15th Sunday after Pentecost
September 12, 2004
Hebrews 13:1-17

Everyday Holiness.

  Last week we saw that to finish the race of faith and see the Lord, we need to pursue holiness. How do we do that? Today's text continues our reading from the letter to the Hebrews and gives us some concrete, practical direction for everyday holiness. Here the Holy Spirit exhorts us to do two things: to practice brotherly love and to maintain the true teachings of the Gospel.

  First let's back up and ask the question, "Why is holiness so important?" Well, do you remember Jesus' words about how to recognize false prophets? By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles? Likewise every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. . . . Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them. (Matthew 7:16-20).

  You know what a person is really like by what he says and does. Everything comes out of the heart, either sin because the heart is evil, or acts of holiness because the Holy Spirit has cleansed the heart through faith in Christ. So the reason that holiness is so important is that it is the outward expression of faith in Christ and of the presence of the Holy Spirit. We can be pretty sure that a person who makes no effort to live a God pleasing life, has no faith and no Holy Spirit. And, according to our reading last week from Hebrews, without holiness no one will see the Lord, (Hebrews 12:14). We pursue holiness then, because we have faith in Christ, because we have the Holy Spirit in us, and because we want to see the Lord.

  Now if we no longer had a corrupt nature that resists the Holy Spirit, we probably wouldn't need any instruction in holiness. Like a plant grows of itself when God gives sun and rain, so holiness would grow by itself. But reality is that our old nature still has a foot in the door. Sin still lurks to some degree in our hearts ready to deceive us. And so we don't always recognize God's will. Sometimes the Holy Spirit has to explain things to us. That is what he does through this Word of God.

  Now open your Bible and look at Hebrews 13:1-17. We can divide this text into two parts, verses 1-8 and 9-17. The first part is about your relationship to other believers. The second part is about your relationship to Christ.

  ¹Keep on loving each other as brothers. ²Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. ³Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering. ⁴Marriage should be honoured by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. ⁵Keep 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." ⁶So we say with confidence, "The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?" ⁷Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. ⁸Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

  There are several different qualities mentioned here such as brotherly love, hospitality, purity and contentment. But there is a common thread to which they all relate. That is the bond of fidelity and fellowship between members of a covenant. Going back to athletic imagery as Hebrews has done, we're talking about something like the bond that binds together members of a team. That team bond enables them work together as one. Think of the relay racers in the Olympics Games just past. In a relay race, the runners spend hours and hours learning how to pass the baton to each other. They have to work together. The coach spends hours and hours evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of each runner to decide which leg of the race each should run. All the runners and the coach have to be committed to each other and that race if they hope to win. They either all win together or they all lose together. The same holds true for your favourite sports team. To win at hockey, soccer, football, baseball or basketball, it takes a team that works well together. There has to be a bond between the players and coaches, a commitment to the team.

  That kind of a bond is what the Holy Spirit is talking about. We are members of the Body of Christ. We share the same Spirit. God has made the same covenant with all of us: he is our God and we are his people. We are members of the same team. There is a bond of holiness between us, a bond of Christ-likeness. We must constantly be about strengthening that bond because our old nature and the world is constantly trying to destroy it. Whereas the Holy Spirit directs our attention to the community, the Body of Christ, that which we have in common, the sinful nature and the world directs our attention to our individual selves. The world tells us to pursue and satisfy our individual desires; and the sinful nature is all too ready to comply! So the Spirit has to teach us to be the Body of Christ. Thus the directions of this text.

  Practice brotherly love. That is, be devoted to one another and concerned about one another as members of the same family. Yes, we are more than a team; we are one family and one body. That's why we need to practice hospitality, not just toward those here whom we know, but toward believer's whom we don't know when they come to us. For the visitor might be sent from God, might be an angel as in the case of Abraham. In the same way, we must remember believers who are in prison or suffering because of Christ. The idea here is not that we have to visit all the criminals in prison, but when fellow believers are persecuted because they confess Christ and the truth of the Gospel, we need to do all we can to help them. We are of the same family, and it might be our turn next.

  Purity in marriage might seem to be in a separate category altogether. Yet the Scriptures speak of marriage as a covenant between husband and wife. It's just like the covenant between God and us. We are one in Spirit with God and one in flesh in marriage. So the bond of marriage is like an intensification of the bond we share as members of the Body of Christ. If we can't commit to our spouse and be one in marriage, we'll likely never be able to commit to other believers and be one in the Church.

