Sermon Tone Analysis

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.

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

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.

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.