SPEAKER_01: This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.
SPEAKER_00: This morning I'm going to talk about hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: I want to ask you who's heard a sermon of late on hospitality?
SPEAKER_00: Or should I ask, when was the last time you heard a sermon on hospitality?
SPEAKER_00: I was absolutely fascinated by the subject matter, and uh I was thinking of that book of Aldous Huxley.
SPEAKER_00: His famous 1932 publication, Brave New World.
SPEAKER_00: Anyone read Brave New World?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: It's a dystopian novel about a world where love and relationships have fallen out of vogue.
SPEAKER_00: Because of all the advancements and developments in technology and therapeutics, people have attained a high level of happiness and they therefore have no need for love and relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Very interesting.
SPEAKER_00: In Brave New World, in fact, there is no place for love and relationships because everybody is happy.
SPEAKER_00: They don't need love and relationships.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, in the world state of Brave New World, love and relationships were forbidden.
SPEAKER_00: It has been now a little less than a hundred years since this publication of Brave New World.
SPEAKER_00: But are we not facing a Brave New World?
SPEAKER_00: And facing similar questions, Huxley attempted to answer.
SPEAKER_00: Are we allowing technology and therapeutics to become a replacement for love and relationships?
SPEAKER_00: I think our world today has an eerie resemblance with Huxley's Brave New World.
SPEAKER_00: It seems like people are just doing okay without love and relationships.
SPEAKER_00: But is that a reality?
SPEAKER_00: And will Huxley's book become a reality?
SPEAKER_00: The title of this message today is Love and Relationships in a Brave New World.
SPEAKER_00: And if you open your Bibles at Hebrews 13, we will see what God's Word has to say about love and relationships.
SPEAKER_00: We've heard now what Huxley had to say about love and relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Let's see what God has to say about love and relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 13 verses 1 to 3.
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to reach read out of the ESV.
SPEAKER_00: Let brotherly love continue.
SPEAKER_00: Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angeled angels unawares.
SPEAKER_00: Remember those who are in prison as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.
SPEAKER_00: Just three very simple, plain, and straightforward verses, which tells a story about Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: Christianity as a community of people for centuries faced many trials and tribulations.
SPEAKER_00: Many faced persecution.
SPEAKER_00: Those are some of the pictures of paintings in the catacombs of Rome at the height of Christian persecution.
SPEAKER_00: And what we see there is that love is depicted as the trademark of Christians.
SPEAKER_00: That relational love and that sympathetic care for one another does seem to be an overwhelming theme.
SPEAKER_00: All through the centuries, people's need for love has never ceased.
SPEAKER_00: As you look at that picture, which is a painting in the catacombs of Rome, people are sitting there eating together.
SPEAKER_00: And to the right is an inscription of the word agape, which is the Greek word for love.
SPEAKER_00: So all through the centuries we see the church having this abundant supply of love.
SPEAKER_00: People wanted love and relationships, and they came to the church, and that's what they found love and relationships.
SPEAKER_00: It seemed that all through the centuries, even when persecution was at its height, people's desire for love and relationships were there, and the church always had an abundant stream of love and relationships.
SPEAKER_00: But perhaps today we have to ask ourselves if the church is able to supply people's desire for love and relationship.
SPEAKER_00: Is that what they will find today?
SPEAKER_00: As we look at Hebrews 13, you wonder if this author here is not foreseeing the church twenty centuries later and anticipating and maybe foreseeing that there is a decline in the church's supply of love and relationships.
SPEAKER_00: And therefore, in Hebrews 13, 1, he says, let brotherly love what?
SPEAKER_00: Continue.
SPEAKER_00: If you're reading out of the NIV, he says, keep on loving.
SPEAKER_00: Just keep on loving.
SPEAKER_00: Not the author is not saying begin to love.
SPEAKER_00: He says just let it go on.
SPEAKER_00: Let this love just continue.
SPEAKER_00: Continue loving one another as brothers and sisters.
SPEAKER_00: Keep on fueling the flames of love and do not quench the fires of love.
SPEAKER_00: This is the gist of verse one.
SPEAKER_00: Now that word there for brotherly love is a very exciting word.
SPEAKER_00: It's a very passionate word.
SPEAKER_00: It is where we get the there's a city that got its name from this word.
SPEAKER_00: It's in Pennsylvania.
SPEAKER_00: Philadelphia.
SPEAKER_00: Philadelphos is the it's a two-full one word.
SPEAKER_00: It's taking two words and it's putting it together, making one word.
SPEAKER_00: It's taking the word philosoph, which is the word for affection, and the word adelphos, which is the word for brother.
SPEAKER_00: And hence we get this word brotherly love.
