A Precious Gift

⁷ Remember your leaders who spoke God’s word to you. Imitate their faith as you consider the way their lives turned out. ⁸ Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever! ⁹ Don’t be misled by the many strange teachings out there. It’s a good thing for the heart to be strengthened by grace rather than by food. Food doesn’t help those who live in this context. ¹⁰ We have an altar, and those who serve as priests in the meeting tent don’t have the right to eat from it. ¹¹ The blood of the animals is carried into the holy of holies by the high priest as an offering for sin, and their bodies are burned outside the camp. ¹² And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy with his own blood. ¹³ So now, let’s go to him outside the camp, bearing his shame. ¹⁴ We don’t have a permanent city here, but rather we are looking for the city that is still to come. ¹⁵ So let’s continually offer up a sacrifice of praise through him, which is the fruit from our lips that confess his name. ¹⁶ Don’t forget to do good and to share what you have because God is pleased with these kinds of sacrifices.