Episode Transcript
[00:00:27] So I have an older brother, one older brother. He's four years older than me. He has a beautiful wife and a one year old daughter now. Wonderful family.
[00:00:40] And we were blessed to be very, very close growing up. We shared a room together, and he was really influential on my life.
[00:00:50] He showed me video games for the first time.
[00:00:55] He like, all kinds of, like, outdoor games I play with him.
[00:01:01] And he was even influential on where I chose to go to college.
[00:01:05] And so for those of you who have a sibling in the room, you know the kind of influence an older brother or an older sister has over you. And it's very easy to want to do and to want to be the things that they were, right? Like, you want to kind of live up to their name. But what's funny is that with that influence that my brother Blake had over me also came a high degree of competitiveness.
[00:01:36] Okay? So even though Blake was four years older than me, I wanted to best him at anything we did together. It didn't matter what it was.
[00:01:44] Whether it was basketball in the driveway or if it was Marco Polo in the pool or it was chess, it didn't matter.
[00:01:54] I wanted to. To beat him. You want to beat your brother? And even when we're just horsing around.
[00:02:00] Have y' all ever remember when you were kids who used to play with this? You ever heard of soccer boppers?
[00:02:07] The inflatable blow up pillows that you put on your hands and you kind of box with them?
[00:02:15] Even when we were doing that one time, I remember we were doing that with a bunch of our friends. And I remember Blake just swung at me so hard in the nose, I got just this feeling of rage, you know, how if something hits you in the right spot, you're like, oh, it's on.
[00:02:35] And so I go to the opposite side of the room and I'm ready to charge him, okay? And Blake's just like. He's just laughing like he doesn't care. But I'm about 10 years old, so I'm probably 40 pounds soaking wet, and I charge him. And my plan is I'm gonna run and jump, and I'm just gonna start wailing on him, okay? And so Blake has the soccer poppers up right here, and he's just smiling. And then as soon as, like, I'm about to jump, I run at full speed as fast as I can. He just holds it out, and I bounce right off of it and fall backwards.
[00:03:12] And I'm crying, and I'm telling it it's not fair. And, you know, like, it's one of those things with your brother. And even when we were, like, forced to take piano lessons together because our mom thought we could be musical or classical or something like that, I was upset that Blake was advancing faster in the chord charts. And so I would watch him play and, you know, play better than me. And then I'd sit down and say, okay, I want to play. I want to play what he plays. And I couldn't do it. And so I would just sit at the piano and cry. And then I stopped. My mom took us out of piano lessons after that, but I was close with my brother, but it was one of those things that I was so comfortable and myself around him that he would see the best parts of me, and he would see the worst parts of me.
[00:04:04] That's part of how family functions, right? Like, they see you at your highs, but they also see you at your lows. And at the end of all those things, my brother was a patient man. He was a graceful man. He always had gentleness and protected me because he was my big brother. And that's what big brothers do. And the reason I share that with you is this.
[00:04:28] If you consider the reality that we don't get to choose who our siblings are, right?
[00:04:36] We're born with them.
[00:04:38] And in the economy of God's kingdom, when God saves you, when you put your trust in Jesus as Lord, he doesn't just change your identity. He doesn't just give you a new heart with new affections. He gives you. He adopts you into a new family.
[00:04:56] And so, in the same way that we don't choose our biological siblings, we also don't choose who's in the church, right? We don't choose who.
[00:05:07] Even in our day and age of the plethora of churches that are in the city around us, where you can go and you can find just the right music or just the right preaching or just the right programs.
[00:05:21] At the end of the day, the church is a people, right?
[00:05:26] It's full of sinners just like you, just like me.
[00:05:30] And whatever church that you choose to covenant with and be a part of, you're covenanting with a people, no matter how good all the different programs that are offered are. And so the church is a gathered collective of those who have been redeemed by the gospel and. And called to be set apart in the world. And this is kind of where we are in the book of Hebrews. The author is shifting from the vertical in chapter 12. Okay? So we just learned how we relate to God through Endurance. Pastor Brad's been talking about that a lot. Through discipline, through this new covenant that God has instituted. But here at the final stretch of the book, the shift goes from the vertical to the horizontal.
[00:06:19] Okay, this is the close of the sermon. And now the author is concentrating his focus on the people of God, how they're to relate to one another and how they're to relate to the outside world.
[00:06:32] So as we approach our text this morning, this is what I want you to see today. Okay? This is the main point.
[00:06:39] Out of God's love, our love goes forth.
