Pastor John Neufeld spoke from Acts 2:42-47 and 1 Cor 12:12-27 on what it means to be in community.
Hebrews: It’s All About Jesus
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… Hebrews: It’s All About Jesus
Part 18 “God is Shaking The World” Hebrews 12:25-29 Intro – in 2004, Hurricane Charley slammed into the state of Florida packing winds up to 100 mph. Homes were destroyed, trees uprooted and signs were knocked down. But one billboard along a freeway in Orlando survived virtually unscathed. Here’s a picture of it…the storm peeled off the most recent advertizing message, revealing the ad from an earlier campaign…”We need to talk: God”. Not only do I find this amusing, but I also find it highly significant in light of what’s going on in the world these days… And I believe it summarizes the heart of the message today found in the last part of Heb. 12…God is trying to get people’s attention and He’s doing it by shaking things up… Last week we looked at the two mountains found in Heb. 12, Mt. Sinai and Mt. Zion…and we contrasted the difference between the two in the way we relate to God… …Mt Sanai representing the old covenant way of viewing God as distant, angry, unapproachable…where it’s about keeping the rules so we are acceptable to God…and fearing His judgment when we don’t keep the rules… …and in contrast, Mt. Zion which represents the new covenant way of relating to God where we view Him as loving, welcoming, inviting…where it’s about embracing the righteousness of Christ rather than trying to earn our own… Mt Sinai is about the 10 commandments, whereas Mt. Zion is about Christ’s blood sacrificed for us on the cross… Mt Sinai is about the past and going back to a lifeless religious system… …whereas Mt Zion is about the future and going forward towards heavenly joy and citizenship… God wants us to live at Mt. Zion… As I mentioned last week, the end of the chapter is so significant that I didn’t want to rush it by adding it to an already full sermon…it’s about the shaking that is going on in our world these days and the shaking that is yet to come, and what God’s purposes are for this… So I invite you to open your Bibles with me to Heb. 12:25-29… Prayer…Read… Meaning of the Passage What we have here is an eschatological passage, a biblical prophecy that there is coming a day in which there will be such a violent shaking on the earth and in heavens that the world as we know it will be destroyed. There will come a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells, but this world is going to come to a cataclysmic end some day. And what cannot be shaken will remain, which is the kingdom of God and everyone who is part of it. We know this because of the prophetic verse the writer of Hebrews quotes from Haggai 2:6 “This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘In a little while I will once more shake the heavens and the earth, the sea and the dry land. This is the teaching of the Bible in many other places including 2 Peter 3:10: But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. Rev. 6:12-14 There was a great earthquake. The sun turned black like sackcloth made of goat hair, the whole moon turned blood red, and the stars in the sky fell to earth, as figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The heavens receded like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place. People who live on the west coast are often reminded about the “big one” that is predicted to happen some day… …the big earthquake that has the potential to do great damage to the major cities along the west coast…anything built on the San Andreas Fault… Well, the Bible says there is a “big one” coming…bigger than anyone can imagine…and God wants people to be prepared, forewarned… …that’s why the writer of Hebrews urges us to build our lives on something solid…something that cannot be shaken…on the unshakable kingdom of God instead of the shaky fault lines of this world… Labor Pains Listen, before the end comes, God has appointed smaller shaking events to serve notice that something big and decisive is going to happen… God’s aim is to get people’s attention through natural events like earthquakes, tsunamis, storms, all manner of calamites… even in the proliferation of evil in this world through terrorism and suicide bombers…God wants to make it clear that this world is in the pains of labor…labor pains that are leading up to the birth of the new heaven and new earth… Just like labor pains for a woman lead to the arrival of something good…so the labor pains in this earth are leading up to the glorious arrival of the kingdom of God…God’s unshakable and eternal kingdom… Why Would God Allow This? Now I know this raises a lot of questions about why a good and loving God would allow calamities like these to happen knowing full well that people will suffer and lives will be lost… While this is too big a question to explore fully now, let me briefly say that according to the Bible, God is sovereign over the events of this world…and He is not the author of evil. And what He decrees to do in His loving sovereignty… and whatever evil He allows to happen by His loving sovereignty…He is using it all to accomplish His ultimate good purposes for humanity… I too ask the question, “Why does God allow in His sovereignty what He could prevent in His mercy?” I wrestle with that one too…and when I don’t get it (which I quite often), I choose to trust that God is good and that He knows what He is doing… Whether we understand all this or not, and truthfully, we can’t understand it fully… we are invited to declare, along with Job… “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” Job 1:21. Jesus spoke about labor pains in Matthew 24:6-8: You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains. I love what John Piper has to say about this passage: “We should hear in every rumor of war and every famine and every earthquake the voice of the Lord saying "I reign! I am in control. I am a God of mercy, a God of hope. I am bringing in the kingdom. I do not want it to happen suddenly without warning. I have warned you again and again and again with shakings that should have broken you loose from your love of the world." Keep in mind that there will be an increasing frequency of these things as the end comes near and the intensity of them will increase, because that's the way it happens with labor pains before a birth…the closer it gets, the more intense it gets…that’s exactly what we see happening in the world these days… What God is Shaking It goes without saying that God is shaking the world these days. There’s not a one of us who hasn’t noticed, to some degree, the shaking God is doing in this earth. Consider the Global Shaking that is taking place: earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc. • we see it politically…upheavel in governments, instablility of the Middle East…North Korea and its dictatorial