Final Instructions pt. 1

Introduction

Well good morning once again. Thank you to those who are just now joining us online. Please reach out and let us know how we can pray for you. At this time children may be dismissed to our children’s ministry time. I invite the rest of you to turn in your Bible or device to Hebrews chapter 13. This is the final chapter in Hebrews. We’ve been meticulously marching through this book and centering on it’s main theme that JESUS IS BETTER.

The author has spent the last 12 chapters going to great theological depth talking about the ways that Jesus is better than the old covenant and deserving of our persevering in faith and trust. He wrote these things to a group of people who faced persecution for following Jesus. They could be thrown in prison or be mistreated simply for trusting Christ and refusing to revert back to the old covenant Jewish ways of worship. He wants them to press on in faith, clinging to Jesus who is supremely better than anything else the world offers, even better than their lives.

In chapter 13 he turns to practical matters of how to live a holy life in this world. These are not merely things they should do because he says do them but they are built on the foundation of everything else that came before in the letter. Since Jesus is better than angels, Moses, and everything else, live this way. It’s build on the gospel. These are commands for those who are already Christ followers.

This is the way of life for gospel people. Believing the gospel is a catalyst for the way you live your life. We believe that Jesus is God, that He came to earth as one hundred percent God and one hundred percent man, lived a perfect life, never sinned, and gave that life to take the wrath of God for our sin upon himself as our substitutionary sacrifice and died for us. And three days later He rose from the grave. When you trust this message and repent of your sin before God you become part of the family of God and a gospel person. That message changes your motives for living, your desires, and the way you make decisions.

The author of Hebrews commands them to living a holy life by giving them what he considers to be core to living this holy life. Let’s read and see what God has to say to us in His Word.

Hebrews 13:1–6 ESV

1 Let brotherly love continue. 2 Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. 3 Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body. 4 Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous. 5 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.” 6 So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?”

This is the Word of the Lord. Let’s pray.

I. Final instructions about love.

Now that the new covenant has come and we live in that new covenant, the author gives them these instructions about how to live outwardly and also inwardly. First we begin with the outward. They are to love. We are given targets for our love.

The targets of love:

Each other

Hebrews 13:1 ESV

1 Let brotherly love continue.

Greek word is philadelphia or brotherly love. That’s why the Eagles play in a place we refer to as the city of brotherly love.

The NIV translates verse one like this: (NIV): “Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters.”

So firstly he is talking about the way they are to love one another within the church body. They are to love with brotherly love within the church. The reason they are to love one another as brothers and sisters is because in Christ we ARE brothers and sisters.

We can not be Christians without being brothers and sisters in Christ. It’s part and parcel. It is part of the identity. There are no lone ranger Christians.

Relationships in the church family should be familial.

Now, we know that this love was already present in these Jewish Christians that the author is writing to because he tells them to let it continue. The note is that the love is already there and he wants them to not stop. Sometimes we as Christians are pretty good at loving people when they first show up but then we sometimes forget that we need to keep on loving even when it’s hard. In John 13 Jesus explained that people would actually identify us as his disciples by our love for one another.

John 13:35 ESV

35 By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Brotherly love for our spiritual brothers and sisters is a mark of a true disciple of Christ.

Calvin wrote,

“...for nothing flows away so easily as love; when every one thinks of himself more than he ought, he will allow to others less than he ought; and then many offences happen daily which cause separations.” - John Calvin

Strangers

Show hospitality - don’t neglect it

Kruger states that, “Hospitality has always been one of the hallmarks of Christian communities. It was especially important in the early church, which was very mission-oriented. Even though travel could be dangerous and difficult in the ancient world, early Christians traveled a great deal. Such travel was motivated by the desire for “networking” among Christians, as well as by a desire to spread the gospel to new people groups. These travelers are likely the “strangers” whom our author mainly has in view—Christian missionaries from other cities and communities who needed somewhere to stay.”

Michael J. Kruger, Hebrews for You, ed. Carl Laferton, God’s Word for You (The Good Book Company, 2021), 216.

Hospitality and entertaining are not the same thing. It’s central to Christian living. In I Timothy 3 we find that it is a requirement for elders in the church. Hospitality is a way of looking out for each other by welcoming them into your home. It’s meeting a need and not simply giving them a good time. It’s centered on others. It has a different motive than entertaining.

How do you view your home? You may need to rearrange your view of this. You may need to start seeing your home as not just for your own enjoyment but a tool to advance the kingdom of God.

What would that look like for you? How could that radically change your ministry for the gospel?

Entertaining angels? This is a reference to Genesis 18 where we see Abraham welcome three strangers and serve them who turn out to be two angels and an appearance of the Lord Himself. Then in Genesis chapter 19 Lot welcomes those two angels in and protects them from the people of Sodom. The issue isn’t to be expecting angels but that you never know what your hospitality might be doing to advance the kingdom of God.

