"What Is Worship" - Hebrews 13:1-7

Let's talk about worship. At the end of chapter 12 in Hebrews,

we finished last week with this.

Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken

and let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe for our God is a consuming fire.

It's always fun to ask people when you say like, hey, what is worship?

What do you think worship is,

all the things that you get. I remember growing up, I grew up in church.

And when I thought of worship, I thought of crimson red choir robes and a bunch of sweaty dudes.

I can remember growing up in church and watching people in the choir.

Now, my dad was never in choir because he can't sing.

And he knows that self-awareness is a good thing to have in your life.

But some of the guys that I knew growing up, some of my Sunday school teachers

and stuff, I would watch them in the choir.

And they started out, everybody looks great. And by the fourth song,

especially if there's been some swaying, possibly some clapping,

these guys are just beet red.

They are sweating. And I can remember, and I think about this every summer for

some reason, when we got to a point in our church, and I guess enough people

have complained, where our pastor allowed them to take off the robes in the summer.

You know, and I, one of the things for me growing up is like,

I knew it was getting close to fall and school starting when the robes came back on.

Like when the robes came back on, every kid was like, dang it,

it's about that time, isn't it? Like it's cooling down a little bit.

Cause when I say we took them off for the summer, it was just,

just like July, maybe August. Right. And you know, over time that changed.

Eventually we got rid of all the robes. Those robes became the children's ministry

robes, which got all hemmed up and worn at the kids' plays and things like that.

And things changed. I can remember our church used to go up to the Brooklyn

Tabernacle every other year.

Every year they came back, they gained a little more soul, if you know what

I mean. Like they came back with some new songs.

All of a sudden they wouldn't just sway, they would kind of add one of these

in. And you're like, whoa, easy.

All right, easy. I don't know if we're ready for that kind of thing here.

And then of course, Chris Tomlin comes in and like that's every youth band.

You got the acoustic guitar, probably some sort of cajon and you're singing

and there's probably somebody crying somewhere about something.

And then of course you'd go to camp and everyone would go down front to the stage.

And this was the first time I had any like inkling of social anxiety.

They were like, everybody come around to the stage. And I'm like 14.

I'm like, okay, if that's what they're telling us to do, I'm going to do that.

The problem is we were sitting close to the front. So I was one of the first

people there. And then there's waves of kids are like getting on top of me.

And I'm like, man, this is not okay.

The weird part is this is not okay, but everyone seems to love it.

Like hands are up. And so I'm just like, I guess I'm the weird one.

I don't want to, I don't want to do this.

You know, then you've got like, what does worship look like?

Is there a posture to this? Do you go hands up, hands down? Do you sway?

Do you not sway? Do you clap? Do you not clap? Do you go halfway hands?

Do you go hands out? Like there's all kinds of things that people think about

when they think of worship.

But the interesting thing is when the Bible talks about worship,

it rarely cares about any of those things.

It really doesn't concern itself a whole lot. It tells us that we should sing.

And certainly there's places in Psalms where it says things about what somebody

would do when they worshiped.

But as far as a prescribed, this is what the church is supposed to do when they

worship. It has very little to do with singing or instruments, right?

Or hands or robes.

When the Bible talks about worship, specifically when it talks about New Testament,

the church worshiping, it has a whole lot to do with your life.

What does your life look like?

Your worship on Sunday should be a culmination of your life.

Worship on Sunday shouldn't be a deviation from what your life looks like.

It should be the culmination of what your life looks like.

Again, we're not downplaying singing at all. If you've been here very long,

you know we love to sing. We expect everyone to sing. We want everyone to sing.

I've told people, if your voice isn't great, just sing quieter. But we want you to sing.

We've said before that I think the most important voice, the most important

instrument in the church is the church's voice, the congregation's voice.

So as I say this, I don't at all want to downplay singing or Sunday morning

worship or any of that stuff for the gathering of the church.

That's not my purpose at all.

It is simply to say this, that if your idea of worship culminates in what you

do on Sunday morning for 30 minutes, then you have missed what the New Testament says worship is.

It certainly includes that, but it's a small part of what the New Testament says.

