We're going to be looking at
Hebrews 13, but I want to read the last two verses of chapter
12, beginning in verse 28. Wherefore, we receiving a kingdom
which cannot be moved, let us have grace whereby we may serve
God acceptably with reverence and godly fear. Now, I might
say that he is not giving an option there as to one of the
ways in which men might serve the Lord acceptably, because
there is no other way to serve the Lord acceptably except in
reverence and godly fear. So that is one of many ways to
do it, but it is the only way. It is that which is acceptable.
For our God is a consuming fire. That is, nothing but that way
which is His is going to stand. opens and no man can shut, he
is that one that shuts that no man can open. He is that all-consuming
fire. He is that one before whom nothing
can stand. And that is what it is to have
a godly fear, is to understand who God is. You know, it is not
a wonder to me, really, when I think about it, in the day
in which we live, why there is so little regard to the things
of God is because there is no fear of God before people's eyes. The average person, they believe
God is like a big teddy bear that lives up in the sky and
he's just hoping somebody will do something for him and he's
just wanting to do good and he's just trying with all his might
to keep the devil from doing stuff. and he's being thwarted
at every hand, and we just need to feel sorry for him and just
do right. I mean, nobody cares about him,
so let's all care. Well, I'm telling you, that's
not the picture of who God is. Our God's a consuming fire. He
doesn't need us. He doesn't need anything on this
earth. He doesn't need anything man
has. But man stands in desperate need
of Him. And that's what this means here
when he says our God is consuming fires, not that He is standing
in need of anything. You know, when a fire gets burning,
you can't put it out. I mean, if a fire is burning
hot enough, it can't be put out. How many fire trucks do you think
it would take to put out the fire from an atomic bomb? Huh? I mean, if you had ever a fire
truck on the face of the earth and they was putting out all
the water they could, they couldn't put it out, couldn't they? Well,
our God, He's much more powerful than any atomic bomb. And He
is a consuming fire, and there's nothing that can stay His hand
or say unto Him, what doest thou? He is a God of very gods. Now, knowing that, dear brethren,
that is how we must consider the God with whom we have to
do. He's not waiting on us. We're waiting on Him. There's
a big difference. Now, you know, most times I was
listening to a fellow this morning. He was zealous, and I'm sure
he was just as sincere as he could be. But he was trying to
stir folks up just to do something for God. Well, dear brethren,
that's not the issue. The issue is not for us to do
something for Him, but the issue is Will He in His mercy do something
for us? Because that's the thing that
we stand in need of. He's certainly not in any need
today. He is a consuming fire. And then He begins in verse 13.
Now think about this. He just says, For our God is
a consuming fire. And then in verse 13 what does
He say? Let brotherly love continue. Now is that not an extension
of what He said, that we may serve God acceptably and in godly
fear. Well, how are we going to serve
God acceptably and in godly fear except brotherly love continue? Because how can you love God
whom you have not seen if you do not love your brother whom
you have seen? You know, we talk all day about
the theories of serving God. That is great. You know, we can
theorize all about it, but when the reality of the matter is
that it comes down to the work of God in men is teaching us
to love one another. Is that not what the Lord Jesus
Christ came into the world to teach us? He said, Do good to
them that spitefully use you. Pray for them. that would hinder
you. And that's the point, that's
the place where God would have us be. Now He specifically addresses
this, to brethren in the Lord. Now there's always a general
sense in which we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. That
should be the hallmark of our existence in this world is that
we are a people who are known for kindness. unto our fellow
man. I mean, we have no excuse or
place ever to be anything other than kind, compassionate, tenderhearted,
forgiving to those other men in this world, whether they are
our brethren in the Lord or not. But what he is saying here is
much more important than even that. He is saying, let brotherly
love continue, because brotherly love is that wherein we share
a common bond. Now, it is just like the love
we have for our family. You know, when we speak about
the community as one thing, but when we speak about our family,
that is something else, is it not? Because the love we have
for our mother and our father and our brother and our children,
it exceeds that which we have for the community in general.
