Sermon: Christian Living

As you take a copy of God's word this morning, we're gonna turn open to the book of Hebrews

as we continue our way through that book this morning. Hebrews chapter 13, if you're using a Pew Bible, you can turn right there to page 1009 in the Pew Bible thousand and nine

this morning. Hebrews chapter 13 and we're looking at verses one through eight.

And let's pray before we open God's word together this morning. This

our Father, we would be still this morning and know that you are God.

And so we pray that even as we sit in this place, we would find that you are still our minds, that you are stilling our hearts, you're still our spirits,

all of those things that happened this week or yesterday or this morning over the last minutes or seconds.

And we would find that there is no distraction for us over these next minutes

that we are still, that we know that you are God, that we hear your voice as it is proclaimed in our midst, as your word is read and preached.

We find that when we lead this place that we have heard from our Father in heaven and for that to be the case, your spirit must stir even as we are quiet and still. And so we pray that your spirit would stir in this room and most importantly in our hearts, we pray all of this in the strong name of Christ, your Son and our savior. Amen. Hebrews chapter 13 verses one through eight. This is the holy in errants sufficient word of God.

Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers or thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Remember those who are in prison as though in prison with them and those who are mistreated since you also are in the body, let marriage be held in honor among all. Let the marriage bed be undefiled for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. Keep your life free from the love of money

and be content with what you have for. He has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. So we can confidently say the Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me? Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you, the word of God, consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. The grass withers and the flower fades. The word of God is forever. Thanks. Speak to God. Amen.

Francis Schaeffer, the pastor and kind of thought leader in the 20th century, middle of the 20th century, late 20th century once wrote a book and then he also did a teaching series and he entitled it, how should we then live? How should we then live? It's a good question. It's a question a lot of Christians are asking, especially in the western world today, in America today. Our culture has changed. It's changed radically over the last

decade or so. And so the question is there, how should we then live?

Princess Schafer's subtitled that book, how should We Then Live? He subtitled it with this. How should we then live the rise and decline of Western thought and culture? He published that book the year before I was born 1976. How much more decline and how much more of a question, how should we then live?

A lawyer, a pharisee of the Pharisees came to Jesus in the three synoptic gospels, Matthew, mark, and Luke. They all recorded and he asked a very similar question aimed at the very same thing, how should we then live? He asked Jesus that famous question, what is the greatest commandment of the law?

And Jesus will answer it. It is asked as a test to test Jesus. It's no small test. In Luke's gospel, Luke says that when Jesus answered the question, the lawyer replied to Jesus very graciously. You've answered correctly in Mark's gospel, mark says that after Jesus answered the question that no one dared to ask him any more questions. And what was his answer? Those of you that have been in the church for a period of time,

you know the answer. Jesus said, the most important is you shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart and with all of your soul and with all of your mind and with all of your strength. It's the same way that the writer of Hebrews has just ended Chapter 12. He has gone through 11 chapters of showing how Christ is the fulfillment of all of the promises of God and that we are to set our hope in him. Our faith is to be in him.

And when he gets finally to the end and he's pressing that we need to keep persevering, we need to get pressing into the kingdom, we gotta keep our eyes fixed upon heaven and looking to Christ in faith, we need to finish the race. He ends chapter 12 with saying, our God is a consuming fire. Let us worship him. Give him acceptable worship with reverence and all. How should we then live? Glorify God, worship God in essence love God.

He focuses us on the vertical.

But just like Jesus, you know Jesus when he answers that question, you are to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength. He immediately, immediately follows it with, and the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There are two sides of the same coin. He can't answer the question just with the one. He is gotta answer it with both because they're intrinsically and intimately tied together.

And so the writer of Hebrews does the exact same thing. He's focuses us on the vertical you shall offer to the Lord acceptable worship and reverence and awe for he is a consuming fire. Glorify God, worship God, love God. And then what does he do when he is giving practical advice? He now says, you are to love one another. That's where he leads us, love God. And then he immediately goes to the horizontal at the beginning of chapter 13, love

one another crisis of fulfillment of everything. You've been united to him by faith and what did Christ do? He loved God with all of his heart, soul, mind and strength. And he loved his neighbor as himself. And now Christ is at work within you. He is at work within you. You're united to Christ. You're filled with his spirit. You're being made a holy temple unto him. You are his disciple. What does it look like? The vertical love God, the horizontal

love one another. How should we then live? His answer is love.

