City Folk
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· 3 viewsIn the closing remarks from the preacher of Hebrews we get a flurry of instruction about how to live. It is amazing how these words jump into our context and encourage us to love one another as we join with Christ.
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Introduction
Introduction
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Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.
Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,
“Never will I leave you;
never will I forsake you.”
So we say with confidence,
“The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.
What can mere mortals do to me?”
Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by eating ceremonial foods, which is of no benefit to those who do so. We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat.
The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.
Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.
Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you.
Pray for us. We are sure that we have a clear conscience and desire to live honorably in every way.
Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.
Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,
“Never will I leave you;
never will I forsake you.”
So we say with confidence,
“The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.
What can mere mortals do to me?”
Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by eating ceremonial foods, which is of no benefit to those who do so. We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat.
The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.
Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.
Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you.
Pray for us. We are sure that we have a clear conscience and desire to live honorably in every way. I particularly urge you to pray so that I may be restored to you soon.
Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Brothers and sisters, I urge you to bear with my word of exhortation, for in fact I have written to you quite briefly.
I want you to know that our brother Timothy has been released. If he arrives soon, I will come with him to see you.
Greet all your leaders and all the Lord’s people. Those from Italy send you their greetings.
Grace be with you all.
Pray.
Hebrews 13
I have had the blessing of serving a few churches already in this journey. KUMC is the longest serving in vocational ministry, but my time at FUMC Bryan was unique because it was my home church. Though I only served as the director of youth and young adult ministries for a couple years and as an intern to for a couple of years before that....I had been there my whole life. I remember taking very seriously all my words those last weeks. The things I would say to the students and charge them with a mission going forward. I had the opportunity to preach at church my final Sunday. May not seem like a big deal now, but I only had a few opportunities to this point. Man, I had so much to say, so many things I wanted to encourage them with. I preached about the growing trends of students leaving the faith and how important multi-generational ministry was. The sermon was about discipleship and it had its points, but then at the end, knowing that this could not go on for ever, I add these last remarks that were relevant but not anchored in narrative with the rest of the sermon.
That is what it feels like we have here at the conclusion of Hebrews. The preacher is gathering his notes from the pulpit and he turns and says “let me give you these last few things.” A charge, a exhortation. No longer spending as much time to convince you of why you should do it, but in light of everything we have talked about…this is what you should do.
In the fashion of the text, we are going to hit these one by one on the laundry list and then I think the preacher gives us a picture of what all of this means. That picture is going outside the city, we will talk about that in closing.
The Preacher’s Checklist
The Preacher’s Checklist
Brotherly love
Hospitality
Help those in need (prisoners)
Chasity
Contentment
Confidence in your leaders
And these amazingly are so applicable to our context as well....
All these issues have immediate relevance in twentieth-century society. Those who are indifferent to them thereby prove that they have hardly grasped the letter’s earlier teaching, for this Christian message has profound social and moral content. They are not merely implications which can be considered and ignored as an optional addendum to a more spiritual message. ‘Therefore, if this truth be so, it demands the following changes in your life …’ In the teaching of these verses Christians are expected to be loving, pure, contented, loyal, bold and worshipful.1
1 Brown, R. (1988). The message of Hebrews: Christ above all (p. 248). Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
Brotherly love:
Brotherly love:
Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters.
Remember from a couple weeks ago....about spiritual friendship. We are so good at responding to physical need. So good at bringing a caserole to a friend who had surgery or a loss…that is awesome. What if we were as good at spiritual support as we are at making a meal for someone. For the preacher, already established just a chapter earlier, loving each other is not just coddling. But it is seeing that no one falls short of grace.
Hospitality:
Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.
We raise our kids with a saying.... “Don’t talk to strangers.” This is smart, lots of crazy things going on in the world. However, I think we grow up and live our life like this. He does something subtle here with the angles. It may seem weird. But remember back to our second week of this series we talked about angels. This is not about potentially hosting John Travolta (show picture), beer drinking, cigarette smoking, two-stepping, life of the party and missing out. Angels are messengers of God, its their identity. What if you have missed a message, a word, a lifeline God has sent you because you, “don’t talk to strangers.”
Help those in need (prisoners):
Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.
In context, probably about those from the community that have been imprisoned for their faith. We should visit those in prison…yesterday we got to visit my brother and it was awesome. For the context, who might be suffering for their faith? Who can we go to and walk alongside? Maybe it is the brother or sister that is carrying the faith in their home and that is tough. Or maybe someone is in prison because they are having a crisis of faith.
