Great to see all of you this morning. I am curious who was at camp this week? I like to just see hands. Oh, the brave souls. Wow. Thank you guys for serving and thank you for those who participated. I know it has to be a great time and I’m sure we’ll get to hear a lot more about the great things that happened up there, so amen. It’s great to be together. Welcome to all of you who are here in the auditorium. Welcome to all of you who are watching online. It’s great to have the opportunity to do this. I continue to be amazed at the technology that I can be here in Florida and can have a meeting with someone in Paris at the same time. It’s just sort of crazy like that. But thank God for the technology. We’re going to continue with Hebrews today. It’s been a rich study. I hope you’ve gotten a lot from it. I really do. For those who have not been with us, the letter to the Hebrews was written to a Jewish audience and hence the name Hebrews.
It was written to a Jewish audience and it was written to emphasize the superiority of Christianity over the Old Testament system. And so you go through the book and he talks about Jesus being so much better than the angels. He’s better than Moses, his tabernacle is better, his covenant is better. And on every front, Jesus is better. And so we continue to hammer that theme home, and we’re going to practice it one more time. Theme of the book is Jesus is Better. All right. If you don’t learn anything else, you got the main reason for reading the book. All right, you’re good there. But after the Hebrew writer has done a great job of just kind of laying out all the reasons why Jesus is better, then he gets to Chapter 13, which is almost exclusively practical applications. He takes the time to tell them practically what it’s going to look like to live the Christian life in this day and time. And so the title of the lesson, you can say Real Christian, but I like the subtitle even more that we’re called to faithfully love. Called to faithfully love. And every point that I make here with you today will have love as part of it.
And you’ll see that in Hebrews 13. Now, the idea of being called to faithfully love, I don’t know what that does to you, but if you stop and you think about it, that’s a bigger deal than maybe we acknowledge. And the reason for that is that there’s so much hatred and bitterness and envy and bad stuff going on in homes. It happens in the church, it happens in our neighborhoods. It happens on our job. And so this idea of being called to faithfully love is very important. Even in the last couple of weeks, we’ve had the whole abortion issues come up with the Roe versus Wade being overturned. And it’s the kind of thing where, and I will say this upfront, I believe abortion is taking a life. Okay? I will just say that’s what I’ve always believed. I’ve never been in favor of abortion. But the thing I want to point out to you by way of helping introduce this subject is I want you to think about what if you know someone, a woman who’s on the other side of that issue? Maybe it is perhaps an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy. Now, don’t take me saying the wrong thing here.
I’m not saying I’m in favor of abortion, but I’m trying to help us to realize that we need to see what love would look like in those situations. We need to think about it. I know of a sister who was a part of our church who got raped. What do you do with that if she comes up pregnant when it’s not something that she’s planning on? And I’m just throwing it out for your consideration. I think we need to have a lot more compassion sometimes with people rather than just being judgmental and what is wrong with you? And you’re going to hell. I mean, someone after the first service, they said same thing with the LGBTQ community. I’ve got some great friends who are a part of that community. They’re not disciples. They’re not part of our fellowship, but we are great friends. I believe at the end of the day, I’m not going to convert them through my religious positions. I’m going to convert them through love. And that’s all I’m talking about, is we need to have a lot more compassion. So that’s just my introduction, all right? That’s not the sermon. Amen.
Thank you for that. We need to have a lot more compassion. So we’re going to talk about this thing about being called to faithfully love, because this is a big deal. It’s bigger than I think we realized. So Hebrews 13, verse one, we’re going to start reading there and you can follow along with me. In verse one, he says, keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing, some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering. Marriage should be honored by all and the marriage bed kept pure. For God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. 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. Love is the fulfillment of the law. Love is the fulfillment of the law. And the Hebrew writer here gives five essential marks of true discipleship of a loving Christian before Christ.
And we’re going to look at those right now, the five are and I’m going to make sure I say them all with that word love, because I want to make it easy for you to recall. But first of all, we’ve got to love one another as brothers and sisters. We’ve got to love one another as brothers and sisters. Secondly, we’ve got to love strangers by being hospitable. We’ve got to love strangers. And I’ll just throw this out. One sister told me at the end of the first service, she said, with this whole abortion thing and all that’s going on, I decided I’m going to volunteer at a clinic just to help. I think it’s great for us disciples to think what is a loving thing to do, and there may be some strangers that you will be able to help along the way. Thirdly, we’ve got to love those who are oppressed and suffering. We need to show Jesus’s sympathy and be helpful. Fourth, we’ve got to love our spouse. The marriage bed is to be sexually pure. And fifth, we have to love and be content with God’s gifts to us. Got to love and be content.
