Sunday, August 29, 2010

Hebrews 13.1-17 - Sermon for 8/29/10

Join with me in prayer.

Lord God, heavenly Father, let us see you clearly as we look into the light of your Word today. Conform us to your image in which you created us. Give us eyes to see, ears to hear, and a heart to follow you. Grant us your forgiveness and mercy as we see we daily sin greatly against you. Remind us that you are with us, through Jesus Christ, your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

These are hard words, the words of the apostle to the scattered believing Hebrews. There's so much here we will have to content ourselves with just the first six verses in our reading today.  Let's first repeat the words given to us. (Hebrews 13.1-6, ESV)

Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for 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, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. Keep your life free from 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?"

Sometimes when we look at the Word of God we benefit from asking the same question the doctor asks. You all know the question the doctor asks, right? "How are we doing today?" I remember going to see a surgeon once, when I was suffering from a hernia that needed surgery. He didn't ask the question in the plural, but it was still an annoying question. How am I doing? Well, if everything were fine I wouldn't be here seeing you, would I? I don't think I answered that rudely. It isn't a good idea to speak rudely to someone who is going to hold your comfort, even your life, in his hands, however briefly. It also isn't a good idea to speak rudely to someone you are hoping will give you a discount on an expensive operation. Yet in our setting today, we are bold to ask the same question, knowing that the same kind of answer is forthcoming. How are we doing? Let's look specifically at some of these commands God gives us through His apostle and see how we are doing.

What of brotherly love? Do we love one another as our brothers and sisters? No, I don't mean as fallen people love their brothers and sisters. I've seen enough people, children and adults alike, needling their brothers and sisters, to know that isn't the kind of brotherly love our passage is talking about. Are we really willing to lay down our lives and preserve the well being of our brothers and sisters in Christ? Do we prefer others in the body of Christ to ourselves? How are we doing? Maybe we do pretty well sometimes. I think we do fairly well sometimes. But what do we find our brother Jesus doing? We find him who had no sin becoming sin for us so we might live. We find him humbling himself to be servant of all. Yes, let brotherly love continue. But may we find it to be that brotherly love found in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

How about hospitality to strangers? For that matter, how about hospitality to people we know? Do we open our homes and our lives, providing for the needs of those who have come into our lives? Do we have a concern for others that compels us to welcome them, warts and all, so as to nourish them, cleanse them, give them rest, and send them away in better condition than they were when they came to us? Again, let us look to Jesus, who was born into this world, born like one of us, though a stranger to humanity and the sorrows of this sinful world. He who knew no sin has come to visit us. Not content with visiting us, he has taken what we through our sin were destroying and has given it to us for life and godliness. He has taken our sorrows and replaced them with his joy. He has taken our death upon himself and has given us life. He daily loads us with all blessings. He himself has promised that he will bring us to our heavenly rest. He has taken all our sorrows upon himself and is giving us eternal rejoicing and fulfillment in the presence of God the Father. How are we doing? Not so well. How is Jesus doing? There's the question we need to be asking.

What about those in prison? Have you ever been in prison? Our American jails these days are pretty humane. Prisoners get food, drink, clothing, and basic medical care. Compared to freedom for some people in the world that isn't too bad. Yet at the end of the day, a prisoner is not free. There's confinement, isolation. A prisoner upon release is stigmatized. He gets to live with that sentence for the rest of his life. He will have trouble getting a job due to suspicions based on his former life. He will spend a long time, possibly the rest of his life, wondering if he will be arrested and imprisoned again. But there's a worse prison, one that we have all been in. We have all been captive to sin, a bondage which leaves scars that will never heal in this life. It's tempting to go into detail about the kind of bondage that various sins will create. It's tempting to talk about the kind of scars we can bear, the skeletons in the closet, the thoughts that haunt us. Yet I'm going to let every one of us look at that picture individually. We all have it. It's nothing to put on display. Yes, we have all done time in a really serious prison, a spiritual prison that has everyone on death row, a spiritual prison that keeps us all in solitary confinement. Though we seem to be free people, there are invisible bars and gates, invisible guards, invisible parole officers who are waiting to catch us and condemn our guilty consciences. But we turn to our Lord Jesus, who has broken the bondage of sin. He has set us free from this prison, though we don't seem to receive that freedom very easily. He has condemned our spiritual jailer to eternal punishment. He has torn down the prison house of death, of hell, of the grave. He himself is the firstfruits of the resurrection. Jesus Christ has put an end to that imprisonment, delivering all who believe him him.