Paul, he's finishing his letter to Romans and Romans 12, one says,

I appeal to you therefore brothers,

by the mercies of God, present your bodies as a living sacrifice,

holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.

That's what worship is.

So again, as we come out of chapter 12, he's just told us that we should be

offering acceptable worship with reverence and awe.

The idea here is what you see a lot in scripture, where your theology becomes doxology.

Theology, what you know about God, and doxology is a praise about God that those

two things have to come together at some point.

In other words, you can be incredibly doxological. I know these are big words.

Don't worry about being big words. That doesn't make me smart.

It just means I read a book once, okay?

But incredibly doxological in the sense that you can praise really well.

And yet Jesus says, well, you praise me with your lips, but you're far from

me in your heart. You can be incredibly theological.

You can know every doctrinal term. You can have read every theologian.

You can actually have read Augustine City of God And if you get that joke,

then you're already a nerd. But City of God is like 3,000 pages long.

It's incredibly hard to read.

And if you can read those kinds of things and read the Didache,

read all of these things.

Again, if I'm saying something, you're going like, I don't even know what that

is. Good for you. You're fine. You don't even know what that is.

But you can know all of these theological terms and yet completely miss it in your doxology.

You don't praise God at all. You don't really love him. You don't really want

to worship him. You just want to be the smartest person in the room.

And the writer of Hebrews knows these two things have to go together.

Your theology and what you know about God is incredibly important,

but so is your doxology, how you praise the Lord.

Both of these things go together, and ultimately, your theology should inform

the way that you live, which according to Romans, is the way that you worship.

So for the next two weeks we're going to cover the first half of

chapter 13 and then in the third week we'll finish hebrews and

then we'll have a finished hebrews party together it'll be good we all

did it together i'm proud of us and then we'll start something crazy like exodus

and take four years i don't know but but we've got two weeks here of of these

practical things that the writer of hebrews is going to lay out to say hey if

you want to offer pure and acceptable worship to God, here's some ways you can do that.

Here's some ways you can do that. So he begins by saying in verse one of chapter

13, let brotherly love continue.

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,

those who are mistreated since you are also in the body.

It's interesting when you start talking about brotherly love.

Now, again, this is a general statement.

When you say brotherly love, it's familial love with brothers and sisters included in this.

When you talk about brotherly love with people, though, it's interesting how

some people clam up a little bit.

They're like, I don't really get into this whole love thing.

It's like, this feels a little soft to me.

It's like, well, then you must not really be into this whole Jesus thing.

This idea of brotherly love, what does that look like? What does that mean?

And I can remember being around certain people and I've got one specific person

in my mind that to me was just a theological giant.

Every time I sat down with him and we would talk about the Bible,

we'd talk about theology and what this word meant and what that word meant and

how do these two things go together.

I'm sitting down, I'm coming ready to go. I've watched 15 hours of YouTube videos.

I've read, I'm ready to have this discussion. And then within 10 minutes,

it's like, I'm an idiot. I don't know anything. This guy's so much smarter than me.

And we would sit and have lunch. We would have dinner in college. And it was great.

I remember learning so much from him, but there was only one time I can remember

him or me feeling like, man, this is a little different.

And we were having a conversation and somebody's name came up.

And it was somebody that I had met in passing. I didn't know super well.

I'm another professor at the school I was at. And this guy obviously knew him

really well because the second I brought his name up, his whole demeanor changed.

And all of a sudden we stopped talking about theology. We stopped talking about

Augustine and Calvin and Luther and Wesley.

We stopped talking about all these things. And he just started telling me how

awesome this person was, how kind they were, how gracious they were,

how loving they were, how patient they were.

It became obvious to me that like, oh, this is what brotherly love looks like.

And even the idea of me bringing this person's name up changes this guy's whole

demeanor, who I've never seen kind of what I would say break character.

All of a sudden he's tearing up talking about this guy because it's obvious

that this guy had loved him and been gracious to him and kind to him.

What was I seeing? Well, I was seeing exactly what the writer of Hebrews says

here, brotherly love, that it would continue.

I think every single person needs people like that in their lives.

And I would also argue that every single person should be that for someone else in their lives?

