Apostles Church

Heb 13:1-6. The writer to the Hebrews exhorts the people to continue in brotherly love, genuine affection for one another as sons and daughters of God. They are to see themselves as part of the household of God and loving believers as family. What does it look like?

Hospitality v2. (love for strangers). One expression of love for the family of God is opening up our home and sharing our lives. Emphasis on strangers. This often involved housing traveling ministers or other Christians who were passing through the area. 1^st Century inns and hotels were often vile and dangerous places (brothels) and presented a moral and financial burden to the Christian traveler. So, believers opened up their homes and provided meals at their table for other Christians. Not just strangers and travelers. The big idea here is to share your space and share your life to cultivate Christian community and brotherly love. Be a hospitable people who open up your lives and welcome others who need friendship. Proactively seek the newcomer. Let your table be one where friendship is forged and deepened. Renounce the radical individualistic spirit that sets hard boundaries around your home and sees the home as primarily a place of personal rest and privacy. The home is the greatest context for ministry. Are you opening up your home and life? Apparently hospitality was such a common practice among Xns that it could be abused at times. Didache – “Let every apostle who comes to you be received as the Lord, but he must not stay more than one day, or two if it is absolutely necessary; if he stays three days, he is a false prophet. And when an apostle leaves you, let him take nothing but a loaf, until he reaches further lodging for the night; if he asks for money, he is a false prophet.” The hospitality of others can be abused and those who abuse it fight against community and brotherly love. Proverbs 25:17. Are you so hospitable that you are running the risk of being taken advantage of? But in your fear of being taken advantage of or growing weary of opening up your home, don’t miss the opportunity for blessing….some have entertained angels unawares. There was a blessing tied to their hospitality that they were not expecting. Even Jesus said, “I was a stranger and you took me in…” As you bless, you will be blessed.

Sympathy v3. Taking a long walk in the shoes of the suffering and actively seeking to bring relief to them. Prison: Christians in early church – The Apology of Aristides(defense of faith given before Emperor in 124AD). “If they hear that any of their number is imprisoned or oppressed for the name of their Messiah, all of them provide for his needs, and if it is possible that he may be delivered, they deliver him. If there is among them a man that is poor or needy, and they have not an abundance of necessaries, they fast two or three days that they may supply that need.” Actively seeking to bring relief.  Those experiencing suffering for their faith (loss of job, physical persecution, loss of property, vandalized, socially marginalized) - Don’t distance yourself from these people out of fear, but be willing to be counted among them, feeling great sympathy that is manifested in action that might bring about similar results for yourself. They had shown this kind of sympathy in the past (Heb 10:32ff). The command is not limited to the prisoner or those suffering for their faith. The call to the community is rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Paul tells the Corinthians 1Co 12:26 “if one member suffers, all suffer together.” But often we are self-focused and instead of taking a long walk in the shoes of the suffering, we feel a short and un-sustained sadness for the person that does not interrupt our life plans or personal agendas. Here, sympathy is a sustained response that costs us. How do we cultivate this kind of sympathy? Spirit enabled imagination – as though in prison…since you have a body. Imagine yourself in the situation. Imagine yourself in prison or in a hospital bed or unemployed or suffering loss or new to this city. How would you want others to respond to you? What would be a meaningful and sustained response to that need?  

Purity and Fidelity v 4. marriage is to be treated as precious and rare; to be esteemed and held with high regard as something with great value. In this respect marriage is to be promoted, pursued, passionately preserved with two key things: purity and exclusivity (no immorality or adultery). It is not merely that we are supposed to stick with it, but that marriage is to prosper and grow and those who are married are to proactively seek to maximize the health and joy and purity of the marriage, and those who are not married are to esteem it, aspire to it, and prepare for it. (Marriage is God’s chosen parable/reenactment of Gospel). One of the ways the pastor says we honor marriage is by not defiling the marriage bed – not treating sex as common, but as sacred and honorable. This is radically deviant from our culture’s casual treatment of sex. Vertical: Our passage is telling us that sex outside of marriage is not God’s will and he is offended when we take something that is sacred and treat it as common and violate his heart for it. Horizontal: And, sex outside of marriage is unloving and destructive to community. (Dr. Keller). Sex creates Oneness in and of itself. 1Corinthians 6:16. It has oneness creating power; designed to be an act that is the total commitment of ourselves to another person. God gives us our bodies to be vessels with which we enact what we are doing with our entire being. We are doing with our body what our souls are experiencing. Physical oneness cannot be isolated. Sex facilitates whole-life oneness. Sex is a commitment mechanism meant to facilitate whole-life entrustment; designed to secure or seal and strengthen a life long commitment. Not to be physical union without every other kind of union. Sex is God’s designed way for a person to say to another person: “I belong to you completely and exclusively and permanently in every aspect—socially, spiritually, emotionally, legally,” which is why marriage is the only appropriate context. (People often feel married/ emo div).

