Now over in the thirteenth chapter of the
book of Hebrews, the Holy Spirit says, Let
brotherly love continue, and be not forgetful to
entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels
unawares.
Remember them that are in bond, as bound
with them, and them which suffer adversity as
being yourselves also in the body.
Marriage is honorable in all, in the bed
undefiled, but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.
Let your conversation be without covetousness, and be
content with such things as you have, for
he hath said, I will never leave thee
nor forsake thee, so that we may boldly
say, The Lord is my helper, and I
will not fear what man shall do unto
me.
Remember them which have the rule over you,
who have spoken unto you the word of
God, whose faith follow, considering the end of
their conversation, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and
today, and forever.
I have one more sermon on the book
of Hebrews, which will be given the next
Sunday after the close of the missionary convention.
That is, one more sermon after this one
today.
Then after that we're through the book of
Hebrews.
It's been quite a while.
I hope you've gotten some help from it.
I have enjoyed preaching it.
In these first 8 verses of Hebrews 13,
there is exhortation here, based upon doctrine.
I want you to be wise and learn
the apostolic method, for this is the apostolic
method.
This is St. Paul's method.
He first gives a scriptural reason for something,
and then he exhorts us to do that
thing for the reason given.
The whole book of Hebrews precedes this, at
least up to the beginning of the 11th
chapter.
The whole book of Hebrews lays for us
the spiritual pattern and gives us great, certain,
foundational facts.
It tells us that here is what Christ
has done for us, that here is what
Christ is to us, that Christ is greater
than Moses, greater than Aaron, greater than Melchizedek,
greater than angels, and that he once for
all by his own blood purchased our redemption.
He lays the foundation so very strong, and
then after he has laid it, he says,
Now, since all this is true, let brotherly
love continue, etc.
He tells us that because we have reasons
for doing something, we ought to do it.
There is abroad in the land what we
call the inspirational preacher.
The inspirational preacher, as he has come across
my bough, has been this, that he gets
up and raises his arms and exhorts people
to be a little hotter, a little holier,
a little better, a little busier, but doesn't
give one lonely reason there should be any
of those things.
Now, this is not biblical.
Suppose that you were standing in the middle
of your lawn and I suddenly yelled at
you, Look out!
Jump!
There would seem to be no reason for
it.
The sun is shining and everything is calm
and restful, and there is nobody around, and
the grass is nice and green, everything is
normal.
There is no reason for it, and I
could stand and wave my arms and scream
at you to jump, and you would just
be puzzled you wouldn't jump.
But suppose that you were standing on a
railroad track and I looked up and saw
coming 50 feet away a train at 70
miles an hour.
I would say, There's a train coming, jump!
And you would break all, not only high
jump records, but distance jump records to get
out of there, because I'd have given you
a reason.
There's a train coming, look out!
You'd get out because there's a reason for
it.
Now, I can be very hard to move,
and I am hard to move simply by
the excitation of a man who's overheated.
If he wants me to do something, I
want to know why he wants me to
do it.
And if there is no valid reason, I
am likely to drag my feet.
But if there's a valid reason for doing
it, at least I would consider it.
This is precisely the method used by the
men of God who gave us the scriptures,
particularly Paul and the book of Hebrews, if
Paul did or didn't write it, that we
lay the foundation and say, Now, this is
the reason you should do this.
Now, are you going modernism and in the
liberal Christian circles?
They want the same piety that we want,
they want the same honesty, the same purity,
they want the same degree of righteousness, they
want the same degree of philanthropic love for
their fellow men.
They want that, but they don't give you
any reason for it.
They simply urge it and quote poetry, but
they don't tell you why we should have
it.
They want the effect without the cause.
They want to be new creatures without the
new birth.
They want forgiveness without atonement, and they want
the fruit of the Spirit without the fullness
of the Spirit.
They want the fruit without the tree.
So it, of course, can only be disappointing.
Now, seeing that there are good, sound, eternal,
biblical reasons for our being men and women
of virtue, the Holy Spirit says, Let brotherly
love continue.
There is our first virtue, love.
He says in effect that you are a
minority group born of the same Spirit, living
in the world, waiting for the coming of
Christ.