It's both and. If you come to church and you're constantly waiting on someone

to serve you, and you're constantly waiting on someone to do what you want to

do and act how you want to act and sing the songs you want to sing and act,

you're going to be really, really upset.

You're going to be really bitter because the truth is that'll never happen.

But I've yet to walk into church thinking, I'm going to find someone to serve

this morning. I'm going to find someone to love this morning and not had multiple options.

I love this story. It's one of my favorite stories in church history.

You've got George Whitfield and John Wesley.

And you may not know who those people are. If you're a Methodist or grew up

Methodist, you know who John Wesley is. He kind of started the Methodist movement.

And if you studied the Puritans and Reformed theology, you know George Whitfield.

These two giants in their perspective, we'll call it theological streams.

And they had public disagreements, very public disagreements about what certain

things meant and how God was sovereign, how he wasn't, and what holiness meant,

and even about worship and the church.

They had very public disagreements because they were both very, very smart men.

People liked watching them debate because they thought about things that other

people didn't think about, and they knew the word better than a lot of other

people didn't know, and it was a good thing.

Of course, when the public sees that, they like to think, well,

these two guys must not like each other because they disagree.

They must not like each other.

And so one day a reporter was talking to George Whitfield and they're going

back and forth and they're trying to get Whitfield.

They're trying to goad him into saying something negative about John Wesley.

They wanted to get the quote, you know, that says, yeah, you know,

Wesley's a real dumb dumb. He's an idiot. I don't know what that guy's thinking.

They asked George Whitfield, they say, George, do you think that we'll see John Wesley in heaven?

George Whitfield goes, no, I don't think we'll see John Wesley in heaven.

Of course, these guys are like, this is the quote. This is the quote.

And they go, well, why don't you think we'll see him? And this is exactly what

George Whitefield says.

He says, I believe that Mr. John Wesley will have a place so near the throne

of God and that such poor creatures as you and I will be so far as to see where he is, right?

The idea is that George Whitefield loved John Wesley.

He considered John Wesley a brother. And when this guy tried to goad him into

saying something negative about him, he simply said, man, I think he'll be so

close to the Lord. I want him to be able to put my eyes on him.

There'll be so many people between him and me that I won't be able to see him.

Now, does that mean that George Whitefield agreed with everything John Wesley did? Absolutely not.

They went to their prospective graves disagreeing on a lot of things.

The truth is John Wesley saw the fruit in George Whitefield's life.

And George Whitefield saw the fruit in John Wesley's life.

And even though they had disagreements, they were able to look at each other

and say, that guy loves the Lord. I think he's wrong.

I think he's wrong, but he loves the Lord.

That's what brotherly love looks like. He goes on to talk about hospitality.

This is a verse that's quoted a lot, especially when I would say people want

to take some liberties and try to convince some people of certain things.

Let me just read it again.

He says in verse two, do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers for thereby

some have entertained angels unawares.

The purpose here is not for you to walk around your daily life trying to find

strangers and going, are you an angel, dude?

You don't walk up to every homeless person, every person in need and be like, hey, my name is Brady.

What's your name? And if it's Gabriel, I need to have a question.

I need to have a conversation with you.

The point is this, hospitality is assumed for the Christian.

That when you come across someone who needs hospitality as a Christian,

your default is to say, yes, I can do that. I can do that.

Now, again, I'm not talking about going into debt to be hospital.

I'm not talking about putting your family in danger necessarily.

I'm not talking about doing things just because, well, I have to be hospital

to every single person everywhere, always.

I'm saying as God allows and as God brings people into your life,

that Christian hospitality is assumed.

Now, the story that he has in mind is in Genesis 18, when Moses entertains two

angels and I believe the Lord incarnate, right?

But again, the purpose of him saying that is not for you to go around and try

to figure out which angels you can help.

The point is, be hospitable.

You might be in the presence of an angel. You might not be.

Guess what? It doesn't matter if it's an angel or if it's just a person in need.

Hospitality is assumed. Listen to all these verses in the New Testament.

Paul says in Romans 12, 13, share with God's people who are in need to practice hospitality.

Peter echoes this in 1 Peter 4.9, offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.

