Farewell // Pastor Bobby

All right.

Hey, guess what?

We finished today,

y'all. We have been in the book of Hebrews since January.

The title of it has been the object of our faith and the idea.

But y'all gonna stay.

Y'all good?

Hey, it's all right.

A little support in the background.

It's not a bad thing.

All right.

No, just kidding.

All right,

so, object of our faith,

the priority of.

Of our lives,

the focus of our identity,

and what it is that God has not only prepared,

planned and provided for,

but what we respond to in faith.

Remember the idea from chapter eleven being the.

In faith.

By faith.

By faith.

By faith.

The idea that we step out and.

Receive the salvation that God has provided.

And given to us.

And by faith,

we believe.

So today we have the last.

Just six verses,

but it's just the very last section.

Quite honestly,

it's just farewell.

It's kind of like.

All right,

see ya.

All right,

so let's read them.

Verses 20 to 25 of Hebrews,

Hebrews 13 · chapter mention

chapter 13.

It says,

now may the God of peace,

who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus,

the great shepherd of the sheep,

through the blood of the everlasting covenant,

equip you with everything good,

to do his will,

working in us what is pleasing in his sight,

through Jesus Christ,

to whom be glory forever and ever.

Amen. Brothers and sisters,

I urge you to receive this message of exhortation.

For I have written to you briefly.

13 chapters is briefly.

Just so y'all know,

be aware that our brother Timothy's been released.

And if he comes soon enough,

he'll be with me when I see you.

And greet all your leaders and all the saints.

Those who are from Italy send you greetings and grace.

Be with you all.

So let's pray together.

God, we thank you and praise you again that we get to celebrate your.

Goodness, your mercy,

your love this morning.

And God,

it's always a privilege.

God, we want it to take it.

As this opportunity to shut down and turn down the noise of the world

around us,

that we might focus our hearts and our minds and our attention on you.

And, God,

we want to hear you this morning.

I thank you,

God, for the things that you've allowed me to study over the last few

weeks, and,

God, that I might communicate.

But, God,

it's your voice we want to hear.

We want to hear from you and know,

God, that you have a purpose and plan for this hour.

And that,

God, we can focus our hearts on you,

and we pray it in Jesus name.

Amen.

So, as this passage begins,

I'm just going to go ahead and tell you that I'm going to actually be

preaching.

This for the next few weeks,

because what we do after we finish the Book of Hebrews is we go back.

To the Book of Hebrews.

Now, just next week is outdoor worship.

Was that on the announcement video?

Because I skipped it.

All right,

so outdoor worship next week out in the parking lot.

08:00 and 10:00 come on.

If you're a family with children,

you.

Want to come at 10:00 because we're.

Going to follow at 10:00 we start 1130.

We have hamburgers and hot dogs.

And sometime after the hamburgers and hot.

Dogs, we blow up the bounce houses.

And do the cotton candy and all that sort of Thing for Kids FeSt.

So we invite you to come be a part of outdoor worship.

If it rains,

come inside.

We were going to do baptism TodAy.

We had lined up several to get baptized in the ocean TodAy.

But I've been told the ocean's angry,

so we're not going to do that.

We've done it in angry ocean before.

It's not pleasant.

Just so you know.

It gives cause to remember your baptism,

to be honest.

All right,

now, may the God of peace.

Now, see,

I looked at this and I was like,

wow. All right.

So THESE Six verses are sort of the summation,

the farewell,

the benediction of.

The book of hebrews.

And so the writer of hebrews kind of wraps it all up into one,

and basically,

in just a few short verses,

summarizes what he said,

what God has provided for ThROUgHOut the book of hebrews.

And what the book of hebrews starts with is God has spoken.

What God?

God, the God of peace.

The God who has been working from the fall to restore the relationship

that we can have with him because he wants peace with us.

And guess what?

We want peace with him.

All right,

so the fall,

the sin,

all of those things that corrupted the relationship.

But between God's creation and God,

God has worked and provided for peace between us and him.

And so we want to know that peace and the book of Hebrews kind of lays it

out for us because it says,

who brought up from the dead our Lord Jesus,

the great shepherd of the sheep,

through the blood of the everlasting covenant.

So when we start to look at this,

we start to realize that the book of Hebrews makes an excellent case for

Christ.

That's the title of a book.

If y'all haven't seen it,

I think Strobel wrote that thing.