What about when we are treated badly? Notice in verse three that we remember "those who are mistreated" not because we are mistreated ourselves, but because we "also are in the body."  Without a doubt, in this fallen world, we receive mistreatment. It's just difficult, plain and simple. We often say that you have to be able to take it if you can dish it out. But then again we see that we have to take it even if we aren't dishing it out. This world is full of suffering. Our lives will continue for the rest of our days, and we will eat our bread by the sweat of our brows. We will labor and toil and the earth will give us thorns and thistles. What hope is there for this situation in Jesus? We have great hope in Jesus, for we see that he came to suffer on our behalf. He came to subject himself to the ravages of sin, shame, poverty, humiliation. In his final act of humiliation, Jesus, the innocent one who never sinned against anyone, the one who had no reason for suffering or death, gave himself into the hands of sinful men and died the death of a heinous criminal, suffering terribly. Our Lord understands mistreatment. Our Lord understands our suffering. Our Lord has suffered in ways that none of us will ever suffer, in that he never needed to suffer. He chose to bear that for our sakes. How is our Lord doing? Or rather, what is our Lord doing? He is doing all manner of things on our behalf.

One of the questions I typically ask married people when I engage in pastoral visitation is how their marriages are doing. It's a bold question, but it's one I have to ask. It's my job. Yes, I've heard all sorts of answers, many of which would not be appropriate to repeat. Sometimes those answers require some follow-up questions. Actually, they probably all do. This came home to me one day when I asked that question, just that way. "How's your marriage?" I received the wife's answer, "Our marriage is pretty all right. Not too bad." The husband looked sheepish and didn't respond immediately. So I asked the wife what she meant by that. Yes, I know, it's a daring question. But it was my job. The wife responded that she thought their marriage was a good marriage but that she probably didn't care for her husband deep down as well as she ought to. She fell short in loving him more than she loved herself. She knew his preferences but didn't think she always cared that much about them. I turned to the husband and asked him if they had a pretty all right marriage or if it was getting pretty bad. He said he had to disagree with his wife. If anyone was not doing well, it was he. He didn't love his wife as Christ loved the Church. He didn't think he was giving himself for her like he should. I encouraged them to keep trying to love one another as they knew they should and to keep forgiving one another as they did. I wish all our marriages would be "pretty all right, not too bad." May our marriages be a picture of Christ and the Church, as we see in Ephesians chapter 5. May those of us who are husbands love our wives as Christ loved the Church and gave himself for her good. May those of you who are wives honor and respect your husbands, giving yourself to joyfully following his lead. Again, we don't do too well. Our Lord does it all perfectly.

How do we do with contentment? How's our concern for money and possessions? In a world with a large population of $2 per day farmers and business people, we live in a nation where my family of three is at the poverty line with an annual income of $18,310. That's $352.12 a week. I admit that I'm very glad to be significantly above that poverty line. Yet if someone suggested that I could have additional income I know I could figure out what to do with it. There's plenty I'd like to have. Once in a while I fill out online satisfaction surveys from Wal-Mart. One of the questions is whether you'd like to have enough money that you didn't have to shop there. This strikes me as a crazy question. Of course I'd like to have more money. It doesn't mean I'd change my shopping locations, but I'd certainly not mind having more money. And we are all that way. But are we driven by it? Do we want to earn more, be more successful in our businesses, just manage to drive up profits a little bit more? Are we the people who would be satisfied if we just made another $100, no matter how much we are now making? Or are we content with what we have?

Let me remind you what we have. Jesus has said, "I will never leave you nor forsake you." God is our helper. By faith in Christ we are the very righteousness of God. We have an eternal home. We have a hope that this world cannot give. We have all the riches of God in Christ. We are heirs to the eternal kingdom. We have been adopted as sons of God. And we want another two percent pay increase? Yes, the money is pretty useful here. But whether we have earthly riches or not, we have true riches in Jesus Christ our savior.

How are we doing? No, strike that question. How is Jesus doing? He's doing just fine. And he promises he is really here with us. He promises that he will never leave us. He promises that no matter the circumstances of our lives he will not forsake us. No matter how bad our lack of brotherly love has been, he has loved us. No matter how many people we have turned away from our door, he has welcomed us into his kingdom. No matter the prison we have been locked up in, he has set us free. No matter how many problems we have had in our marriages and families, he has adopted us into his family, called us his pure bride. No matter how much or how little we have managed to amass on earth, he has given us heavenly riches. Yes, "the Lord is my helper, I will not fear, what can man do to me?"

Let us pray.

Lord, we rejoice in you today. You have done all things well. You have drawn us to you by your grace and mercy. You have given us all the riches of your presence. Let us receive that presence with joy, in the unity of the true confession of the faith, looking eagerly to your soon return.  Amen.

--
Dave Spotts
blogging at http://capnsaltyslongvoyage.blogspot.com


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