Sermons
Passing the Test of Christian Love, Pt. 2
April 26, 2020
Ministry:
- Sunday Morning
Speaker:
- Jeff Crotts
Text: Hebrews 13:4-13:4
Series:
- Hebrews
Hebrews 13:1-6 Passing the test of Christian love (pt. 2)
If you are like me, sitting at home serves as a “Hard Reset.”
- The need to “Get Out” has been increasing, tempered with the desire to set new habits.
- I opened Hebrews 13, as a functional “Hard Reset” in this theologically dense book.
“How do I apply Hebrews 1-12?”
- Your heritage, the saints of Hebrews 11.
- A member of the “better” New Covenant!
- Same race, same marathon.
- “So now what?”
- Persevering, brotherly love [philadephia] (v. 1).
- Affection in God’s mission and mistreated – “strangers” and “persecuted” (vv. 1-3).
Applications digging into the core of a person – Marriage and Money.
- Two categories extending the point of “brotherly love” by flipping the same coin.
- Love on one side and Contentment the other.
- Hearts moving towards and away from good and evil.
Commands from verses 1-6 highlight two virtues.
- Love: in verse 1, “Let brotherly love continue” (v. 1).
- Contentment: in verses 4 and 5 “Let marriage be held in honor among all…” (v. 4) “Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have” (v. 5).
Two virtues.
- Love controls the first
- Contentment the second
Current isolation (COVID 19) brings up basic spiritual/moral temptations.
- Measurable effects like loneliness and depression.
- Suicide?
- Measurable increase in pornographic use (11%).
- God’s Word says, “Look inside” – “Are you exercising contentment?”
Contentment includes its opposite – Coveting.
C.H. Spurgeon: “I’ve been in a lot of testimony meetings, and I’ve heard a lot of people share how they’ve sinned, and I’ve had people come to me and make confession of sin. But in my life, I’ve never had one person confess the sin of covetousness to me.”
Sitting through chapel services as a college kid desiring to get married made contentment an issue for me.
- Preachers would work through Paul’s testimony (single in jail) from:
Philippians 4:
11 Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.
12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.
13 I can do all things through him who strengthens me.
- I remember being frustrated with the word “secret.”
- My specific reason was that the word “secret” meant that it was a “secret!”
- If contentment is secret, then how can I be content?
- Every sermon I heard, seemed to leave it there.
- A young man in my early twenties wanted to find a life partner all I ever heard was: “Find contentment in Jesus first, and then Jesus would let me find love.”
- Contentment was a stipulation, but finding contentment was still a “secret.”
Since those days, I have dug into what Paul meant.
- Being content means self-sufficiency. “Totally satisfied” – “Sound heretical?”
- Two words before “secret” are the word “learned” unlocking the application.
- Like “sanctification” is learned over a long period of time.
- Contentment is not a quick shift of the mind or a “pill.”
- Contentment is “learned.”
- A life-long pursuit that may not reach until old age.
- There are depth and meaning to this pursuit.
Richard Swenson a Christian, medical doctor wrote a book called, Contentment: The Secret to a Lasting Calm says:
Contentment is not picked up in the natural course of living. Not by growing older, richer, nor by getting married or having children…most surprisingly, contentment is not innate to being a Christian. [He says] discontentment is dug in for the duration…until our last breath. The only way to dislodge this grim fortress is to learn it away.
Swenson quotes the Puritan classic, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, by Jeremiah Burroughs (1599). Burrough’s adds:
Contentment in every condition is a great art, a spiritual mystery. It is to be learned and to be learned as a mystery.
Hebrews 13 addresses, contentment through gut topics like Marriage and Money.
Learning contentment through these categories is our aim (“Let brotherly love continue” – Love the mission, Love the mistreated)
-
Being content with marriage
Contentment ties together with “…marriage being held in honor” in two ways.
a. Marriage as an institution
Marriage is God’s design for men and women.
- The early church some considered celibacy to be holier than marriage.