SPEAKER_00: But it's more than just emotion, it is describing the disposition in the early church.
SPEAKER_00: The disposition in the early church was that of relationship and fraternal love.
SPEAKER_00: You see, it was the type of love that you would typically see within the bonds of a family unit.
SPEAKER_00: It's a family type of love.
SPEAKER_00: And one author says that Christians in the early centuries not only saw themselves as people of a common destination, but also people of a common womb.
SPEAKER_00: They saw each other as brothers and sisters, and hence the affection for each other was like the affection you would have for a brother or a sister.
SPEAKER_00: Christianity, as depicted through the ages, is a story of a people who are relational with each other, and it was expressed in two ways.
SPEAKER_00: If there's an overarching characteristic of this affectionate familial type of love, it was expressed through hospitality and sympathetic care for each other.
SPEAKER_00: Hospitality and sympathetic care.
SPEAKER_00: That was the overarching expression of this relational love of the church.
SPEAKER_00: No doubt some of these murals painted in the catacombs were at the height of the second and fourth century persecutions.
SPEAKER_00: The more people were harassed, the greater the hostility towards Christianity, the greater the hospitality and the sympathy.
SPEAKER_00: It's funny to well, it's not funny.
SPEAKER_00: It's actually very interesting to see a picture of people burning at the stake or being crucified, and pictures of people eating together.
SPEAKER_00: It's interesting.
SPEAKER_00: As the persecution heightened, so did the cure and hospitality shown to one another increase.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, there was the successor to Constantine, which was Roman Emperor Julian.
SPEAKER_00: Julian was known as Julian the apostate because he abandoned the Christianity of his father and introduced paganism back into the Roman Empire.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what he says.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's scratching his head.
SPEAKER_00: That the kindness towards strangers, that is hospitality, had been the chief means of propagating their atheism.
SPEAKER_00: You see, he called Christians atheists because they did not want to recognize the Roman gods.
SPEAKER_00: And so he refers them to atheists, and he says, you know, this religion is keeping, it's keep growing, keeps on growing, and it's getting stronger because of their kindness towards strangers.
SPEAKER_00: He says that's a way of which they they propagated their quote unquote atheism.
SPEAKER_00: And so Emperor Julian witnessed the hospitality of the first century, or that by that time is the fourth century Christians being one of the greatest means of propagating itself as a religion and proselytizing others.
SPEAKER_00: But let's take a deep dive here in verse 2.
SPEAKER_00: I want to get into verse 2 here.
SPEAKER_00: If we look at this affectionate love shown through hospitality in the community of the saints, verse 2 says what?
SPEAKER_00: Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers.
SPEAKER_00: Hospitality to strangers is just one word in Greek, and I will get into that a little later on.
SPEAKER_00: But he says there, do not neglect.
SPEAKER_00: If he says do not neglect, he means that you will have the propensity to neglect the practice of hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: Now let's do a quick study here of hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: Hospitality, even pre-existed Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: From my studies, the first and earliest expression of hospitality shown in the Bible was in Genesis 14, 18.
SPEAKER_00: Who was that?
SPEAKER_00: Melchizedek.
SPEAKER_00: Melchizedek, the king of Salem.
SPEAKER_00: He was, by the way, some would say, uh a type of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He typifies Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He hosted Abram and he served him bread and wine.
SPEAKER_00: So there's your first occurrence of hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: And then later on you find Abram and Lot showing hospitality, right?
SPEAKER_00: And who did they have over at their house unbeknownst to them?
SPEAKER_00: Angelic messengers.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And that's why that verse in Hebrews 13, 2 says they've shown hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entertained angels without even knowing it.
SPEAKER_00: That's reference to Abram and Lot.
SPEAKER_00: This thing of hospitality carries right over into the New Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And who would you say is the crowning example of someone who showed and practiced and preached hospitality?
SPEAKER_00: Who would you say is the crowning figurehead there in the New Testament?
SPEAKER_00: Mary and Martha?
SPEAKER_00: Martha.
SPEAKER_00: Martha, right?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, close.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Let me talk to you.
SPEAKER_00: The answer is right.
SPEAKER_00: Always here, like in Sunday school class.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, right?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Do you remember the story of Zacchaeus?
SPEAKER_00: And there's even a song that's in the back of my head.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus sees Zacchaeus this tax collector sitting up in a tree, and he said to Zacchaeus, Hurry and come down.
SPEAKER_00: But then Jesus does a peculiar thing, is he invites himself to Zacchaeus' house.
SPEAKER_00: He invites himself over.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Zacchaeus, today I must stay at your house.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus invited himself because he wanted to host Zacchaeus.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the host of hosts.