Six emphases. He places on loving one another in this text and we're gonna walk through them First, brotherly love. Brotherly love his first imperative. Verse one, let brotherly love continue. Why? Why this? At the very start of this very practical horizontal focus kind of loving closing well, didn't Jesus say they will know you by your love for one another? This is what it looks like to be a Christian you love one another.

Now again, remember the context the church is receiving this letter that is receiving this letter is facing growing opposition. The the Roman world is turning against Christians and they are beginning to feel the pressure and increasing persecution. And so the writer addresses this at the very beginning because often it is our love for one another that is first tested. When the church faces growing opposition,

there will be disagreements. We will feel pulled and we will feel pushed. We will disagree about what faithful living looks like in the midst of growing opposition and cons. Instead of considering others better than ourselves, we will consider ourselves better than others.

My life or maybe more poignantly my family's life, its wellbeing is threatened. That's fertile ground for relationships breaking down among my greater family, the church. So he starts here. How should we then live with brotherly love?

Let brotherly love continue.

I'm gonna continue to say this over and over 'cause I believe it and until we believe it together and then I'll keep saying it over and over 'cause we keep needing to remind each other of this and are gonna keep needing to remind each other of this. When you come to Christ, you'd not only been saved unto Christ, we've been saved unto one another

and I truly believe that the great apologetic in our age for the truthfulness of the Christian faith is going to come through our love for one another and society that is increasingly hostile, that's fractured, that literally cancels one another for having a differing opinion.

This is going to be increasingly strange and increasingly odd.

Be increasingly odd that so many distinct people with so many distinct differences gathered together in distinct love for a distinct activity to worship God.

It will be increasingly strange and it will be increasingly alluring.

They will know you by your love for one another.

What is the first answer the writer of Hebrew gives for? How should we then live, continue and brotherly love? Continue. Notice that they already have it as we have it, but it takes effort to maintain it. He's saying brotherly love doesn't just happen. It doesn't simply continue. You have to persevere in this. You actually have to labor towards this. Why? Because it's continually assaulted. The culture is gonna do everything it can

to break your relationships with one another. And so you have to keep at it how We could give a lot of different biblical answers. Let me just offer a few. We are to seek each other's interests, not simply our own. We're seek to serve one another but not mere service. We are to serve one another to the point of sacrifice. As the scriptures teach, we're to give each other the benefit of the doubt considering others better than ourselves.

We're to pray for one another. Few things will engender love for your brothers and sisters in Christ more than praying for them.

We forgive one another, we encourage one another. Maybe you begin writing cards of encouragement to people in the church or maybe you actually show up on a Sunday morning and isn't just about you. You come here with a list of three or four people in your mind that I, I want to touch that person this morning to encourage them, speak a word to them or if I can say it, especially to high school and junior high students in the room

you seek not just to be with your friend group, just your affinity group, just the people that are like you that go to the same school you do or the same kind of schooling that you do. You love one another. It's brotherly affection.

We treat each other as we are family. How should we then live? The first answer is in brotherly love.

Why? 'cause Christ is at work within us. Been united to Christ. You've been united to Christ.

He loved his own to the very end. I call you friends. He says, you are my brothers and sisters. Who is my mother and my brothers and sisters. Those who do the will of God that believed in me. This is what it looks like. He's at work in us. That's what this is what it looks like.

He now gives us a second answer in verse two. He focuses his readers upon hospitality. Now again, a little context, in the biblical world, there were no Marriott hotel chains. There were ins and that was about it. And ins were not clean, white chic kind of places. These things had a reputation of being dirty, being filthy, but even more than that of being unsafe. And so Christians were to show hospitality, especially in the midst of this where there is a growing persecution

and there are Christian travelers and it would be unsafe for them to be in the end. And so they were to open up their homes to strangers, other Christians that are traveling through the area. So the writer says to them, show hospitality. This is just part of what it looks like to be a Christian. Peter will say in one Peter four, show hospitality to one another without grumbling. We are to invite people into our homes maybe to stay who

or she has a wonderful history of this. Some of you do this regularly, have different students that have stayed with you or different people that are hurting in the congregation stay with you for a period of time. Wonderful examples, but at the very least we would invite people in for meals and for fellowship and for friendship It. And it isn't just to be our homes, but it's to be our church. When they come in those doors, they, they can't help

but run into a hospitable spirit. They feel welcomed, they feel seen, even feel known by the way that you ask them questions. Loved one of you recently emailed me about a conversation you had with a family member and you were talking to your family member about the church and that family member was saying, well I bet you don't have these kind of people at your church and these kind of people and you wouldn't allow this kind of person in your church.