Well, by the same token, brotherly love should exceed all that love. Is that not what the Lord taught
us by His very example? Remember when the people came
in and said, your mother and your brothers are outside here. He said, those who were my family
are those who serve the Lord. They are those who love the way
of God. They are those who believe the
things of God. He said, that's my family. He
said, those that do the will of my Father, let brotherly love
continue. Now, he didn't say, let it begin,
did he? But he said, let it continue.
Because why? Because he's the beginning of
it, and he's also the continuation of it. But the beginning of it,
or just saying that we love one another, is not really loving
one another. But you see, for love to continue,
it has to be demonstrated. I mean, I can tell you that I
love you, but if I don't show it to you, how do you know it?
It's like, again, I believe John says, You know, if I say, or
maybe it was James, he said, if I say to someone, be warmed
and filled, but I don't give anything into their hands to
warm and fill them, how can I say that I love them? You know, just
saying it's one thing, but demonstrating it's quite something else. Let
brotherly love continue. Let it be that which is the hallmark
of us as what? The sons of God. those who are
the followers of Christ. I mean, can the followers of
Christ be described as being those who do not care about their
brethren? I mean, is that the hallmark
of God's people? Well, we know that they are the
followers of Christ because they are fighting and carrying on
with one another, and they do not care a thing about one another.
Speaking about one another behind their backs, And, you know, one
of them gets in trouble and they just don't care anything about
them. Now, what kind of a man would that be? What would that
be? You know, we know what the followers
of Christ are, how they are described in the Scriptures. If you ever
wonder what your conduct towards your brethren needs to be, all
you have to do is look at the conduct of the Lord Jesus Christ. And if you wonder how you ought
to love your brethren, there's the example right there. You
don't need to look any further than that, because that is the
demonstration of brotherly love. Because the Lord Jesus Christ
loved not Himself even unto death, and He bore the burdens of His
brethren. And so are we counseled to bear
one another's burdens. That's what he said, did he not?
That's what Paul said. Bear one another's burdens and
so fulfill the law of Christ. You know, people want to take
and paint the Ten Commandments on the sign and stick it up in
their yard, and they want to say, here it is. Here's what
we need to do. Well, dear brethren, if you want
to fulfill the law of Christ, love your brethren. I mean, the
Scripture says that. That's fulfilling the law of
Christ. You know, it's not talking about
the Ten Commandments and how much we believe the Ten Commandments
and we want to chisel them in stone and set them up at the
courthouse. That's all. I'm not opposed to that if somebody
wants to do it. But what have you done when you've
done that? Not a thing in the world. Ain't anybody can do that. Somebody that doesn't even believe
in God can do that. But let brotherly love continue
is the demonstration of that which Christ has instructed us. You see, all of us know more
about how we are to love our brethren than we ever put into
practice, do we not? But He said, let it continue. There's not to be a cessation
of it. Economic times don't get too
hard to love your brother. You know, political differences. No excuse not to love your brother.
There is nothing that exceeds the importance of that one thing.
Let brotherly love continue. Now then he goes on and he gets
specific about this. He said, Be not forgetful to
entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels
unawares. Now this is an interesting passage
of Scripture here. And it's often given a kind of
a mystical note as we read, because when you read the term angels,
there are often creatures mentioned in the Scriptures, the angels,
who are heavenly creatures that can take on the form of men as
they appeared to Abraham in the fields of Mamrech. And there
are various angels that have appeared to men in the Scripture
and they appeared as men. They can do that. But when he
says here, especially right on the heels of let brotherly love
continue, and he says be not forgetful, letting brotherly
love continue, be not forgetful to entertain strangers. Now that word there, entertain
strangers, that's one word in the Greek. I won't try to pronounce
it for you, but entertain strangers is one word, and it means show
hospitality. That's what it means, show hospitality.