Chasity:
Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.
Hebrews 13:
I wont add too much here so that I can get to the other points, we talked about this a couple weeks ago… to those that are married in the room…listen, marriage is not about emotion and feeling. It is about covenant and commitment. , Wives submit to your husbands as do to the Lord. Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.
I hear this all the time, I am just not in love anymore. Friends we are to love with the love of Christ and I dont know of any moments where he was like eh, I am not feeling it right now. Ok, this is a sermon unto itself.
Contentment:
Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,
“Never will I leave you;
never will I forsake you.”
So we say with confidence,
“The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.
What can mere mortals do to me?”
Hebrews 13:
This is self-explanatory. Keep your lives free from the love of money. You do not have to have boat-loads to love it. We are too quick to love the created over the creator. There is a reason why money and sex are talked about so much…they are the easy foothold to the heart. to the flesh. Kingwood, keep your lives free from the love of money, you cannot serve two masters. Last point.... we quote this text all the time, and isnt it fascinating that it has to do with money?!
Confidence in your leaders:
Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you.
Let’s pretend for a second that I am talking to you about all of your spiritual leaders. The other pastors, pastors you might be with at another church in the future. Yes, there is a level of “good fit”, but sometimes we consume pastors like they are a commodity. We take what we like, we leave the rest. Or that’s just so and so excited about whatever, no big deal. I want you to test what you hear always with God’s word and the wisdom of the church, I want you to be very careful following anyone (that’s why Hebrews says do not be carried away from strange teachings), but there is a point where you need to follow those God has entrusted to lead spiritually. They have been given authority and responsibility. We will answer for how we lead.
Ok, all of this is ramping up to this text right in the middle and we need to teach on it a little...
Get outside the city
Get outside the city
The calling in this text, I think all of the bulletin points have to do with this exhortation, to become comfortable with discomfort, outside the city walls.
The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.
Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name.
The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.
Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.
Hebrews 13:11
Hebrews 13:
I am such a city boy...
I have shot a gun like 3 times. I cannot fish, I cannot hunt, I cannot find my way around any farm anything. I prefer libraries to the pond, a good book to many things outside. The city is comfortable for me. I like to know where hospital is, grocery store is, where people can be found at any given moment. To leave the city for me is to leave comfort. That is just the beginning of this calling from the preacher of Hebrews.
In the levitical sacrificial system, priest took the bodies of the animals outside the city and burned them. That was to keep everything ceremoniously clean. Death goes outside the city walls. They would burn trash out there. Outside the city walls was to be exposed and unprotected. Outside the city walls was to suffer. Tradition has Jesus become the sacrificial lamb that is crucified outside the city walls.
and we are to go outside the city. outside our comfort. outside protection. outside the masses, or conventional wisdom. Outside the protection of fitting in. We are to go with christ outside the walls and suffer the text tells us,
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
For whoever will lose their life will find it.
2 quick things:
for this city is not ours…it is not the one we should be waiting for.
our calling is to suffer. This is our sacrifice.
For any in the congregation who protest that they are quite content “inside the walls,” thank you, the Preacher reminds them that they are setting up residence in the wrong city. “For here we have no lasting city, but we are looking for the city that is to come” (13:14, see 11:10). This may sound scary, but it is actually freeing and reassuring. We go to a homeland that cannot be shaken, to receive an inheritance that cannot be stolen. This means that the faithful can go outside the camp boldly, courageously, and with all good cheer, not engaging in destructive murmurs and fearful sighs (13:17). What the Preacher said about money applies to the whole of the Christian life and mission: “I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?” (13:6) Now there’s a “minute for mission”!1
1 Long, T. G. (1997). Hebrews (pp. 145–146). Louisville, KY: John Knox Press.
What is our sacrifice? How do we go outside the city walls? We sacrifice with the fruit of lips, professing his name, and we sacrifice by doing good and sharing others.
All that we have heard today, all that we have heard in this series...
Jesus the great messenger, Jesus the deliverer greater than moses, Jesus the high priest that has made a way to God, Jesus the sacrificial lamb that takes away the sins of the world, Jesus the pioneer and perfector of our faith, Jesus is the one we look to, he has accomplished all you need to be reconciled with God and for victory over death, sin, and hell…Go join him outside the city. Outside the city is the only place where you are joined with him and the world sees you.
Close with the benediction:
Now may the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Hebrews 13: