Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - How Do You Treat Others? | New Testament | Hebrews 13

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

What you believe about God has everything to do with your relationships with other people. Are you taking seriously Jesus's command to love others? In today's episode, Keith discusses how Hebrews 13 teaches to love others sacrificially. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Hebrews 13

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. One of my good friends loves bullet points. He loves to get an email or a letter or even a Bible study that just made up of short bullet points because he says it's easier for him to comprehend. Well, in some sense, that's how Hebrews 13 reads. It reads like a bunch of bullet points, which are implications for how we should live in light of all we've learned from the book of Hebrews. One of the things that's clear is that what we think about God has everything to do

with our relationships with each other and the world. I mean, that logic is built into the structure of the Ten Commandments. The first four commandments are about our relationship with God, and the next six are a relationship with other people. The vertical shapes the horizontal. Love God, love your neighbor. So the question that Chapter 13 begins to answer is this, given the supremacy of Jesus, which we've seen in the book of Hebrews, how do we treat people in our life? How does the supremacy of Jesus work itself out inside the church? So the first verse, or the first bullet point, is keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. The author of Hebrews is telling us that we as Christians are part of one family. Lee Ayacoco was the CEO of Chrysler, and he was talking with

the legendary football coach Vince Lombardi, and he asked him, Lombardi, what does it take to have a winning team? Iacooker records the answer. Coach said, look, there are a lot of coaches with good ball clubs who know the fundamentals and have plenty of discipline, but still don't win the game. Then you come to the third ingredient. If you're going to play together as a team, you've got to care for one another. You've got to love each other.

Each player has to be thinking about the next guy and saying to himself, if I don't block that man, Paul is going to get his legs broken. I have to do my job well in order that he can do his. The difference between mediocrity and greatness, Lombardi said, is the feeling that these guys have for each other. So it is in a healthy church. Each Christian learns to care for each other. As we take seriously Jesus' command to love one another,

we contribute to a winning team. Keep on loving one another. suggest that the brotherly and sisterly bonds in this church were weakening. Like they started out when the church was young with a strong love for each other, but then under all the pressures they faced, those relationships had weakened. Some of the church members were growing tired of other church members, divisions were creeping in.

And so the author of Hebrew says is, look, in the face of all those pressures, keep loving one another. In fact, love is a sign that we belong to God. God. 1 John 3 says, we know that we have passed out of death into life because we love the brothers. Jesus said, by this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. Love is the mark of a Christian. So verse 2, or as my friend would say, the second bullet point, do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing so some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.

I want to tell you about an incredible story that involves a man named Eric Honaker. He was the former communist dictator of East Germany. This story happened right after the Berlin Wall fell. Eric Honaker had been in the hospital receiving treatment due to cancer. Then when he got out, there was nobody in East Germany that was more despised and hated than him. He'd been stripped of all of his offices, and even his own Communist Party had kicked him. out. He was kicked out of the villa that he had been living in. The new government that had come into power refused to provide him and his wife with anywhere to stay. So they stood as homeless

people on the street. And it was Christians who stepped in. One pastor, his last name's Holmer, who was in charge of a Christian help center up in the north of Berlin. And he was asked by church leaders if he'd be willing to take him in into this help center. Think of a homeless shelter. The pastor and his family decided that it would be wrong to give away a room in the center that could be used for a needy person. And they didn't want to give away an apartment that one of their staff might be able to use. So instead, they took the former dictator and his wife into their own home. It must have been a strange scene when the old couple arrived. The former absolute ruler of the country was being sheltered by one of the Christians whom he and his wife had despised and persecuted.

In East Germany, there was a great deal of hatred toward the former regime, and especially toward Honaker and his wife Margo, who had ruled the educational system there for 26 years with an iron hand. She had made sure that very few Christian children were able to go on for higher education. There were 10 children in Pastor Holmer's family. Eight of them had applied for further education in the course of the past several years. All had been refused a place at college because they were Christians. in spite of the fact that they had good grades, excellent grades in school.