I would argue if you're going to offer hospitality with grumbling, don't do it.

In the same way that if you feel led to give to something, but you're going

to give with a begrudging hand, don't give it. Be hospitable.

Unless we ever think that as we mature in the faith and that all we have to

offer people is wisdom, that we become what I like to call Christian Yodas,

where people just come to us

so they can learn everything about what they need to know and then leave.

Hospitality is actually mentioned about elders in 1 Timothy 3.2 and Titus 1.8,

that the leaders of the church should be people that are hospitable.

It says, now the overseer, the elder, the pastor must be above reproach,

self-controlled, respectable, hospitable.

Maybe you've heard the phrase and people who know me well know I hate this phrase,

but you've heard people say, well, I've paid my dues.

I hate that phrase. And if you've said that to me, just know I've hated that you've said that.

Okay. I just want you to know, I may not have said that in the moment,

but I hated when you said that.

My own dad says that sometimes. And I love him enough to say,

that's ridiculous, Brad.

And if you're wondering, do you really call your dad of my first thing?

I do when he says ridiculous things.

But the idea that we've paid our dues at some point, that we get to a point

in our Christian life where we just don't have the energy, we just can't do it.

Now, certainly there's times in your life and may be a time in your life where

physically you won't be able to be hospitable the way that you want to be.

As you get older and as things go a certain way, even different seasons of your life.

I can remember when we had Bradley and we had no idea what we were doing.

Kareth knew what she was doing. She's always known what she was doing with kids.

I had no idea what I was doing.

I was just holding them like this all the time. I didn't know where to put them.

What do you do with this thing?

I remember thinking when people were like, hey, we'd love to come over and meet

with you. It's like, no, no, no, no, no. You're not coming to our house right now.

It has an air of craziness about it. It looks like psychos live here.

There's definitely seasons where this is easier and where it's not.

But again, the point is we're to be hospitable. We're hospitable people.

He finishes this section by saying, remember those in prison.

What an interesting thing.

Remember those in prison as though in prison with them and those who are mistreated,

since you are also in the body.

I think the best way to sum this up is remember those who are hard to remember.

Remember those who are hard to remember.

It's easy when people aren't around very much, when we stop seeing people,

when they're not in front of our faces to forget them.

I would say this is not a call for everyone to remember everyone.

This is a call for everyone to remember someone.

In our day and age, since we all can communicate instantly all the time,

I think these commands have been expanded beyond what they were meant to be,

that we feel like at times it can be guilted into saying that you should be

texting every single person that you know every single day to make sure everyone is okay.

The truth is, you don't have the capacity for that.

And I've seen a lot of people get worn down by saying, I just don't feel like I'm being kind enough.

I don't feel like I'm reaching out enough. And I'll go, well,

who are you reaching out to? And you're like, I've got a list of 87 people,

but I just don't feel like it's enough.

And you're going, man, this is not meant to be a burden.

This is not meant to be something that you walk into and go, golly, I just.

I can't get all these people to where I want them to be. Yeah,

you can't. That's the point.

You can't remember everyone, but every single one of us can remember someone.

He says, remember those who are mistreated.

Mistreated. That's an interesting verse. Listen to how he says you should treat

those who are mistreated, or how we should go about thinking about it.

He says, because you are in the body, right?

Since you were also in the body. In other words, if one of our family members

is being mistreated, well, that's a part of your body.

How would you care for your own body?

If you cut your finger, if you were sick, if you weren't feeling good,

how would you care for your own body?

This is the picture that Paul is, sorry, the writer of Hebrews is painting.

I think you can summarize this whole section like this. Christians are not black holes.

Christians do not turn in on themselves.

Christians do not suck in everything around them and keep it for themselves

and go, everything I can get my hands on, every bit of time that I have is my time.

Every bit of money that I have is my money.

Every bit of stuff that I can gain for myself is my stuff.

Christians are not black holes. They love one another despite the differences.

They're hospitable to people around them with their money and time and stuff.

And they care for those who are easily to be forgotten, whether they're in prison

or simply being mistreated.

Christians are not black holes. That's the first way you can worship the Lord.

It's the first section of worshiping the Lord.

