Sermon Transcript
The following is a lightly edited transcript generated from the audio; it may contain small errors.
- Hospitality Is a Form of Preaching
- The Priority of the Person
- The Supremacy of Love
- The Priority of the Gospel
Let’s stand and pray together. I know you just prayed, but let’s pray for the Word. We thank You for Your Word. We thank You that it’s true. We thank You that it is good, it is pure because it’s like You. We pray that You would give us ears to hear Your Word today. We thank You for those of us that know You. Embrace the Word that we might be changed by it. And we do pray for any here today, Lord, that may not know You personally, that before they leave today, they would come to know You. They would understand Your great love for them and they would accept Your love today as expressed on the cross when You died for their sins and then rose from the dead. So we ask, Jesus, that You would be glorified today through the preaching of Your Word. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
Hospitality Is a Form of Preaching
You may be seated. So we have this thing in church where I get a text from Justus. I’m just going to share a personal thing, okay? What’s that? Go? So he texted me, he said, what’s the sermon title? And even if I know what I’m going to preach on months in advance, the one thing I don’t usually know is the title. It’s just a weird thing. I don’t like, I don’t know why. I have this thing about the right title, you know what I mean? Anyway, you don’t know what I mean because you don’t preach all the time, right? Anyway, what’s the point of the story? The story is, I knew what I was preaching and going to preach on today, but I didn’t want to use the word that the sermon’s about. You got the right look on your face, like what? Okay, what I want to talk about today is an aspect of hospitality. But believe it or not, I don’t like the word hospitality. Because I think for a couple reasons, I think it conjures up images in people’s minds that are actually misleading when you hear the word. A second reason is I think that, I was thinking about this, that if you took a random poll, if you just had a microphone, you walked up to a bunch of Christians and said, tell me some of the important virtues in the Bible. I bet you’d probably get this many people saying hospitality, because it’s just not what comes to mind. You know what I’m saying? Yeah, when you study the Word, it is amazing how much the Word actually talks about this topic. Now, it may not use the word hospitality, but the meaning of hospitality permeates the Scripture. It’s really astounding. And so, today I want to talk about the message, this is where I’m still struggling with the title. I’ll just say the message of hospitality. And in a way, I want to talk about why it’s important, but I don’t want to use that word in my title. The point I want to get through today is that hospitality is a form of preaching. It’s a form of preaching. Now, you’ve heard the expression, preach at all times and sometimes use words. And maybe that’s the bottom line of what I want you to hear today is that when we are a hospitable people or when we’re an inhospitable people, we are preaching. We’re preaching in our living. Well, it’s really true about everything, right? How we live preaches many messages, but the way we live should be preaching some core values, core basic things that are in Scripture, right?
Well before I, I’m going to mention three, but before I do, I want to remind you that the word hospitality in Scripture really means the love of strangers. That’s a literal translation of the Greek word. Stranger-love. Not strange love. We got a lot of that going on in our society. A lot of strange love. No, I mean stranger-love. Now, most people love their spouses, not all. You love your kids. Maybe you have a couple friends, you love them. Everybody else is a stranger. So hospitality is not about entertaining your friends. Now, entertaining your friends is good. And you could say maybe that’s a first step in the practice of hospitality, but in reality, hospitality is the care and concern for the stranger or the other to you. So if I don’t know your best friend, to me, he’s a stranger. Right? And so I’m called to be hospitable to that person that I don’t know. Of course you should be hospitable to the people you know. That’s kind of a given. Those who we don’t know, those who are the stranger or the foreigner or the other in Scripture. So the question is, why is this important, or should I say, what does hospitality demonstrate? I want to mention three things.
