Hebrews 13:4-6
Please turn in your copy of God’s
holy word to the book of Hebrews chapter 13. Our reading will
be chapter 13 verses four through six. Remember last week we entered
into chapter 13, the last chapter of the book, and what we said
at the outset was that our lives as Christians ought to be like
a burnt offering. The burnt offerings of the Old
Testament sent up a smoke, an aroma that was pleasing in the
nostrils of God, and it appeased His wrath. It gave them His mercy. And now as Christians who have
been saved by faith through grace in the person and work of the
Lord Jesus, we’re to offer our lives as living sacrifices, holy
and pleasing in His sight. In our lives, our behavior, our
ethics, the way we live, what we say, what we do, marriage,
money, all these things are to be a pleasing aroma that rises
to heaven. where God can, in a sense, smell
our offerings that we offer to Him and it pleases Him. So let
us consider that as we read together from chapter 13 of Hebrews, beginning
at verse 4. Let marriage be held in honor
among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will
judge the sexually immoral and the adulterous. Keep your life
free from the love of money and be content with what you have.
For he has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you. And
so we can confidently say the Lord is my helper. I will not
fear. What can man do to me? Pray with me. Our God, our hope this day is
that your word will do its work. that it will be used to convince
and convert sinners that they are in need of Christ Jesus,
that they may come to faith in Him, trusting in Jesus alone
for their salvation. And we pray for those who already
know Christ, who are already in Christ, that Your Word would
comfort and build them up For we live in the realm of the devil. We live under the world’s influence.
We have our own flesh, our remnant sin in us. And we need your help
and your grace and your blessing and your mercy that we might
live a life that is pleasing in your sight. So help us by
your word and by your spirit this day to understand who we
are, who you are, and how then we ought to live. And we pray
it in the name of Jesus, our savior. Amen. About four years
ago, I was given the gift of a dog. Now, this dog’s name is
Winston. He’s a poodle, basically. He’s
a poodle with a little bit of golden retriever mix. He’s black
and now turned a good bit silver. He’s about medium size. Well,
we as a family decided to get a dog, but somehow he’s my dog. He follows me everywhere I go. He listens to every word I say.
He sits and stares at me if I’m asleep on the couch. He waits
outside the door if I’m in my room dressing. When I get home
from work every day, he’s by the door waiting to greet. But
he’s been a lot of hard work. He’s an animal. He has needed
to be trained. And so when we bought this dog,
we bought a leash. We bought a collar, a crate,
we bought treats, and we bought a book of different commands
that you can teach to your dog. What’s the goal of all this training?
It’s to restrain him. It’s to teach him to do what
we want him to do in the proper settings where we might take
him. And so we put him on a leash when we walk him. We put him
in a crate when we’re away from home. We give him treats in order
to reward him for his obedience. But you know, with a dog, there’s
no telling what that dog will do. I mean, you can train him,
you can leash him, you can crate him, you can do all these wonderful
things, but you never know what he’s going to do when a person
comes in the house, or in the yard, or another dog, or a squirrel,
or will he run in the street? You see, he is an animal that,
yes, while he is trained, he still becomes distracted. He
needs guidance. He needs boundaries. He needs
rules and regulations. He needs a routine that keeps
him safe. And I don’t want to say you all
are like dogs. Christians are smarter than that.
We’re made in God’s image. But you know, on a good day,
my dog is attention deficit disorder. While trying to get him to do
one thing, he’s looking off this way. And friends, that’s a lot
like us. When God is saying, look at me,
look at my work, look at heaven, our eyes are off at the world.
Our eyes are on our own sinful desires. Our eyes are often on
Satan and what he is attempting to entice us with and to. We have distractions. We need
restraint. We need boundaries. We need training.
And you know what the Bible is good for? Paul says this to Timothy. The pastor at the Church of Ephesus,
he said, Scripture is useful for training us in godliness. Now, we don’t have crates and
collars and treats and all that sort of stuff, but we have the
word of God. We have the Holy Spirit at work
in each of us. And so God is training us by
his word and godliness so that we will live lives that are pleasing
sacrifices in his sight. Now, when you look at the lives
of pagans, they live unrestrained lives. They live lives that are
unholy and unfaithful to all that God declares as good and
righteous. And the contrast to that in the book of Hebrews and
in other places in the Bible is that Christians live restrained
lives. We live holy and blameless lives. And in today’s passage, he’s
going to speak to us about two subjects, two topics, marriage
and money. And those are areas where, as
Christians, we too must exercise restraint. We must exercise caution. We must live under and out of
the grace of God that is ours in Christ through the Word and
by the power of the Holy Spirit. For marriage and money can trip
us up. Marriage and money can lead us
to places that are not fitting for Christians to go. So let’s
take each of these one by one. First, marriage. Notice what
he says in verse 4. Let marriage be held in honor
among all. And let the marriage bed be undefiled. For God will judge the sexually
immoral and the adulterer. One of the favorite tasks of
mine as a minister is to perform weddings. You don’t get to do
many of them these days. A lot of kids go off to destinations. Weddings are no longer in the
church. They’re no longer part of the ministry. But I think
of one particular wedding I did maybe five, six years ago. It
was quite a blessing. And one of the things you do
when you as a pastor are preparing a young couple for marriage is
you You prepare them for what they’re getting into. I’ve often
said to you that my job as a pastor is to help you prepare to make
your vows and keep your vows. That’s vows of membership, vows
towards your children and baptism, vows of ordination, but also
vows of marriage. And as a minister stands in front
of the congregation before the bride comes in, the groomsmen
are often already there, he makes a statement if he uses the old
school version of the wedding ceremony from the Book of Common
Prayer. He says this, marriage is a sacred institution instituted
by God. And it is for the purpose of
mutual companionship between the husband and wife. It is for
the purpose of being fruitful and multiplying and filling the
earth with more and more children of God. It is for a place of
safety in the midst of a depraved culture. It is for all kinds
of things. And then you’ve probably very
often heard the minister say this, it is not to be entered
into unadvisedly. Hence, premarital counseling.
