Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Is Hospitality a Lost Art? | Torah | Genesis 18:1-15

Episode Date: February 10, 2022

Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. What's your view of hospitality? How often do you host others? What's holding you back from inviting people in to the messiness of your life? In today's episode, Patrick uses Genesis 18:1-15 discuss different responses to hospitality in the Bible. Listen to find out how Jesus calls Christians to invite people in. 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 Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Passages: Genesis 18:1-15 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.

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 Patrick Miller. Right now, we're going through the first book of the Bible, Genesis. Years ago, I was talking to a woman in her mid-30s who was single. She wanted to get married for a lot of her life, but it didn't really happen. And at this stage, she was kind of expecting to go the rest of life alone. And so I was trying to encourage her.

I was giving her words from Paul and Jesus about how celibacy can be. an actual calling and that God does tremendous kingdom building through celibate people. I mean, just look at Paul and Jesus. She smiled at me politely. She knew everything that I was saying, and I wasn't doing a very good job of it. But all of a sudden, she got brutally honest with me. She said, yeah, I know all that. And I'm considering whether celibacy might be God's calling on my life. But can I ask you a question? Of course, I said. She responded. She goes, have you read what Paul and Jesus wrote about treating fellow believers as brothers and sisters. Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course I have.

She continued, well, do you have your sister and family over regularly? I nodded. She goes, so what about your single brothers and sisters in Christ? Do you treat them like siblings? Do you have them over regularly? I knew I was caught because she was totally right. We mostly have people in our house who are a lot like us, people who were married, people with kids.

And she continued, she goes, look, I would be more open to embracing a celibate calling if the church was more open to embracing its calling to welcome celibate people into their homes as siblings. I may never have kids, but I love to be so close to a family that they'd trust me to watch their kids and to mentor their kids. I mean, the Bible does say that the children of the desolate will be more than the children of, well, people like you. Her words really cut me, not in a mead way, in a way that I absolutely needed. American church. And let's just be honest, a lot of my own life, we've become so family-centered that we leave those who are single out to dry. We don't treat singleness like an honored calling. That's what Paul did, but we don't do that. We treat singleness like something that needs to be fixed. I mean, you meet a single person. You say, oh, I need to introduce you to someone. Maybe singleness

isn't something to be fixed. And most married couples, I know, they don't even want to have single people inside of their married small groups because they think, well, that's going to jeopardize our ability to talk about marriage and how is that person going to add to my marriage, which, aside from being really, really selfish and not a service-oriented way of being in community, just pause and think about that for a second. That means that Jesus and Paul couldn't be in your small group. Do you think you could learn something about marriage from Jesus and Paul? Hospitality, real hospitality, has become a lost art. And yet it's so interesting because hospitality is central to the Bible storyline. In Genesis 18 and 19, there are actually two stories of

three angels visiting two different locations. And the second story, which will begin to look at this week and next week, the angels visit the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. And with the exception of Abraham's nephew, lot, the people in these cities, they despise hospitality. When someone new comes into town, they don't see it as an opportunity to give and to serve. They literally see it as an opportunity to steal, to take, and to sexually abuse. And God brings justice against them for their ill treatment of the needy, the poor, and the weak by literally raining down fire on their cities. Now, I'm not saying that if you don't host people, it's because you want to take advantage of them. That's probably not the case. Nor am I saying that if you refuse to practice

hospitality, God's going to burn your house or your apartment down. But I am I I'm saying is that God wants to contrast the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. He wants to contrast their response with the response of Abraham. You see, before the angels ever visit Sodom and Gamora, those three angels, they actually visit Abraham. And we're going to read that story in Genesis 18. Verse 1. The Lord appeared to Abram near the great trees of Mamry while he was sitting at the entrance to his tent in the heat of the day. Abraham looked up and saw three men nearby. So let's just pause for a second. God is appearing with these angels. He's one of the three people.

He's appearing to Abraham. But Abraham doesn't know. He just sees three people showing up. When he saw them, he hurried from the entrance of his tent to meet them and bowed low to the ground. Abraham is acting like a servant. He's not acting like the guy who's in charge. He bows before them. Verse three, he continues.

He said, if I found favor in your eyes, my lord, do not pass your servant by. Let a little water be brought. And then he may all wash your feet and rest under this tree. Let me get you something to eat. you can be refreshed and then you can go on your way now that you've come to your servant. Very well, they answered. Do as you say. So Abraham hurried into the tent to Sarah, quick, he said, get three cias of the finest flour and knead it and bake some bread. Then he ran to the herd and selected a choice, tender calf and gave it to a servant who hurried to prepare it.

He then brought some curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared and set these before them. While they ate, he stood near them under a tree. This is a wild story, isn't it? Abraham doesn't realize that these are angels. They're just three travelers to him, and yet he responds like a servant. He bows down before them. He begs them to stay, and he prepares a baller feast. But the story of hospitality in the Bible doesn't end with Abraham, even though it kind

of begins with him. It picks up in Exodus 24 when God becomes a host of his own feast. He invites all of Israel's elders to come before him and to feast with him. And that story continues in the prophets when they imagine the day of Jesus's return. And they imagine that return as this huge wedding feast to beat all wedding feasts. And that story continues in the gospel of Luke when Jesus explicitly calls his followers to invite others over into your house. And specifically, he says, don't invite people who can pay you back. Don't invite people who can pay you back by giving you a better reputation or who can add into your bank account, give you things that you want.

He says, invite those who can't pay you back. Because when you do that, You are acting like God. See, Jesus' logic around hospitality is totally straightforward. When you and me were God's enemy, what did he do? He planned a cosmic party, and then he died to invite you to attend. When you plan your smaller parties on Earth and invite those who've been neglected by our romance-obsessed, family-obsessed culture, you are building God's kingdom because you are replaying, you are rebooting, you are reenacting exactly what Jesus did for you.

Now, let me just be honest here. This is so rarely how I view hospitality. I'm basically making this podcast for myself because I'm not the ideal example out there. You can just ask my wife, Emily, I'm always tempted to pass on having people into our house. I know that's going to take me time to clean up and to prepare food and, you know, hosting can get pretty expensive, buying meat and white and all the things. what stops you from hosting? Maybe it's some of the things I already mentioned.

Maybe you think your house needs to be perfect or the food needs to be perfect. But have you considered that maybe the people who you aren't inviting because of all those reasons, they just want to be invited, not into a perfect life, but into your real, very messy life? I love what the author Rosario Butterfield says. I just want to read this quote. She says, don't let pride stop you from opening your home. ignore the cat hair on the couch or in the mac and cheese. It likely won't kill anyone decisively as loneliness will.

Add as much water to the pot to stretch the soup. If you run out of food, make pancakes and put the kids in charge of making that meal. See how much fun that is. And know that someone is spared from another humiliating fall into internet pornography because he is instead walking with you and your kids and your dogs. Know that someone has spared the fear and darkness of depression because she's, She's at your house, always on the Lord's Day. She's never alone, but instead safely in community with you, where her place at the table

is needed and necessary and relied upon. Know that host and guests are equally precious and fragile, and that you will play both roles throughout the course of this life. The doors here open wide. They must. God's welcome to you, his enemy, to sit at his table. How much more so should you and me see it as a joy in an honor to open? our table to those that he loves.

Who's God calling you to invite into your house, into your life, to your table? Let's all build God's kingdom and allow His grace to empower us to become hosts like him. Before you forget, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talks newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes and you'll get an email every Wednesday that's going to help you beat that midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.