The Priority of the Person
The first thing it demonstrates is the priority of the person. The priority of the person. And what I mean is, is that hospitality, meaning demonstrating concern and affection for others that you don’t know, reaching out to others, embracing others, welcoming others, this demonstrates the priority of the person over things, over institutions or structures, and even over one’s self, right? There are only two eternal things in the world. One is the Word of God and the other is the souls of men and women. Ultimately, those are things that are of profound, basic, radical importance. The Word of God and the souls of men and women. Not the church building, not your home, not your carpet, not your furniture, not your cars, more important are people. People. So when we practice hospitality what we’re preaching by our actions, we are preaching human dignity. The dignity of every human being. Why? Because they are created in the image of God. They are image bearers. God made them. They’re not a random product of chance. It’s just like evolution spit them out after billions of years and there they are, a blob. No, they’re a person who God made and God destined to be on the earth at this time in history and to make contact with you.
John Calvin says this, he says, “Therefore whatever man you meet who needs your aid, you have no reason to refuse to help him. Say he is a stranger, but the Lord has given him a mark that ought to be familiar to you by virtue of the fact that He forbids you to despise your own flesh.” He’s quoting Isaiah. Well, he’s not my own flesh. Well, yes, actually he is your own flesh because we’re all descended from one father. Right? So in one sense, the other isn’t really another. It’s just that I don’t know my brother. “You say he is contemptible and worthless, but the Lord shows him to be one to be dignified, to give the beauty of His image.” The beauty of His image. And I know that beauty is hard to see sometimes, right? See a homeless guy, you know, he’s filthy and he’s in rags, and you don’t see a lot of beauty. But you have to look through all that, right? Because there’s a human soul there, amen?
Here’s what Jesus said about the soul. In Matthew 16, if you want to turn there with me, we’re going to look at a number of Scriptures, which is why I didn’t open with just one. In Matthew 16, Jesus is in the context of a challenge to discipleship, in other words, a challenge to give our lives to Him in service. In verse 24, “Then Jesus said to His disciples, ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it. For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world,’” all the things, even all the status, all the wealth, what gain is it if he gains the whole world, “‘and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?’” In other words, the soul is of more value than all the wealth, all the [audio unclear] to the value of the human soul. This is a statement by the One who made the human soul. So He would know it, wouldn’t He? He would know its value.
Go to Matthew chapter 10. Matthew 10, this is where Jesus talks about not just the value of the soul but the enduring value of the soul, the eternal value of the soul, verse 24. “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above his master. It is enough for a disciple that he be like his teacher, and a servant like his master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they call those of his household!” In other words, Jesus is saying, if they call Me bad names, if they say I’m demon-possessed, which they did say of Jesus, they’re going to say that of you, because you’re, if you’re one of His disciples. 26, “Therefore do not fear them. For there is nothing covered that will not be revealed, and hidden that will not be known. Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light; and what you hear in the ear, preach on the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” By practicing hospitality, we are preaching really the ultimate value of the human person, that is in God’s image and that their soul is of such, is of eternal duration and eternal value. More important than anything we might have.
John Wesley said this, he said, “A poor wretch cries to me for alms. I look and see him covered with dirt and rags. But through these I see one who has an immortal spirit, made to know and love and dwell with God to eternity. Amen. I honor him for his Creator’s sake. I see through all these rags that he is covered with the blood of Christ. I love him for the sake of his Redeemer. The courtesy therefore which I feel and show toward him is a mixture of the honor and love which I bear to the offspring of God, the purchase of His Son’s blood, and the candidate for immortality. This courtesy let us feel and show toward all men, and we shall please all men to their edification.” Isn’t that good? In other words, we have to learn to see people through the lens of Scripture, which really means we need to learn to see people the way God sees them, the way God sees them, and value them the way God values them. And so through hospitality, we recognize and we preach by our acts the value of every person made in the image of God.
But we also demonstrate the value of the Christian identity, if you will, when we are hospitable to our brothers and sisters. We recognize the fact that the saints have not only the image of God, but now they bear the image of the Son. Jesus is my Brother, and therefore my brother is Jesus to me. This is what Jesus said. He said that when you went to prison and visited those in prison, when you fed the hungry, when you clothed the naked, Jesus said, you did this to Me, remember? And remember when Paul met Jesus on the Damascus Road and Jesus says to Paul, “Why are you persecuting Me?” Well, he wasn’t. Well, he was. Well, He was here, wasn’t He? He was persecuting Christians and Jesus said, “You’re persecuting Me by doing that.” So we Christians, when we are born again, we take, we already have the divine image, even being fallen, even not knowing God, even being estranged from God. We have the divine image because He was our Creator. Now we take on also the additional image of His Son because Jesus is our Redeemer. And so when we are hospitable to the saints, we are not only showing the value of recognizing the image, but we’re recognizing the image of the Son. And so thus we minister to Jesus and welcome Jesus when we reach out to the saints.