SPEAKER_00: Why did he invite himself over to Zacchaeus's house?
SPEAKER_00: Because he wanted to express love, relationship, and acceptance.
SPEAKER_00: See, Zacchaeus was a tax collector.
SPEAKER_00: He was on the margins of religious society.
SPEAKER_00: He was despised, and nothing would express love and acceptance and relationship other than having him over at his house.
SPEAKER_00: And yet he is the crowning example of one who practiced hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: What did his opponents say of Jesus, Luke 7, 34?
SPEAKER_00: They said you are you're a drunkard, you're a glutton, because you're forever hanging out with people.
SPEAKER_00: You're forever eating and drinking with some of the most despicable of people in society.
SPEAKER_00: Luke 17, Luke 7, 34 says, the Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, Behold, a gluttonous man and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.
SPEAKER_00: And then Jesus says, Yet wisdom is vindicated by her children.
SPEAKER_00: You know why Jesus said that?
SPEAKER_00: It says, okay, if you think my methods of showing hospitality is kind of just kind of off, then just look at the results.
SPEAKER_00: Measure the results.
SPEAKER_00: Look at the results in the lives of sinners and tax collectors, and you tell me if it's such a bad idea.
SPEAKER_00: Hospitality, Jesus knew, was one of the richest and deepest expressions of love.
SPEAKER_00: He knew people would understand this idea of relationship, acceptance, and love.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing could better express it to people than to eat with them.
SPEAKER_00: Shortly after the resurrection of Jesus, he said, What?
SPEAKER_00: What are some of the words that Jesus said in John 21, twelve?
SPEAKER_00: Come have breakfast.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is grilling there on the beach of Lake Galilee.
SPEAKER_00: He's got his little grill out there.
SPEAKER_00: His little Traeger or whatever the first century Traeger was.
SPEAKER_00: His weeber.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus had a fire ready.
SPEAKER_00: He was grilling fish and bread.
SPEAKER_00: I would love to preach that sermon.
SPEAKER_00: I would title it Fish Tacos with Jesus on the beach.
SPEAKER_00: All his days walking this earth.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus said to people listening to him in Matthew 25, they also will answer the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison and did not help you?
SPEAKER_00: He will reply, I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do to me.
SPEAKER_00: And so there Jesus knows human nature, and he says, You will probably, through the course of life, neglect the practice of hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: But he says, if we neglect it, we are neglecting to show hospitality to him.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus was hardcore on hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, neglecting it was seen as a careless act, a loveless act.
SPEAKER_00: It was showing hostility towards God.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, Jesus in Luke 7, verse 44, he admonishes Simon the Pharisee for being a poor host.
SPEAKER_00: Remember that verse where he said, You didn't wash my feet, you didn't treat me nicely, you didn't make me feel welcome in your home.
SPEAKER_00: Neglecting hospitality in the ancient Near East was seen as a reckless act.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, there was this story in 1 Samuel 25 of this wealthy businessman named Nabal.
SPEAKER_00: And his name is actually means fool.
SPEAKER_00: And he refused to show hospitality towards King David and his men.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what happened?
SPEAKER_00: He had a heart attack.
SPEAKER_00: The Lord struck him the next day.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm gonna say, don't don't get scared.
SPEAKER_00: Don't don't, you're like, oh, I'm gonna die.
SPEAKER_00: But but it's just to show that God takes hospitality serious.
SPEAKER_00: Especially when people need it.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 13 2 draws our attention back to this potential neglect of hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: He's not saying start showing hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: He says, watch out that you don't neglect it.
SPEAKER_00: Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers.
SPEAKER_00: Remember, I said I'll explain this phrase here hospitality to strangers.
SPEAKER_00: Actually, in the Greek it's a two for one word, and it actually takes the whole sentence and lobs it in one word.
SPEAKER_00: The Greek word is uh phylloxonos.
SPEAKER_00: Phylloxonos, it's a compound word.
SPEAKER_00: It takes the Greek word phyllo or phyllo, which is the word for affection, and the word stranger, xenos.
SPEAKER_00: That's where we get the word xenophobia from.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's taking people you don't know so well and affection, and you put that together, it's showing an affectionate love towards people you don't really know.
SPEAKER_00: That's somewhat a stranger.
SPEAKER_00: Now I want to be careful here not to go beyond what I think Scripture is saying.
SPEAKER_00: Look, it says there, do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, and you're like, well, that guy creeps me out, but I'm gonna have him over.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't know him from Adam, but I'm gonna have him over.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's what it's saying.
SPEAKER_00: Don't invite some guy off the street and say, hey, come and eat with me because that's what Jesus demands.