And since you are all of one Spirit
and one Father and born of one level
of life, why, love each other.
Love each other.
Now, I think that I have told you
here before, I never heard anybody say this,
and I suppose that if I were in
some churches I would be at least taken
before the board and questioned about it.
But I have insisted that it's possible to
love people when you don't like them.
You see, there are some people that are
compatible.
They are just nice people.
You have no hesitation loving them at all.
They draw it out of you normally and
naturally.
Then there are others that they just can't
make you like them.
They can't.
But the scripture says that we are to
love everybody.
The Lord Jesus Christ loved people that nobody
could like.
You see, a talkative, noisy, boasting fellow, I've
met a few of them.
We had a couple in our church in
Chicago, one fellow named Bill, God bless Bill.
He'd read up on the jokes in Reader's
Digest.
Then we would cut into the most serious
conversation with a hollow jury, and then he'd
give it to you.
It was awfully hard to take.
I didn't like that, but I think I
can say I loved the man.
You see, you can love them when you
don't like them.
So that if sometimes you have a feeling
of incompatibility with somebody, don't fall on your
face and beat the floor and go to
an altar someplace and say, I'm not right
with God.
You could be right with God and not
like the way some people act.
But you can love them in a bigger,
broader, more comprehensive way, because they are in
Christ Jesus.
You might have a brother or sister in
your home, and you're a member of your
family that's hard to like.
We had out of the six boys that
my wife and I had, he had them,
but you know how it is.
Out of the six boys, we had one.
We used to do this, we'd say, in
order to keep them quiet around the table
and keep them from arguing and fighting while
we ate, we'd say, we're starting over here
and going around, and each one would think
of something nice to say about each one
of the others.
So he'd start over here and he'd say,
Well, Lowell is very bright, he likes to
read, and Bud is very kind and forgiving.
And down they would go until they came
to the next to the last one.
And they'd all hang on the sandbar.
They couldn't get any further, because definitely he
wasn't a nice member of the family.
He was a dentist, if ever there was
one, and worse.
Some of the things he did were utterly
out of this world, utterly hopeless.
Some woman came in one day and she
said to us, Are you trying to sell
Volume 1 of an 8-volume set?
And I said, Well, not that I know
of.
Why?
She said, Your boy had it over here
trying to sell it to me.
Volume 1 of an 8-volume set!
Now, that was the boy.
And he had old streetcars there that never
bothered to close the back door at all.
And his mother had him out shopping, and
he saw a streetcar flag down.
He ran and jumped on the other end
without even a token.
And he started to pull away, and of
course she stood there helpless on the sidewalk
with her shopping bag.
Then when he looked back and saw her
receding in the distance, he lost heart and
jumped off.
Of course, they had picked up speed, and
he went rolling like a ball for several
times his length.
And we all wondered what would happen.
I wasn't there, but finally they brought him
home.
The doctor brought him home, dumped him down
and said, Give him a spanking and put
him to bed, nothing wrong with him.
But he almost, things like that, he just
piled them up.
You could tell one or another or two
or three, but just pile them up, you
know, live like that.
That's the way he lived.
It's all right now, but that's the way
he lived when he was little.
It was pretty hard.
It was hard for the rest of the
family to like him because he wasn't likeable.
He is now, but he wasn't then.
But I think they loved him all right.
I know I did.
I know I prayed for him more than
for all the other five put together.
More earnestness and serious burden.
So it's possible to love and not to
like.
Love is a Christian virtue.
Then there's second, hospitality.
He says in verse 2, Be not forgetful
to entertain strangers, for thereby let Abraham entertain
angels unawares.
It's pretty hard to be hospitable in our
day.
There's no place to put anybody.
We build houses that are now called functional
houses.
They used to just build houses, and there
were four or five rooms nobody ever got
into but spiders year in and year out,
and if you wanted to take anybody in,
you took them in.
There was plenty of room.
You'd save your Uncle Oliver over in Coburg.
You'd say, Come on, come on, there's room
for everybody, and there would be plenty of
room left over.
But now we build functional houses.
Every inch is accounted for.
There's no place to put anybody.
But nevertheless, hospitality is here.
