Hebrews 13:7-8, 15-21. "What Do You Think You Need From God?"

In this episode on Hebrews 13:7-8, 15-21, Tim emphasizes the distinction between needs and wants, using children's desires as an example. Maturing involves learning to distinguish between the two. The book of Hebrews encourages spiritual maturity, comparing it to physical growth, and calls believers to remember their spiritual leaders who taught God's Word. The importance of good leadership in spiritual growth is highlighted, contrasting with the negative impact of abusive leaders and neglectful environments, like  Nicolae Ceaușescu's 1980s system of orphanages in Romania.

Tim stresses that God, our ultimate spiritual parent, ensures we have access to His Word and good leaders. True needs, such as daily provision and spiritual nourishment, are met by God, unlike mere wants like independence or material wealth. The unchanging nature of Jesus assures that just as God provided for past leaders, He will provide for us. Ultimately, what believers need from God is His Word, which brings spiritual rebirth and growth, equipping them to do His will.

This Sunday sermon, based on Hebrews 13 verses 7-8, 15-21, was preached at Grace of God Lutheran Church on July 21, 2024.  This sermon is preached by Pastor Timothy J. Walsh, a member of WELS (Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod). Scripture selections come from the New International Version.

Intro Music "On the Way" by Vlad Gluschenko https://soundcloud.com/vgl9
Creative Commons — Attribution 3.0 Unported — CC BY 3.0

Outro Music "Divenire" by Ludovico Einaudi
copyright (℗) by: Ludovico Einaudi (in 2006)            

Transcript

May the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him. Amen.

“I need ice cream!” “I need to go to my friend’s house.” “I need you to play with me.” Can you guess who’s said those things to me? Yes - it’s my kids. The answer that they have gotten tired of hearing from me is, “You don’t need that. You want it.” 

Kids do, to be fair, need these things at times. To grow up well-adjusted and acclimated for the world, kids do need simple pleasures like ice cream, appropriately granted. Kids need social interaction with other kids. Kids need adult interaction as well; they need the modeling and the guidance that only interacting with an adult can provide. Kids do need these things. They don’t always need them when they want them, though.

A good, practical definition of “maturing” or “growing up” is learning to distinguish between, and to take care of, one’s own needs and one’s own wants. To grow up, you need to be able to distinguish for yourself between needs and wants, and you need to deal with them appropriately yourself. You can’t let your parents have that job forever. 

The book of Hebrews speaks a lot about maturing and growing up. Here’s one example from earlier in the book, chapter five. “By this time you ought to be teachers, but you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You still need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.”

These words about “infants” and “milk” don’t refer to the physical world, the world where growing up means learning about work hours and cooking and tire rotations. In the book of Hebrews, we read about spiritual maturity. The writer - we don’t actually know who wrote Hebrews, interestingly - the writer uses the physical growth process to picture spiritual growth.

What we heard from Hebrews as today’s second reading comes almost at the very end of the letter. By this point in Hebrews, the writer is offering teachings for spiritual maturity. This is solid food; fine dining. Before we get into it, let’s stop to pray that God’s Spirit brings about our growth in faith and in love through his Word today.

Spirit of God, in the Word which you breathed out through the apostles and prophets, you have provided us with all which pertains to life and godliness. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear your message of conviction over sin and comfort in the Savior. In the name of Jesus, amen.

“Remember” is the first word of our reading today. Memory develops with age. We can’t remember our lives as babies, when we drank milk. As we develop physically, memory also develops. But our faculty for memory is very selective, when we’re young. We remember that Mom mentioned going to the park; we forget that Dad told us to clean our room. A mature memory pays attention to the right things. It recalls not just what it wants to recall, but what it needs to recall. 

What are we called to remember here, as mature believers? “Remember your leaders, who spoke the Word of God to you.” We spoke last week of the expectations we should have for leaders in the church; this reading continues that theme somewhat. But the focus here is not on the current leadership of any particular congregation. Instead, we’re encouraged here to think about all the faithful leaders God has ever placed into our lives. For some of you, this congregation, and me as pastor, may be the entire extent of your experience there. Others of you have had many pastors, many teachers, in various churches. 

We need leaders in the church. Through faithful leaders, preaching the Word of God, God brings about our healthy spiritual growth. Without faithful leaders, our growth is unhealthy, and stunted. This is true in the physical realm as well. Children need adults who are dedicated to raising them. We can find ample evidence of that in Nicolae Ceaușescu’s 1980s system of orphanages in Romania. Ceaușescu was the last dictator of Romania. He encouraged families to have children, children, children. Families were rewarded for having more children than they could support. The surplus children were transferred to state orphanages, championed by the slogan, “the state can take better care of your child than you can.” (Spoiler: It could not.)