So we’re going to go ahead, we’re going to get into what this looks like. You see that little picture of these two little guys? You got to love kids. You just got to love kids. I mean, if you don’t love kids, I’m going to tell you, you don’t have a place in heaven. I’m just going to throw it out there. But you got to love little kids. I actually saw a video of this, and they show these two guys running up each other and hugging each other. And it’s so cool because they don’t care about race and they don’t care about how much money you have. They don’t care about the argument they had five minutes ago. They’re good, they’re ready to go. And he said, We’ve got to keep on loving each other as brothers. We’ve got to do that. God calls us to that. And the kind of love he’s talking about here is agape love. And we know this term, if you’ve been around for a while, we talk about agape love. This is the highest form of love. It’s love regardless of the circumstance that’s going on. And when you think about that kind of love, you could start listing a bunch of things.
You could say, well, the loving thing to do would be to pay my brother Carlos for doing a great job of painting my house. Pay him what he’s worth. I mean, I’m not an Ad for Carlos, but he’s a great painter. He did paint my house, by the way. And I remember he wanted to show me some love, and I said, no, bro, don’t give me a discount. I want to treat you fairly, okay? I can put down that’s a loving thing to do. We got people that do various trades in the church. The loving thing to do, I think, is to treat them fairly, okay? You borrow their equipment, you don’t return it broken. I had somebody do that with me, and I don’t have a bad attitude, I really don’t. But I remember I loaned someone something of mine, and I’m not going to tell you what it was because somebody may feel indicted, but I lost something of mine and it came back broken, and nobody told me. I got to open it up and find out. That’s not loving. We can list a bunch of quote unquote loving things to do, or we can just decide to be loving, whatever that means.
And that’s the point of this section. And you got to know first corinthians 13 love is what it’s patient. Love is kind. It doesn’t envy, it doesn’t boast, it’s not rude, it’s not selfseeking. Love doesn’t delight in evil, but it rejoices in the truth. Love keeps no record of wrong. Guys, you can’t do that if you don’t have agape love. I can’t be patient with somebody I’m mad with if I don’t have the love of God going on in my heart. And that’s why I want to encourage all of us as disciples the kind of love I’m talking about today. Everybody here can do it. If you’ve got God’s spirit. I say if you’ve got God’s spirit. Romans five, verse five. You can just write a couple of references down. God says that kind of love has been poured into our hearts. That’s in Romans five, verse five. Also in one, John 419, he says, we love because he first loved us. God shows us what love is all about. That’s why we can love. But I really like one Peter 122, where it says, seeing that you’ve been purified so that you have a sincere love for your brothers, he says, now, love one another deeply from the heart.
God shows us what love is so we can do this. And I want to encourage you with that. And not only that, Jesus sets us an example. In John 13 I love this. I’m going to read just the first verse. John 13, verse one. It says, It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. What it says here is that Jesus knew who he was, and yet he still chose to serve them. He takes on this lowest job of washing feet. He takes on the job that the servant of the house was supposed to do. Apparently, no one took the time to do it. These guys probably sat around looking at their feet, looking at each other with a sheepish grin like, wow, nobody’s doing it. And Jesus just gets up and he takes time to wash your feet. Now, the thing that blows me away is that he washed Judas’s feet. Now, he’s the Son of God. He knows what Judas is going to do.
He knows Judas is going to betray him. He also knows, and sometimes we forget this little fact about Judas, that Judas regularly helped himself to what was in the treasury. So Judas was also a thief. So you got Jesus, who is fully aware of whose feet he’s coming to. And now if I’m Jesus, I’d probably get there and want to twist that ankle a little bit. I’m just keeping it real, you bum. I know what you’re up to. I know what’s on your mind. I mean, how can you sit there looking all innocent? Because I know what you’re thinking. I know exactly what you know. Whatever. Or maybe I get that little bowl of water and I just pour it on his feet and then go to the next person and I do nothing for him. Jesus didn’t do that. He still washed his feet. And my belief is that he probably washed Judas’s feet even better than the other guys. That’s the kind of love God has poured into your heart, into my heart. We can do this. So we got to love the brothers and sisters. We got to have that kind of love for each other.