SPEAKER_00: I I I don't think it is, and I'll tell you why.
SPEAKER_00: What scripture is saying here is the strangers here may not necessarily be people who are complete strangers or people outside the community of faith.
SPEAKER_00: When he speaks about strangers, I think he is speaking here about the larger community of believers.
SPEAKER_00: Strangers may include, as we've seen, angels.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I think it's very unlikely that you will have an angel.
SPEAKER_00: You might think, you know, your wife is an angel, your little kids are little angels, but uh this is not what the passage is speaking about.
SPEAKER_00: It I think today is probably referring to those who are missionaries, itinerant preachers, ministry workers, things like that.
SPEAKER_00: But almost exclusively throughout the New Testament, when I see the word hospitality, it is within the one another context.
SPEAKER_00: And what is the one another context?
SPEAKER_00: This is the one another context.
SPEAKER_00: And it may include people who come in here.
SPEAKER_00: For example, now at the men's conference, Dr.
SPEAKER_00: Jack Hughes, he's gonna stay at my house.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Um he's I know him, but I don't really know him.
SPEAKER_00: But I know he's a Christian, and we got to show hospitality to him.
SPEAKER_00: He is a minister of the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And today you may say to me, Who is this stranger, Anton?
SPEAKER_00: Give me more specificity about who is the stranger I need to show hospitality to.
SPEAKER_00: And this is one of these do services.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to do something.
SPEAKER_00: And I want to pick up something.
SPEAKER_00: Not something, someone.
SPEAKER_00: Um, let's let's, oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_00: Let's use Jason.
SPEAKER_00: Jason, can I use you?
SPEAKER_00: Because you know, you you have to like me, even if I put you on the spot.
SPEAKER_00: You a pastor, you have to love people, right?
SPEAKER_00: And and and and we can look around us, right?
SPEAKER_00: And there would be somebody sitting maybe behind us or to the left of us, to the front of us, and you like, you know, I have to be honest, I know his name, but he's a complete stranger to me.
SPEAKER_00: If I look at myself here, I can go through this audience here, and there's some people I know, but I mean, here's some people who've been here a while, and I'm like, you I know about you, but I don't know you.
SPEAKER_00: You that stranger to me.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the passage is speaking about.
SPEAKER_00: If you look at Romans 12, it it it it gives us a little more practicality here.
SPEAKER_00: He says it it mirrors actually Hebrews 13.
SPEAKER_00: He says there in Romans 12 10, Paul love who one another.
SPEAKER_00: It speaks about the community of believers with brotherly affection, same word as in Hebrews 13, and then he moves on in verse 13, contribute to the needs of the saints, which Hebrews 13, 3 speaks about, and seek to show hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: And that hospitality again goes back to verse 10, the one another community.
SPEAKER_00: That's the that's the stranger, right?
SPEAKER_00: If I start randomly lining you up here to show hospitality, you would go, I don't know, like my grandmother would say, I don't know him from a bar of soap.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, and whatever that means.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know him from a bar of soap.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what does that mean, grandma?
SPEAKER_00: I think my grandma invented indiums, uh, but nevertheless, and I use them, and people look at me as if I'm a stranger from another planet, but show hospitality to one another.
SPEAKER_00: Here's enough strangers here in this room to keep us busy for a hundred years.
SPEAKER_00: I love this saying.
SPEAKER_00: Unless the community of saints begin to open the doors of their homes to one another, the reality of a local church as a close-knit family of loving brothers and sisters would only remain another theory.
SPEAKER_00: You see, we have entered the era of Huxley's new brave new world where people they are too busy to have time for relationships and love.
SPEAKER_00: Their technology is taking the place of love and relationships.
SPEAKER_00: And people have therapists that replace love and relationships.
SPEAKER_00: And in Japan, for the elderly population, they are now using artificial intelligence to replace love and relationships.
SPEAKER_00: And so as we at this culminating point in Christian history, the question is is Hebrews thirteen two just another theory or is this reality?
SPEAKER_00: As we look at Paul, we look at the writer of Hebrews, we see that hospitality fleshes out love in a unique, personal, and sacrificial way.
SPEAKER_00: If you want to know how do I love people?
SPEAKER_00: How do I love them?
SPEAKER_00: You show hospitality to them.
SPEAKER_00: That's how you love them.
SPEAKER_00: That's a very plain and simple way.
SPEAKER_00: Let me tell you this.
SPEAKER_00: The world knows about hospitality, but let me tell you, for the world, the outsiders, uh, it is uncharacteristic of the world to entertain and feed and host those who are not blood relatives, colleagues, and intimate friends.
SPEAKER_00: You see, even unbelievers have blood relatives, colleagues, and intimate friends over.