Number two, he says, verse four, let marriage be held in honor among all and

let the marriage bed be undefiled for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.

It's amazing how something that's

so clear in the Bible Can become so misconstrued when you want it to be.

Sexual ethics and marriage in general is one of the clearest pictures in the

scripture that we get, and yet it is what people fight over the most,

what people can and can't do, how people should and shouldn't act.

For our purposes this morning, let me just be as clear as I can.

Marriage is instituted by God in Genesis between two people that he created,

the way that he created them.

It is one man and one woman for life. That's the goal of marriage.

And the reality is we live in a sinful world where sin exists.

And I know there's people in this room that can give me a better picture.

It could stand up and give us a better picture of what it's like when you're

married to someone or around someone who doesn't hold marriage in honor,

who treats you, treats marriage as a contract and not a covenant.

But the truth is in a room like this, it's pretty easy for us to say,

hey guys, marriage is between a man and a woman. You shouldn't be fooling around outside of marriage.

I would say that includes pornography. You shouldn't be doing those things.

And most of us in the room are going to go, yes and amen. I think that's true.

That's not true in every room, but I think it's pretty true in this one,

which I think is why the first half of this verse is almost better for us to

zero in on than the second, where he says, let marriage be held in honor among all.

That's a higher bar than just defining it correctly.

Again, I would go back to the example I gave you earlier. it's one thing to

theologically and rightly describe something.

I've sat with numerous men who could describe to me what the Bible says about

marriage that didn't keep them from cheating on their wives, didn't do it.

I've sat with numerous young men who aren't married that can just tell me what

the Bible says about marriage, but it doesn't keep their eyes from wandering

where they shouldn't go.

This is why it's so important. The first half of this verse is let marriage be honored.

The same word here is used in 1 Peter and is translated as precious.

I like that. Let marriage be viewed as precious.

Can you imagine if every person that got into marriage viewed it as precious?

And again, I know there's people in this room that could stand up and say,

I know what it's like to be married to someone who doesn't view marriage as precious.

Let it be honored. Me and Kareth, when we first were getting married,

we went back to church that we grew up at and we had just gotten engaged.

And we're going thinking, man, this is going to be exciting and everyone's going

to be excited for us because everyone was excited that we were dating.

We had grown up there. It was the classic, like everyone all of a sudden had

a story of how they knew we were going to be together.

Like when we were working VBS and we just knew y'all were going to be married.

And you're like, you've never talked to us. You have no idea who we are.

Everybody just wants to be part of the story. But it was interesting once we

got engaged and we go back, we're walking around church.

It's crazy how many people, I'll say it from my perspective,

how many men walked up to me and were like, old ball and chain time, huh?

And you're like, I thought you were excited. You don't like your marriage?

You know, you would walk up to people and I'd be like, yeah,

me and Carrie, they're getting married. They're going like, well, your life's over.

You're like, these were positive things.

And these are people in the church that I'd known forever. And it's like you

realize, oh, you're just staying married.

You're just married because you feel like you can't get divorced.

You don't actually love your marriage.

You don't actually honor your marriage.

Again, we may not talk down about spouses and things like that,

but marriage becomes the butt of every joke.

It becomes this thing that, again, like ball and chain, happy wife,

happy life, things like that. They downplay what marriage is.

I think we have to be careful that in a room like this, again,

where it's easy for us to sit back and go, yeah, don't cheat on your wife.

And yeah, don't look at that stuff.

And yeah, gay marriage. And yeah, all of that stuff. Listen, very true.

Very true. I would say, look at our statement of faith. You don't know how we

feel about marriage. We're very clear on what that is.

But it's one thing to know what is right and what's wrong and what the Bible

says about it. It's a very different thing to honor it.

Want to honor marriages here. I want to say it's a great thing to be married.

The same way we say it's a great thing to have kids.

When we have kids that cry a little bit and make noise, we want to make sure

people know we don't care about that. We love kids. They're not a nuisance.

They're not in our way. In the same way, marriage doesn't bring down our life.

It doesn't hurt our chances.

This would have especially been big for them as they come out of the second

century and there's a lot of persecution on the Christian church. So what happens?

Well, people start living more of a monastic lifestyle and with a monastic lifestyle,

they say things like, well, if you get married, that's fine,

but it's actually kind of a downgrade.

You still see this practice in the Roman Catholic church where priests can't get married.

And you're going, the Bible says marriage is this blessing.

And yeah, I mean, Paul says he wishes everyone would stay single like he is,

but that's not him downplaying marriage.

So anyway, that was a little bit of a soapbox. I apologize.

But marriage is to be held in honor.

Last thing, he says, keep your life free from the love of money and be content with what you have.

I love this quote by Thomas Fuller. He says, riches are long in getting with

much pain, hard in keeping with much care, quick in losing with much sorrow.

Riches may leave us while we live, but be sure we will leave them when we die.

The Bible's full of this idea that the love of money is a problem.

Whether you see the love of money as the root of all evil, one of my favorite

stories in the gospels is the story of the rich young ruler who comes up to

Jesus and is trying to figure out what he needs to do to be saved.

And Jesus essentially says, you can't do it yourself.

Jesus telling his disciples, it's almost impossible for a rich man to inherit

the kingdom of God. It'd be like a camel going through the eye of a needle.

The disciples go, well, then who can be saved? How can anyone be saved?

And he goes, with man, it is impossible. With God, all things are possible.

Over and over again, we see that the love of money is the problem.

And again, just hopefully to make something clear, it's not money that's the issue.

It's the love of money that's the issue.

Money is not a problem. Abraham was an incredibly rich man.

If you read about Abraham, he had all kinds of property. He had all kinds of stuff.

Job was an incredibly rich man. It was taken to him, but then what happened?

It was restored to him tenfold.

David, an incredibly rich man. Solomon, an incredibly rich man.

It's not the money itself that is the issue. It's when we begin to love it.

When we begin to think, if I had more of this, my life would be better.

If I could go get that toy I wanted, whether it's a car, a boat, or whatever,

if I could get that, if I could have that in my life, if my 401k looked a certain

way, if my house looked a certain way, if I had this new carpet,

if I had this new stuff, if I had these things, my life would be complete.

I don't know who said this quote. I couldn't find who said it.

I've had it written down in my Bible right here on this page forever.

It said, if the rich man was given heaven, he would want hell because everybody else had heaven.

The idea is when we want, when we covet, when we have these things,

even when we're given a good thing, we'll want something else if we realize

that other people also have the good thing.

When you want and when you covet, when you love money, you want what nobody else has.

The toy, you want the thing, you want to live in a certain bracket.

The problem is not living in those tax brackets.

The problem is thinking that living in a different one would make you better,

would make your life more complete.

That's why he says the opposite of a love of money is not being poor.

Prosperity theology has had plenty of things said about it, and rightfully so.

I'll be clear. I think prosperity theology is demonic. I think it's from the pit of hell.

I I think thinking that God's only concern for you is that you're healthy,

wealthy, and wise is a terrible, terrible thing.

But by the same token, poverty theology, just about as bad.

To say that you're only holy if you don't have money.

You know, if you have money, you know, there's just no way you can love God

the way I love God because I'm broke.

That's often said by people who are just really bad with money.

It's like, yeah, you're broke, but you have three mortgage payments and you

own two jet skis. What do you mean? Of course you're broke.

It's like, I've been into your garage. There's 15 neon signs in there.

Of course, you're really suffering for the Lord.

The issue is not how much money you have or how much money you don't.

The issue here seems to be contentment.

Are you content with what you have? Better said, are you content with what God has given you?

Now that doesn't mean you aren't trying to be the best in your field.

It doesn't mean you aren't happy when you can make more money, right?

If I got a raise this week, I wouldn't walk away going, sorry,

God, I guess I was too good at my job. I'm sorry, I'm gonna have more money

now. I wouldn't say that at all.

I would be happy that God allowed for that to happen, but I should also be content

with exactly where I am. Jesus says this multiple times.

Of course, most famously where he says, look at the lilies of the field,

look at the birds of the air.

They're taken care of. God's going to take care of you.

Give certain people more money than others. I think he gives certain people

more natural skills for dealing with money than others. My mom's a CPA.