This member of our church responded, oh yeah, we would allow that kind of person, that kind of sinner to walk into our church and to be in our church. And they said their family member just went silent. They were shocked.

Jesus sat with tax collectors. They were shocked. He was with prostitutes and they were shocked. We don't throw people out of their ear when they walk in these stores.

We welcome them. We have hospitable spirit.

The writer gives quite an encouragement for doing so. In verse 12 or verse two, he says, for thereby some of entertain angels unaware, he, he's recalling the story of Abraham and those strange visitors that came and they were actually angels that took up bodily form. You do realize this, that even this morning, this is not a joke this morning, there could be an angel sitting in this room in bodily form. You could have greeted one that walked in the door.

Hospitality was countercultural in that day. It isn't our day in our culture homes, even our churches, often we consider them citadels fortresses against the world. We, we go in, we section ourselves off from all of the world. We're safe within hospitality breaks down the walls.

It invites others in. How should we then live in brotherly love? Second in hospitable love. Third verse three. Remember those who are in prison again, remember the context. There's an increasing number of Christians that are being rounded up. In fact, the rite of Hebrews in chapter 10 will say that there are some that have been imprisoned and that they have had compassion on. And he's saying some of you have had all of your

material well taken from you. He has his eyes on them having loving care for those most destitute in their community. 'cause you'll remember that in that world if someone was put in prison, they had nothing. There were no clothes provided for them. There was no food provided for them. The only way that they were provided for is if family members or friends stopped by and they dropped off food and and they dropped off clothing.

They were the most destitute in the community. And so the writer of Hebrews is telling them, you are to have care, loving care for those most destitute in your community. And notice the emphasis he places here again, he reminds them that they have a vested interest in those who are suffering most in their midst. In fact, he encourages empathy. He says, remember those who are in prison as though in prison with them. Why? Because in a very real sense,

you are in prison with them. You're one body. We've not only been saved to Christ, we've been saved to one another. And so their pain is my pain. Their trial is my trial. Their trouble is my trouble.

And soul is on that, that road to Damascus and he is persecuting Christians. What does Jesus thrown from the he? Uh, what does he roar from the heavens? He says, soul, soul, why are you persecuting me?

Is union in the body?

So thus we care about the young brother fighting cancer, the wife being mistreated, the parent with a child going astray. The man who just lost his job, the college student who is lonely and friendless their pain is our pain. Their trial was our trial.

Remember John 11, Jesus weeps at the tomb of Lazarus. Why? He knows he's gonna raise Lazarus from the grave. He said it the day earlier.

He knows that Lazarus is gonna be reunited with Martha Mary. Why does he weep? Because Martha Mary are weeping. Their pain is his pain. He is at work within us.

So brotherly love, hospitable love, compassionate love. Fourth, he now turns his attention to marriage. Affirming love. Why focus particularly on marriage? Because a culture that is increasingly hostile to Christianity will be increasingly hostile to marriage and its influence could be brought into the church. It is no mistake, it's not a mistake that when a culture turns against Christians and it turns against the Christian faith

that it also turns against marriage. Why? Because of what Paul says in Ephesians five, that marriage is a picture of the relationship between Christ and the church, not the other way around Christ. And the church is not a picture of marriage. Marriage is a picture of Christ and the church. So that all the way back in the garden of Eden, when God chose to to take the rib out of the side of Adam and form Eve and to his marriage partner

and he established the institution of marriage, he did so so that there would be a continual testimony through all the ages over and over and over with every marriage that we see of the relationship between Christ and his church,

the attempts to downplay the importance of marriage in our society. Even worse, to rip the sexual union from the confines of marriage to redefine marriage from one man and one woman in a lifelong commitment to something totally other, to undo the proper roles of husbands as a head of their homes to mock the idea of wives submitting to their husbands to dismiss heinous the heinousness of infidelity. It all is just taking aim at Christ

and he doesn't want to see the culture's attack upon marriage, find its way into the church.

We care about it culturally, but notice this focus is on them, the Christians. It always begins with us. Let marriage be held in honor among all meaning all those that are members of this church that he is writing to from every child, to every single, to every widow, to widower, to every married, husband and wife all are to honor the institution of marriage. And in particular he has in view sexual fidelity. Again, it begins with us.

We pray the in the Lord's prayer, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. It's not just an abstract idea that you and I are praying.

