Faith is Seen (Hebrews 13)
Faith is Seen (Hebrews 13)
This man is not a Christian
A missionary friend told me a story that happened to him while he was on his way to a missionary convention. Delegates from several countries met and therefore travelled by plane. When the flight arrived, of course, the organizing committee was waiting for them, along with delegates from other countries who were arriving on other flights or the same one. As they were welcoming them, a lady, apparently another delegate, exclaimed about my missionary friend: “This man is not a Christian. I saw him drinking wine on the plane!”
(Indeed, my friend had honored his meal with a wine which was served to him with it…)
#This man is not a Christian. #
####I saw him drinking wine on the plane.”####
Behavior that demonstrates his faith
What is interesting,
(besides the different ecclesiastical habits and certainly influenced by the history of prohibition)
This is because this lady expected a “Christian” to behave in a way that reflected his faith and for this to be seen around him.
Idem, Epistle to the Hebrews
This is what the last chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which we will begin reading today, invites us to do.
For those of you who are joining us, we have been reading the Epistle to the Hebrews for several months. and we try to understand it to see how what God wanted to leave us can impact our lives.
Precision for wine
But before reading Hebrews chapter 13, a little clarification: No, the Bible does not say that you should not drink wine…
Jesus Himself made excellent wine from it, on the occasion of the first miracle that is related to us in the Gospels. (John 2. 1-11)
The problem of addiction
The aspect that the Bible condemns regarding wine is its excesses:
Because man is no longer the human he should be. Not only does he lose his dignity, but above all:
Other areas discussed
But this is not the aspect that is highlighted in the text of Hebrews 13 which is submitted to us today.
Our faith in Christ must be seen in these areas:
brotherly relations,
of hospitality,
assistance to prisoners,
of sexuality,
and money.
To worship God
Our behavior in these areas is one of the ways we worship God, the Eternal. Several times in the epistle the question of truly worshipping God was raised:
There is no doubt, Jesus is far above all traditions or places. But to worship God through Jesus is firstly to do so through our daily way of life, this is what the sentences which precede the text that we are going to read tell us.
28 Therefore, since we have received a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us hold fast to the grace that enables us to worship God in a way that is acceptable to him, with reverence and piety.
The author will then present how to worship with piety through the five points mentioned previously.
#How to worship#
####through brotherly relationships, hospitality, assistance to prisoners and the mistreated, sexuality, and money.####
The author speaks to believers
As we look at the course of the epistle, we remember that in chapter 12, the author solemnly invited those attending the church to lay hold of Christ as Savior and Lord. This appeal was addressed to those who had not yet done so. And now he addresses the real disciples of Christ so that their way of life, their piety, reflects their belonging to the Kingdom of God.
Perhaps these few sentences will be truisms, obvious things, I hope. But who knows, maybe they will shake us in our deep ideas or values? Let’s read:
1 Continue in brotherly love.
2 Do not forget to show hospitality, for in this way some have unknowingly entertained angels.
3 Remember those who are in prison as if you were prisoners with them and those who are ill-treated as if you were in their body.
4 Let marriage be held in honor by all, and let the marriage bed be kept free from defilement:
Those who engage in sexual immorality and adultery, God will judge them.
5 Let not your conduct be guided by the love of money,
be content with what you have. Indeed, God himself said:
I will never leave you nor forsake you.
6 We can therefore confidently say:
The Lord is my help; I will not fear. What can man do to me?
For early readers
What could these injunctions represent for the first readers of the epistle?
Persevere in brotherly love
1 Continue in brotherly love.
The community that receives this epistle is in full turmoil, questioning, and debates about the questioning of Judaism. Perhaps the exchanges have left relational traces? And this simple little sentence supports all areas (brotherly love, hospitality, assistance to prisoners and the mistreated).
Not a feeling
Brotherly love is not a question of feeling.
– “That one is going well, so I’m cultivating the relationship.”
– “I avoid the other in a Christian way.”
Persevere
But it’s about persevering, like when you build a house, it’s tiring and it’s impossible to stop in the middle of it. You’re doing a marathon and you’re not going to give up after 500 meters because you didn’t have the feeling.
It is therefore a job, an objective, a long-term project.
Brothers and sisters
Because it’s not about buddies, friends, or pals but about brothers and sisters.
It’s interesting because you don’t choose brothers and sisters in a family! In a normal family, everyone has the same education, everyone experiences the ups and downs of the same family; there is a responsibility towards each other.
We are not Tefal, (a coating that never sticks). We don’t play it “personally” in a family, we are linked. Everyone inherits what the previous generation leaves behind.