SPEAKER_00: But you see, it is uncharacteristic for Christians to entertain, feed, and host only those who are blood relatives, colleagues, and intimate friends.
SPEAKER_00: You see, we trend to be very good at showing hospitality to those we are married to, our relatives, our friends, our colleagues.
SPEAKER_00: We go to that.
SPEAKER_00: But what Christianity calls for is the thing that blew the emperor's mind was that love towards the stranger.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's the only way in which we can share our family, our home, our finances, our food, our privacy, and our time in a sacrificial way.
SPEAKER_00: As one author said, we not only share our food and finances, but we share our very lives when we show hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: The apostle Peter knows that hospitality is a sacrificial type of love.
SPEAKER_00: It will take time, energy, it will take cut into our alone time.
SPEAKER_00: And there phrase is be hospitable to one another without complaining.
SPEAKER_00: First Peter 4 8.
SPEAKER_00: You see, Peter knew this is gonna be hard.
SPEAKER_00: This is gonna be hard, so so do it, do it.
SPEAKER_00: Good.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, now stop complaining about doing it.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, look, if you want a sermon on complaining, you can listen to uh a preacher who preached here last week.
SPEAKER_00: He's got a message on grumbling and complaining, but nevertheless, I would say it's not that the church in general doesn't want to practice hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: I think we become inattentive to it.
SPEAKER_00: And if we're inattentive to it and to its power and its ability to forge relationships, then we will neglect to practice it.
SPEAKER_00: If we don't practice hospitality, we must remember that new relationships will not be forged.
SPEAKER_00: If we fail to practice hospitality, new relationships will not be forged.
SPEAKER_00: How is it that there was a guy and a woman and a baby sitting there and now they are two guys?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is fascinating.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we are entertaining strangers or angelic beings here today, but I'm just like, this is a moving congregation.
SPEAKER_00: Just sit where you've sat.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it throws me off.
SPEAKER_00: Where am I?
SPEAKER_00: Oh.
SPEAKER_00: New relationships are forged, and sticky relationships are strengthened.
SPEAKER_00: New relationships are forged, and sticky relationships are strengthened when we practice hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: Give me a minute here and I'll explain that to you.
SPEAKER_00: Titus 1 7 and 1 8 speaks about the qualification of the leaders of a congregation.
SPEAKER_00: And it's very interesting.
SPEAKER_00: Think about this.
SPEAKER_00: It says, therefore, an overseer, it's speaking of the shepherds, the elders, the pastors, all its leadership, as a God's steward, as God's steward must be above reproach.
SPEAKER_00: He must not be arrogant or quick-tempered or drunkard or violent or greedy.
SPEAKER_00: I think anybody would agree that, yeah, we don't want a pastor or elder that is quick-tempered or a drunkard or violent or greedy.
SPEAKER_00: Imagine him on a Sunday morning.
SPEAKER_00: But verse 8 says he must be hospitable.
SPEAKER_00: He must be.
SPEAKER_00: He must be a lover of good, self-control, upright, holy, and discipline, but he must also be a man who practices hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: He must, in fact, set the tone and the example in the congregation.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because hospitality is the WD-40 to rusty and sticky relationships.
SPEAKER_00: If there's a rusty and sticky relationship in the church, you go, you and you, we're going to barbecue.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to roast the figure with an apple in his mouth.
SPEAKER_00: Because that's going to lubricate these rusty and sticky relationships.
SPEAKER_00: And it's going to forge bonds that there was never before.
SPEAKER_00: One professor of Yale School of Divinity, Abram Elerber, says, we must not forget that hospitality in the early church was not merely a practical consideration, but a theological one.
SPEAKER_00: The practice of hospitality was not viewed simply as a means of showing love, but also a means of overcoming practical issues.
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: This guy's from South Africa, by the way, and he has to be right.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, speaking of sayings, there's an Arabic saying.
SPEAKER_00: People who eat together often leave as friends together.
SPEAKER_00: You see, there might be hostility, enmity.
SPEAKER_00: You just feel like, yeah, I just don't know this guy.
SPEAKER_00: And then you find out, wow, this is actually a nice person.
SPEAKER_00: I had that in my early walk in Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: We had this thing at church, I forgot what they called it.
SPEAKER_00: It was like a, they would put you on a list and randomly you would eat together.
SPEAKER_00: It's like every end of the month, like six or ten people get together and they eat.
SPEAKER_00: And then one day this guy's like, hey, Anto, my view of you completely changed after the lunch.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, what was that?
SPEAKER_00: She's like, yeah, I actually thought you're not a very nice guy and not a friendly guy, but you know, it turns out you're actually pretty jovial.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, well, great.