[00:06:46] Out of God's love, our love goes forth. That from the fountain of his love, the Christian love then flows. And we'll see from our text that it flows specifically in two directions. But if you have your Bibles, look down again at our sermon text. This is Hebrews 13, verse 1. It says, let brotherly love continue.
[00:07:09] Let brotherly love continue. This literally reads in the Greek, let Philadelphia continue. It's the Greek Philadelphia. That's what brotherly love means.
[00:07:21] Philadelphia, city of Philadelphia, City of brotherly love.
[00:07:25] And it's this word that comes from the root philos, combined with the word adelphos, which is brother. So you have philo, which is love, affection, and then adelphos, which is brothers. And so what you have is that in the Greco Roman world in the first century, which is the context of the New Testament, this word was primarily used to describe the love that blood relatives have with one another, particularly brothers and sisters. Okay. But it also carried with it this idea of political allegiance, which is kind of the origin story of how the original city of Philadelphia in Asia Minor got started. If you look In Revelation chapter 3, there's Jesus specifically addresses the church in Philadelphia, right?
[00:08:23] And this idea of Philadelphia being strictly between blood relatives, the New Testament picks this up and transfers it in to the people of God who are not blood relatives.
[00:08:40] And that's what it uses to not only describe the love that they have, but as identity markers.
[00:08:49] So Jesus in Matthew 12 says, Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother. And the early church is gonna pick up on this language.
[00:09:02] In Acts 1, when the disciples are gathered together to meet about replacing Judas, Peter stands up and he addresses this group of believer, and he calls them brothers and sisters. This was a new profound idea in the early church that they were to now relate to one another not just as believers, not just as common disciples, but as brothers and sisters in the family of God. And here's what's fascinating about that the Roman Empire picked up on this language that they were using because it became so commonplace in the early church that they actually accused the earliest Christians of incest.
[00:09:47] Listen to this. This is a document from the second century depicting how the Romans saw the first Christians. It says they know one another by secret marks and insignia and they love one another almost before they know one another.
[00:10:05] Everywhere also there is mingled among them a certain religion of lust. And they call one another promiscuous brothers and sisters, that even a not unusual debauchery may by the intervention of that sacred name, become incestuous.
[00:10:23] That's quite the statement, isn't it? That's quite the.
[00:10:28] It's really an amazing thing that the outside world is looking at this church and says they love one another almost before they know one another. That the witness of. Of brotherly love and love among Christians was so felt and seen by the outside world that the only smear conclusion they could come up with is that they must be interbreeding like, wow. Like, what if that were true for the church today?
[00:10:58] Right? Not the incest part, obviously, but what if it were true today from a missional standpoint? That if the church actively loving one another was what we were known for, Right? And this is. This is Jesus words in John 13. This is what he spoke of. He doesn't say that the world will know us by our theology, though, brothers and sisters, our theology is very important.
[00:11:24] He doesn't say that they'll know us by our morals.
[00:11:27] He doesn't say that they'll know us by our Sunday attendance or how much we give or don't give or what we post on social media or don't post on social media. He doesn't even say that they'll know us by our zeal for the Word or the prayers that we pray.
[00:11:43] No. What does he say?
[00:11:45] Not that those things aren't essential, but what does he say that they'll know us by?
[00:11:50] He says that the undeniable marker of a true disciple to the watching world is that they will know you if you have love for one another.
[00:12:01] That's how they'll know.
[00:12:04] But here's the thing, though. This kind of love doesn't just pop up out of nowhere randomly in the early church 2,000 years ago. This brotherly love that we're called to model to one another doesn't start with us.
[00:12:19] It actually begins with the very character and the very nature of God himself. If you have a Bible, turn to First John 4, verse 8. Starting in verse 8, First John 4, verse 8.
[00:12:33] This is important.
[00:12:38] First John 4, verse 8 says, Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
[00:12:48] In this, the love of God was made manifest among us that God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him in this his love. Not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
[00:13:06] The very idea of love, Christian love, is rooted in the triune God. So what that means is we worship one God in three persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And each of the three persons relates to one another in love.
[00:13:25] Okay? And there's a lot that we could say about that because this even goes beyond this concept of brotherly love. This is agape love.
[00:13:36] It's divine, it's self sacrificial. That's how the persons of the Trinity relate to one another. They relate to one another in divine love.