Who knows? Perhaps it was this high perception of the brotherly relationship of being of the same family that made believers in the book of Acts sell their inheritance to come to the aid of their brothers and sisters in the faith.
Love
It is not said to persevere in “fraternal cohabitation” for two hours on Sunday morning, before and after the office, but to persevere in fraternal love.
To get a good mental picture of what is being said here, let’s try to project ourselves into those we love the most. What the author is suggesting is to transpose it to my brother or sister in the faith. These few words:
1 Continue in brotherly love.
will be reflected in the following injunction.
Hospitality
2 Do not forget to show hospitality, for in this way some have unknowingly entertained angels.
For the Hebrew people and their neighbors, hospitality was one of the highest duties. The best products were offered, even one’s necessities without any problem. Care and protection were guaranteed. It was done with the awareness that it had a spiritual value and that God took it into account. The Old Testament shows us many examples of this, such as that of Lot welcoming angels (hence the allusion).
Decreased attention?
At the time this epistle was sent, perhaps surrounded by different practices, perhaps there was some relaxation, some weariness?
Hospitality is essential for some believers. But let us also remember that when one became a disciple, it was common for one to:
So, there were necessarily brothers and sisters who were on the street. And there were no social services or temporary shelters.
Long Hospitality
Simple and normal hospitality, perhaps temporal, could be transformed into “Persevere in brotherly love” when it lasted…
The prisoners
“Persevere in brotherly love”
also extends to brothers and sisters imprisoned for their faith.
“Remember those who are in prison as if you were prisoners with them and those who are mistreated as if you were in their body.”
Those who we cannot welcome into our homes because they are prisoners, let us not forget them.
Prisoners of belief
It seems that this is about believers being imprisoned for their faith, as was common in the early Church. The context speaks to us of brotherly relationships. A little later, in the same chapter in verse 23, there is also mention of Timothy who was released.
Care for others
This does not mean that non-believing prisoners should not be cared for.
Which is nothing extraordinary, if we consider his neighbor.
Identifying with the imprisoned believer
The author invites readers to identify with them, to put themselves in their situation, in their shoes, in what they are experiencing. As much as possible, imagine yourself in the same situation of deprivation of liberty, inhospitable place, and bodily suffering due to incarceration or torture.
Just because we don’t see them doesn’t mean they should be forgotten; on the contrary, let’s try to be hospitable to them.
Biblical example
Current topic at the time. At the end of some epistles we see the apostle Paul; for example, at the end of the second epistle Timothy, while he is incarcerated, gives thanks and asks for specific assistance ( 2 Timothy 4:13 ).
Sexuality as its creator intended it.
The following injunction invites us to keep our sexuality as its creator intended. Perhaps the usual Greek practices had a bad influence. Interestingly, they were identical to what we know in our current society…
4 Let marriage be held in honor by all, and let the marriage bed be kept free from defilement: those who commit sexual immorality and adultery, God will judge them.
Understanding
This verse is easy to understand, even though we no longer use the term “marriage bed” to refer to sexual relations for married people. We can easily see that this verse works as a mirror:
marriage is honored and sexual immorality;
the marital bed and adultery.
Simply, this verse reminds us that sexual relations seen by its creator, are only expressed within the framework of a married heterosexual couple. We see it in the author’s injunctions:
For both of these cases, the Lord will judge them.
Money
The last injunction concerns money. There, it seems that we understand the context better.
Let us remember that choosing Christ meant being excluded from one’s social fabric and one’s work. No more financial income in the immediate future!
For people on the journey for Christ
Hence the temptation – for those who were discovering Christ – to maintain normality, was to choose to remain in Judaism so as not to be excluded from society and to keep their jobs.
Influence on disciples
This could work for the disciples who were suffering from financial difficulties. Hence this reminder that God does not abandon His own and even if some have coercive levers in the financial domain, the Eternal is far above.
5 Let not your conduct be guided by the love of money,
be content with what you have.
Indeed, God himself said:
I will never leave you nor forsake you.
6 We can therefore confidently say:
The Lord is my help; I will not fear. What can man do to me?
A little step back
Our faith is seen in what we do, practically.
Our faith is seen in our decisions, practically.
These decisions flow from our faith.
And we do this out of gratitude for what Christ has done for us. By identity, we are children of the Kingdom of God. By these decisions and actions, we bring worship to God.
And for us.
Offset
While we are not in a context of ancient Jewish culture and ancient Greco-Roman influence, even if the ambient Greco-Roman context resembles in certain aspects what we know in our current society.
How to live the principles of this text
So, what would be the practical ways to live today’s injunctions?
Perseverance in brotherly love
It is easy to love the brothers and sisters in Christ of Wallis and Futuna when you have no contact with them.
