The Book of Hebrews- Hebrews 13:1-3 Love of the brethren
Hebrews 13:1-3 · Vern Peterman · Aug 17, 2014
Hebrews, No. 65
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926437290

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. We're going to be starting this morning the 13th chapter, the last chapter of the book of Hebrews. And as Randy read for us, we'll be just doing the first three verses today. Looking down the road here, we're going to be, if things go according to plan, completing the study of Hebrews at the end of September and beginning in October, starting in the Gospel of Luke. So anyway, just so you see what's coming down the road. This morning what we're looking at here is some very practical direction for those in the body of Christ. It's things to do here while we're seated there, right? And so we'll begin taking a look at those practical instructions here as we Start chapter 13. Let's begin with verse 1.

Let love of the brethren continue is the way the New American Standard translation has it. But as we point out last week, let doesn't mean allow anywhere in the New Testament. So that's an important distinction. This verse is not saying that we should allow the love of the brethren to continue or that we should stop not allowing the love of the brethren to continue. It's not giving us that direction at all.

What it is doing is telling us this. Literally the verse says, the brotherly love must actively be continuing. That's the way it's actually written. It's not a permitted to continue, but it actually is an active decision on the part of a believer. While that sounds pretty brief, there are several things that we're going to be examining about that particular verse and exploring those.

First of all, this is a family kind of love. We often hear about the kind of love that is unconditional and has God as its source. And that's the love that's sometimes said as agape love, or if you took Greek and Texas like I did, agape, you know. But, in this case, as we saw in Romans 12, 9-13 last week, those of you who were with us, this is calling for a family kind of love, phileo, a different kind of love than is used in a lot of passages. This kind of love, however, recognizes the spiritual reality, we in the body of Christ are spiritual family of a special kind. And we are all Christ's brothers. That is the distinction.

And it comes out, we saw it earlier in Hebrews, Hebrews 2.11. It's not quite like a human family. A human family typically, of course you have all these things show up at family reunions, right? Fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters-in-law and aunts and uncles and cousins and grandparents and on and on and on. I even, not too long ago, got to meet a second cousin once removed. But God doesn't have anything like that. Not in our church family. God has none of these other kinds of extended family relationships.

Because we are, all of us, Christ's spiritual brethren. Every single one. We are all of us Christ's brethren. We all share the same history in Christ. We have all been identified with Christ in His death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding.

God was very specific in the way that He identified us with Christ. When Christ crossed the Sea of Galilee in the boat and calmed the storm and that, we weren't identified in that. When Christ did the feeding of the 5,000, the feeding of the 4,000, we weren't identified with that. God made sure that we were specifically identified with Christ in these five ways.

And we all, as spiritual brothers of Christ, have that same history. Isn't that interesting? Same spiritual history. We share Christ's spiritual history in these five events. We are also called God's children. God has no grandchildren. He doesn't have any nieces and nephews. But we are, all of us, God's children. All who believe.

Rather than let, which is kind of what the impression you get reading the English translations, It says actively love. The word let can seem to imply that we simply allow something to happen, or that we stop preventing it from happening. Now, we have, if you use computers very much, you get these various things, you know, allow this, allow that, you know, you get these things come up. It gets annoying at times. But that's not what this is.

This is, instead of actively loving, the verb tense in Hebrews 13.1 says that these believers are to actively express brotherly love to one another.

Do it deliberately. Do it deliberately. Actively showing and expressing brotherly love isn't just waiting around for a feeling. Oh, I'll do it when I feel like it. You're not waiting for a feeling. Express brotherly love based on your position as spiritual brothers.

One of the things we like to point out here is that as human beings we can each get into various priority and sequence. Feelings of various kinds can be very intense. And one of the observations here is the world has been screaming for us to trust our feelings since World War II. That's been kind of the turning point. The biblical sequence, however, is different. The biblical sequence is spiritual facts as spelled out in God's Word. So when we say facts, it's the spiritual facts spelled out in God's Word. Faith in those revealed spiritual facts.

And finally, feelings that follow, not feelings that lead. It has been sold into Christendom, primarily through the charismatic movement, that you follow your feelings, and that feelings are hugely significant. Feelings and experiences are everything. That's how the world has gotten into the church. It's the world's message.