God's kingdom is present now and we're praying that it will continue to go forward in the world and in our hearts in the world. You are praying that every time you pray that prayer,

it's not a mistake that the writer of Hebrews after speaking about faith and about us being pilgrims in this world, that he presses home, that even as we have our minds set upon heaven, that there is a real working of it out in life here on earth among us, in us.

All this to say this,

we cannot be exercised about a downturn in our culture if we're not busy about seeing Christ's kingdom extended in our own lives.

The man who is outraged about transgenderism and hormone, hormone therapy being used on children and upset rightfully so, that it seems like every major corporation has to have a rainbow flag on everything that it produces and is attempting to redefine marriage. And yet that man is looking at pornography.

He's not standing on solid ground.

He's protesting louder with his voice than he is with his life.

And a wife laments the destruction of family in our society, disrespective children in our day towards those in authority. And yet she does not honor her husband

or young couple, just cannot believe the redefinition of gender in our society and yet is crossing every sexual barrier there is. Or a husband that is fomenting at the mouth because the government is reaching into areas that it should not. And yet he is domineering of. His wife is not standing on solid ground.

It begins with us

midst of a marriage destroying culture, which they were in a sexually obsessed culture which they were in. He's saying be especially faithful and concerned about your own marriage, affirming love. Be faithful in your own marriages and help one another to be faithful in your marriages. Why? Because Christ is faithful in his and you are his disciples and he's at work within you. And so this is what it looks like to love God,

to love one another, which leads the author to caution us about loving the wrong thing. We have brotherly love, hospitable love, compassionate love, marriage affirming love. And now a caution about the principle love that grips so many, this is what you must not love money.

How should we then live now by loving money? He says keep your life free from love of money and be content with what you have. Literally it reads, be satisfied with the present. There are two present les that he puts back to back here. It has the idea of now this is true and it must continue to be true. Being satisfied, keep being satisfied with the present. And as you keep going in the present and as it is the present,

keep being satisfied in the present is to be ongoing. This is what you have been given in any given moment. This is what God has given you. So be content in that. And what is that? That is a God trusting law.

Notice the grounds for the satisfaction that we are to have. He says the promise of God, he reminds us verse five, literally he himself has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. This is the great covenantal promise of God in the scriptures. It is implicit throughout the Old Testament scriptures and is explicit at different points. He will say to Jacob in Genesis 28, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go for I will not leave you

until I have done what I have promised you. He says to Joshua, just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you, I will not leave you or forsake you. And then he demonstrates it visually throughout the Old Testament. He will lead them by a fire, a pillar of fire at night and by a cloud by day he will give them the tabernacle on which he will descend in the glory cloud to say, look, I am not leaving you. I will not forsake you. He'll do the same When the temple is

erected, he will do so with every prophet and priest and king that he sends to them as a nation. He is just declaring over and over again to them, I will not leave you, I will not forsake you when their backs are up against the Red Sea and it looks like they're going to be dashed to pieces. I've not left you, I've not forsaken you. Even when there are 400 years of silence in the inner testament time and they begin to think He's left us,

he's finally forsaken us. Then he sends a prophet who makes a way in the wilderness. That prophet who makes a way in the wilderness sees God with us. Emmanuel coming. He says, behold the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

I will not leave you, I will not forsake you.

He's promised it covenant to his people and he's fulfilled that promise. What the author is arguing is that, do you not understand your greatest enemies sin, the guilt of your sin hell, which had a grip on you death, which had dominion over you, Satan, which was your continual adversary. You have been delivered from the greatest threats in your life. He does not leave you. He does not forsake you. If he fulfilled his greatest covenantal promise,

if he saved you from the greatest enemies, you faced

an argument from the greater to the lesser, then why worry about trifles?

What you need, you have what you will need. You will have. He does not leave nor forsake his people.

And when Jesus is the garden of Gethsemane and he's truly facing the worst of all providences, and it is a providence because the father has ordained it, that he would go to the cross and that he would suffer, that he would bear the weight of his father's wrath. And he's in such anguish that that when he is praying that he will drop sweats of blood,

he knows he has not left me and he will not forsake me. And he prays not my will be done, but thy will be done.

He knows

and he is at work within us.

Do not need to doubt his provision for us in small things. How should we then live in God, trusting love?

Finally, he tells us in verse seven, to remember your leaders, those who spoke to you, the word of God. There to be our example. Paul said in one Corinthians 11 to the Corinthian church, and you should imitate me just as I imitate Christ.

And I was in fourth grade, there were a group of boys in my grade and our parents decided that it would be good for all of us to get into Boy Scouts. Um, and yet none of the fathers of these families was willing to step up and lead. And my mom was a single mom at the time. And so all kinds of correspondence were sent out to try and find someone that would lead us. And this man volunteered. His name was Mr. Nagel and Mr.