Second Corinthians 514 says, for the love of Christ controls us, compels us, constrains us. The love of Christ is what gets us going. And keeps us going. That’s what God expects. So in addition to loving our brothers and sisters, we’ve got to love strangers. We got to love strangers. Let’s go ahead and read Hebrews 13, verse two. Yep, I’m at the right one. Okay. He says, do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing, some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. Now, broadly defined, hospitality is the act of being friendly. And welcoming to guests and visitors. It’s helping a stranger in need. It’s a reception of guests and strangers. And the Hebrew writer says, love strangers. Show them hospitality. And he said, in the process, some of you entertain angels, and we’re unaware of it. And, you know, I know every now and then you might have someone who comes up to you and they’ll say, well, I met this woman today, and I believe she was an angel. I don’t think that’s out of the realm of possibility. I think it totally happen. I think it happens probably a lot more than we are aware of.
In Genesis 18, you remember the three guys that showed up to tell Abraham and Sarah about having Isaac, and they’re interacting and feeding them food and all this stuff, and they realize God is among them. And I think it’s Judges 13. Manoa, Samson’s dad angel appeared to Manoa’s wife to tell her, you’re going to have a son. You’re going to have Samson. They didn’t know. And that’s all I want you to keep in mind about an angel. You don’t know if you’re entertaining an angel. You may be entertaining an angel, but the point the Hebrew writer is making is, love strangers, show hospitality. Let God sort out who you are with. But you need to have a mindset of loving strangers and showing them hospitality. So we love our brothers and sisters. We love strangers. We show hospitality. Thirdly, you got to love those who are oppressed and suffering. Love those who are oppressed and suffering. Hebrews 13, verse three. Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison and those who were mistreated, as if you yourselves were suffering. He says, I want you to remember Christians in prison.
I want you to remember them. I want you to think about them. Show them sympathy. Show sympathy to disciples who are suffering. Show empathy. Empathy is to get inside and feel what somebody is feeling. Some of you are so good at that, and I appreciate that. You’re the kind of person that man somebody hangs out, you’re going to feel a lot better after they leave you. That’s just the way you are. That’s the way you communicate. And I appreciate that. There are some examples in the New Testament. There are a couple of ways I’ll just throw out. If you want to learn to be more sympathetic and show more empathy, you can first of all decide, I’m just going to be present. I’m just going to be present in that all somebody wants. When there’s a loved one who’s lost, isn’t that all Job of his three friends? Just sit here, guys. Stay quiet. Don’t open your mouth, or else you’re going to be in the Bible to show you what shouldn’t be said. I mean, sometimes all we have to do is be present. And I love in Timothy what it says here. Paul says he says, may the Lord show mercy to the household of Onisipherous, because he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains.
On the contrary, when he was in Rome, he searched hard for me until he found me. May the Lord grant that he will find mercy from the Lord on that day. You know very well in how many ways he helped me in Ephesus. Paul says, man, this guy refreshed me. He got it wrong. He searched for me. He searched for me until he found me. He was there for me. And sometimes that’s all we need is for someone to be present. Look at what Paul said in Philippians. Philippians four, verses 14. Another way we can show love and sympathy is simply by doing what you can do. It says, yes, it was good of you to share in my troubles. Moreover, as you Philippians know, in the early days of your acquaintance with the Gospel, when I set out for Macedonia, not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you only. For even when I was in thessaloniaca you sent me aid more than once when I was in need. You have a situation where Paul is in need. He had needs, and these guys went out of their way to meet that need.
In other words, if you love someone, you don’t have to spell out here’s what love means. You got to do this and this. It’s kind of like the husbands are told to love our wives. God doesn’t give them all his feet. Well, you get up in the morning, you got to give her a kiss. You got to acknowledge her when you get home at night you have to let her use her 30,000 words by talking to you. And you just got to go through it, guys. You don’t have to go through all of that. Just do the right thing. Just love her, man. Just do what I told you to do. And I better keep going before I get us guys in too much trouble. Let’s look at Romans chapter 13, Romans 13. And this is what Paul gets at here in Romans 13, verse eight, he says that no debt remain outstanding except the continuing debt to love one another. For whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and whatever other command there may be are summed up in this one command, love your neighbor as yourself. He said, you don’t have to list out all of these, here are the to-dos. Just love your neighbor as yourself. So talked about loving our brothers and sisters, loving strangers and what did I just say? Okay, yeah. Loving those who are oppressed and suffering. And now loving your spouse. Loving your spouse. And we need to talk about this briefly. Hebrews 13, verse four. Let’s read this. It says, marriage should be honored by all and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. Our society has gone crazy sexually. Nowadays, what does a guy tell a girl? Well, if you love me and then you fill in the blank. Now, if you love me, you will protect my purity. If you love me, you will protect my holiness. That’s what God calls us to. That is real love. I remember once sharing first, Timothy five, two with a brother. And there was a situation where he was out of line in terms of sexuality. And I said, this verse says that you are to treat your sisters with absolute purity. Absolute purity. I said, how would you like it if someone treated your daughter the way you’re looking at this sister?