But the meaning of this morning’s text is not to focus on those who are at the antipodes, but to take into account those who are in our environment.
For example, those who are in this room, those who follow us on broadcast, those we know, and those who know us relatively well from other assemblies close to us.
Progressing in brotherly friendship
Am I ready, because I consider my brother and sister in Christ as a member of my family, to liquidate my inheritance to come to their aid (as at the beginning of Acts)? This makes us measure the margin of possible progression that we have to make. But first, it shows us that our mutual knowledge will necessarily go beyond the simple polite greetings that everyone makes.
Go beyond everyone’s politeness
Question for reflection: What is there more in our relationships that would make it immediately clear that we are disciples of Christ?
That little extra something that shows our faith…
Hospitality
It’s the same idea in hospitality.
Do you know that you can come to our house unexpectedly and that you will be welcomed and honored for an hour or three months?
Hospitality certainly costs money; and individual freedom and it hurts our selfishness.
The ultra-vital advise is given
But we have a lot of room for improvement in light of what the widow of Zarephath did. She even gave the last loaf of bread before starving her host.
Basic Criteria for Discipleship
It is interesting, that hospitality is part of the minimum criteria for the designation of church leaders. Not that it is the exceptional aspect that only they exercise, but because it was the minimum of the believer. And that inevitably, we must find it in the leader.
In terms of hospitality, are we known for that little extra something that shows our faith?
The prisoners
In Switzerland, we are no longer faced with being imprisoned, tortured, or killed for our faith.
Four or five centuries ago, for the same baptism as this morning, we would have risked our lives.
So, what to do about a topic for which we have no direct application?
Even the framework for all these injunctions is mostly local: the people we know. Are we known for having that little something extra that shows our faith in our imprisoned brothers and sisters?
The sexual domain
The fourth injunction concerning the sexual domain is hyper-current.
Progressivism
Our Western societies present sexuality without a framework as a progressiveness of ideas and practices. This is a lie on two counts:
In this, the injunction to live sexuality within the unique framework of heterosexual marriage has not aged at all in 2000 years. The designer of sexuality knows the excellent framework in which this is expressed, thus avoiding indelible wounds.
Are we known for that little extra something that shows our faith in the area of sexuality?
Where are we diluted, colorless, or odorless?
Money
The last injunction is perhaps the most delicate for us, the one concerning money.
Deep question of identity
So attached are we to the pride that our accounts are fair, of not depending on others but on what we have earned and managed well; that the worst shame would be to be in deficit, to depend on other people’s money.
The way we have been voting for decades expresses this very clearly.
What if everything changed?
Let us imagine that our faith causes us to fall overnight into ruin, into indigence, into poverty, into financial dependence on others.
Would we still choose to cleave to Christ with the same righteousness?
Or would we find a false justification, accommodations with our faith, a compromise with our faith to keep even what is necessary to live?
Can we see in our lives that little extra something that shows our faith is truly free from financial attachment?
The financial aspect reveals something of our certainties. Do we rely primarily on what we have capitalized, on legal right, or Christ?
More than a truism
These first six verses that we read easily in our personal reading, without being hyper-concerned, turn out to be an excellent indicator of the beautiful progression that we can make with Christ.
Faced with our failures
Perhaps we have been lacking in one or another aspect that is being shown to us today.
Certain judgment
And God will not forget it.
Christ has already passed this judgment
But Christ does not forget it either if we are His child.
“Yes, you have not shown what I expected from a child of the Kingdom.”
“But I also carried that to the cross.”
When in repentance, we ask God to forgive us when we have fallen short, we trigger the forgiveness He has already purchased for us at the cross.
Forgiveness is not an easy joker
In doing so, Christ’s forgiveness is not an easy joker that would exonerate us from two or three blunders. No, Christ’s forgiveness is not to be taken lightly. It was acquired at the cost of His life. While for us, it is impossible.
Let’s aim for progress
And in gratitude, we will, with His help, try to progress so that our lives are a worship, an adoration, a walking praise. That when we are seen, we can say:
– “Ah yes, it’s not just words! There’s a little something extra, it’s someone who shows that he’s attached to Jesus, he does like Him.”
Start with a point
We may not be able to progress in all areas at the same time, but we can decide to reverse the trend positively with the help of Christ in one area.
Deciding which domain
Let us take a moment of recollection with Christ to see what is the area where I must move forward as a priority:
1) Is this my vision of the sibling relationship?
2) Is it at the level of hospitality?
3) Or the fate of prisoners, for their faith?
4) Is my concept of sexuality God’s?
5) Could my commitment to financial righteousness impact my choices regarding faith in Christ?