She's a psycho with numbers. She's crazy. If I sit down, if she were to die

tomorrow, I don't think anyone in my family, including my 74-year-old father, could do their taxes.

I don't know that we could do it. We would probably all meet together as a family and just freak out.

My mom is able to do things with

numbers and money. she understands things in such a way that we don't.

Does that mean she hates the Lord? I don't think so.

The question is, again, are you content with what you have?

Are you content with what God has given you? Are you constantly looking out

going, you know, I need more, I need more, I need more.

Here's the hardest part of this whole passage for me. He says,

for he has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you.

So we can confidently say, the Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me?

As a pastor and honestly, as a preacher, the easiest thing for me to do is to

talk about marriage, to talk about humility and to talk about giving and to

talk about loving your brother.

You know why it's easy? Because it's just, this is what you should do.

This is what the Bible says you should do.

This is how you should think about marriage. You should be hospitable.

You should be content with what you have.

What's hard is things like this because it's not what you should do.

It's why you should do it. It's why you should do it.

And the longer I'm in ministry, the more and more helpless I feel to motivate

people to do what God asked them to do.

Because I realized maybe first in myself, but secondarily in others,

that this is something that God has to provide for you.

Because I've watched people sit under incredible preaching. I've watched people

sit under incredible teaching years after years after years and be unchanged.

I know of men and women who have been in churches for 40 or 50 years that don't

seem to love the Lord, don't seem to enjoy Him, but they're in church every Sunday.

And after He gives this list of, I would say the first half of this list of

what He wants them to do, to love each other, to hold marriage and honor, to be content.

He says, the reason, the reason that you can do this is because he has said,

in other words, the Lord has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you.

Of course, he quotes Joshua 1.5.

Response to that, we say, the Lord is my helper. I will not fear.

What can man do to me? He quotes Psalm 118.

But I can't make you love Jesus.

I can't make you love Jesus.

I've realized that now I can put him in front of you. And I hope that I do that.

I can be faithful to the text. I hope I can do that. But I am completely dependent

upon the Lord to wake you up, to see how beautiful he is, to see how wonderful

and gracious and kind he has been to you.

Because the truth is, when we say the Lord is on my side, I will not fear.

What can man do to me? Man can do a lot to you.

It's easy to say that. Man, what can man do to me? Have you been around mankind

lately? Have you lived very long?

Don't raise your hand, but how many of you have been betrayed?

How many of you have had the rug pulled out from under you?

How many of you have felt the sting of a friend who all of a sudden wasn't a friend,

of a husband or a wife who all of a sudden wasn't a husband or a wife,

of a parent who all of a sudden didn't care to be your parent anymore,

of a friend, again, who wasn't a friend, of a boss who all of a sudden decided

he didn't need you anymore.

Every single one of us has felt these things. And especially in Hebrews,

when they say, what can man do to me? Their answer would be like, well, he can kill me.

He can legally kill me. He can legally separate me from my family.

He can take my kids from me. He can take my money. He can take my possessions.

That's happened to them in Hebrews.

When we say, what can man do to me? We can be very ignorant at times.

And I would say false, have false bravado of, yeah, what can man do to me? Man can do a lot to you.

The reason you could say that is not just by saying the Lord is on my side,

but you have to know the Lord.

You have to know him. You have to love him. You have to see him for who he truly is.

You know, when I got married to Kareth, we've been married almost 15 years,

which I know in this room is not super long for some, but some long for others.

But when I got married to Kareth, I remember thinking, I'm so glad I know everything about this person.

I'm so glad I completely understand them. Because, you know,

people would say like, well, you never know.

It's like, man, we grew up together. I know our family. I know everything there is to know.

And almost 15 years in now I stand there. I'm like, I wonder what else is out

there, man. Like, I wonder what I'm going to learn.

Imagine if after almost 15 years of marriage, you were to come ask me,

Hey, what do you know about Kara?

What can you tell me about you and Kara's marriage? And all I could say was,

I just know she loves me, man.

I just know she loves me. Well, yeah, but what about this? What about her life?

What do y'all do together? What are y'all interested in? What has she done for

you? What have you done for her?

Man, I don't really know any of that stuff. I just know she loves me.