SPEAKER_00: I'm so glad that the meal overcame that problem.
SPEAKER_00: But nevertheless, Alexander Strauk talks uh about his experiences uh of a missionary who lived in Brazil in a high-rise apartment in Sao Paulo.
SPEAKER_00: And next to the missionary was a guy by the name Mario.
SPEAKER_00: And Mario was uh antagonistic towards Christians and Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: He just couldn't stomach this idea about the Christian missionary living next to him.
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, Mario was a radical Marxist too.
SPEAKER_00: He was very passionate about communism and had no time for Christians and Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: But here is what Mario recalls years later.
SPEAKER_00: Mario said, I had a bowl of soup with you, with you and your family.
SPEAKER_00: And as I sat there observing you, your wife, your children, and how you're related to each other, I asked myself, when will I have a relationship like this with my fiance?
SPEAKER_00: When I realized the answer was never, I concluded I had to become a Christian for the sake of my own survival.
unknown: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: A bowl of soup?
SPEAKER_00: You know what Murray also says as the years went by.
SPEAKER_00: In his early walk as a Christian, he says I learned just as much during those Sunday afternoon lunches in the homes of Christians as I did during the sermon in the morning.
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: I learned just as much during those Sunday lunches at Christian homes as I did during the morning sermon.
SPEAKER_00: Brothers and sisters, we underestimating the power of hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: If it blew the mind of Christian emperors, it will most likely blow our minds.
SPEAKER_00: But let me say this here's a little phrase I want you to think about.
SPEAKER_00: Churches failing at hospitality eventually become failing churches.
SPEAKER_00: It's just it.
SPEAKER_00: Because human beings at the very core understand love and relationships in no better way than hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: It's just it.
SPEAKER_00: You can do this churchy Sunday morning kind of thing, this churchy love.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't go very far.
SPEAKER_00: Let me give you a bit of a story here.
SPEAKER_00: This one writer for the Los Angeles Times some years ago wrote about this churchy Sunday morning kind of love that is unwilling to venture beyond the walls of the church building.
SPEAKER_00: That was the kind of hitting.
SPEAKER_00: What he did was do his own experiment to prove that Christians and Christianity is all about this churchy type of love, but that love does not venture beyond these walls.
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to say four walls, but there's like eight, ten walls here.
SPEAKER_00: But basically for us, it's the type of love that doesn't venture beyond these walls.
SPEAKER_00: So so this guy, this journalist, did his own experiment and he wanted to prove his point.
SPEAKER_00: And he thought he was going to show that the that love in the Christian church is actually very superficial.
SPEAKER_00: And so he started visiting evangelical churches in the Southern California area to evaluate relationships and love and see if it's true, this churchy Sunday morning kind of love.
SPEAKER_00: And so he started reading his experience.
SPEAKER_00: He said when I got to the doors and someone shook my hands, I gave it two points.
SPEAKER_00: You see, it I got a pre-packaged letter some days later from the pastor in the mail, it got three points.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what?
SPEAKER_00: Only three points?
SPEAKER_00: Come on.
SPEAKER_00: Just run that off the copier, at least.
SPEAKER_00: People should value it more.
SPEAKER_00: But he got it three points.
SPEAKER_00: But then he says, when it got to the coffee hour, that got five points.
SPEAKER_00: Well, I was like, okay, so this is better than the pastor's letter.
SPEAKER_00: I said, isn't it terrible what people think of our letters?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, three points.
SPEAKER_00: Surely your team gets five points for serving coffee.
SPEAKER_00: Come on.
SPEAKER_00: Let's stop wasting paper and cutting down trees.
SPEAKER_00: Let's drink coffee.
SPEAKER_00: Then he says, when I was introduced to another person in a cordial, non-threatening way, it was worth 10 points.
SPEAKER_00: So, whoo! Okay.
SPEAKER_00: But he says, when I got that personal invitation to lunch after church, I had a score at 60 points.
unknown: Wow.
SPEAKER_00: So let's do our own experiment to see if faith is one of those churches who practices a churchy kind of love that is not willing to go beyond the reach of these walls.
SPEAKER_00: You ready?
SPEAKER_00: Take out a piece of paper and a pen and some there's some connect cards or whatever.
SPEAKER_00: Do it on your phone.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you see, you you can't just have your phone.
SPEAKER_00: You gotta have ink and paper.
SPEAKER_00: Let's do our own own test, our own experiment here.
SPEAKER_00: Write down the number of times you had an invitation to lunch after church in the last two years.
SPEAKER_00: You want to do it like the last two months, okay.
SPEAKER_00: I don't even remember what happened Friday.