Sex without marriage is unloving because it is self-focused. To enjoy ultimate intimacy with someone physically while refusing ultimate commitment to that someone reduces sex to a physical act intended to satisfy sensual appetites. You have turned sex into an act of taking and self-gratification; You aren’t honoring it as an act of life commitment to another because you are not also choosing to commit all of yourself to the person in every facet of life. You can leave the relationship at any time with little or no social, economical, or legal consequences. Sex is giving all of yourself to someone experiencing every other kind of union: legal, economic, personal, emotional. You are not to do something with your body you don’t have the character, or courage or commitment to do with your whole life. In other words, the ultimate intimacy of sex without the ultimate commitment of marriage, is the epitome of selfishness and greed and consumerism. When you have sex with another person and resist this purpose of total self-giving, you are consuming that person for your own pleasure and have turned sex into a means for self-gratification and not self-giving. You are saying to someone “I want you, but I don’t want to entrust myself to you. I still want to make my decisions on my own, own my own possession and keep them unto myself, and keep control over my life.  I want to be naked with your physically, but not economically, socially, legally, or spiritually. I would like to be able to end the relationship at any point with little to no consequences.” When you have sex in that way, ultimate intimacy without ultimate commitment, you makes sex very self-centered, using the other person instead of truly loving them, and you destroy them. (Also unwise). You also steal from their future spouse, which dishonors marriage. So, the pastor says, honor marriage by honoring sex which is made for marriage; love one another by renouncing the radical individualistic and consumeristic spirit of the age that consumes people for personal pleasure. Embrace a purity and fidelity that is deviant from the culture.

Contentment vv5-6. A key to truly loving others is being free from the love of money. Test: Do you actively imagine having more? Do you buy things you can’t afford? Are you attracted to people with money? You cannot love money and love God. You also can’t love money and people at the same time. Covetous and greed are self-focused vices that seek gain for self with little regard for the good of others. Christ calls us to radical generosity; antithetical to the love of money. The way we find freedom from the love of money is to experience the grace of contentment. This elludes most people and is the source of so much angst, consumption and chaos. We believe the lie that “contentment is found in what we do not possess.” We are like Ahab in 1Kings 21, who possessed the entire Kingdom but was not happy until he could have Naboth’s small little vineyard. So he had Naboth killed to possess it. Contentment is always one more thing away (a relationship, a gadget, a vacation, a raise, a promotion, a meal, a TV...). We have to realize that more and better are insatiable goals incapable of ushering in contentment. Alexander the Great with the world at his feet cries for another world to conquer. We are called to be content with what we have. The Gospel has given us all we need. The greatest thing we possess in the Gospel is God himself. IN fact, twice in Scripture Greed is called idolatry – it is seeking to replace God with money and possessions. The real problem is a diminished view of God. His Grace and Greatness give us Satisfaction and Security. Christ has won us a place in God’s family and we have his favor, his presence to delight, strengthen, guide, and comfort. And we have his promised help. Ultimately nothing can undo us. We are in his hands and he holds us securely and is accomplishing his good purposes for our lives and will not give us over to ruin and destruction. We have no fear; we are at peace. We are at rest. Illus: Chrysostom threatened with banishment. “Thou canst not banish me for this world is my father’s house. “But I will slay thee,” said the emperor. ‘Nay, thou canst not, for my life is hidden with Christ in God.’ ‘I will take away thy treasures.’ ‘Nay, but thou canst no for my treasure is in heaven and my heart is there.’ ‘I will drive thee away from man and you shall have no friend left.’ “Nay, you cannot for I have a friend in heaven from whom thou cannot separate me. I defy thee, there is nothing you can do to hurt me.” Christ satisfies our hearts, gives us strength, assures us of God’s good purposes for our lives. All he is for us is enough for us and our hearts need not crave anything outside of him. When that settles in, you can experience love as radical generosity. When security and satisfaction is in Jesus not in money, then you can release your money for the good of others. When satisfied in Jesus, you are empowered to love in tangible ways; that includes radical generosity. When you know that God is for you, you can be for others. Renounce covetousness and embrace love and generosity.

This kind of love does not find expression in a weekly gathering. It finds expression as we die to our individualism and consumerism and embrace a gospel forged community life. This kind of love requires a death to self-focus and self-orientation and an embrace of a Christ-focus and community orientation. It starts with the Gospel. Jesus has welcomed us, sympathizes with us/suffers to bring us relief, been faithful to us and given all of himself to us and will never leave us. He has shared his riches with us, going broke for us. He has been cast out so that we might be brought into this family. As we behold him, we become like him in our hearts and in our outward expressions of brotherly love. And we help each other in our race of faith through hospitality, sympathy, purity, and contented generosity. Where you can BE more…Let brotherly love remain.