A Summary of Christian Duty (Part 1 of 2)

Trevor Burrus The idea that we ought to be people who do our duty can feel a little old-fashioned in today's world, but is that concept still relevant for us? Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg teaches us how our gratitude toward God is expressed as we fulfill our Christian duty. Alistair Begg Father, we recognize that you draw near to us in the hearing of your Word. And so grant, then, that this might be our experience in these moments, for your glory and for our good.

For Jesus' sake we ask it. Amen. May I invite you to take your Bibles and turn with me to Hebrews and the thirteenth chapter. And we're going to concentrate this morning on just three verses as we seek to move our studies in Hebrews to a close by this evening. And those verses are 15, 16, and 17. I'd like to read them in your hearing. Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that confess his name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased. Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account.

Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you. On the 21st of October 1805, one of the most famous sea battles in the history of warfare took place. At the Battle of Trafalgar, the British troops, under the leadership of Admiral Lord Nelson, soundly defeated the French and Spanish fleet.

And although the details of that historical period are hazy to virtually all—and particular snippets of information are known only to a few—any well-educated English schoolboy will be able to tell you two things concerning the Battle of Trafalgar. One, they will be able to tell you that the name of the flagship on which Nelson was carried was the Victory. And they will also be able to tell you that the message which Nelson conveyed first to his captains when they came on board the flagship Victory, and then to the other members of the crews of the remaining twenty-six ships by means of flags going up the lanyards—the message was simply this. England expects that every man will do his duty. England expects that every man will do his duty. And consequently, all the members of the crews of these various ships would acknowledge the fact that while it was a privilege for them to serve their king and their country, it was impossible to think privilege without at the same time thinking duty. Now, the reason I mention that is because when we read our Bibles with care, then we discover that all of the Christians' duties, if we understand them properly, are nothing other than privileges, and that when we think in terms of Christian privilege, they in turn prove to be nothing other than sources of obligation and motives to duty. Now, while duty is a dirty word—people think that unless you feel something, you shouldn't do anything—that is really utter nonsense in so many realms of life, and not least of all in the matter of Christian pilgrimage. We are sustained by the prompting of the Spirit of God in our lives, directed by the Word of God, and we are called to abiding faithfulness to fulfill the privileges of our walk with Christ in the expression of our duty. And from the earliest days at Sunday School in Scotland being brought up in the post-World War II generation, the teachers and the songwriters seized every opportunity to make that point and to drive it home.

And I sensed the same was true across on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. And so you would have hordes of little children scurrying around the classroom, singing, I'm too young to march with the infantry, to ride with the cavalry, and to shoot with the artillery, and I'm too young to zoom o'er the enemy, but I'm in the Lord's army. And the teachers labored hard and long so that we might understand that the privilege of knowing Jesus brought with it the demands of duty. And the Bible is replete with this emphasis. The high point, if you like, of the whole emphasis of the book of Hebrews was reached in the thirteenth and fourteenth verses of this chapter, where the writer calls upon the readers to identify themselves in such a way with the Lord Jesus Christ that they will know the privilege of disgrace.

And there is in that paradox great truth. To be identified with Christ is the great privilege. To recognize that in doing so there will be demands that are placed upon us, there will be disgrace that attaches to it, is to be nothing other than biblically taught and thoroughly realistic. And the writer is essentially pointing out that from the vantage point of victory, the captain of our salvation sends the message out to all whom he has enlisted, Heaven expects that everyone will do their duty. Now, in these three verses, we have three aspects of Christian duty.

And they are simply these. First of all, in verse 15, our spiritual duty with respect to God. Then in verse 16, our moral duty with respect to men. And then in 17, our ecclesiastical duty with respect to Christian leadership.

Now we're going to give some time to each in turn. First of all, in verse 15, our duty with respect to God. Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice. Now, the Jewish readers were well aware of the nature of sacrifice. And as we've been going through this letter, we have seen again and again the juxtaposition of the Old Testament order, which was pointing forward to this final great solution to the problem of sin—that the Day of Atonement, as the high priest entered into the Most Holy Place bearing with him sacrifices on behalf of the sins of the people, they were pointing forward to the day when Jesus Christ, that great sacrifice of atonement, would bear sin in his own body on the tree.