But the idea is that the case for Christ,

the book the case for Christ was actually written a long time ago,

probably before 70 ad.

And we find it in the words.

Of the book of Hebrews.

So what we have here is that this case for Christ is the idea that this

presents to us the supreme act of goddess to reconcile the world to

himself. Jesus is unique as God's work for us.

You know,

what it is,

is we.

See in the book of Hebrews,

we see Jesus as both God and man completely.

We see him as king and priest.

Two things that seemingly,

to our finite minds,

is difficult for us to understand.

How can he be God and Mandev?

The Bible,

the law in the Bible tells us that no man can be king and priest.

And yet Jesus is all those things.

Christ is supreme.

And what the book of Hebrews is telling us is that God has spoken.

God has spoken.

And when we start to go down the list,

I'm going to give you the outline again.

I've been giving it to you about every Sunday,

because Hebrews is easy to understand if you follow this outline.

God, the God of peace,

has spoken in times past.

He spoke through prophets and angels.

In these last days,

he has spoke.

Spoken through his son,

Jesus. Jesus is the son of God.

He is the heir of all things.

He is the.

He is the creator of all the.

All of God's creation,

universe. However you like to refer to that,

he actually is the sustainer of everything that God's created.

So who's holding it all together?

Jesus is.

You see?

So when you start to look at this,

you start to go,

wow. Okay.

This is the case for Christ.

This is the idea that God has presented and provided for our salvation.

He is the radiance of God's glory.

So when you see that thing that a lot of people like to zero in on,

that shekinah thing.

Shekinah, glory of God.

Guess what?

The radiance of God's glory,

the shining forth of the glory of God is Jesus.

Okay, so there's not something out there that just becomes this Shekinah

thing. No,

that's Jesus shining.

Okay? Jesus was in the bush.

Okay?

So, see,

when we start to look at this,

everything from Genesis to revelation takes us from creation to kingdom,

and it's all about Jesus.

Jesus is the exact expression of the essence,

the very nature of God.

So all of these things speak to him,

being God the son.

All right?

So there is an eternality in this thing.

And so when we start to realize this,

so then we see how Jesus is the only one who could be qualified to be

king and priest over.

All that God has established.

So indeed,

he's our king and priestley.

So the point of today's message is,

keep on.

I've shared it a couple of times.

Press on.

Keep on.

Continue.

Be who God provided for you to be.

Be who God called you to be.

Do what God expects you to do.

Don't make excuses for sin in your life.

I've said that one time.

That was one of the messages.

One day,

don't look at sin in.

Your life and go,

oh, God's forgiving and merciful.

And that's not why he's forgiving and merciful.

So you can make excuses,

right? So what is our identity?

See, our identity is Christ.

Christ in us is the hope of glory.

That's what Paul said in Colossians one,

the riches.

And he goes on when he says the hope of glory,

he says the riches of the mystery of salvation.

This redemption that God,

God bought me back.

Can I tell you what?

He paid more than I'm worth,

just so you know.

But he thought I was worth more than I do.

You see that?

God bought us back.

That's redemption.

That's our identity.

I belong to him.

I can't go out here in the world and go,

oh, I can pick.

My own things and I can do my own stuff.

No, I belong to God.

He bought me.

He paid for me.

All right,

so what does that compel in my life?

What does that call me to in my life?

How am I to respond to what God has done to what God has accomplished?

Obedience.

We see in the book of Hebrews also this warning system.

There's forewarnings.

It's almost like,

you know,

the hurricane.

Warnings or something,

right? You get the low grade warning.

You might have the funnel on the map,

right? And you might be in the yellow area or something.

And then if you're in the red area,

that means packed,

right?

Well, the warnings kind of step up in nature throughout the book of

Hebrews. Don't drift in your belief.

Don't, don't,

don't start investigating crazy belief systems.

Don't start running after things that stick to what's there.

Don't move into unbelief.

Now, I think this is kind of.

A partial,

well, I don't believe that.

Somebody says something,

take something from the Bible and say,

well, this is what it says.

Well, I don't believe that,

really?

Remember the whole year we spent going through the Bible?

I said,

God did not call us.

To be editors or redactors.

We don't get to cut out the parts of the Bible we don't like.

Or that we don't think,

say what we want them to say.

Don't believe the wrong things.

There's some wrong.

All right,

remember I told you there's some stinking thinking out there.

Be careful of the wrong things and.