- Ascetics, like Origen, despising marriage, castrating themselves for purity.
- Monasticism
- What Paul renounced!
- Calling out false teachers who “forbid marriage” – “liars with seared consciences.”
- “Doctrine of demons” (1 Tim. 4:1-3).
- Ascetics, like Origen, despising marriage, castrating themselves for purity.
- God invented marriage all the way back in the Garden.
- “It is not good for man to be alone” (Gen. 2:18)
- God designed marriage for companionship.
- “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen. 1:28)
- God was intimately involved to bring the first two people together.
ESV Genesis 2:22 And the rib that the LORD God had taken from the man he made1 into a woman and brought her to the man.
ESV Proverbs 18:22 He who finds aa wife finds ba good thing and cobtains favor dfrom the LORD.
ESV Matthew 19:6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. aWhat therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.”
Marriage was God’s idea.
- Jesus performed his first miracle at the Wedding of Canaan.
- Ephesians 5 says marriage pictures the relationship between Christ and his church (Eph. 5:22-26).
- Redemptive History will culminate at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb (cf. Rev. 19:6-9).
- The roles of headship and submission portray Christ and his Bride the church (cf. 1 Cor. 11:8-9; 11-12).
- The beauty of mutual submission (1 Peter 3:1, 6).
Marriage is based in desire.
- A man’s desire for a woman and vice versa.
- 1 Corinthians 6 and 7 make the case for this inside the church.
- Culture dishonors marriage by elevating immorality.
- Recreational or casual immorality assumes people will not stay married.
- These are destructive presuppositions.
- God’s institution is undermined by marketing perversion.
- Natural desires morphing into unnatural desires (cf. Romans 1:18ff).
Believers in the Spirit, see marriage between one man and one woman as God’s design.
- This flies in the face of culture.
- Marriage based on the resting commitment to an ordered design.
- Spoken vows make this commitment to God’s sovereignty
- And, to this design.
- Contentment becomes an abject contrast to lust!
b. Marriage as a commitment
Contentment in marriage is not achieved by merely seeing and acknowledging God’s design. Contentment comes through actions. Obedience.
The marriage bed is a euphemism for marital relations.
- Being “undefiled” (v. 4) is being pure.
- In both in mind and body.
- The two are one flesh.
- A spouse completes his or her spouse.
ESV Ephesians 5:31 ab“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and bthe two shall become one flesh.”
Marriage is a commitment to contentment.
Verse 4b backfills a positive command with a harrowing punishment.
- “…and let the marriage bed be undefiled” referring to holiness in marital relations.
- The word “undefiled” means purity (cff. “religion” Jas 1:27 and “inheritance” 1 Pet. 1:4).
- What is holy within marriage is damaging and detrimental outside of marriage.
- Holiness is a matter of the heart and actions.
The word “sexually immoral” [porvous] makes this broader than physical involvement with another person.
ESV Matthew 5:28 But I say to you that aeveryone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
ESV 1 Thessalonians 4:1-9 Finally, then, brothers,1 we ask and urge you in the Lord Jesus, that as you areceived from us bhow you ought to walk and cto please God, just as you are doing, that you ddo so more and more.2 For ayou know what instructions we gave you through the Lord Jesus.3 For this is the will of God, ayour sanctification:1 bthat you abstain from sexual immorality;4 that each one of you know how to control his own abody1 in holiness and bhonor,5 not in athe passion of lust blike the Gentiles cwho do not know God;6 that no one transgress and awrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is ban avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you.7 For aGod has not called us for bimpurity, but in holiness.8 Therefore awhoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, bwho gives his Holy Spirit to you.9 Now concerning abrotherly love byou have no need for anyone to write to you, for you yourselves have been ctaught by God dto love one another
Someone committing “sexually immorality” and/or “adultery” is under God’s judgment.
- Someone involved in cereal unrepentant pornography is under God’s judgment.
- Headed for judgment.