[00:13:47] But this is how God reveals that love to us. This is the gospel. Not that we love God, but rather God loved the world and sent his Son into the world to be the atoning sacrifice that is to take our place, to bear the penalty of sin, which is death, and to suffer under God's wrath and die physically and then rise again three days later. There is no greater act of love than that ever for all time. That is the love of God made manifest. This is the bedrock, friends of all of Christianity. And listen, if you're here today and you're wondering if God is a God of love or if God loves you or not, friends, don't search your feelings, don't look to bumper stickers, don't look to empty platitudes, don't look. Certainly don't look online, don't look to the church or pastors, friends, look at the cross of Jesus Christ.
[00:14:56] That is God's love displayed for you objectively for all time. That is how you know you are loved and you can have life with him now if you don't know him, you can turn from the sin that grips you and enslaves you so closely and believe in Jesus.
[00:15:15] God is the source of love and he reveals that love most clearly and powerfully at the cross. Amen.
[00:15:24] So that's how God's love is displayed. But it's not just manifest for doesn't stop there, it's moves towards us. Romans 5, 5 says, God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
[00:15:43] The love that God shares in his nature is now poured into our hearts by the Spirit. The Spirit takes his loves and transfers it to God's people. This is what happens after we're redeemed and delivered by Him. This love from the Spirit fills our hearts and transform how we relate to one another.
[00:16:08] Now, again, okay, so we have the source of God's love. First, John 4, we see it displayed on the cross.
[00:16:15] Then it moves from there to the Spirit, takes it and pours it out in our hearts. And then in First Thessalonians 4, Paul says, Now, concerning brotherly love, so what we're talking about today, he says, you have no need for anyone to write you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another, for that indeed is what you are doing to all the brothers through Macedonia. Notice, he says, you yourselves have been taught by God. In other words, Paul is saying, y' all are doing so well with this. You don't need an apostle to come and tell you this.
[00:16:54] It's so entrenched in your DNA that it. It must be God who has taught you this.
[00:17:02] And not only that.
[00:17:03] This is a fulfillment of the covenant promise. In Jeremiah 31, when God says through Jeremiah, no longer shall one teach his neighbor and brother, saying, know the Lord, but rather he himself will write his law on the hearts of his people and friends. What's the sum of that law? What does Jesus say the sum of the law is?
[00:17:30] It's love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. This is God taught, right? You see the connection here?
[00:17:43] But even though they learned this from God, Paul emphasizes at the end of this verse, he says, even though you're nailing it, we urge you, brothers, do this more and more.
[00:17:55] We urge you, do this more and more.
[00:17:59] I'm thankful to have witnessed the countless times, the many ways in which this church body surrounds and uplifts those who are abounding and those who are lowly, those who have suffered.
[00:18:14] There's many of us in the room that have suffered unimaginable loss of life over the years.
[00:18:20] Many of you have walked through marriage struggles or instability in your jobs. I've seen you love one another in the forms of meal, trains and caring for one another's kids.
[00:18:32] Some of you even get together and play board games with one another once a month, and you're still friends.
[00:18:40] That's brotherly love. That's amazing.
[00:18:44] But the reality is that even though this concept for us friends is so simple to understand, it doesn't make it easy, right?
[00:18:56] It doesn't make it easy, because you and I, we can start off well loving one another. But the challenge is that we must persevere when it's hard to continue.
[00:19:08] Even if we like each other, even if there's a common bond of friendship between us, we still must fight to love one another. It is a fight. 1 Corinthians 13:7 says, Love bears all things.
[00:19:23] Love believes all things. It hopes all things and endures all things.
[00:19:30] So let me ask you, like, how are you doing?
[00:19:34] Is there someone in your life right now who is hard to love?
[00:19:40] How can you believe all things about that person?
[00:19:45] How can you endure and hope for all things on their behalf? How can you pray for somebody that's hard to love?
[00:19:52] You ever tried to do that?
[00:19:54] It's difficult.
[00:19:57] We must bear with one another and love.
[00:20:02] We must continually work to exercise brotherly love again and again. Especially.
[00:20:09] Especially when that love is tested by trial or circumstance or conflict. Does that make sense? So we persevere in brotherly love, even when it's hard. And now the good news is that in verses two and three, they're going to show us the positive side of this. More specifically, they're gonna show us how Christian love goes forth and in what direction. So look down at verses two and three.
[00:20:38] He says, do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you are also in the body. The first way that Christian love goes forth is by showing hospitality.
[00:21:00] And notice who the object of the hospitality is geared towards. It's geared toward strangers.
[00:21:08] In fact, the word for hospitality is actually connected to this idea of brotherly love because they have the same roots. So remember, Philadelphia is brotherly love. The word for hospitality is Philozinia.
[00:21:24] Same root.