The Supremacy of Love
Secondly, not only do we demonstrate the supremacy or superiority of people, in hospitality we show the supremacy of love, the supremacy of love. Look at Romans 12 for a moment. We’ll start in verse 9. This is an interesting verse because I don’t know how yours reads. Mine says, “Let love be without hypocrisy.” Is that what yours, I know yours. What’s ESV say? Let love be genuine. Yeah, okay. So they make it an imperative. The word let in English means it’s an imperative, it’s a command. Let this be such. In other words, do this or whatever. Actually, this is not an imperative. Also this says in the Greek is, love without hypocrisy, or love genuine. So really it’s like a caption. It’s like a heading to what follows. Love without hypocrisy, colon. Here’s the description. You ready? Here it is. “Abhor what is evil. Cling to what is good.” Abhor means hate, hate, hate, loathe. It sounds like the Grinch, doesn’t it? Remember that part of the Grinch? Mine says, cling to what is good. Literally can be translated, be glued. Be glued to what is good. So it’s inseparable. “Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another; not lagging in diligence, fervent in spirit, serving the Lord; rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing steadfastly in prayer; distributing to the needs of the saints, given to hospitality,” given, literally could be translated, strenuously pursue it. And this word given here, pursue, I think the King James says pursue, I’m not sure of the ESV, is actually used in Greek of a horse that’s running. He’s straining. He’s reaching. He’s laboring. That’s what the word means here. Pursue and strive and labor in hospitality. “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. Be of the same mind toward one another. Do not set your mind on high things, but associate with the humble. Do not be wise in your own opinion.” [audio unclear] Yeah, love. It’s two words, love and stranger put together in Greek. Stranger-love. But as we demonstrate hospitality by right attitude and by our acts, we make love concrete, and we make it concrete. [audio unclear] stinks and reeks and he wants 20 bucks and you don’t give him anything. But you care about the homeless, you know. It’s easy to care about causes in an abstract way, but then when you’re confronted with the reality, it’s a whole different situation. Hospitality is love in action. It’s love in concrete acts of kindness and welcoming and affirming and all the things that true hospitality entails. So we embody love. We don’t just talk about it. We don’t just preach about it. We embody it by how we live. This is why one of the reasons why hospitality is so important. We are preaching the gospel which is a message of God’s love. Amen. We are preaching the gospel that God loves when we demonstrate that love through concrete acts of hospitality and kindness to people. And this is no small matter because when you look in Scripture what you find out is that love is the greatest virtue, love is the greatest commandment, and love is the greatest apologetic.
First it is the greatest virtue. Look at 1 Corinthians 13. Turn there with me, you all know it but let’s read it together again. 1 Corinthians 13 verse 1. “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.” Amen. Paul clearly is saying love is the greatest virtue. He says at the very last verse of chapter 13, 13:13, it says, “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” And hospitality is a concrete demonstration of love. It is preaching love, but better it is preaching it through our actions. It is living the greatest virtue.