Some way or other, we've got to beat
the modern architect and in some measure be
hospitable somehow.
Be hospitable, entertain strangers, because some have entertained
angels unawares.
I remember reading the life story of one
of the great Saints in days gone by,
how he went to a home and was
taken in.
This is in Church history, this is dates
back into the century.
He was taken into a home and was
given a place to stay and was fed
and looked after while he was there.
He had a little blind boy in the
home.
When he was leaving, he turned to the
mother and said to her, Sister, you have
been very good, you and your husband, and
I thank you, I want to thank you.
In the Lord's name I want to thank
you.
Is there anything I can do for you?
No, she said, I can't think of anything
you could do for me, but maybe you
would pray for my boy.
And away that something came down from God
on that little Saint, he turned around and
put his hand on the head of the
little blind boy and said, Lord, make him
see, and he saw.
That's in Church history.
He was no fanatic, no healing evangelist, he
was a man God could talk to.
So this woman, by being good to an
old Saint, got the eyesight of her boy
back.
Many have entertained angels unawares.
Then there is verse 3, Sympathy, Remember them
that are in bonds, as bound with them,
and that suffer adversity, as being yourselves also
in the body.
Do you ever stop to think that some
of our brothers and sisters behind iron curtains
and bamboo curtains and other curtains are going
through a little hell now?
Do you ever think about it?
Do you ever think that in the country
of Columbia, South America, alone over the last
few years, we have lost by martyrdom, I
wouldn't give you the statistics, but dozens of
Christians, including pastors who have died to keep
it out of the papers and keep it
hushed, but it's true nevertheless, they are dying
there and other places throughout the world for
Christ's sake.
Sympathy, it's a great word, the ability to
extend your own feelings into that of others
and feel with them if they are bound,
be bound with them if they suffer, suffer
with them.
It's a Christian virtue.
Verse 4, Purity.
We used to go into that.
Certainly we don't have to expound that in
a congregation like this.
Marriage is honorable in all, but the impure,
God will judge.
Purity.
Generosity, verse 5, Let your conduct be without
covetousness, and be content with such things as
you have.
There is generosity.
Don't reach out and grab, but give all
you can.
Then there is courage, verse 6.
He says that we are to say boldly,
The Lord is my helper and I will
not fear what man can do unto me.
There is submission, verse 7.
He says there, Remember them that have the
rule over you, who have spoken unto you
the word of God, whose faith follow, considering
the end of their conversation, Jesus Christ, the
same yesterday and today and forever.
That's the verse that gives meaning to all
the rest that I have spoken here now,
that mighty verse 8, Jesus Christ, the same
yesterday and today and forever.
It was out of this verse that the
Christian and missionary alliance was born 75 years
ago.
This truth is moral dynamite if we only
had the faith in it.
Above all, I believe this verse could bring
back again the power of the primitive church.
I feel like saying, They have taken away
my Lord and I know not what they
have done with him.
But if we would only have our Lord
present, we would know that he was the
same Lord as always.
The church now, the evangelical church, is weighed
down with moral boredom and life weariness.
The church is tired, discouraged and unastonished, and
Christ seems to belong to yesterday.
The prophetic teachers have placed everything out in
the future where we can't get to it,
and have dispensationalized us into poverty and have
left us there.
But the scripture says that Jesus Christ is
the same today, yesterday and tomorrow.
He is the same Lord because he is
the same God.
Same substance, same power, same wisdom, same love,
same mercy.
Christ is the same as a person.
He feels now the same as he always
felt about everybody and about anybody.
So we don't have a faraway Christ, we
have a Christ at hand.
We do not have a Christ that belongs
to yesterday, we have a Christ that belongs
to today.
He is as powerful now and as near
now and as real now and as loving
now as he ever was when he walked
there in Galilee.
If you were to go home and read,
and I trust you frequently do, the Gospels,
and then remember that when they killed him,
they didn't change him.
When they slew him, they didn't alter his
personality.
They didn't drain away his love, they didn't
destroy his affections, they didn't take away his
power.
He is the same Lord Jesus Christ now.
He can't be seen now, whom having not
seen we love.
He can't be seen now, but he is
the same Lord Jesus Christ as he always
was.