[00:21:25] Hospitality is literally a love for the stranger.
[00:21:30] And this idea is so profitable, so beneficial to those who practice it, that he's actually. The author's making an Old Testament callback here. When he talks about some who have entertained angels, he's making a reference to Abraham in Genesis 18, when Abraham welcomed the two angels and the Lord himself without knowing who they were.
[00:21:55] Okay, but just hear what he's not saying, though. He's not saying, hey, open up your home. You never know when Gabriel's gonna come in.
[00:22:06] He's not saying that that's not meant to be the prize. He's saying, we don't show hospitality just so that we might look out and get an angel in community group, that would be awesome, but we probably wouldn't know it. Instead, what he's saying is that hospitality in reality reflects God's heart, who welcomed us into the kingdom because we were once strangers in exiles too.
[00:22:36] That's the heart of hospitality.
[00:22:39] And so if you think about it in today's day and age, where we are in 2025, hospitality is a tangible way that we can love people, especially in our context.
[00:22:51] In 2023, the CDC declared loneliness as an epidemic.
[00:22:59] Isn't that wild? We usually do that for diseases, but loneliness we've looked across and we've seen a surge in fear and apprehension, particularly since the pandemic of going outside our houses and socializing.
[00:23:18] Do you know that on average, in America, the average American does not go to a stranger's home for dinner more than once a year?
[00:23:30] That's where we are.
[00:23:32] We're not going into each other's homes at near the rate that we once did. But we think about it like in Christian circles, that's normative to us, right? It's very normative for us to have friends over, our neighbors over and share a meal and talk about Jesus. This is what Christians have been doing for centuries and. And by God's grace, we'll continue to do it. But it's helpful to understand where we are.
[00:23:57] That doesn't mean that we change the playbook on community, but what it does mean is that our understanding of hospitality must go deeper, friends, than the act of opening our doors to our neighbors. It isn't less than that, but there's more to it.
[00:24:17] Because the reality is that we can open up our homes and still not have love for the people entering it.
[00:24:25] Right?
[00:24:27] Biblical hospitality has far more to do with your heart than your home.
[00:24:35] So here's just a few diagnostic questions for you.
[00:24:40] Are you a welcoming person?
[00:24:44] Do you include people who are new when they enter the church, or when they enter your workplace, or when they enter your home? Or are you content in allowing them to stand off to the side and sit by themselves?
[00:24:57] Are you interruptible like Jesus was? Or do you find yourself hurried or preoccupied with your own plans? That's me.
[00:25:08] Do you have compassion for those who don't look like you or talk like you or possess any of the same interests or background as you?
[00:25:18] Is your social circle closed from the inside?
[00:25:23] Or is there always room for one more?
[00:25:27] See, friends, hospitality is about presence.
[00:25:31] One of my favorite quotes. I'm not sure, I'm not sure who said this. You can look it up, but it goes like this. It Says, I've learned that people won't always remember what you said.
[00:25:44] People often forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
[00:25:54] This is the heart of hospitality.
[00:25:58] We welcome others in the name of Jesus because our lives have been transformed by him.
[00:26:05] And hospitality. It carries with it this kind of ethos.
[00:26:10] There's a feltness to it. There's a warmth to and receptivity to hospitality. It's why Peter says, show hospitality to one another without grumbling.
[00:26:23] Right, because if we're grumbling, we're not showing hospitality. You can't do both at the same time.
[00:26:31] Hospitality, friends, is a posture of the soul. It's even a gift of the Holy Spirit.
[00:26:38] You don't have to have a hostable home to show hospitality. You just have to have a hostable heart.
[00:26:45] Okay? So that's hospitality. The next exhortation in verse three is to remember those who are in prison, those who are mistreated, since we are also in the body. He's using bodily image here. You think of it like this. Think of it like when you injure a part of your body, okay? So when I was a kid, another story about my brother. I borrowed his skateboard, and I didn't want to ride it the traditional way like you're supposed to. I wanted to, like, sit on it and ride it kind of like a bobsled. And so I'm pushing myself up and down the driveway, and suddenly I run over just a pebble and the board stops and I fling forward and my face smack hits the pavement. And I ended up chipping my front tooth and getting, like, a huge scar.
[00:27:43] And my dad was so upset at the situation that he broke my brother's skateboard in half on his thigh, like, just broke it. And he told him that he would pay him back. I learned this weekend that he has not paid him back since then. So it was a real gospel moment for my brother because he didn't do anything wrong, and he lost his skateboard over it because of me.