  We are also told to steer clear of the love of money and to be content with what we have. That is important if we are going to practice brotherly love and hospitality and help those persecuted for the faith. To do those things, we are going to have to use some of our resources. And if we love those resources more than our spouse or fellow believers, we will fail to love them. The love of money, not the bills or coins themselves, but the power to act that comes from having money is perhaps our greatest temptation to evil. So remember that God give wealth and the power to make wealth. Remember that all that you have and your very being belongs to God. So be content with what you have and honour God with your wealth.

  That standard of holiness is hard to maintain. We worry about getting involved in other's problems and loosing our money. We also have our pride! That's why Jesus said what he did about how to behave when invited to a dinner or whom you invite to your dinner. So the Holy Spirit reminds us that God will never abandon us and that the Jesus Christ we follow is the same now as when he created the world or walked the earth. God doesn't change; he never tires or lacks resources. He may have a different solution or plan for a given situation than we, but he will not abandon us. He will see us through.

  That's why he says, Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. The leaders referred to here were probably Peter and Paul and others. They maintained faith in Christ and that bond with his people no matter what. God did not abandon them. They serve as a model for how God will deal with us, for Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

  All that has to do with how we relate to our neighbour. The next part deals with how we relate to God. ⁹Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by ceremonial foods, which are of no value to those who eat them. ¹⁰We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat. ¹¹The high priest carries the blood of animals into the Most Holy Place as a sin offering, but the bodies are burned outside the camp. ¹²And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. ¹³Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore. ¹⁴For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come. ¹⁵Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise-- the fruit of lips that confess his name. ¹⁶And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased. ¹⁷Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.

  There are many details in this section, but the main idea is clear. If we are to be holy and see the Lord, we must maintain our faith in Christ. We cannot let ourselves be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. We must understand the Scriptures and then believe, teach and confess the true teachings of the Gospel. Only then are we hearing and following Christ.

  Remember that those to whom this letter was sent seem to be Christians who are tempted to return to or adopt some form of Judaism. Apparently they feel the need to return to the Old Covenant with its practices and regulations that are shadows of the things to come. Our author says, "No! Don't do it!" Those things have been fulfilled and replaced by Christ. It does no good to observe special food regulations now. It does no good to repeat the sacrifices of the old system now. Just as the sacrificial animal on the yearly Day of Atonement was burned outside the Israelite camp, so Jesus died outside the city. From that we are to understand that his death was the atonement for our sins. He paid for our sins once for all. Therefore, we have a new altar where we receive the body and blood of Christ, not that of animals. So we must come out of the old covenant and live in the new. Only then do we have entrance into this new city to come.

  Now I doubt that you are tempted to adopt a form of Judaism. But I know that you are constantly bombarded with strange teachings. You are constantly pressured by the world to make Jesus and his teachings conform to Western culture. For example, even though Jesus said that he was the way, the truth and the life, the only way to forgiveness and eternal life, the world pressures you to believe that he is one teacher among many. There is a religious smorgasbord before you, so take what you like, let others do the same, and do not tell them they're wrong! None of it really matters anyway. That, my friends, is strange teaching!

  The world's strange teaching will not just go away and leave us alone. Just last June, the Anglican Church of Canada affirmed "the integrity and sanctity of committed adult same-sex relationships" I'm as tired of the issue as you are, but here is another strange teaching that the world is trying to force on the Church with some success. We must not let ourselves be carried away by such things. They will not just go away!

  Now when we resist these strange teachings, we incur the wrath of the world. The world absolutely hates it when we maintain our confession that there is salvation only in the name of Jesus. The world absolutely hates it when we say that homosexuality or consensual sex or living together without marriage is wrong. When we maintain the true teachings of Scripture and pursue the holiness that God approves, we bear the disgrace of the jeers of the world. But when we do, we really follow Jesus. So, Let us, then, go to him outside the camp, bearing the disgrace he bore.

  Because the world opposes the Spirit, the Scriptures encourage us to do good and maintain the fellowship that we have in Christ. We need each other to be strong and resist the world. So we are told to obey our leaders. Again, we are brought back to the body, community or team concept. Rather than everyone doing what is right is his own eyes, we are told to listen to our leaders who instruct us in the Word of God and holiness. God put them there and works through them to bless us. If we despise and ignore them, in the end, we only hurt ourselves.

  In short, these verses from Hebrews call us back to Jesus' words. When a teacher of the law asked him what was the most important commandment, Jesus responded: "The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." And when the teacher of the law agreed with Jesus, Jesus said, "You are not far from the kingdom of God."

  And so I say to you, practice brotherly love and maintain the true teachings of the Gospel, and you will see the Lord!