Don'T ultimately reject God.

What is it?

What is our action?

What is our response to what God has done?

Supposed to be and look like we're supposed to grow in our faith.

We're supposed to guard our faith,

all right?

God has given us his spirit in such a way to pour into us,

not just to say,

okay, all right.

I'm gonna give you a little bit,

and I'm gonna give you more than I give him.

No, God pours into us his spirit all the time.

If it gets blocked up,

it's cause.

We blocked it up.

Okay, all right,

so now we get to the end,

and I told somebody this morning,

this is all summary.

We can be done here in a few minutes.

But God knew what was going on today.

Honestly, I didn't plan today.

This was planned weeks and weeks and months ago.

I didn't know Jennifer wanted to do five songs instead of four.

See, she hadn't said anything to me about it,

but they are.

Everybody else already came back and said.

You know,

Jennifer picked five songs instead of four this morning.

I was like,

what, I should go reprimand her,

right? No.

Anyway, but I knew,

all right,

so God arranged it.

God put it together.

And then Lindsay Loanander comes up to me.

She said,

bobby, you think we have.

Any time to share a little bit about young life?

I used to be on the young life committee and young life.

I love the young life mission statement.

See, there's papers out there.

You can grab your one.

We exist to introduce adolescents to Jesus.

Christ and help them grow in their faith.

That's why.

That's the mission statement for young life.

That's what they want to do.

So then I started looking at the end of the message.

How do we move on from Hebrews?

How do we get to the next.

All right,

so next week we're outside.

We're going.

The title of next week's message is,

be the gathering.

What does that come from?

That comes from Hebrews,

chapter ten,

verses 19 to 25,

where it says,

do not forsake the gathering together of yourselves.

As some habitually do.

See that?

All right,

that's next week.

So go ahead,

study up and get ready.

We are the body of Christ.

Our fellowship,

right? This gathering of people.

You know,

some of you,

that have been around long enough.

And this is going to,

you know,

the big word these days is trigger.

This is going to trigger some of y'all.

I don't often use the word church,

right? I just don't.

It's just one of those things.

You go out to an unbeliever out.

There and say,

church, they're going to go.

You go out there and tell them,

say, guess what?

We're a gathering of passionate people who want to love God with

everything that we are.

They go,

well, I want to love God.

Well, come on.

Let me tell you how.

Let me tell you what God's laid out for you to have this kind.

Of peace and loving relationship with him.

But quite honestly,

you go out in this generation to go,

come to church with me.

They're going to go,

not on your life.

Right?

I'm just giving it to you like that now.

It doesn't mean that church isn't an.

Operative word to describe who we are.

I just don't use it.

I use these phrases right here.

We are the body of Christ.

Because first corinthians 1227 says,

we are the body of Christ.

Each a different member of the body.

There you go.

Acts 242 talks about the fellowship of the believers.

Anybody meet somebody new this morning?

Can I just go ahead and tell y'all,

we got new people in the room this morning.

If you hadn't met them,

then you fell down on a job.

No, I'm just kidding.

No, we want to meet new people.

We want to meet people who are searching for Christ,

that are reaching out,

asking, seeking,

knocking for the promises of goddess.

The last one,

and this is my favorite.

It comes from one corinthians 16 one.

We are the gathering of the saints.

Right? I loved it when I was in high school and my friend Brad Hamilton,

and, I don't know,

Brad sometimes watches from Texas,

watches our morning worship.

But I remember when our choir youth director called him St.

Brad and we all laughed.

But that's what we are.

We are saints.

We are set apart unto God.

So next week,

when we start talking about don't forsake the gathering together,

guess what?

That's a command.

So it's expected us.

We are the fellowship of God's people.

So kind of in that sort of vein,

I want to introduce Hannah to you.

Hannah, come on up here.

I'm going to grab Kelly's mic over here,

Chris. All righty.

Come on.

Walk out on the dock with me here,

Hannah. All right.

This is Hannah.

What's your last name?

Potts.

Hannah Potts.

I just met her,

but she is the area director for young life up here.

Cape fear north is what the website says.

Is that what we're calling?

Very cool.

Well, I want you all to get to know Hannah.

There's a table set up out in the welcome center.

You can get some of,

you can get this and all that sort of thing.

Hannah's going to share with you about who we are.

This guy's got more energy than any high school kid I've ever meth.

That's amazing.

Like he said,

my name is Hannah Potts.