And that's what he says here. Be not forgetful to show hospitality. Now he says, because entertaining
strangers, that is, you show hospitality when you invite people
into your house. to sit down and have a meal with
you. That's showing hospitality. Now I know that we live in times
when you can't, and this is not, he's not describing here a situation
where you are to go out and just try to gather
up all of the riffraff that there is in the world and bring them
to your house. That's not what he's saying here. The Lord Jesus Christ certainly
wouldn't turn men away, would He? But He did tell us to be
wise as serpents, harmless as doves. We are to be, though,
on the other hand, a people whose desire is to show hospitality,
to do what we can to minister to others. Now, I'm going to
give an example, and I'm not patting them on the back. But
one thing that has stood in my mind over the years as a testament
to what is being said here is Curtis and Helen. Now, I'm not
going to embarrass them, but they have always been people,
as far as I know, people that were willing to take people into
their home and to show kindness to them. and to give people a
place to stay and things like that that were in places of need. Now that's what it is to entertain
strangers and to be glad, to be looking for the opportunity
to bless those who are brethren in the Lord. I mean, what a glorious
thing it is to be able to minister to those whom the Lord sends
our way. and to give back to them such things as the Lord
has given to us. So be not forgetful to show hospitality,
for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Now, like I said, this is sometimes
interpreted as meaning that sometimes maybe a heavenly creature came
along He showed up at your door, and he had his wings folded up,
you know, under his coat, and you didn't know it. And he came
in, and you showed him some hospitality, and then later on you saw him
fly off, you know, and you said, oh, well, it was an angel. Now,
the word angel, often in the Scripture, I mean, the word angel
literally is a messenger. Now it may be a heavenly creature
who is a messenger because you remember when the Lord sent word
to the shepherds in the fields, He sent an angel. And what did
they come for? Did they just come just to be
there? No, they came bringing a message.
Now what I think that this passage of Scripture is literally talking
about is saying we need to be mindful to show hospitality because
quite often The hospitality that the Lord enables us to show to
others is really a blessing in disguise because those who are
sent our way are bringing to us something much greater than
what we have given to them. They have brought us a message.
And that is often true. When brethren come to us and
we turn them away, how do we know what message we might have
missed? I'm thinking humanly. We know
we're not going to miss anything the Lord's intended for us. But
as we exhort one another, dear brethren, how often it is, you
see, when we look at the opportunities we have to show hospitality unto
others, we shouldn't look at it as a burden, but rather what
blessing has the Lord got in store for us as we show hospitality
to those who are in places of need? Because that is a blessing,
how often it is true. Thereby some have entertained
angels unaware as they didn't know it. I think this is not
exactly the same thing, but it's very similar to it. Those two
men on the road to Emmaus, as they were walking along and their
heads were hanging low, you know, just kind of consoling
one another because they had been followers of Christ and
now he had been crucified. And some had even said now that
he had risen from the dead. And they were just confused. They didn't know how to believe
it. They couldn't believe that, could they? I mean, if you didn't
know that the Lord Jesus Christ rose from the dead having seen
it, And somebody came and said, or let's say for instance, if
Al, if he had walked among us, and somebody came to him and
said, you know, Al rose from the grave the other day. I mean,
you'd say, what? I mean, how's that going to be?
How's that going to happen? I mean, but they were puzzled
because they had confidence in Christ. They knew He had said
He was going to rise again, but they hadn't, they didn't really,
know that it was going to be true. Now there's recently been
a movie made, I'm not going to plug this movie because it's
not totally scripturally accurate, but it's accurate enough that
it was, I went to see it, it's a blessing, it's called Risen,
and it's about the resurrection of Christ. Now one thing I think
they do capture in this movie is the attitudes that the apostles
had after the Lord had risen from the dead. I mean, sometimes
in my mind I picture like these guys, you know, they're all sitting
around and they just knew, well, buddy, we're going to sit over
here and wait and the Lord's going to rise from the dead. No, they didn't
believe He was going to rise from the dead. I mean, not literally. I mean, they believed, you know,
in a resurrection kind of in a general sense like we do. You
know, well, we believe we're going to rise from the dead someday.
But that's not like the real thing, is it? I mean, not just
somebody coming and one day you see them hanging on a cross and
then three or four days later they're sitting right there in
front of you. And I believe they captured that in that movie,
if they didn't get everything right about it, but they got
that part right. Because this was an amazing thing.