Billy Graham said the immoral writings were “like the drippings of a broken sewer.”
The judgment goes all the way back to Leviticus 20:13.
ESV Leviticus 20:13 aIf a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.
- Breaking this Old Covenant Law meant death.
- Paul clarifies this as eternal judgment.
ESV 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 Or do you not know that the unrighteous1 will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: aneither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,2 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.11 And asuch were some of you. But byou were washed, cyou were sanctified, dyou were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
ESV Revelation 21:8 aBut as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, btheir portion will be in cthe lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is dthe second death.”
- Though the judgement is future, judgment is now: 1 Corinthians 6.
ESV 1 Corinthians 6:9-20 Or do you not know that the unrighteous1 will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: aneither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality,2 10 nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.11 And asuch were some of you. But byou were washed, cyou were sanctified, dyou were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.12 a“All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be enslaved by anything.13 a“Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”–and God will destroy both one band the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but cfor the Lord, and dthe Lord for the body.14 And aGod raised the Lord and bwill also raise us up cby his power.15 Do you not know that ayour bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never!
16 Or do you not know that he who is joined1 to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, a“The two will become one flesh.”17 But he who is joined to the Lord abecomes one spirit with him.
18 aFlee from sexual immorality. Every other sin1 a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person bsins against his own body.19 Or ado you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? bYou are not your own,20 afor you were bought with a price. bSo glorify God in your body.
- Believers need to come face to face with their depth of sin.
- Sinning against a God who is so personally near!
- God’s judgment comes out in the physical effects of immorality.
- Diseases – Broken relationships – Mental firestorms.
- Hurt conscience.
- Men, who are married are committed to their spouse while guarding their hearts against the seductress.
- Men do not let someone else inside of your heart.
- Women, have to likewise guard their hearts against becoming a seductress.
- Men choose to love their wife for life and women have to equally make a decision to love their husbands not allowing their hearts to be lead astray.
ESV 1 Timothy 5:13-15 Besides that, they learn to be idlers, going about from house to house, and not only idlers, but also agossips and bbusybodies, saying what they should not. 14 So I would have ayounger widows marry, bear children, bmanage their households, and cgive the adversary no occasion for slander.
15 aFor some have already strayed after Satan.
- Satan wedges himself into a marriage through immorality.
- Broken trust.
- In addition, there is the matter of withholding.
ESV 1 Corinthians 7:1-5 Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: a“It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.”2 But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.3 aThe husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband.4 For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.5 aDo not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, bso that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
- A word to single people.
- You may have the gift of singleness.
- This too is by God’s sovereign design.
ESV 1 Corinthians 7:6-9 Now as a concession, anot a command, I say this. 7 aI wish that all were bas I myself am. But ceach has his own gift from God, done of one kind and one of another.8 To the unmarried and the widows I say that ait is good for them to remain single bas I am.9 But if they cannot exercise self-control, athey should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
- Paul was single. Jesus was single.
- Jesus was the perfect man.
- Discern your own desires.
- If you are content spiritually and physically, do not doubt your desires.
- If God has put you into singleness right now, do not doubt it!
- Formerly married, widowed?
- Not ever married?
- Do not miss exercising your tremendous freedoms God has granted to you.
For singles – one key way to “honor marriage” is by dignifying the institution.
- Honoring, biblical design – Honoring, God’s sovereignty – will spark health within your life.
- Opening opportunities.
- To engage a variety of relationships.
Single or married affirming biblical marriage affirms God’s sovereignty and affirms God’s accountability.
Contentment in marriage parallels contentment in money.
ESV 1 Timothy 6:6 Now there is great gain in agodliness bwith contentment, (1Ti 6:6 ESV)
- I have a lot to say about the issue of money.
- The love of money goes deeper than marriage.
Saving it for next time!
As our city will inevitably begin to re-open, do not miss your opportunity to undergo your hard reset!
Godliness requires Contentment. It takes focus and work!
Now is the time to put the work in for your soul’s sake.