But it’s also the greatest commandment. Look at Matthew 22. Our Lord Jesus here is interrogated and He’s asked about the law. Here’s what He says. He says in 22:34, “But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees”—that’s why, Sadducees. That’s an old joke. Anyway, they gathered together. “Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?’” You would, you know, you’d think these guys by now would have realized that testing Jesus always backfired. They just didn’t get it. Every time they tried it they looked stupid in the end. So anyway, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?” Jesus said, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’” [audio unclear] And these two are really one. They’re just opposite sides of the same coin. Because John tells us you cannot love God and hate your brother. You cannot walk in hate and walk in love at the same time. So if we love God, we love our brother. But not only our brother, if we love God, we love our neighbor. And our neighbor may not be our brother. He may be our coworker, he may be our physical neighbor. He may be the person that you see every week at the gym or the ballpark or wherever you go and do your thing. That’s your neighbor. And you are to love them as yourself. This is the great command. If we get this wrong, you know what? Nothing else really matters. Because this is it. This is the sum of it all. To get this commandment wrong is to, not just to miss the bullseye, it’s to miss the entire target. It is to be on the completely wrong path. And believe it or not, it is possible to get this wrong. I mean, it’s possible for entire churches to get this wrong. It’s possible for Christian movements to be politicized or to be radicalized, or to become ideological in ways where love really isn’t what’s going on. You know what I mean? It’s not really about love. It’s about some other agenda. And it can seep its way in to what you’re doing and you don’t even realize it. That what’s happening isn’t an expression of God’s love. It’s about winning or building the organization or some other goal which really isn’t about love for God and our neighbor. So this one we have to get right. We have to get it right.
As I said, it’s also the great apologetic. What do I mean by that? Well, Jesus tells us in John 17, if you want to turn there with me, am I reading too much Bible for you today? Oh, is that a good thing to read the Bible? Okay, good. Glad to hear that. In John 17, Jesus is praying for the church, us. And He says in verse 20 after praying for the twelve, He says, now this is the Lord Jesus talking to the Father, He says, “I do not pray for these alone,” meaning, well actually at that time it was the eleven, I think, “but also for those who will believe in Me through their word,” that is future saints, “that they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us.” Why is that important? “That the world may believe that You sent Me.” In other words, the way the church operates in terms of its oneness, its unity, its love, its body life, its fellowship, its hospitality, its self-nurture, if you will, that is supposed to convince the unbeliever that Jesus really did come from the Father, that He really was who He claimed to be. And that’s why Jesus said earlier in John 13, if you want to turn there at the very end of John 13, He says this, John 13:34, He says, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.” Now the commandment to love one another was actually not a new commandment. It’s in Leviticus and it’s kind of implied in many, many places. So why does He call it a new commandment? Because He says this, “that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” In Matthew, which we just read, Jesus said, love your neighbor as yourself. But here, here He’s saying, love one another as I loved you. That’s an even greater love because the love of Christ was, is the love of the ultimate sacrifice, the ultimate sacrifice. You know what Jesus is really saying here, guys, is that you are to love your fellow saints in such a way that you would die for them, because that’s how I loved you. Die for them. Would you die for me? That’s what we are called to for one another. Literally. For one another. “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” By this, by this kind of love, the non-believer will see that you are truly Christian. Now it doesn’t mean that by seeing it they will necessarily be converted, but they’ll know. In other words, this kind of love will set us apart from the world and people will know that we are true followers of Jesus Christ by this kind of love. Somebody say amen. And this is what we are called to. And this is what hospitality not only implies, it entails, it demonstrates, it preaches by its actions.
The Priority of the Gospel
Also, and I’m going to conclude with this, the hospitality, the message is the priority of the person, the priority of love, and then thirdly the priority of the gospel, and you really can’t separate these three things. Because the gospel is about God’s love for people. They’re all inseparable. Think about really the grand narrative of the Bible. The grand narrative is God creates man and woman. They’re in a garden. They got, I mean, this is uptown, you know what I mean? I mean, really. This is the place to be. This is the nice community. There’s even gated, actually. There are flaming angels with swords. So the original couple, they have a home. They have a place. They are not strangers. But then they fall. They sin. And then they are expelled from the garden and then they become wanderers. They become sojourners, they become strangers. So God in His plan for redemption chooses a man named Abraham. And He actually calls him out of his home and God makes Abraham a stranger. And He makes him a father of a nation and ultimately of many nations, but the key nation Israel, and then his descendants become enslaved in Egypt and now they are strangers, but then He delivers them and He redeems them, right? Then He gives them a land, He gives them a place, He gives them a home, yet He tells them while in their home they should remain as strangers and foreigners in their own home, that that should be their mentality because their real home was in heaven. But He also tells them to embrace the stranger, embrace the other, embrace the foreigner. And there are many, many Scriptures of the Old Testament where Israel is told, remember you were a stranger. So now remember that and then treat the strangers right, over and over.