And then the Lord, you know, He disappeared from them for
a while, and they were running around saying, well, did we just...
I mean, was He really here, or were we just dreaming, or what's
going on? I mean, they didn't understand
this. I mean, us looking back on it, we can see it. But they
were very puzzled. But as the Lord ministered to
them during this time, they came to that place. where this became
not simply something they were puzzled about, but something
that consumed them. And they were, buddy, it didn't
make any difference what happened from that point forward, because
Christ had risen from the grave. And so these men, as they walked
along the Emmaus Road, and they're in that state, they don't know
to believe this. I mean, has somebody You know,
it's like when somebody tells you something's too good to be
true. Somebody tells you about this new miracle cure they got
for such and such, and you're sitting here and you're wondering,
well, now I wonder, I've heard this stuff before, is this really
the real thing or is somebody just telling me something? And
so here they are walking on this road, and the Lord comes and
He starts walking along with them, but they don't know who
He is. I don't know if he had a hood on, and it says their
eyes were holding that they couldn't see him. I don't know if that
means he looked deafened, or I don't know what it means. But
I know they didn't know who he was. But he went along and he
told them. The Scripture says that he opened
the Scriptures to them, and he told them that, you know, didn't
they know that Christ was going to rise from the dead? And they
said, as they went along, they said, well, here, let's turn
aside here and go into this place and let's sit down and eat together. And of course, as the Lord spoke
to them, and these things were going on in their mind, but then
all of a sudden he was gone. But it says the Lord opened their
eyes. And they said, Man, didn't we
see him? Didn't we know who he was? I
mean, didn't our hearts burn within us? You see, he was an
angel in that respect. unawares unto them. He was sent
to them with a message that was designed to bless them immensely,
and He did that. And so it is, dear brethren,
be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have
entertained angels unawares. Remember them that are in bonds
as bound with them, and them which suffer adversity as being
yourselves also in the body. You see, what is that but to
bear one another's burdens? I mean, consider, whatever a
problem somebody else has, it's our problem if they are brethren
in the Lord. It's not just their problem,
well, they'll have to deal with it. No, what can we do to help
them with it? How can we, what can we do for
them? You know, a lot of times we say,
well, if there's anything we can do, let us know. And we're
thinking in the back of our mind, boy, I hope he don't call me. But let brotherly love continue
is that we really do mean that. See, that's what it is to let
brotherly love continue, is that we want to bear one another's
burdens. We want to esteem one another
above ourselves. And that's what we're exhorted
to do. Remember them that are in bonds, those that have been
in prison for the cause of Christ. Those are in places of trouble
for the cause of Christ. Yeah, brethren, I mean, will
we just sit idly by and don't really care or just be glad that
it ain't us? No. He said, remember them. Now we know that in those days
in the prisons that they had, if somebody didn't bring them
some food, they didn't have any. It wasn't like these, what they
call prisons today, where they just pretty well take care of
them, whatever they need, they're going to bring to them. You know,
they get three meals a day because if they don't give them three
meals a day, well, everybody will rise up in protest that
we're mistreating them and all that kind of stuff. Well, these
prisons here, buddy, they threw you in there and that was it.
If somebody didn't come bring you some food, you didn't have
any. If somebody didn't bring you a blanket, you didn't have
one. Because they didn't care, they put you in jail, see. It
wasn't a daycare center for adults. I mean, it was the real thing. And so when we remember them,
that means we have concern for their needs and seek what we
can do to help them, even as if it was us. May the Lord help us to be a
people that have the Spirit of God. Now we
can't get it, can we? But we can pray by the grace
of God that He give it to us and that we exhort one another
to manifest it. Because it is through the exhortations
of God's Word that He impresses the Word of God upon our hearts
and causes us to desire these things. I mean, if we didn't
know how to love one another, how would we know how to love
one another? But the Lord Jesus Christ, He's
shown us, has He not? So however He would be, that's
how we should be. May the Lord give us grace to
be so.