And he said, I would kill him. It was sobering. He shocked me. Because you want people to get it, you want to understand. But he totally got it. He realized that it’s wrong. God wants us to flee sexual sin. You all remember the story of Joseph and Potiphar in the Old Testament, in Genesis? This woman kept saying, Come sleep with me, sleep with me. And he would get in that house and out of that house, he would do his job. And he kept on going. He said, look, my masters put me over everything around here except you, because you’re his wife. How can I do such a thing in sin against God? He simply would not. Finally, one day he’s in there, she grabs onto his cloak and then she accused him of trying to rape her. Got him in trouble throwing in prison. Sometimes doing the right thing can hurt, sadly. But God says, you got to flee. He ran out of there. He said, I got to get out of here and I don’t know what it is for you. It may be pornography, it could be lust, it could be masturbation, it could be orgies, it could be any of a number of sexual sins.
But God says flee immorality, you got to get away from it. You got to run. God wants the marriage bed to be pure. God wants the marriage bed pure. There should be mutual fulfillment in marriage. You are there for each other. And when it comes to sexual matters, the husband and wife only have each other to meet that need. So sexual purity. Number five, he says, we need to learn to love God’s gifts to each one of us and not be guilty of covetousness. Okay, yeah, perfect. I can’t read in the back, which you can read up front hopefully, so I have to make sure I’m at the right spot. But Hevrews 13. Verse five. I love this. It 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. The Bible says we’re to love the gifts God has given to us and to avoid covetousness. There are so many warnings in the Bible about that. But I want to ask you about show of hands and those of you online, you can raise your hand, we can’t see you anyway.
But how many of you have ever had anyone come to you and confess the sin of greed? Let me see the hands. So we have about four people or five. Yeah, we don’t hear that very much. Most people don’t talk about greed even though we all struggle with, we want the bigger car, we want the nicer car, we want the promotion. We just go down to that. We want more money. We don’t have enough. And he’s just saying, look at it. You got to guard your heart against being covetous. Now, I’m not saying don’t have ambition.
You can be the CEO of a company and you rather flip burgers at Wendy’s. Not that I’m going to posts to Wendy’s. Then I think you’re selling yourself short. You need to do more. And I want to embarrass him. But we have a brother in our midst right now who a brother reached out to me and said, hey, want somebody from church to work? I gave him his brother’s name and since then his brother’s gotten promotion after promotion after doing extremely well. I’m super proud of him. I think we need to be ambitious. Not selfishly ambitious, but be ambitious. Go after be the best that you can be. But what he’s talking about here is don’t be covetous, don’t be greedy, don’t be the kind of people you can’t learn to be content where you are. One Timothy six, verse six says, Godliness with contentment is great gain. You have to be able to get to a point where you can say, you know what, God, I’m doing the best I can where I’m at, but I love what I have and I’m grateful for what I have. And what’s amazing is that he is very likely talking to some people who have lost everything.
And that’s why I want to read you Hebrews ten, verse 32. It says, remember those earlier days after you’ve received a light when you endured in a great conflict full of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution, and other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You suffered along with those in prison and joyfully accepted what? The confiscation of your property because you knew that you yourself had better and lasting possession. So do not throw away your confidence. It will be richly rewarded. The good news here today is that if you have Jesus, you have it all. You are okay. You are not lacking anything if you have the Son of God in your heart and life. And I wanted to ask you, you remember the Old Testament, the story of Balam greed got him to a lot of trouble. You remember the story of Aiken? Aiken stole some of the devoted things, he hid them in his tent and ended up he and his family died as a result. Of course, we know about Judas. Judas ended up going the way of destruction because of his greed.
