. Mistakenly, these same priests think that in offering an animal sacrifice, they can partake of the meat and that there is something sanctifying in it, and the author is saying that sacrifice doesn't benefit them at all. We have an altar from which those priests have no right to eat because they put Him outside the camp.
And therefore you have a decision to make. This is the rest of the passage, and I'm spoiling next week's for you. You have a decision to make. You can either maintain your allegiance to that defunct system of sacrifices and that tabernacle and that holy place and that ark of the covenant, or you can go outside the gate and bear His reproach. You go outside the gate and bear His reproach, that is where sanctifying grace comes from. That is the fountain of grace, not some meat offered on an altar. But if your allegiance is to that old system, consider yourself cut off. That's the line in the sand that the author is driving at there.
Now why is it that eating this meat did not benefit them? Hebrews 9:9–10 tells us why: “Accordingly both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make the worshiper perfect in conscience, since they relate only to food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until a time of reformation.” So what teaching is he correcting? Some were obviously teaching that you could be spiritually nourished by your diet, by foods that you ate or did not eat, and maybe even the timing with which you ate those foods. And the author is saying all of those regulations that were associated with that old system, and the eating of that meat, that did not profit them at all.
Now, the notion that food laws might do something for our sanctification might not mean anything to you if you're going home today and you have a ham in the oven like I do. These food laws, they're not in the least bit alluring to you Gentiles two thousand years removed from it. But if you were a first-century Jew and you had come out of a religious system where for fifteen centuries that was emphasized and you were taught and every single thing you ever ate or touched was measured against the Old Testament law and all of the ceremonial details of that, and along comes somebody, after you've come to Christ and faith in Christ, along comes somebody and says, “You know, for fifteen centuries we observed these dietary laws and restrictions. Certainly they weren't given for nothing. We should probably go back and continue to abide by those dietary restrictions if we really want to grow in our grace. . .” It's another form of adding something to the gospel in terms of requiring something for sanctification that has no benefit to you whatsoever.
So you can see how alluring this would be for first-century Jewish believers to begin to mingle the Old Testament dietary laws with their new covenant faith in Christ. And this was actually something that is dealt with in all kinds of other contexts in the New Testament. Paul mentions it in Romans 14: “The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (v. 17). First Corinthians 8:8: “Food will not commend us to God; we are neither the worse if we do not eat, nor the better if we do eat.” Colossians 2:16–17: “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.” Therefore Paul says in Colossians,
20 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,
21 “Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch!”
22 (which all refer to things destined to perish with use). . .
23 These are matters [he says] 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. (Col. 2:20–23 NASB)
What is the apostle saying? What you eat and what you drink and whether you do it and how you do it and when you do it has nothing at all to do with your sanctification. I'm not talking about getting drunk by alcohol as if that has nothing to do with your sanctification. I exclude that. But pertaining to whether you partake of alcohol or not, whether you eat meat or don't eat meat, whether you go vegan or non-vegan, dairy or non-dairy, gluten-free, whatever it is, none of your dietary restrictions, none of your dietary constructs, have anything to do with you growing in grace. To eat or not eat is irrelevant because that's not the source of grace; that's not the source of sanctifying influence in your lives.
The main point of what he is saying is this in verse 9: “It is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace.” So now the question becomes, What is the source of that grace? It is a good thing for the heart to be strengthened, but this happens by grace. We want spiritual strengthening. We want growth and holiness. We want conformity to Christ. We want to mortify sin and resist temptation and to be obedient to His commands. We want to grow in that and progress in that. So how does that happen? It happens because God provides the grace that is necessary to sanctify us and to grow us and to strengthen us. “It is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). This is begun by grace. It is continued by grace. It is empowered by grace, fed by grace, and produced by grace.