SPEAKER_00: So let's do last two months.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Put 20 points there for each.
SPEAKER_00: 20 points every time you had an invitation for lunch.
SPEAKER_00: It actually went.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Write down the names of the people you showed hospitality to in the past two months.
SPEAKER_00: Write down the names of the people.
SPEAKER_00: You might need to use code words there.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: You don't want somebody to peek over and just like, well, you had him over for lunch, not me.
SPEAKER_00: You know, do you really know him?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Put that 20 points for each.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: We we should by now hit about a hundred.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, if you hit a hundred, you're in good.
SPEAKER_00: Shape.
SPEAKER_00: But now we're gonna start deducting points.
SPEAKER_00: If that person was a colleague, a relative, or an old friend, strike one.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, just take it off.
SPEAKER_00: If these are your regulars, meaning is this is the same people that you have over on a regular basis, just take their names off.
SPEAKER_00: They no longer strangers.
SPEAKER_00: Just take that off.
SPEAKER_00: And if you have known this person for longer than two years, take their name off, too.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, what are we left to?
SPEAKER_00: Let's shout up some scores here.
unknown: 40.
SPEAKER_00: 40.
SPEAKER_00: So you got 40%.
SPEAKER_00: What's that?
SPEAKER_00: It's like an F minus, right?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Anybody who sorry.
SPEAKER_00: It's better than nothing.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like 40.
SPEAKER_00: That's cool.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: Either you're not good at math.
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: I I I I I I I just want to make a point, maybe a point of the extreme, but I I wonder who scored a hundred here.
SPEAKER_00: Um scored 80.
SPEAKER_00: We we got to think about this, dear brothers and sisters.
SPEAKER_00: Here's a major puzzle piece missing.
SPEAKER_00: If all we do is have people over at our house that we've known for years, if all we do is have blood relatives, family, and and and colleagues over, if all we do is have the same couple over at our house for the last two years, three years, five, ten years, there's a missing puzzle piece here.
SPEAKER_00: We have neglected to show hospitality as Hebrews 13 shows.
SPEAKER_00: So as we look at our scores, would you say, by definition, of this writer from LA Times, are we a church that shows this churchy kind of love that is unwilling to venture beyond the walls of the church building?
SPEAKER_00: And that is a question you will have to answer, dear brothers and sisters.
SPEAKER_00: Because unless the community of faith, evangelical free church, begins to open its doors to their homes, to one another, the reality of a local church as a close-knit family of brothers and sisters would merely be a theory.
SPEAKER_00: People don't understand love if they don't see hospitality practiced.
SPEAKER_00: Going back to Julian the apostate, he introduced, reintroduced polytheism and paganism.
SPEAKER_00: He followed Constantine.
SPEAKER_00: And now the official religion in the Roman Empire is no longer Christianity but paganism.
SPEAKER_00: They that promoted all kinds of vile practices, debauchery, and perversions that you can't even imagine.
SPEAKER_00: Christians were made the objects of ridicule and suspicion.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, Julian again says these impious Galileans not only feed their own poor, but ours also.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome them into their love feast.
SPEAKER_00: That's speaking of hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: And they attract them as children are attracted to cakes.
SPEAKER_00: He's like, man, people can't really resist this type of thing.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's trying to discredit Christians.
SPEAKER_00: He's trying to shut this Christianity thing down.
SPEAKER_00: It seems during turbulent times, people are drawn to real love and real relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Are we in a time of turbulence?
SPEAKER_00: When it gets rough for Christians, by the way, it gets rough for everyone.
SPEAKER_00: When Christianity is ridiculed and viewed with suspicion, society starts fragmenting.
SPEAKER_00: But I tell you, as I look at history, the tougher the times, the greater the desire for real love and real relationships.
SPEAKER_00: Why people turn to therapists and to the technology and not to love and relationships is because everything they find out there is fake.
SPEAKER_00: We can give people the real thing here, dear brothers and sisters.
SPEAKER_00: Today I've got more to say than time to preach.
SPEAKER_00: But let me say this.
SPEAKER_00: People need to understand love in a practical way, and no better way than showing hospitality.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna just deal with verse three here quickly because I think I've made my point, but this affectionate love was also shown through sympathy for those who are suffering.
SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 13, one, 13, 3 says, Remember the prisoners as though in prison with them, and those who are ill-treated, since you yourself are also in the body.
SPEAKER_00: I went to Jason this week and I said, I'm I'm scratching my head here because we are we don't know what persecution is.
SPEAKER_00: When last was the last time that you thought about the guy in in Bangladesh or Nepal or on the Moldy violence that's persecuted for his or her faith.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't wake up every morning and thinking about it, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so I asked Jason, how how does this apply?
