Part 19 “Five Levels of Relational Love”
Hebrews 13:1-6
Intro – the end is near…at least in terms of our sermon series in Hebrews…today we enter the last chapter of this amazing book in which we will only look at the first six verses this morning…
And as is so often the case with finishing an important letter, the writer is bringing it to a close by getting personal and tender and sharing some final thoughts that must not be omitted…things that he wants them to remember…
And the closing theme here in the first part of ch. 13 is that of relational love…the quality of love in what I see as five levels of relationship…five different relationships of increasing challenge that are expressions of the life of faith…and all require love…
As we discover these five relationships, we will immediately see that we are meant to be lovingly engaged in each of them…and God’s word to us in the first six verses will show us how and why…
Perhaps one of the lessons of ch. 13 is that in the end, all that really matters is love…how well we loved…how well we loved God and others…how well we showed our love to others…and how well we were loved by God and others…
…open Bibles…pray…read…
I Level One – loving our brothers and sisters in Christ v.1
-the first level of relational love is between those of us in the family of God, our brothers and sisters in Christ…
-read v. 1…
-even though there was love between the believers in this first century church, the writer knew that with all the forces at work against it, the love between people needed to be specially guarded and nurtured and made a priority…
…otherwise it would be strained and challenged and grow weak as hearts got overwhelmed and distracted and conflicted with others… and grew cold and distant toward each other…
That’s why he says, “keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters…” Don’t give up on each other; don’t cool down toward each other; don’t let anything cause you to stop loving each other well…
So much could be said about the importance of loving each other in the family of God. The Bible has a lot to say about it.
The Biblical vision of love for one another in the body of Christ is perhaps best stated in Rm. 12:10 “Be devoted to one another in love.” That sums up pretty well how God wants us to relate to one another here at Northgate and among all our brothers and sisters in Christ…love that is both an affection and an action… see also Eph. 4:31-32…
I believe this is foundational for the church…without love we’re doing what Paul described in I Cor. 13…we can be an active church…we can have all the spiritual gifts operating…we can exercise great faith, we can be involved in sacrificial service for God…but if we don’t have love, it’s empty…it’s “a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal…and we gain nothing…”
In the end all that really matters is love…
The Foundation of our Love
Yet even our love for one another has a foundation upon which it is built, and that is the love of God for us…that’s where love for each other comes from…when we know and receive God’s great love for us shown through Jesus Christ…
Even Jesus last words on the night before His betrayal and arrest and crucifixion, He told His disciples to love one another based on His love for them… Jn. 13:34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
So the first level of relational love, dear friends, is between brothers and sisters in Christ…so don’t lose it…for whatever reason…work hard at keeping it alive and real and active…
II Level Two – loving strangers v.2
The second level of relational love in Heb. 13 takes us to another level of challenge…that of loving strangers…
-it’s one thing to love the people we know in our church family, but now God asks us to love strangers…by showing hospitality to them…by opening our hearts and our homes to people who need practical help with things like food, clothing and shelter…
In biblical culture, opening your home to a stranger was a high value, considered a godly way of practicing love…and it was helpful because inns of that day were expensive and generally unsafe places that should be avoided…
Even today in cultures like the village of Marare in Uganda, offering hospitality to visitors is a huge value and something that people insist on doing…
eg. when my team did our home visits in the village, we were often invited in to their very poor, humble dwelling and offered something to eat and drink…at the least we had to sit with them outside their door if there were too many of us to fit inside…even the poorest family wanted us to feel welcome…
There are many biblical examples of God’s people offering accommodation to strangers…and the one example that is probably in the mind of the writer of Hebrews is when Abraham received three visitors in Gen. 18…
…whom he recognized as heavenly visitors, angelic visitors, one of them very likely was a pre-incarnate appearance of Jesus Christ…
…and based on that example, the writer of Hebrews says “you never know… when you’re taking care of a stranger you might just be entertaining an angel…”
An Angel Story
Now I have heard many angel stories throughout the years…and I was asking God to give me one to share today in this sermon…and then on Tuesday night, Colleen Barbe shared something so amazing that it sounds like an angel story to me…Colleen come and share…
There’s no doubt that through angels, who are called “ministering spirits”, God is actively at work in the world of people and yet most of the time we are oblivious to their work among us, which is exactly how God wants it to be…
Rather than our focus being on angels, our focus is meant to be on God…
You Did It For Me
So let me give you the best biblical reason why it is important for you and I to show love to strangers by meeting their needs…it’s found in Mt. 25: 35-30 (Sheep and Goats)
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’
“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’
“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
There’s the reason to love strangers; because when we do, we’re doing it for /to Jesus…we’re ministering to Christ…
I’m so glad that a group of people in our church are sponsoring a Christian refugee family from Syria. This is very much the heart of God for suffering people and one way in which the call to love and serve a stranger can be fulfilled in a practical way right now in history…there’s still ways to get involved…