You could keep that in your mind.
What does Jesus Christ think about the sinners
that walk up and down the streets?
You and I get righteously indignant.
He loves them.
What do you think of the outcasts?
We say, is he worthy of being helped?
I don't think Jesus ever helped a worthy
man in all of his life on earth.
He said, the worthy don't need a physician
but the sick.
What about the doctor that would not visit
a patient unless it could be proved that
he wasn't sick?
And what about the church that would not
help a man unless it could be proved
that he doesn't need it?
Christ loved the outcasts.
There is a sense in which we are
all outcasts.
He descended from that man and woman who
were cast out of the garden with a
flaming sword to keep them from returning.
He felt the same way about babies, put
his hand on their little head and blessed
them.
A man that introduced me Thursday night down
in Newark, New Jersey, told the people, he
said, I understand that Dr. Tozer has quite
a following in Canada.
He paused and said, among the children.
He said, I don't know whether he has
his black bag along or not, and here
I was, caught in the middle.
I told about me giving candy to babies.
Now somebody says, why does he do that?
I don't know.
I like kids is all.
I just like babies, and I like little
girls and boys, all sorts of little girls
and boys, every color and kind.
I like them.
I believe that Jesus Christ loved them with
a love I could not even remotely approach
or use.
He loved them, and he loved flowers and
birds and his disciples.
He is the same, the same.
Do you ever go through tough periods, any
of you Saints of God?
Do you ever go through tough periods when
it isn't easy to pray and things aren't
as bright and fresh as they were maybe
a month before?
Do you ever go through that?
I do sometimes go through tough periods when
my prayer isn't as fresh as I feel
it ought to be.
What do you do in a case like
that?
Remember one thing.
I change, he changes not.
He is the same, and he feels the
same toward me regardless of how I feel
toward him for the moment.
He never changes, and we change like the
weather.
So don't imagine that because the sun isn't
shining on you, the sun isn't shining.
I left Newark airport Friday in the goofiest
brain that I have ever seen in all
of my life.
It cost me $23 cab fare to get
where I had to get because helicopters weren't
flying and nothing was happening and it was
raining and still raining and going on raining,
and yet we took off into that.
In a short while we were in the
sunshine, and even so bright I had to
pull the blind down.
I thought, well, this will be lovely.
Then we came to Toronto and we had
been in the sunshine for an hour and
20 minutes.
I thought that it would be nice and
sunshiny when I got here.
Then we suddenly lost altitude, as they call
it, and we were down into whipped cream,
just whipped cream.
We got cleared down almost touching the fence
post before we could see the ground.
The sun wasn't shining in Newark and it
wasn't shining in Toronto, but it was still
shining because I was up in it.
So regardless, my dear men and women, about
how you feel, remember, he always feels the
same about you.
Clouds may pour the moon and shut out
his glorious face from you, but nothing can
quench his love for you.
Love is so great that many waters cannot
quench it.
His eternal plan by the cross never changes
and has never changed and will never be
changed.
That's why we can, after the passing of
more than 1,900 years, take communion this
morning and say, we do show for his
death till he comes, because we are in
the middle of a great stream of flowing
truth that doesn't diminish but that flows on.
He is coming, he did come, he is
coming, and we are in the middle somewhere,
maybe way near the end.
But we are somewhere in between he did
come and he will come, and he hasn't
changed his plan.
He never starts a house and then changes
his mind and leaves it.
Michelangelo died, they found in his big backyard
scores of statues that had been started, and
he gave up on them in disgust and
discouragement and threw them aside, only partly done.
The Lord never started one yet that he
won't finish.
He is the same.
But our job is to believe his truth
and practice Christian virtue in the power of
the Holy Ghost, expect him to come and
do what he tells us to do.
That's our job.
So this morning we, along with I wouldn't
know how many other churches in this city
and throughout this province, shall celebrate the dying
of the deathless one and the rising again
of the man that couldn't be dead, and
his glory is coming back to earth.
And we do this, we trust, with the
intention that we shall practice the Christian virtues,
all the Christian virtues, not only the seven
mentioned, but all of them, through the power
of the Holy Spirit that worketh in us.
Amen.