We as believers, are to put our faith in the spiritually revealed facts and let the feelings follow. One of the ways we illustrate that is the train in the tracks is like faith in the facts. And the feelings follow, like the caboose. This is the way that we're to live. We put our faith in the facts and let the feelings follow. Christians, in a great percentage, have embraced this, you know, the feelings are everything and the experiences are everything.

And that's just not biblical. Now, the other point we're going to make here about verse 1, And I'm going to borrow from the Texas background here. All y'all must as an individual act of will. The brotherly love, this family love, is actually an imperative. So it's not let as in allow. It's a love that must be shown among believers and applies to every single one of us. Every single one. That love is to be motivated by grace. So here's an imperative, but it's not legally based. It's motivated by grace. It's a grace-motivated imperative. It's based on the position that each of us has as brothers of Christ and children in the family of God. Forever family. That's our position. So our acting is motivated by grace based on our position that we have as spiritual brothers.

The imperative is also an appeal to the will to actively express brotherly love. It's a decision. I'm not waiting for a feeling of brotherly love in order to act. I'm seeing that it's grace-motivated for me to actively pursue brotherly love based on my position.

And one other characteristic, continuously. That comes out of the verb. The act of expression of brotherly love as an act of will among the believers is to be continuous. And there is no finish line. You can't just say, OK, I did brotherly love. We're done. No. The finish line is when you pass through heaven's gates. That's when you're done. Continuously. It's nonstop.

It's not based on occasional contact with the body of Christ, or once in a while, or just when we feel like it. Now, why continuous? Because, are you not continuously standing in grace? Are you not continuously saved by grace? The grace that motivates the brotherhood of love and the position we have as Christ's brothers and as children of God are non-stop.

I actually initially titled this, but Nancy thought it was not a good idea. Always take a non-stop flight to the place you've already been. I thought that would confuse people. So anyway, continuous. Now, let's move on to verse 2, which is also on page 2 of your handout. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by this some have entered angels without knowing it. There's Nancy smiling again. Okay.

Hospitality is one of those overlooked words in the New Testament. It's something that frequently we just don't get the pattern. But it's something throughout the New Testament that's fairly consistent. The Greek word means literally to love, as in family, strangers. So it's a family love towards strangers is the way the Greek word comes out. Hospitality is a long-standing Christian quality of character, but during New Testament times it was especially important for Christians to show hospitality to other Christians.

The publicly available places to stay were oftentimes morally and spiritually degraded. And also, and I put in here very expensive, I didn't have room to write prohibitively expensive. Staying at one of these places, it would be like if I told you, okay, for last night's stay, that'll be $2,000. It's just like, whoa. Prohibitively expensive.

Dehospitality, and this is in Hebrews 13.2 and in the Romans 12.13 passage we looked at last week. It's dehospitality. Definite article. Dehospitality says and does these things.

It expresses that Christians are family. Even though it's a love of strangers, it is treating them like family. Next, dehospitality is one way of sharing in the needs of the saints. And thirdly, the hospitality places a high value in Christian fellowship. It's an opportunity to fellowship with other brothers and sisters in the Lord. sharing where you're at spiritually, what are you learning, where are you growing, etc. So it's a spiritual opportunity for fellowship. Aside from this passage here, we have these passages that talk about practicing hospitality or something like that.

And what we looked at last Sunday, practicing hospitality, comes out of Romans 12.13, the last half of the verse.

And actually, like Hebrews 13.2, it's practicing de-hospitality. Definite article there.

First Timothy 5.10, a widow is eligible for support if she has shown hospitality for strangers. It's one of the qualifications for a widow being eligible for church support that Paul writes to Timothy.

In First Timothy 3.2, and in Titus chapter 1, an overseer, who is an elder or a shepherd, has numerous qualifications that they have to meet character qualifications and in both those passages both of those passages it is a qualification of an elder to show that they have a characteristic of being hospitable and then what you find there and also first Peter has a general statement to believers be hospitable to one another without complaint and I'm I'm reading from that that there were some who were inclined to be hospitable and then complain about it. So he's correcting that.