Prisoners

Why in prison?

To properly understand this we need some historical context. During the time of this being written, it was common for Christ followers to be tossed into prison simply because they were Christians. This was typical persecution. You can read about this in historical books as well as actual letters from Roman leaders.

The author is advocating that they show compassion to these Christians who have been thrown in jail who are suffering innocently. They should remember them. They should visit them and provide for them as they were able.

We should also recognize that it is easy for us to forget those Christians around the world who are being persecuted in ways we can only imagine.

The writer has addressed how we are to live holy lives outwardly but now he turns the focus inwardly to how we love and think about marriage. Love is not the only virtue for Christians. WE must also talk about purity and freedom from the corruption of sin.

Francis Shaeffer explains:

“ The Christian really has a double task. He has to practice both God’s holiness and God’s love.… Not His love without His holiness—that is only compromise. Anything that an individual Christian or Christian group does that fails to show the simultaneous balance of the holiness of God and the love of God presents to a watching world not a demonstration of the God who exists, but a caricature of the God who exists.”

Phillips, Richard D. Hebrews. Edited by Richard D. Phillips, Philip Graham Ryken, and Daniel M. Doriani. Reformed Expository Commentary. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2006.

II. Final instructions about marriage.

1. Hold marriage in honor

Positive statement - not, do not commit adultery

Biblical marriage - the only one recognized by the Bible as marriage. One man, one woman, one lifetime.

Hold in honor

Marriage is the first institution that God established here and it’s the basic building block of society and church. Generally speaking, you can gauge the health of a church based on the health of its marriages.

I’ve seen and heard so many who don’t hold marriage in honor among the world. I do pre-marital counseling and I have had couples talk about how marriage is talked about by their coworkers. When I do this counseling I use a book called Tying the Knot by Rob Green. In it he explains two extremes that he has seen in how people view marriage.

“The first extreme is the belief that marriage has to be hard and difficult, with an inevitably miserable transition period. I firmly believe that God gave us the gift of marriage as one of the joys of life on earth. We don’t need to enter it thinking that it will be anything other than wonderful. So please disregard those who act as if marriage is a tremendous burden, leading to struggle upon struggle. Yes, some marriages struggle, but God intends any struggles you have to show you where you need Jesus’s work in your heart.

...

The second extreme to avoid is the belief that marriage will be wonderful without any effort. As one of my friends once told me, he thought the formula to a great marriage was really simple: Just “don’t have sex before you are married, marry a Christian, and everything will be great.” Certainly, the Bible encourages believers to only marry believers and to abstain from sex before marriage, but those things alone do not guarantee a wonderful marriage!”

2. Keep the marriage bed undefiled

The first recipients of this letter were living in a culture that was similar to ours in the fact of its sexual perversion and indulgence in sexual immorality. Christians have always supposed to be marked as different in this area. Today’s culture has become so sexualized that many of us have become desensitized so much that we either don’t notice things going on around us anymore or we refuse to expect Christians to be different. Family, the Lord God expects Christians to be different, whether single or married. Part of holding marriage in high honor is keeping it pure. A Christian church must not tolerate or endorse sexual activity of any kind that is against God’s design. So whether that is heterosexual or homosexual or whatever the next hot perversion is, we must not give approval to that which the Lord says is evil. We must also, however, maintain our love for others.

III. Final instructions about faith in God’s provision.

1. Hold loosely to money.

Not a fist full of dollars but an open palm...

Don’t love money.

2. Be content with what you have.

I wrestle here.

Call for response and application

What is expected of us? To love God, love one another, be hospitable and generous with one another. Remember the persecuted church. Be content with Jesus, where God has placed us.

Richard Phillips writes, “ This is faith’s soliloquy: If God is my helper, then what can man do to me? The point here is that given God’s promise to be with us—the God who gave us his only Son and therefore surely will give us everything else he has—then God is my helper, and he never will leave or forsake me. If that is true, then why should I be afraid? Here is the antidote to the fear of man which otherwise so dominates our lives, which leads us from God and into sin.”

Phillips, Richard D. Hebrews. Edited by Richard D. Phillips, Philip Graham Ryken, and Daniel M. Doriani. Reformed Expository Commentary. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 2006.

If you are content in the Lord Jesus then what can mere humans do to you? Why are we so scared of them?

Because Jesus is better, we can live faithful lives of purity and holiness for the glory of God and the good of the church. d

We care called to holy living. It’s hard. It’s different. It stands out to the world around us. And I don’t know about you but sometimes when I contemplate all of the repercussions of that which I could experience, I am drawn to the thought: Jesus is worth it, because Jesus is better. Everything else in my life must fall second to that. How will you organize your life around Jesus?