And the finality of it and the sufficiency of it reverberate through the pages of the letter. For example, in the 12th verse of chapter 10, contrasting what had been going on in the prior system, where the sacrificial offerings were going on again and again and again without the ability to take away sin, Hebrews 10 12, but when this priest—that is, Jesus—had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down on the right hand of God. And by this sacrifice, Jesus atoned for the sins of his people. Now, in that Old Testament structure, the sacrifices were offered not simply for sin—namely, propitiatory sacrifices or expiatory sacrifices—but there were also the offering of dedicatory sacrifices, which took place not so that people might be accepted with God, not in order that sin might be forgiven, but took place in order to express the thanksgiving of the people for the way in which God had accepted the propitiatory sacrifice. And these were material sacrifices. The Jew would bring an ox or a sheep or a goat, and they would offer it up there on the altar, and in doing so they would say, God, I am thankful to you, and I recognize the wonder of what you have done in providing a sacrifice for sin. Now, it is this very emphasis which the writer brings to his readers here, hence the significance of the therefore as the third word in verse 15. The Christian is bound by obligations—strong ones, tender ones—to present a thank offering to God. What is the offering that the Christian then brings to God? Not an oxen, not a goat, not a sheep.

What then? Ourselves. Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that bear his name. Probably the best parallel passages in Romans chapter 12, familiar to some, news to others. Therefore, says Paul—same word, same point of emphasis—therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy… What is God's mercy?

Where is it shown? It's shown in his atoning death, Jesus' death on the cross. In view of God's mercy, he says, I urge you to offer your bodies as living sacrifices. Holy and pleasing to God, this is your spiritual act of worship. So what is my duty, then, to God? This is not the summation of it all, but this is a significant part of it—namely, to bring my life as a daily offering to God in the way that the Jew would have brought an oxen or a sheep or a goat as an expression of our gratitude for all of the wonder of what he has done. The thought is captured exceptionally well by the apt statement of the missionary statesman CT Stutt, when, with inescapable logic, he encapsulates it in this way. If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice that I could ever make for him could ever be too great. If I gave away all that I owned, if I gave up my career in his service, if I buried myself in obscurity, if I offered my body to be burned, there is no sacrifice that could ever be so great that took into account the immensity of what the Lord Jesus had done.

And that is the point that he is making here. In worship, it is to be far more than simply the trotting out of songs, the rehearsing of tunes, the restating of poetry, ancient and modern. It is to be the very fruit of lips which acknowledge his name. Now, you'll notice that this sacrifice of praise, as it's referred to here, is that which is offered through Jesus. Through Jesus.

Don't allow your eye just to scan that and jump on. It's very important. Through Jesus, the one with whom we identify and find ourselves in the realm of disgrace. It's a point of emphasis, because the writer is saying it is through Jesus and only through Jesus. You do not offer this sacrifice, he says, through the functions of Judaism. You do not offer this sacrifice of praise by means of saints and angels. You do not offer this spiritual worship by means of the Virgin Mary.

It is only through Jesus. Saints and angels and virgins and Jewish priests and all the rest provide us zero access to the God to whom we owe this spiritual duty. They are not our altar. They did not cleanse us by their blood.

They did not suffer in our place. They did not open up a new and living way for us to approach God. And therefore, to seek access to God the Father by any other route is to deny the uniqueness and sufficiency of the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, your sensible people examine the Scriptures to see if these things are so. John Brown, commentating in the early nineteenth century in Scotland, says, All our religious services must be presented through the mediation of our Lord Jesus Christ, in dependence on what he did on earth and his doing in heaven. It is only when viewed in connection with his atonement and intercession that any of our religious services can be acceptable to God. I don't have time to make application of it, but one word in passing. When people come to us and say, Surely all that matters is that we want to seek God.

Don't let's get set aside now by our particular predilections in relationship to this. Surely the words of Oprah Winfrey in her commencement address to the women of Wellesley College is sufficient for us. As she said, Find whoever it is. I like to call it God, she says, but you can call it what you want. You can call it source. You can call it power. You can call it Allah.

But it doesn't matter, she says. All that matters is that you unite with the energy of it, and you can be anything you choose to be. Through Jesus, therefore, and only through Jesus. Do you think that he went to the extent of leaving heaven, coming to earth, being born as he was born, living as he lived, dying as he died, to open up the only way to God so that he might then look from heaven and say, Hey, you know what?

Really, all those other ways are fine. The notion that we might conclude that all roads lead to heaven, like they lead to Timbuktu, is certainly very prevalent. But we can find no substantiation for it in the Scriptures. The spiritual duty, then, is offered through Jesus, and it may be offered continually. Continually.

And because it may, it should. A continual offering to God. Not an hour a week.

Not something that simply happens in a corporate way. But somebody whose life is so interwoven with the Lord that the very walking and talking, sweeping and injecting, reading and so on, is all an expression of praise. And this was mind-blowing to his readers, because when they thought in terms of offering sacrifices, they could only do it at particular times, and they could only do it in particular places. No, says the reader, this spiritual service may be presented at any time and in any place. This is a wonderful truth! You don't have to go to a special building.