Pastor Holmer was asked why he and his family would open their door to such detestable people. Pastor Holmer spoke very clearly. He said this, Our Lord challenged us to follow him and to take in all who are weary and heavy laden, both in soul and in the body. I think that story is a miracle. Because no one, apart from the grace of God and the example of Jesus and the instruction of the New Testament

would ever do such a thing. No, one more thing. Hospitality meant something different in the world of the New Testament than it does in our world today. When we talk about practicing hospitality, we think of having our friends over to our house for dinner. But in the New Testament,

hospitality was having strangers in your house. Some of the inns, or what you might think of as first century hotels, had fleas. Some had violent innkeepers. Some were more truly, brothels than they were a place to sleep. Add to that that many Christians had suffered ostracism by both society at large and their own family. And so the New Testament instructs Christians to take

in people and let them stay in their own home. That is a big sacrifice. But that's what all love requires. All love requires us to sacrifice on behalf of others. Verse 4. Marriage should be honored by all. and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. So this is our next bullet point, and in it we learned that part of honoring marriage and keeping the marriage bed pure is avoiding adulterous relationships. Now, this was radical stuff in the first century, but this is how Christians lived. There was a Roman official named Pliny who sent a letter to the Roman emperor Trajan, and in this letter he's describing Christians.

He says, they bound them. by oath, not for any criminal end, but to avoid theft or adultery and to never break their word. In other words, they bound themselves to each other to promise that they would never steal, they would never commit adultery, they would never break their word, and then the list goes on and on. Christian's sexual morality was unique in the pagan world, and it was a source of wonder. And it is a wonder today as Christians keep themselves sexually pure for the sake of Christ. That we are called to radical purity is nothing to trifle with. Because Hebrews 13-4 concludes with this, God will judge the sexually immoral and the adulteress. That means that all of us will be

judged for our sexual sins. We have to give an account to God for every part of our life, including that part. Verse 5, our next bullet point says, keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have because God has said, never will I leave you, never will I forsake you. This is a reminder that those who love money will never be content. Ecclesiastes 510 says, he who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income. There's an old ancient story about a king who is suffering from an illness and was advised by his wise men that he could be cured if the shirt of a contented man were brought to him to wear. So they searched for a contented man, but they couldn't find any. So emissaries were sent to the edge of the kingdom, and after a long search, a man was found who is truly content, but he had no shirt.

The point is that contentment comes from a source other than things or possessions. Christians know that true contentment only comes from resting in God's care. That's why the verse ends with, he will never leave you or forsake you. In other words, Christians be content because you have God. God, he will never abandon you. We will be content if we truly embrace the fact that we have a relationship with God, that our sins are forgiven. That's why Paul told Timothy in 1st Timothy 6, Godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of the world.

But if we have food and clothing with these, we shall be content. Okay, our last bullet point, verse 6. So we say with confidence, the Lord is my helper. I will not be afraid. What can mere morals do to me? Now, this is a quote from Psalm 118. And it's one of those verses that I return to when I feel overwhelmed, when I feel like people are against me, when I feel like circumstances are against me.

There's an old preacher who lived in the 300s. His name is John Chrysostrom. He was the Archbishop of Constantinople, which is now Istanbul. He was brought before the Roman emperor and was threatened with banishment from the empire. Here is what he said in response to that threat. Now, I've cleaned up the English just so it's a little bit easier to understand. But he says, thou cannot banish me from this world, for this world is my father's house. So the emperor said, well, then I will kill you.

No, sir, you cannot say Chrysostrum, for my life is hid with Christ and God. well then the emperor said i will take away your treasures no but you cannot take my treasure for it is in heaven but i will drive you away from your community and you will have no friends left no sir you cannot for i have a friend in heaven from whom you cannot separate me i defy you for there is nothing you can do to hurt me when your life is with christ in god when you rely on him for your happiness and your joy and your peace, then nothing this world can do can ever take that away from you. Hey, thanks for listening. If you want to go deeper, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talk newsletter. You'll get a short email once a week. It'll challenge you to grow in your faith,

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