Nagel was a leader and one of the Boy scout troops in the area. He decided to take our little group under his wing. And so we would meet together every Wednesday night and on those Wednesday nights he would teach us different things and we went through Cub Scouts with him and then we went through wee blows with him. And then when we were old enough, we finally could go into the Boy Scout troop that he was a leader in.

He was a fixture in my life. Uh, he taught me how to tie a knot, a lot of knots. Uh, he taught me how to paddle a canoe. He taught me how to lead a group of peers. He taught me how to give a firm handshake. I can remember that day especially.

And Leah and I were getting married 26 years ago. I sat down the week of our wedding and I decided to write him a letter just thanking him for teaching me how to be a man, taught me how to be a man.

And uh, I wrote him a letter and I gave it to him on our wedding day. And he never made a comment about it. His wife told me he keeps it in the top drawer of his bureau. Uh, and there was about 10 years that went by. I didn't see Mr. Nagel didn't talk to Mr. Nagel, and we lived in different parts of the country and one day I was home in Springfield, Illinois and went to the local mall and there he was standing outside a store.

And so I walked right up to Mr. Nagle and I stuck out my hand and gave him that firm handshake. He taught me to give and I thought, you know, he never answered my letter, never said anything. So I'm just gonna tell him. I spent 10 minutes telling him the impact he had on my life and how he taught me to be a man.

And when I had finished, he just stuck out his hand to me and gave me that firm handshake he had taught me to give. And he just said, Jason, now you need to find some young men and do the same thing.

Do as I did, do as I do,

consider the outcome of their way of life. Imitate their faith. The writer says, have people that sit on your shoulders,

old saints that have gone before you, that leaders that have taught you the word of God, that you've watched their life and you're imitating their life.

Those that keep in step with the word, those leaders who proclaimed it, a church that is doing that is answering with their lives. The question, how should we then live? We live in imitative love. What did Jesus say? He said, come after me and I will make you fishers of men. If anyone would come after me, let him pick up him his cross and follow me. Discipleship is imitative and it's an imitative love. He, he's at work within us.

He has called us to be disciples.

So there is an imitative. Love, love, brotherly love, hospitable love, compassionate love, marriage affirming love God trusting love, imitative love. But notice verse eight, all of this is under the great truth. All of this fits squarely under it. It is the great truth, the great motivation, the great peace, the the, the great hope that we have in the midst of all of this because my love is tepid. My love waxes and wanes.

Even though he is at work within me, I continue to fight the flesh and I continue to fail in many ways. To love Him. To love you.

I should we then live. Remember the subtitle, the rise and decline of Western Thought and culture. How should we then live when the fire gets hotter, when the persecution begins to heat up, when the ground is shifting and the adversaries are growing, not by relying on our ourselves.

Even my love is too tepid. Your love is true, tepid too unstable. The overarching answer is found in verse eight.

Remember he is saying, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. How shall we then live by looking to him, by resting in Him, by depending upon him. Listen, the world is changing. Here's news for you. The world is always changing

and you don't try and conform to that which is changing. There's no security in that. There's no permanence in that. You conform to that which is unchanging.

He's the same yesterday, today, forever. And I depend upon that which is unchanging yesterday, today, forever.

The same Christ who was marked by all of these loves. Brotherly love and hospitable love and marriage, affirming love and imitative love. Dawn week ago, he's the same today and he continues to pour out that love upon his people. It doesn't dissipate, it doesn't disappear. It's the same yesterday, today and forever.

It's the right response. If he's at work within me that now what I seek to do is to love him with all my heart, soul, mind and strength and like him at work within me to to love others

even as he continues to pour out his love upon me, even as he continues to move his kingdom forward in me by his love.

What the writer is saying to you and I as you run this race, remember that's the context. He wants them to finish the race. You want to finish the race. How In love. In love, how shall we then live when the world around us is changing? It's the same prescription it's always been because it's the same Christ. It's always been. It's the same hope. There's always been motivated by the same love there has always been. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Same prescription, same Christ.

He's at work within you. Let's pray.

Father, we are thankful though the world may change around us.

You are from everlasting to everlasting, the same God of Christ. Your Son is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And that you and the Son have poured out your spirit, that spirit of love to work in us. Your kingdom purposes, that we might look more like the Savior who bought us in love. Would you continue to work in us and through us to your glory and praise Christ's name. Amen.