And who could ever forget Ananias and Sapphira? Guys, covetousness is bad news and God takes it very seriously. Don’t have a love of money. Money is not sinful, but don’t have a love of money because that is wrong. So after talking about all these areas of love, he kind of shifts gears here in Hebrews 13, and we’re going to wrap up here in a few minutes, but he talks about love for faithful leaders. Let’s read. Hebrews 13, verse seven and eight. And then we’ll read 17 to 19. He said, Remember your leaders who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. In verse 17, have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority because they keep watch over you, as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you. Pray for us. We are sure that we have a clear conscience and desire to live honorably in every way. I particularly urge you to pray so that I might be restored to you soon.
And you know that last verse, he wants to be restored. So it shows that the Hebrew writer had a connection with them. Apparently he was with them at one point, and he looks forward to being restored to them. But I want to just say in general, before I look at a couple of things here, I just want to say how much I appreciate the support that Lepatic and I get as leaders in this church from all of you. I really am grateful for that. If you lead at any level, whether you’re a mom leading in the home, or you got a business online or you’re a family group leader, or you’re a church leader, as we are, leading is challenging because people are challenging. And some of you know, I’ve shared this joke when I worked at Links many years ago. One of the drivers said something that made the CEO of the company trying to think like, okay, what are you thinking? He said, I would really love my job driving the bus if it weren’t for the people. And the CEO kind of looked at it like, do you realize you wouldn’t have a job if it wasn’t for the people?
But that is one of the challenges of leading, is that once you’re dealing with people, guess what? We’re all sinful. And James says, we all stumble in many ways. Not a few ways. First of all, it says we all stumble. Then it says in a whole bunch of ways. And guess what, married people, you’re with someone who stumbles in many ways. And guess what, folks? With a roommate, you’re with someone who stumbles in many ways. So we may as well accept it for what it is. But I know in spite of all that, I really have felt the love and support of all of these years from all of you. And I thank you for that from the bottom of my heart. Because at times it is challenging and we’ve been through some highs and lows. We’ve had some moments of great ecstasy and great events and great fun, but we’ve also had the valleys. We’ve literally been in the valley of the shadow of death sometimes. Some of you know, we had the funeral yesterday here for Jose Roche, and I was blown away because this room was filled to the brim. And we started bringing in chairs.
We filled up that aisle by the wall. So we took away access out of here and we filled up that aisle with chairs, and we put another row of chairs in the middle. We put more chairs in the back, and people were still standing. And then we had 50 more chairs set up in the fellowship hall. We literally use every available seat for those there that were here yesterday and people were still standing. And I said, only in the kingdom of God can you have those kinds of relationships and friendships and connections with people who are outside of Christ. You wouldn’t know and wouldn’t care, but yet in the church, it’s amazing. And in a couple of weeks, we’re going to have a similar set up here, probably for Don McKinley, right here in the same auditorium. But I am grateful even for those challenging low points, because you guys have made us feel loved. You supported us. And I’m a people pleaser. I like being liked. I can go to a weird place if you don’t like me, but that doesn’t mean you don’t tell me the truth. I want to know the truth because that will make me a better leader.
But at the end of the day, we’re super grateful. And he talks here about how you got to remember your leaders. Here’s a little secret. Everything that happened in the past wasn’t all good, but it wasn’t all bad either. Some of you are Christians today, your disciples because of someone who’s probably not even around anymore, I know the guy who helped me and studied with me, he’s not even around anymore. But I love Him dearly because he shared Jesus Christ with me. So everything that happened in the past wasn’t all bad. But the other thing he says here that I think we have to take note of. He says, Remember your lead you spoke to consider the outcome of the way of life. And then the next one, he says, have confidence and submit to their authority. Now, I was on my heart, don’t believe he has to tell them submit to their authority if they weren’t tempted to not submit. But let’s face it, if you agree, it’s not submission. Come on, wise, god says, Submit to your husband. Well, if he treated me right, if he was a good husband, if he was awesome like Patrick Hall, then it’d be easy to submit to Him.
You know what I’m saying? I mean, submission implies that there might have been some tension there, but you have to learn to submit anyway. And so what is he calling for? For the leaders. He said to the members, obedience, we need you to obey. Make our work a joy by obeying. But then he also says, Pray for us. Really pray for us, because we really need all the prayer we can get. We’re going to hit this last section of Hebrews Nine before we take Communion. And when we get to that point, if you need a communion cup, the ushers will give that to you. But I want to read this section together. Loving Christ also means identifying with Jesus and offering a right sacrifice. And that’s what this section gets at. It says, do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings. It is good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by eating ceremonial foods, which is of no benefit to those who do so. We have an altar from which those who minister at the tabernacle have no right to eat. The high priest carries the blood of animals into the most holy place as a sin offering.