And from whence comes that grace? Verse 10: we have an altar from which those people have no right to eat. We have an altar. Now here's the question. What is that altar? That's one of the difficult hermeneutical conundrums that the passage presents. It's not difficult to imagine what Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox or Greek Orthodox or Russian Orthodox would do with the mention of Christians having an altar. Of course, they would see it as a place where the church sacrificed Christ or reenacted the sacrifice of Christ in the Mass or some other ceremony on a Sunday or whatever occasion they would get together for that, a place maybe where the elements of the Lord's Table, like we have here, would reside, and that in the eating and the drinking of that, the author must be referring to this physical altar made of stone or wood inside of every church where the elements were there, that people came up and they ate and drank what is symbolically the body and the blood of Christ, and in so doing they were eating and drinking of that sacrifice which Christ made. That's what Roman Catholics and Orthodox would make out of it.
It is not a—neither is it a reference to a heavenly altar upon which Christ is currently offered or which He currently serves food. Some people have taught that, that we have an altar in Heaven where Christ now dishes out elements and serves food and spiritual graces, etc.
What is the altar? I think it's Christ. I think it's Christ. I think He is our sacrifice. He is our High Priest who offers the sacrifice. He is the High Priest who then intercedes for us to apply the merits of that sacrifice to those who are His. And I think that He is the altar, the place of sacrifice where that sacrifice is made. I think that the author here is simply borrowing the imagery of the altar to speak of Christ, to describe the source from which our spiritual food and sustenance and source of strengthening grace comes from. He is the place of sacrifice, and He is the sacrifice, and He is the high priest who offers the sacrifice. He is that atonement, and rather than being offered inside the tabernacle, He was taken outside the gate and rejected by the nation and rejected by people, and there He suffered and there He died. And there He fulfilled the entire picture of what went on inside the tabernacle in that animal sacrifice on the Day of Atonement.
So here is the author's point. Those who attend to that old sacrificial system think that by going to the altar and partaking of that sacrifice and by eating of it that they are spiritually strengthened, and actually they aren't benefited by that at all. It's merely a symbol that points to a greater reality. The greater reality suffered not on that altar but outside the gate. And He is our Priest and He is our sacrifice. He is our altar. And that altar, which is the real, true symbol and fulfilled that symbol, they have no part in that. They cannot partake in Him because they put Him outside the camp. They put Him out in the realm of the unclean where God is not, where He didn't dwell with His people, and there they crucified Him in the place where cursed things went to die. Because they did that, they are forever then cut off unless they come to that true altar who is the source of redeeming and saving and sanctifying grace. So, the author is saying, if they continue to serve that shadow which cannot benefit them, then they will continue to be cut off from the grace that will save them.
So don't be deceived by various teachings about food, about being made spiritual by your food, your drink. We are benefited by grace, not by dietary laws. We are strengthened by grace, not food requirements, a grace that comes to us through Christ, His sacrifice, and His offering. And He is the one who was rejected of men, spit upon, who suffered and died for the sins of His people. He is the atoning sacrifice. And He paid the price for our sin, dying the death that you and I deserve to die, bearing the wrath of God that was yours and mine for our sins against Him, our violations of His law, our rebellion, our transgressions, our iniquity. All of the sins that we have ever committed were laid upon Jesus Christ on that altar, on that sacrifice, and He paid the full price for it. So then we can, as we come to the Lord's Table, partake of the symbols that remind us of that perfect sacrifice that was made to atone for the sins of His people. Through Him we have forgiveness. Through Him we have redemption. And through Him we have saving and sanctifying and securing grace. It is good for the heart to be strengthened, but that doesn't happen by partaking of food or drink.
And by the way, the same is true of partaking of the elements of communion. If you're an unbeliever and you partake of the elements of communion, it damns you. It doesn't help you at all. It adds to the judgment that you will face because you are making a mockery of something that was not for you. You must come and repent and believe savingly upon that sacrifice in order to have any partaking in it. And even as believers, the partaking of the food or the drink is not in itself a sanctifying thing. It is gathering together as the Lord's people as we humble ourselves and we confess our sin, we repent of our sin, we acknowledge that before the Lord, and we partake together as a body of believers, thinking about that great sacrifice that was made for us. That does have a sanctifying effect, but it's not because there's something magical in the elements. It is because there is something sanctifying about the people of God obeying the Lord and communing with Him in our hearts and in our minds as we partake of the elements.