All right. Now, some have entertained angels without knowing it. There are three specific instances in God's Word in which some have entertained angels without knowing it, at least at the time. What would happen is they would entertain the angels and then later on find out that they were angels. The three specific instances are given in Genesis 18.

This is Abraham is entertaining three men and he actually acts in a servant capacity to these angels who appear to him as men. He doesn't know at the time that that's what they are. The next one is in Genesis 19. It starts in 1 through 3 and continues on. Here's Lot who is entertaining angels. He doesn't find that out until later. And then another in the book of Judges.

In Judges 13, 15 through 25, Manoah the father of Samson was visited by the angel of the Lord whom we take as the pre-incarnate Son of God. So, entertaining angels, they might not be just created angels, but in this case, here is the father of Samson. And we'll look into this shortly here. Here's the father of Samson, who is entertaining the pre-incarnate Son of God. Christ before he was born. They had a visit from the angel of the Lord, and now the angel of the Lord is not the same as an angel of the Lord.

Judges 13.22, So Manoah said to his wife, We will surely die, for we have seen God. We take it as the pre-incarnate Son of God, Christ, appeared to Manoah and his wife. Isn't that something? So you might not just be entertaining an angel, you may in fact In these Old Testament contexts, they may have, in fact, have been entertaining the Son of God before he was born of Mary.

So, the angel of the Lord speaks as God, doing things God does, as we saw in this passage with Manoah. As in this account with Manoah, many who see the angel of the Lord say that they have seen God. Since appearances of the angel of the Lord end at Christ's birth, we take him to be the Son of God. Now, there is a larger principle in this. It's not just, you know, I really ought to be hospitable because I might entertain angels or maybe even the angel of the Lord, the Son of God. But there's a bigger principle in that. We don't know what God is doing in any particular situation. We don't know what God's doing. Things that may seem mundane and we may not think being of any great significance may in fact be something that God uses very significantly.

I give the instance Nancy when she was in her middle teens was invited to Mount Hermon Christian Conference Center with a Christian family and a lady who smiled at her was a turning point spiritually for her. One of the things that turned the corner for her. So, hospitality is one of the many things that the Lord can use in a significant way. I think that's the larger principle here. What might seem insignificant to us at any moment may be very pivotal to other people in ways that we don't expect at the time. Hospitality is also part of the good work that God has prepared beforehand.

All right, now let's take a look at Hebrews 13.3.

Remember the prisoners as though in prison with them, and those who are ill-treated. So it's remember the prisoners and those who are ill-treated. Since you yourselves also are in the body, So let's look at the context for this verse. We have facilities in the U.S. called jails, prisons, correctional institutions, penitentiaries, and various other names. The context for this verse is the Roman Empire about 67 A.D. And there's a reason why we want to take a look at the context here. We have it in the New Testament that John the Baptist, Peter, Paul, Silas, and Timothy all spent some time in some kind of prison. So these are good guys.

In 2 Corinthians 11.23, Paul wrote of his trials, including more abundant imprisonments. So Paul was in prison a whole lot more than we have recorded in the book of Acts.

Prisons were often holding cells until a time of judgment. In other words, A prison sentence was not something they did in those times. They put you in prison until some other decision was made. However, they were not necessarily in any rush to get you out of there or to make a decision. So they didn't give sentences like we do today. You're going to spend five years or ten years in prison. They would simply take their time making a decision. They would have then someone in prison until a judgment was made, maybe to release them, further punishment of some kind, or execution. But it was a holding cell until that decision was made.

Now, the legal system was not like ours either. Beatings were often given to prisoners before or in the middle of a trial or with no trial at all. In fact, the general philosophy in the Roman Empire was beat first and ask questions later. Maybe. And if one did not have friends and relatives on the outside to come in, it could be very miserable and you might even die there.

You see, the jailers got no penalty if one of their prisoners died in prison. They didn't care and the Roman Empire didn't care. What you didn't want to have happen is to have the prisoners get out. So the jailer, like the one in Philippi, was very concerned that the prisoners got out, but he was not concerned until he became a believer with how well Paul and Silas were doing. So you needed to have friends on the outside to bring you food, to bring you fresh clothing or take care of anything else. If you did not have friends and family on the outside, it was not going to go well for you.