But the bodies are burned outside the camp. And so Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through his own blood. Let us then go to Him outside the camp bearing the disgrace he bore. For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come through Jesus. Therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise, the fruit of lips that openly profess his name. And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices, God is pleased. We don’t have near enough time to sort of unpack all of this, but this is one of those places if you do daily Bible reading, you can sort of get through and say, okay, I read a God. I don’t want any clue of what that’s all about, but I at least read it. So bless my heart for reading it, and I think there will be a blessing that we read it. But let me just point out a couple of things. He warns them against being carried away by strange teachings. And if you look at the very beginning, he talks about how it’s good for our hearts to be strengthened by grace, not by eating ceremonial foods.
So apparently in the church there was some sort of teaching going on that was promoting this idea of eating certain foods. And that’s how you really get close to God. Some think that because of all those Jewish laws in the Old Testament, that maybe some of the brothers and sisters were being tempted to go back and kind of be under that old system again. Then the others that feel like, okay, there were Greeks there. They had a lot of strange teachings about food. Some of those teachings about reincarnation that they believe that when you die, you reincarnate, you come back in another body, then you come back in another body, and eventually you finally merit release, and you’re no longer in that cycle. And so in the meantime, for you to hasten that release, you have to be austere with your body. You didn’t eat meat. You had to do certain things. In other words, talk about strange teachings. Who knows? Maybe that’s what the Hebrew writer had in mind. There was some strange teachings. But I think the big picture point of this particular session is that God wants us to be enamored with Jesus.
And he refers back to the day of Atonement. He talks about how the blood would be spilled and it would be poured out, it would be taken and the Holy of Holies and all that. But the sin offering, the sacrificial offering would happen where? Outside the camp. And so he said, Let’s be like Jesus. Jesus suffered outside Jerusalem. Jesus suffered on the hill of Calvary. He suffered a death of criminals. And he says, let’s join in his death. And I think it’s his way of just reminding Him all the stuff I’ve said to you about the better tabernacle, the better covenant, the better sacrifice, better priesthood, better than Melchizadek, just remember that’s what this is all about. So let’s suffer with Jesus outside the camp. Let’s not get caught up in this world. Let’s be willing to connect with Him. And that’s a very elementary kind of a quick view of this. I would encourage you to study it more, but there’s a lot of good meat there. So to wrap this up before we take communion, just to remind you, faithful love. Faithfully love. We got a faithfully love, brothers and sisters.
We got a faithfully love strangers, we need to faithfully love those who are oppressed, we need to faithfully love our spouse. And if you’re not married, your future spouse. I’ll just throw that in there. And we got to be loving of the gifts that God has given us, but let’s also love our leadership. Let’s make their work a joy, and let’s love the sacrifice of Jesus. So as we get ready to take Communion, verse 13, I’ll remind you of that. It says, let us then go to Him outside the camp bearing the disgrace that he bore. Jesus suffered a horrible death. It was a disgraceful death to be hung on a tree. The Old Testament even talks about that, and he just reminds of God. That’s where we want to meet Jesus, right out there. Let’s meet Him outside. Let’s meet Him at the Hill of Calvary. Let’s take on his humiliation, his isolation. Let’s take on what he took on. And guys, every time we take Communion, it’s a good reminder that we get to identify with Jesus’s death and to continue to proclaim his life to this world. So let’s go ahead and pray, and we’ll take Communion.
Almighty God, thank you so much that we are blessed to have the privilege and the honor of suffering with Jesus. I think back to our baptism and how baptism, you said we actually got to participate in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And thank you for the forgiveness of sins that came about as a result of that. Thank you for the newness of life that we have because of that. Thank you so much that every single day you’re continuing to make us holy, that we’re being more and more made like Jesus. We’re being sanctified. And right now, Father, you bless us with an opportunity. Remember Jesus death, burial and resurrection. Again, as we take these emblems the bread which is his body, the wine which is his blood, father, he spilled his blood. He poured out his life so that we could have a relationship with you. And thank you for the opportunity of remembering Him, and thank you for this day to worship together. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.