I get to be the area director here for young life,

and this is my second year doing that.

And it is an absolute gift and pleasure.

And he already read our mission statement,

which is to introduce adolescents to Jesus and help them grow in their

faith. A part of what young life does is we put on skin much like Jesus

and move into the high school to find lost and disinterested high school

students. And we get to tell them about Jesus and we get to show up like

Jesus to them,

hopefully. And so that's some of my hope this morning,

is just to inform you a little bit about that,

to be really clear that we're really grateful for churches like you guys

in the community,

that we get to send our high school friends as they come to know Jesus

back into the church.

And so grateful for churches that are rich in their theology and in

community that we get to send them to.

And then also to invite you into learning more.

Maybe that's just asking questions and being able to communicate about

young life and your spheres of influence.

Maybe that's joining us in prayer.

I think we're the most arrogant when we don't come to the Lord in prayer.

And so we need a robust team of people who are committed to praying for

us. And so maybe that looks like support in other ways with your time and

talents, or maybe you're interested in joining our committee,

which Lindsay can tell you all about.

She has faithfully served on the committee.

That is some of the hope here this morning is really just to say thank

you and just to give you the opportunity to learn more.

We're going to be out front,

like he said,

but I'm really grateful to be able to be with you all this morning,

to worship the same God as you guys are worshiping.

And so I pray that this church community would be growing in their

affections for the Lord.

And so thank you,

Bobbie, for the opportunity to get to do that.

That's all I've got to say.

We'll be out front if you have more questions.

There you go.

Get acquainted with Hannah,

because that's my little sister.

That's right.

That's my little sister.

I always like to point out,

when we start talking about the fellowship of believers and the gathering

of the saints and all that sort of thing,

we are the family of God.

And so I'm glad she's here.

I'm glad she could be here this morning.

When Lindsey first asked me about this.

She said,

I'll see if Hannah can be there.

And I was like,

cool. And so she had to get up early to get up here.

So we're glad she's here,

folks. The summation of the book of Hebrews.

Right. Conclusion of all things,

it's all about Jesus.

He is the priority.

He is the focus.

He is the center of our identity in Christ.

Don't lose that emphasis.

When you leave here this morning,

guess what?

Somebody's going to look at you.

Okay, so I've had a lot of comments on my shirt this morning.

The very first one came from my wife,

Angie. I walked into the room and she went,

something went splat on your shirt.

The other side of that remark was Tony Morton,

who said,

the seventies called and want their shirt back.

There you go.

Folks, you're going to walk out into the world today and somebody's going

to look at you and they're going to automatically make,

you know,

have ideas about who you are.

If you get the chance to talk to them,

let them know you're about Jesus.

Let them know that that's what Hebrews is all about.

By faith.

Remember the gas pump?

By faith.

I talked to somebody about Jesus today,

okay? It starts with Jesus.

And if you don't know Jesus,

we want you to know Jesus this morning.

We want to introduce you.

He's a best friend.

All right?

Friend that sticks closer than a brother.

We want you to know Jesus.

So we're going to sing.

Well, actually,

choir's going to come back up here because it's going to take a minute.

So I'm going to pray.

Y'all come on.

Yeah. Start making your way up here.

I'll wait till y'all kind of get sort of in the area before I start

praying. Because we want y'all to sing as soon as I say amen.

Right? Isn't that how y'all time that stuff?

There you go.

Good job.

All right.

All righty.

It's kind of exciting to have the choir doing the takeover.

I think the next one's scheduled in December,

right? So they're gonna do Christmas takeover in December.

So y'all be praying for them as they practice.

And if you want to be a part of it,

they can add a whole nother row up there if necessary.

Alrighty. So if you'd like to sing in the choir,

you come on Sunday afternoons at what,

530? She ain't listening.

Sunday afternoons at 535 o'clock.

05:00. See?

I'm wrong.

Alrighty. Let's pray together.

God, we thank you and we praise you again that your word is clear,

your word is true.

And, God,

you are faithful.

And so,

God, I just thank you this morning as we've studied Hebrews,

to understand God,

that you have worked from just in the moment of the fall,

God, to restore peace between you and your creation.

And God,

we are those who enjoy that peace by faith in Jesus.

So, God,

we pray that God,

this morning we have grown,

we have learned.

And that,

God, we can reflect better Jesus in our lives.

And we pray it in Jesus name.

Amen.