posturing of power…the rise and fall of world leaders… • we see it economically…weak global economy…rising debt levels of many countries…right here in Canada, the drop in the value of our dollar, the historic low price of oil… -many people’s retirement financial plan isn’t looking as good as it did…even those plans are being shaken… And not just the global shaking, what about the Personal Shaking many people are facing…many of you here today…you’re being shaken with: health challenges, family upheavel, personal conflicts, job-related stress…endless list… -don’t you see it among many people? an unsettledness, dis-ease…growing sense of gloom and doom…hopelessness and despair…this world, your world is being shaken… The key question though is, can you choose to believe that God is at work through all this shaking? Can you see that God is shaking things up to accomplish His purposes? His good purposes? His eternal purposes? So what purposes you might ask? Why might God be sending the shaking? God’s Purposes for Shaking It’s important we know the Biblical reasons why God shakes things…what His purposes are in the shaking. Here are at least three given in our passage: 1. to get our attention v.25 Mankind in general is oblivious to spiritual things…people are by nature spiritually blind to invisible spiritual realities…that’s why it sometimes takes a very loud wake up call to open the eyes of men and women to the reality of a living God Who is there and Who is speaking and Who is intervening in the course of this world’s history… -it’s just like the billboard: “we need to talk: God”… sometimes it does take a hurricane to get people’s attention… God gives labor pains to the world so that people might wake up and realize that something big and eternally significant is going to happen… Even among God’s people, some of us are in such a deep sleep spiritually that God is using all manner of ways to get our attention…to call to us, to awaken obedience in us, to follow Him by doing whatever He says… …you asleep? want to stay that way? Why? eg. 15 years old…my first real struggle with this…invitation for baptism in services…strong conviction, but I resisted God…fear…until baptism was postponed because of tragic motorcycle death of one of our young adults… I’m not suggesting God let that young man die just because of me…but I do know that terrible accident really got my attention…woke me up…better, it moved me out of my stubbornness and resistance to a place of obedience to God’s call…I obeyed God and got baptized… What’s it going to take for some of you to respond to God?…like v.25 says, “Don’t refuse Him who speaks…” 2. to dislodge us from the world v.27 -God shakes things so that our grip on the world can be loosened…so that our affections can be redirected…so that we will stop loving the world and instead learn to love the things of God…and God Himself… God shakes things so that He can remove what is temporary and place us solidly on what is eternal and unshakable, namely His kingdom, Mt Zion, the place Jesus’ blood and righteousness makes available to us… God shakes people awake so we can see the instability of this world and the desirability of the unshakable kingdom that He offers… …so we can see how ultimately pointless and futile it is to invest most of our time, energy and hope in a temporary, shakable place…and how wise and valuable it is to invest ourselves in a permanent, lasting, heavenly future… It’s tragic how in a time of calamity, some people instead of learning this lesson, hold on more fiercely to the things this world offers for hope…hang more tightly onto money and possessions…onto power and control…they seek more help from human leaders and agencies and governments… …or just get more self-indulgent with alcohol and drugs and sex and entertainment… eg. Did you hear about the airplane emergency this past Sept in Las Vegas? while still on the ground one of the plane’s engines caught fire, so there was an emergency evacuation. But the surprising thing is, despite clear instructions from the flight crew, people actually stopped during the evacuation to grab their carry-on luggage! Can you imagine the risk in that to all the passengers on board? As one blogger summarized: "People love their carry-ons more than life itself." God shakes us so we loosen our grip on this world and it’s temporary pleasures and rewards… …which leads to the third purpose of shaking: 3. to plant us on the firm foundation of His kingdom v.28 …then God offers to plant us firmly on the unshakable foundation of His kingdom… God shakes us so that we will look for solid ground, for something unshakable…something that doesn’t shift around and move and sway and knock us off balance… …and we find it when we place our hope, heart, love, future in God’s kingdom…which is here now and is coming fully in the future… Jesus Is The Sure Foundation There is ultimately one foundation upon which we can build our lives…that we must build our lives…which can never be shaken, removed…and that is the foundation of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ… I Cor. 3:11 For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. -it starts with a confession of faith…receiving of Christ’s great salvation through faith in His finished work on the cross…some of you still need to do that… …but it goes so much further as we then build our whole lives upon the solid rock of Jesus…so that when things shake, we will not come crashing down along with the world around us… -we build with spiritual materials and kingdom values and practices and Biblical principles… Mt. 7:24-27 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” Jesus Christ is our sure foundation… Let’s make sure that we are building our lives on Him and His kingdom… Let’s do what v. 28 says, “…be thankful and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire…” Conclusion -“we need to talk”… -join me up front to pray for the coming of God’s kingdom…to declare our willingness to embrace His kingdom…to lay hold of that which cannot be shaken…to lay hold of Jesus Christ Himself… -to pray for this world that is being shaken… -let’s invite God to shake things up… Pastor Bob spoke about the choice of Mountain Sinai or Mount Zion, the place of the 10 Commandments or where God spoke to us through Jesus Christ. Hebrews 12:18-29
Hebrews: It’s All About Jesus
Part 16 “Race Markers for 2016” Hebrews 12:12-17Intro – welcome to 2016 dear friends…I have the privilege of bringing you the first message of the year from God’s word which I hope God will use to guide us, encourage us and line us up with His will and purposes for the year ahead…I’ve often told you stories from the marathons I have run…lots of good sermon illustrations come from running…that’s because running a race is one of the pictures the Bible uses for living the Christian life… |
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