[00:28:09] But the point is, you think about a moment in life when you've injured a part of your body, like, really, really badly. What happens?
[00:28:19] The rest of your body reacts to it, right? The rest of your body.
[00:28:24] Like, my hands covered my face. Your body's hunched over. Everything in your brain adjusts to that part that's feeling the most pain, okay? And so I think that's what the author of Hebrews is getting at here. When a part of the body is hurt, we don't just say, well, that's the legs problem or that's the arms problem.
[00:28:45] No, when a part of the body is hurt, the rest of the body responds to meet that need.
[00:28:50] First Corinthians 12:26. Paul says, if one member suffers, all suffer together.
[00:28:56] If one member is honored, all rejoice together. And so if the first way that our brotherly love goes forth is through showing hospitality, the second way is to show solidarity with those who are suffering, especially those who are suffering for their faith in Jesus.
[00:29:15] So what does this look like, though, practically for us in 2025? Like we in a country where we can worship and gather freely and not be in prison for it.
[00:29:29] So how do we figuratively remember those who are in prison in 2025? Just a couple of things. First, we remember that we're part of the global church.
[00:29:41] We have missionaries that we support and send out who are in parts of the world where the Gospel is not accepted. And in some cases, it's even illegal to worship Jesus.
[00:29:52] So let's not neglect to pray for our missionaries and for those who are laboring to take the good news of the Gospel to Jesus in hard places.
[00:30:01] Okay? Let's not forget to write words of encouragement to them. Part of this is just doing the act of remembering, right?
[00:30:11] We remember them. This is a very tangible way we can continually show our support, both for our missionaries and for the church at large, the Big Sea Church.
[00:30:22] The second way we do this is that we come and work alongside Christians who are serving in our local communities. This is something that the elders and I talked about this week. So we're actively asking, how can we love our local schools and teachers in our neighborhood?
[00:30:39] How can we continually support those of you who are adopting?
[00:30:44] How do we continually support ministries like the Fort Worth Pregnancy center and the Net?
[00:30:50] But let me invite you, if you're passionate about something, any kind of mercy ministry, I just want to invite you to come talk to us.
[00:30:58] We want to hear the areas where you're passionate about in the city, like, what burdens you.
[00:31:05] Because, friends, this is what Christians have done, and this is what Christians will continue to do.
[00:31:11] We remember those who have been mistreated, and we live as faithful representatives of the city on the hill that we're called to be.
[00:31:21] Because if there's one thing that the church needs to do in times like this, it's to shine.
[00:31:29] Practically speaking, it's to shine the light of the gospel and to push back darkness that is in our world.
[00:31:37] So we move towards the broken, we move towards the outcast, towards those who are hurting and suffering, because that's what Jesus did.
[00:31:48] This is how part of the kingdom of God spreads in a fallen world.
[00:31:54] And so I want to close with this.
[00:31:58] Brotherly love is not just an accessory feature to the church. It's foundational to how we relate and see one another.
[00:32:08] But here's the thing.
[00:32:10] You and I can't exercise brotherly love with one another if we don't experience first the love of God.
[00:32:19] So if you're here today, maybe you wouldn't consider yourself a Christian, or maybe you're a believer, but you found that your love for the Lord has grown cold.
[00:32:29] Corrie Ten Boom says that there is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still.
[00:32:39] There's no pit so deep that his love is not deeper still.
[00:32:45] So in other words, there's no doubt, there's no unbelief, there's no dark night of the soul or failure too final. His steadfast love extends to the heavens and his faithfulness to the clouds. The psalmist says God is love.
[00:33:05] And his love is not a fleeting or emotional or temporary. It's deep, eternal, personal love expressed in the person of Jesus.
[00:33:19] A famous theologian in the 20th century, he wrote tons of books on theology and dogmatics and church history and books of the Bible, everything. He was giving a lecture to his students. This was towards the end of his life. And one of his students asked him, he said, can you summarize all of your work in one sentence?
[00:33:42] And this theologian, he thought about it a second, and he paused.
[00:33:48] And then he responded, jesus loves me. This I know, for the Bible tells me so.
[00:33:56] Friends, it's really that simple, but it's that profound.
[00:34:04] He loves you.
[00:34:06] He died for you. He's the reason we're able to love each other in the first place. Because without Jesus, we're hopeless.
[00:34:14] We're lost in our sin and we'll only see eternal destruction. But since he loves us objectively and freely in the gospel, at the cross, in his victory, we can move forward knowing that from God's love our love can go forth. Amen.
[00:34:34] Let's pray.