These children grew up with no adult love. Adults poured gruel into bowls for them and hopefully, occasionally, changed them when they soiled themselves. Adults beat the older kids, who in turn beat the younger kids. When the dictatorship fell in 1989, the orphanages were revealed to the world. Some of the children were able to adapt, when they were moved into regular life. Many were not. Perhaps twenty percent eventually were able to live independently. Fifty-five percent need significant social support services. Twenty-five percent need round-the-clock care as adults, which they would not need if they had received it as babies. 

We need parents - parental figures, at least - in our lives as children. We need spiritual parents as well. And having any parent is better than having no parent. But we come around again to the theme from last week. It also matters for your healthy growth to have capable parents. Abusive parents hurt their children; immediately, obviously, but long-term as well. Abusive leaders in the church - those who distort God’s Word, who take advantage of the flock - have the same effect.

Thankfully, we are not simply the spiritual children of those leaders. We are God’s children. We have a good Father, a gracious Father, who cares about us and is capable of giving us everything we need for healthy growth. We have this necessary factor for our spiritual growth: A parent who loves us.

Because God loves us, he ensures that we have access to his Word. And he ensures that there are good teachers, good leaders, available to bring us that Word. This gets us back to the reading: “Remember your leaders.” “Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

Again - you have all had leaders who have spoken God’s Word to you. Remember what you know of them. Remember the lives that they led. What things mattered to them? What outcomes did they aim for? What did they place as their priorities? If you have had faithful leaders over you in the church before, you have, by God’s grace, examples to remember and to imitate.

Here’s an important question to ask as you do so. What did they think they needed? What did they show mattered? What did they pray to God for? What blessings caused them to rejoice?

There are many good things we may want from God which are the spiritual equivalent of ice cream. We don’t need them.

We may want to be a part of a large church. (Some people want to be part of a small church. To each their own.) There are advantages either way. But we don’t need our preferences about church size met.

We may want God to give us a big social media following - a million Instagram followers or YouTube subscribers - because, we tell ourselves, “Then I’ll have a real platform to touch people’s lives.” We don’t need that. And frankly, I don’t think we should want it. The internet is not real life, no matter how much society tells you otherwise. Up to a third of your followers are robots blasting spam, and another third doesn’t remember subscribing. 

We may want God to give us material independence. A high-paying job, a big court settlement, a windfall inheritance. We don’t need it. “Remember your leaders.” Look at those who have gone before. Did Isaac - the son, by the promise, of Abraham, who is our father through faith - did Isaac worry about his material security when the Philistines harassed him and his herdsmen? No. He moved on. He knew God would provide for him. God’s promise is that you will have your daily bread. But he does not promise that you will have it with independence. Not everyone who wants to start their own business can pull it off. We may need to work for others. Sometimes we may need the charity of our brothers and sisters. We want independence. We need daily bread. That, God promises to provide.

“Imitate their faith.” The faith of those who went before us, who spoke God’s Word to us. They also struggled with these desires. We all do. Everyone has, everyone will. Everyone except the Lord Jesus, who is “the same yesterday and today and forever.”

If the Lord Jesus took care of those who went before you, he will take care of you. He is the same yesterday and today and forever. Our God does not change like shifting shadows. Daily he sends down every good and perfect gift from above. I’m quoting from James chapter one there, perhaps some of you already recognized it. Let me go directly to those verses, because they pertain to exactly our topic today. James one seventeen: “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth.”

Through the Word, we become God’s children. As God’s children, we have everything we need. So when we get down to it, all we need is God's Word. God’s Word brings about our new birth, it causes us to be “born again,” as people say. Born into God’s family. 

If you have faith in God, you are born again. You don’t need some special experience, some moment where you got down on your knees and gave your life to Jesus. Such an experience may be a healthy thing. When people tell me their conversion stories (which they seem compelled to do when they find out I’m a pastor), I don’t shut them down. I am interested. But if you don’t have such a story, you  don’t need to be afraid that you’re missing something. When Paul wrote his letter to Timothy, Paul spoke of it as a blessing that Timothy had known the Lord from infancy, that Timothy could trace his faith back to his very earliest memories. Paul did have a personal “conversion experience.” Timothy didn’t. It didn’t matter.

What do you think you need from God? Do you think you need God to speak directly to you? Or at the very least, would you appreciate him sending an angel to bring you a message? Be careful with such wishes. Satan loves to appear as an angel of light, beckoning us to ruin. Those who look for extra words from God, outside the Scriptures, are skating on thin ice, and monsters circle in the waters below.

What we need from God, plain and simple, is his Word. He rebirths us, he gives us faith, through that Word. He brings us into his family. He shares with us his promise to provide for our daily needs. He shows us our sin, and he reveals to us the costly price he paid to make us his own; the death of his own Son. 

This is the lesson we learn also in our Gospel reading. When the crowds came to Jesus, doubtless with all kinds of wants, what did he do? He taught them. We don’t know what they wanted at that moment. What they needed was God’s Word. It is what we need as well. 

May God’s Spirit ever remind us of this truth: That God through his Word equips us with everything good for doing his will, and he then works in us what is pleasing to him. Amen.