You don't have to meet with special people. All of our lives interwoven with God. Now, if you as I have had the privilege of this in your family life, you have something for which to be deeply grateful.

I was reflecting upon it this week as I came to this verse. I don't know why it would come to mind, but I was thinking about how often my father would sing as we drove along in the car. This was a mistake for a number of reasons. One, because my father is not a very good singer. And two, because he didn't exactly have a very receptive audience around him in the car—three in the back and one beside him, not necessarily getting blessed by his melodic interchanges. Nevertheless, it never prevented him, and since we had no radio to turn on, whereby we might drown him out, no tape player to use, whereby we might be done with him, we would sit there and listen to him sing. And he sang all kinds of things.

Now, two of these came to mind as I was sitting at my desk up the stairs during the week. One of them went like this—I won't sing it for you, because I'm as bad as my father—but it went like this, Singing I go along life's road, Praising the Lord, Praising the Lord, Singing I go along life's road, For Jesus has lifted my load. Not a particularly earth-shattering lyric, and not a striking melody line, I can assure you, and certainly not a brilliant singer. But as a kid sitting in the back, I was forced to process this, say, Whatever else is happening in my dad, he's singing he goes along the road. And he would quickly follow that—he had a little two-punch routine—where he would follow that with one that he said he'd learned from a missionary in South America somewhere.

And he would wax into this one to great pain. And it went like this, Jesus is with me wherever I go, Jesus is with me, I know. Over the mountains, the land and the sea, Jesus I know is with me. As oft through the valley of sorrow I go, His hand is upon me, I know, I know.

Jesus is with me, wherever I go, Jesus is with me, I know. Now, he clearly didn't sing that once, because if he'd only sung it once, I never would have remembered it from once. Therefore, he must have sung it a lot. Therefore, he must have been a very jolly wee man singing all these songs, huh?

I don't know. Do you think he only sang them when he was happy? Do you think he only sang them when he felt like it? If my dad had only sang when he was happy and felt like it, I probably would never have heard him sing—not because he was morose and unhappy, but because he had three teenage kids.

He had a job. A wife. Stuff. Hey, let me ask you a question.

Let's stop— let's freeze-frame it right at this point in our lives. Of all the things that anybody will say about you or me, does anybody say, you know, I'll never forget him? It didn't matter when I was with him. He was praising the Lord.

It didn't matter where you went, it didn't matter what you were doing. She always was blessing the Lord. It's a Christian duty.

It's not a glandular condition. I watch some of you people in worship as well. It's very intriguing to me. Some of you raise your hands, and that's nice.

Others of you don't, and that's nice. But there's certain ones that you raise your hands on, and there's other ones you don't raise your hands on. And I've been trying to work out what it is.

Is there something goes on inside your tummy that goes, hand-raiser, non-hand-raiser? What is it? Is it a melody? Is it a truth?

What is it? See, the issue of loved ones is that it doesn't matter where we are, it doesn't matter who we're with. It is our Christian duty to offer spiritual worship to God that engages our minds, stirs our hearts, and flows from our lips. Secondly, a notice that our duty is to be shared with respect to others. As Matthew Henry quite quaintly puts it, thanksgiving is good, but thanks-living is better.

Thanks-living is better. When John writes, he says, Dear Children, 1 John 3.18, Let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth. The hymnwriter puts it really well, Fill thou my life, O LORD my God, in every part with praise, that my whole being may declare your beauty and your ways. Not for the lips of praise alone, but for the praising heart. I ask you for a life made up of praise in every part. And that praise, then, is expressed in the way in which not only I confess his name, but also the way in which I do good to others.

Now, the Jewish people again understood this. All of the blessings that they had experienced were to be passed on to the aliens and strangers in their gates. God didn't give me all this stuff so that I could sit around and be a fat cat. He didn't give me all this stuff so that I may sit around with my friends and party, so that I might congratulate myself on how well I've done, so that I may tear down my barns and build bigger and say, Take life easy, drink and be merry, because you've done a tremendous job.

No! He gave it to us in order that we might use it, in order that in our moral responsibilities, living as citizens in the community and living as brothers and sisters in the family, we would not forget to do good. That we would be do-gooders! Evangelicalism has got a horrible record when it comes to doing good. Say, We're not do-gooders.

Yeah, I understand we're not. Well, we'd better start being do-gooders, because we're supposed to be. Not so that we might gain acceptance with God as a result of doing good, but in order that by our good deeds, we might declare the Father's glory. There's more for us to learn about fulfilling our Christian duty, and we'll hear that tomorrow in part two of this message. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. If you're a frequent listener to Truth for Life, you probably know that teaching the Bible is our passion. We know that it is through the teaching of God's Word that unbelievers are converted, believers are established in their faith, and local churches are strengthened.

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