SPEAKER_00: And and he pointed me there to this with them.
SPEAKER_00: With them.
SPEAKER_00: As we think about this, is this passage is spoken speaking, spoken speaking, speaking about sympathy.
SPEAKER_00: You see, we got a giving empathy.
SPEAKER_00: We're like, oh, that's so terrible that you're having tough times.
SPEAKER_00: But we don't show sympathy.
SPEAKER_00: See, sympathy is a is to be joined together with that person in their trial and their difficulty and their suffering, sympathy acts.
SPEAKER_00: You see, first Christian centuries and the followers of Christ, they would be instantly arrested in a prison, not for doing any specific crime, but simply for believing on the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We have no idea of that in present-day America, not yet, but we are not arrested.
SPEAKER_00: We are not imprisoned because we are saints.
SPEAKER_00: But people all around us here in this room suffer all kinds of trials and tribulations.
SPEAKER_00: They suffer.
SPEAKER_00: And the principle is the same: the solidarity to be netted together as we are suffering with them.
SPEAKER_00: Sympathy is not something we feel.
SPEAKER_00: Sympathy is what we do.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul says there in 1 Corinthians 12, 26, if one member suffers, all suffer together.
SPEAKER_00: All suffer together.
SPEAKER_00: This passage speaks there about it.
SPEAKER_00: He says, since you yourselves also are in the body, it's like, hey, if somebody's suffering, the whole operation is suffering.
SPEAKER_00: And brotherly love, this familial affection, is expressed in true sympathy.
SPEAKER_00: Not a churchy kind of sympathy, but a sympathy that requires that at times we open up our homes to those who are suffering, or we bring our homes to those who are suffering.
SPEAKER_00: I think hospitality fits right in there.
SPEAKER_00: I will forget, never forget this.
SPEAKER_00: Many years ago, we were at seminary and we lost a baby, and it was a very traumatic and painful experience for us.
SPEAKER_00: But we would hear a knock on the door.
SPEAKER_00: Somebody standing with a tray.
SPEAKER_00: Food.
SPEAKER_00: And one person even had like little chocolates.
SPEAKER_00: And she had little cocktails, mocktails or whatever you want to call it, but little umbrellas in it.
SPEAKER_00: People brought their homes to us.
SPEAKER_00: Can we eat with you tonight?
SPEAKER_00: Of course.
SPEAKER_00: Are you suffering?
SPEAKER_00: Are you do you have pain?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, but we're not gonna say no to this.
SPEAKER_00: Wow, I will never forget that.
SPEAKER_00: I will never forget.
SPEAKER_00: Even somebody came over and says, you know, I'm just in a tough spot here.
SPEAKER_00: Life is crazy here with us.
SPEAKER_00: But here's a gift certificate to Applebee's.
SPEAKER_00: And you know when things get better, let's go out.
SPEAKER_00: Let's go have dinner.
SPEAKER_00: There was a promise of hospitality to come.
SPEAKER_00: We can get creative, dear brothers and sisters.
SPEAKER_00: But this is what C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis said.
SPEAKER_00: He said, despite persecutions, little pockets of early Christians survived because they cared exclusively for the love of the brethren.
SPEAKER_00: They applied Hebrews 13 and they stopped their ears to the opinions of the pagan society all around them.
SPEAKER_00: He says that this practice of hospitality and the sympathetic care of one another was the survival of the church.
SPEAKER_00: And so, my dear brothers and sisters, we are in Huxley's brave new world where technology and therapeutics are more and more replacing what this congregation can do.
SPEAKER_00: But if we give people the real deal, it's not only for their survival, it is for our own survival.
SPEAKER_00: May God give us grace and mercy as we take to heart what God has demonstrated to us all through the ages.
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we come to you and we say you have lived the life we could not live.
SPEAKER_00: You did the good works that we are to walk in.
SPEAKER_00: We are not only saved by your son's death on the cross, but we are also saved because of his perfect obedience and his works of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: And hospitality is a work of righteousness.
SPEAKER_00: It is the good works that we are predestined to walk in.
SPEAKER_00: Not as a means to gain our salvation, but as a means to express our salvation.
SPEAKER_00: You are the host of hosts, and you have said to us that you are preparing your father's mansion for us.
SPEAKER_00: We will enter into the Father's house.
SPEAKER_00: There is no greater host in all the universe than you, Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We're looking forward to sitting down at the marriage feast of the Lamb to dine with you for eternity.
SPEAKER_00: May we, Lord, bring a little bit of heaven down to earth as we open our homes to one another.
SPEAKER_00: We pray this in Jesus' glorious name for ever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.
SPEAKER_01: Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.