Now, how about the ill-treatment? We have multiple evidences that Christians could easily be ill-treated, and Jewish Christians were especially at risk of being ill-treated by both the Gentiles and even their fellow Jews. So these people who are getting this letter in the book Hebrews the people who are reading it were people that were especially subject to being ill-treated by both the Jews and the Gentiles let's look at an example the book of Acts chapter 17 1 through 4 Now when they had traveled through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And according to Paul's custom, he went to them and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that the Christ, the Messiah, had to suffer and rise again from the dead, saying, This Jesus, whom I am proclaiming to you, is the Christ. And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, along with a large number of the God-fearing Greeks and a number of the leading women." That sounds pretty good, huh? Now for the rest of the story.

But the Jews, becoming jealous and taking along some wicked men from the marketplace, hired thugs. formed a mob and set the city in an uproar, attacking the house of Jason. They were seeking to bring them out to the people. Mob rule. When they did not find them, they began dragging Jason and some brethren before the city authorities, shouting, These men who have upset the world have come here also, and Jason has welcomed them.

And they all act contrary to the decrees of Caesar, saying, There is another King, Jesus. Oh boy, where have we heard this before? And they stirred up the crowd and the city authorities who heard these things, and when they received a pledge from Jason and the others, they released them. Now the Jews, do they care about the decrees of Caesar?

No, but they used it as leverage to get these men in trouble. They used it as leverage to get these men in trouble. So being a Jewish Christian was something that easily got both the Gentiles and the Jews on your case. So the ill-treatment by their fellow Jews may have been one of the motivations for these Jewish Christians to slide back under, as we mentioned previously, the Jewish sacrificial system. The idea being, if I do these sacrifices, will the Jews let me alone? Will they get off my case? And that may have been one of the temptations. But he says, nope.

Remember those who are ill-treated. and don't go back under the sacrificial system. Now one of the things we point out, this verse is focused upon support of Christians. It's not, and I'm not saying that there isn't some valid ministry, in dealing with prisoners in general. However, this was particularly focused upon Christians. That's the way the context reads here.

As with brotherly love and showing hospitality to strangers, and as we'll soon see, this and other verses in chapter 13 were written mainly with relationships among Christians in view. Remember those in prison as if imprisoned with them. Later in the same chapter, we will read, take notice that our brother Timothy has been released, with whom, if he comes soon, I will see you." And that's in Hebrews 13, 23.

Now, the way this is written is, you must remember as bound with them. Remember was written as a grace-motivated imperative, so it was an imperative. You must remember, okay? with the idea that all of them must be remembering the ones bound in prison.

A very intense qualifier is about to follow. That remembering was to come with a mindset of having been bound with them in prison, written in the perfect tense. Isn't that amazing? As soon as my brothers and sisters go into prison, the mindset that he is urging is, as soon as they go into prison, you're there with them. That's how intensely this has been written.

It is as if you were already bound there in prison with them, and you still are. One of the things that becomes clear when we look at these three verses is actually some fairly intense words here, and things are written rather more intensely in the original language than comes across in our English translations. We're not even done getting finished with this chapter. We're going to continue on bit by bit until we get to the end of chapter 13 at the end of next month.

But it's already clear from the intensity of these verses, God does not intend that the fellowship among believers be casual and incidental. We believers are spiritual family forever. That's clear. We believers, even if strangers socially, have a basis for family love. We believers are to act with imaginative empathy. My brother and sister gets in a prison, or I could even think some other kind of difficulty. I'm there with him. In the perfect tense. Completed past action. putting ourselves in their place. Intensely so.

God doesn't want our fellowship to be casual and incidental. As a matter of fact, people should not be able to explain what goes on among people in this church body using the things they learn in sociology class. It should be inexplicable. That's what God intends.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you for what you spelled out. These are very practical verses, but at the same time, they're also very intense verses. And we see that the fellowship that we have is not like the gathering together of unbelievers, but it has great distinction. We thank you for that. We thank you for what you revealed because you love us and care for us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.