And so we're just going to stay married because of that.

Well, you've got two kids. What about the kids? What about all of those things

that come with that? Man, I don't know. I just know she loves me.

You would probably look at me like, have y'all actually been married 15 years?

Do y'all live together? Do y'all share anything?

Or do y'all live in hotels? What's going on? And I think for a lot of people,

that's how they talk about their relationship with Jesus.

10, 15, 20, 30, 50 years into it, you go, man, tell me about the Lord.

And they go, I know he loves me.

I know he loves me. No, no, no. Tell me about him.

What do you know about him? Tell me some stories about how he's rescued you.

Tell me some stories about how he's been kind to you. Tell me some stories about

where he's delivered you, where he's opened your eyes.

Tell me some stories about how he's done things in your life.

And people go, man, I don't know. I just know he loves me. And I walked an aisle

and I prayed a prayer and that, you know, Jesus.

That's not going to get you to a place where you follow the Lord.

I'm not saying you won't go to church. I'm not saying you won't sing the songs.

What I'm saying is I know a lot of bitter church people because of that,

because they don't know the Lord.

Verse one says it this way, the Lord is my light and my salvation.

Whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid?

I imagine if you wouldn't ask David, what does it mean for the Lord to be your

light? He could give you a 10 hour sermon on what that means.

You said, David, what does it mean that the Lord's your salvation?

He could give you another 10 hour sermon on what that means.

That the Lord is the stronghold of my life. What does that mean?

This is what it means to have doxology and theology together.

To rightly know him and to rightly praise him is to have a relationship with the Lord.

And for people, when they say, man, why do you care so much about marriage?

And why don't you let people get married? Why do you care what people do in their own bedrooms?

We say, because I know the Lord. Because I know the Lord.

And he's asked me to say this. He's asked me to believe this.

And if you knew him, you would believe this too.

Why are you so hospitable? Why are you so kind? Why do you not care about having the most things?

Why is that true of you, man? Because I know the Lord. Because I know him.

Not simply because the Lord loves me, but because I love the Lord.

And so when things get hard and when things get difficult, and when I have to

have unpopular opinions, when I'm asked to love a brother in Christ,

even though we disagree, I'm okay with that because I know the Lord.

The Lord is on my side. I will not fear. What can man do to me? Let's pray.

Father, thank you for this morning. Thank you for your word.

Thank you for these practical lessons in our life.

God, I pray that as a church, that we would be a people who love each other,

that we would be hospitable.

God, that we wouldn't forget people that are easily forgotten.

And as we walk with one another, despite disagreements and struggles and things

that we may not ever see an eye on, that we would be able to look at one another

and say, man, I see your fruit.

I see that you love the Lord and that's enough for me.

Hold marriage in honor at Trinity Bible Church, not simply that we would get

the facts right, not simply that we would say who can and can get married correctly,

when they should get married, how they should get married, but God,

that we would honor it, that we would hold it as precious,

that when we talk about it, when we mention it, when we bring it up,

when it gets brought up here, that we talk about it like a precious jewel that's

been given to us for safekeeping.

God, will we not love money? In the same vein, will we not despise money?

Will we simply be content with what you've given us?

When we feel led, if we have a need, will we pray for it? And if you tell us

we don't need that, will we be content with whatever you've given us?

Because we know that you will give us every single thing that we need.

And if we don't have it, we don't need it.

And God, the hardest part of this whole thing, something that I ask and beg

of you often, Would you open our hearts and minds to see you clearly?

Would you give us a heart that loves you and ears that listen to you and eyes that see you clearly?

God, I know I can't talk anyone into the kingdom. I can't talk anyone into being

what they would not be lest you intervene, that you draw them and you bring them in.

But God, I pray that we are faithful here.

You've said that anyone who believes can come. And God, on this side of heaven,

that's what we preach. We preach the gospel.

We pray that you would do the rest, that you would do the work,

that you would do what we cannot do, that you would make dead men live,

that you would make orphans adopted children of your family.

Ultimately, that you would bring your family into your presence for eternity.

God, we look forward to singing forever the goodness and gracious that you've

shown us. And I pray, amen. Thank you.