III Level Three – loving the prisoner, mistreated v.3
The third level of relational love is connected to this and increases even more the challenge of love…(this is not getting any easier…and we’ve still got two levels to go)…loving the prisoner and the one being mistreated…
Again, in 1st century culture, prisons were horrible places where people needed outside help to be fed, looked after…
…and clearly this was happening among the believers to whom this book was written…
-some of them were in prison because of their faith…which made it even more challenging to support them because then you were risking being apprehended for the same crime of simply being a follower of Jesus…
At Northgate, thankfully, we are extremely well informed of this kind of persecution today through the Voice of the Martyrs…many of us pray regularly for the persecuted church around the world…for those who are in prison for Christ…
I miss those days when we could go into the maximum security prison just north of the city and do chapel services…interact with the prisoners…with Les Kryvenchuk and the Roths…unfortunately that door has been closing by the prison system…challenge is to find the open doors for ministry that still exist…
At the heart of this level of love is the call to empathy…to emotionally identify with those who are suffering…
…to put ourselves in their shoes and try to imagine what it’s like to be in their situation…
When we do that, we will be led by God’s Spirit to respond in a number of ways: pray…give…visit…call for justice…speak on behalf of those who have no voice…
God will lead us to get involved in ministries that reach out to those in need…
eg. church in Beaumont has agreed to sponsor a Syrian refugee single mom and her three children who converted to Christianity out of Islam, but her husband has not. He was very abusive to her…even before her conversion, but especially after…so abusive that even an Islamic court granted her full custody of the children…
…she was finally able to get help from Christians in Lebanon where she found the Lord…she divorced her husband and just as the process of coming to Canada was starting to take place, her husband kidnapped the children and took them back to Syria…
…so the church in Beaumont just held a special night of prayer for her and a number of people are fasting and praying for her children to be returned and her husband converted and for them to be able to come to Canada…
-that’s loving the prisoner and the mistreated…
IV Level Four – loving our spouses v.4
The fourth level of relational love is for our spouses, for those of us who are married…
I know what some of you are thinking…there goes the increasing level of challenge theory…I mean, how easy is this, to love your spouse…way easier than the stranger or the prisoner…or the refugee family…
But wait a minute, think about it…for those of us who have been married for any length of time, you know that is not easy to keep married love strong…it takes a lot of work…it’s not as easy as it was in the early days…
-it gets harder to prioritize your spouse, to pursue him or her, to have fun together, do things together, to honor them and to honor our marriage…
-it’s all too easy to put other things ahead of our spouse…eg. work, family and hobbies…and even serving God…
…it’s all too easy to take for granted the person that is closest to us, thinking that they’ll be there anyway and can take a back seat to other more urgent time consuming matters…
…now there’s lots of married couples that are an exception to this trend…even Audrey and I are working harder at making sure we prioritize our love relationship and keep it strong…we know the health of our marriage brings health to every other thing we do in life and ministry…
At the heart of this relational love challenge in v.4 is the command to “honor” marriage…and to honor our spouses…and how do we do that?
How To Honor Marriage
• be faithful, avoid sexual immorality
• honor vows by practicing them
• keep marriage healthy, alive, growing, prioritized
• honor the Biblical definition of marriage: “a lifelong union between one man and one woman”
Let me give you one good reason to honor marriage…to honor your marriage: God has placed eternal value on marriage… …that’s why He wants you to love, honor, cherish your spouse till death separates you…
God intends that married love be a reflection of the love Christ has for the church…that’s how highly God honors it…
Eph. 5:31-32 “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.
He chose human marriage as a diving object lesson of His love
V Level Five - loving God Himself vv.5-6
The final level of relational love in this passage is for God Himself…
-read vv.5-6…
This passage contrasts our love for money with our love for God…instead of loving things, we set our heart on God…
You’re thinking, “that completely blows apart the concept of increasing challenge in levels of love here…I mean, loving God…that’s where it all starts…anybody can do that…”
But I want to say that loving God, I mean really loving God in the way the Bible commands us to…is probably the hardest thing in all the universe for us to do…
…even as Christians our pride and independence, our self-centredness and our need to be in charge of our lives …makes it really hard to love God in the way the Bible commands us to…
Mark 12:30 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’
If you want your love for God to grow…then you need to understand that love for God is more than a feeling…it’s more than an emotional response to Him…but it better be a feeling and emotion or something’s wrong…
-our love for God is a willing and grateful surrender of our lives from which we obediently follow Him…
John 14:23 Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.
…our love for God, the greatest and most challenging love of all…
Conclusion
There you have it, five levels of relational love…the challenge to love, “not just with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” I Jn. 3:18…
What does God want you to do about what you’ve heard today? Out of the five levels, there is no doubt one of them that has stood out to you…my challenge would be to simply focus on that one area…and talk to God about how you can increase your level of love in that relationship…
Time of quiet prayer…