So the Jewish people became the vehicle for the Messiah. So God chose a people that had been strangers and were called to be even strangers in their own land. Through them the Messiah came. And the Word tells us He came unto His own, but His own did not receive Him. So Jesus now becomes a stranger. Right? The very people He created and place He created, now He’s not even received there. So He’s now a stranger in His own land, if you will. Nevertheless, Jesus invites people to Himself, invites them to a great supper, as talked about in Luke 14, we don’t have time to read it, but they don’t come. So the Jewish people by and large at the time of Christ wouldn’t come. So Jesus wants a big, He wants a big party, wants a big feast, right? So He sends His servants out, He said, invite the Gentiles in. I want a full house. I want to be hospitable. Right? So the strangers come, the Gentiles, we’re told in Ephesians 2, were strangers to the commonwealth of Israel. They were aliens to the promises of God. They were foreigners. They were the other. And in that day, the typical Jewish person despised the Gentile because he was the other. Because he was different. Because he was unclean. And yet God invites them to His table. Not only that, but He invites them not only to His table for a meal. We’re told in Ephesians 2 that by receiving Christ, they become members of God’s household. So they go from being strangers, not just to being a guest, but to being a family member. Now that’s hospitality, right? And so God adopts us, unclean Gentiles, adopts us into His family because of His great hospitality. So the church is now the family of God and we have a home and the church is our home and it is open to all who respond to the invitation to receive Jesus Christ. Yet we are still strangers and sojourners on the earth, we’re told in 1 Peter and Hebrews 11. Why? Because heaven is our ultimate home. Amen. We are looking for another city, another city, an eternal city that cannot be shaken. Amen? So if that’s our true home, this isn’t our true home. So we are strangers. We are in one sense the other because we’re not in full possession of our home yet.
That’s the grand gospel narrative. There’s a fall that alienates us from God. But then there’s a meal, a sacrificial meal, a sacrifice is made for redemption. And we’re invited to come and partake of that meal. And the real meal, of course, as we know, is Jesus Christ, amen. He says, I am the bread of heaven. He says, you must eat My flesh and drink My blood. Not literally, not physically, but spiritually, by coming to Him, by believing in Him, by receiving Him. And when we do that, our alienation between us and God is removed, and then we are restored, and we have not only fellowship with God, we have a new family. We’ve become part of God’s household. We’re now in the family of God, amen? All of this is embodied in hospitality. You wouldn’t think so, but it is. This is the gospel we preach. This is the gospel we believe, but the question is, is this the gospel we’re living? Is this the gospel we live, or is this only a gospel we talk about? If the church wants to really impact the world, the other, it requires us to live out the gospel, right? To the least of these, live out the gospel in how we treat one another, live out the gospel in how we interact with those outside the church. And by the grace of God, as they see how we live out the gospel, they will want to join, they will want to be part of the family of God. But they’ve got to see it lived out.
Let’s stand and pray. Lord, we thank You that You’ve called us, that although we were strangers and aliens, and even Your Word says, Lord, we were Your enemies. Your Word says that You demonstrated Your love for us in the death of Your Son for our sins. And we are so thankful, God, for Your hospitality. We thank You, Lord, that because of Your hospitality, we now have a place in Your family, and we have a home in heaven. And we pray, Lord, if there’s anyone here that doesn’t, that they’re not part of Your family or they’re not sure, I pray that You would help them understand that You have prepared the meal. You have made the sacrifice. You have done everything necessary for them to enter the family, but they must partake by faith. They must believe. They must acknowledge that they’ve sinned, they must acknowledge Christ as the One who bore their sins and rose from the dead, defeating sin. And they must call upon Him. Call upon the Lord Jesus and you will be saved. Ask Jesus Christ to save you and you will be saved. That is the promise of God to you. And He will give you eternal life and that eternal life begins now. It begins today. And you can become a member of God’s family today. Put your trust in Christ and join His family. We pray all this in Jesus’ precious name. Amen.