And so we get together with these couples in five or six sessions,
and if you’re like me, you give them the Scared Straight program.
This is what you’re getting into. Are you sure that you want to
be married? And usually you’ve got to stare
at the young man, eyeball to eyeball, and say, this isn’t
puppy love, my dear friend. This is what you love and honor
and cherish, what you provide for. Will you take care of this
person in sickness and in health? And in today’s culture, you have
to say, there is no backing out. For God says marriage is between
one man and one woman for life. And so he says to us in this
passage today, marriage is to be held in honor. It is to be
precious in the sight of God’s people. And it is to be preserved
by the church. Now we’re living in a crazy,
crazy culture. Marriage has been redefined.
It has been reestablished. It has been changed in the eyes
of the state, in the eyes of the culture. But dear friends,
When God defined marriage in the book of Genesis, He spoke
and His word holds fast and true. And though the world may attempt
to change it, though laws may uphold it or fail to do so, in
some sense we could say all that doesn’t matter. No, it actually
does. But God’s word never changes. The reality of marriage for Christians
never is altered by the state or by judges or by lawmakers. It remains the same. We’re going
to see in a couple of weeks that Jesus is the same yesterday,
today and forever. God’s word is forever true. God
does not change his mind. But marriage was instituted and
designed by God for the good of man and wife, for the design
of the family and for bearing children and for being an institution,
a social glue, if you will, in the cultures that would come
along after the book of Genesis and the story of Adam and Eve
in the garden. Jesus affirms marriage. The Apostle
Paul affirms marriage. Our confession of faith affirms
marriage. The vows that we make and take
if we’re married affirm the sacred union. The book of Proverbs says
over and over good things about marriage. And so we have the
Bible on our side. No, we have God’s Word on our
side. We have God speaking on our side. And He says to us,
marriage ought to be held in honor. Among all within the church,
the world may despise marriage. The world may deconstruct marriage. The world may redefine marriage,
but God’s word never changes. And he says to us, marriage ought
to be precious. It ought to be preserved. It
ought to be held in honor. But he goes on to say that there
ought to be within our marriages purity. The marriage bed, he
says, ought to be undefiled. We should not drag the world
into our homes. We should not drag the devil
and the flesh and the desires that are created in us sinfully
by the world. We should not drag that into
the bedrooms of our homes. For God says the marriage bed
shall never be undefiled. In fact, He threatens judgment.
If you defile marriage, if you defile the sacred bond of the
relationship that is ours in marriage, God will judge, He
says. There’s a threat. Now, since
the fall of Adam and Eve into sin, since the devil has been
lurking around this world, since our own desires have been what
they are, marriage has fallen on hard times. Purity in marriage
has fallen on hard times. Marriage is broken. The relationship
between husband and wife has been damaged and defiled. And we can look through the Scriptures
and see that that has been the case since the garden. You look at Sodom and Gomorrah,
or King David, or King Solomon, you read throughout the scriptures,
story after story, where God says, Be ye holy as I am holy.
But we follow after our desires, we follow after our flesh, we
follow after the world and the devil. And Jesus said to us,
regarding marriage and impurity. It was not designed to be that
way. It is because of your hardness
of heart that it has become what it has become. Now, we live in
a loose culture today. I mean, even our presidential
election is revealing to us the looseness of morals between people
who should have dignity, who ought to know better. But it’s
been that way all along. It’s not unique to 2016. And
Jesus is telling us here in His Word that the adulterer, the
immoral, the unfaithful, and the licentious will be judged. Jesus says in other places that
those who do these things will not inherit the kingdom of God. And so how is it that a new creation
in Christ Jesus ought to live? Well, in this respect regarding
marriage, we’re to hold it in honor. We’re to keep the marriage
bed, the sacred bond of marriage undefiled. Now. Without going
into detail, let me just say this, as our shorter catechism
says so well in our thoughts. And in our speech. And in our
behavior. We ought to be chaste. We ought
to be pure. We ought to be holy. We ought
to act and live and dwell as the children of God. And if you
say to yourself, would God be pleased with this behavior? And
if the answer is no, then the answer, my brothers and sisters,
is no. Keep your home, keep your marriage,
keep your relationship sacred and pure for the new creation
in Christ does not live like the unrestrained pagan. Or. Maybe like the animal that I’ve
taken into my home and attempted to train, he’s still an animal.
Friends, don’t live like an animal. Don’t live like a pagan. Live
like a new creation in Christ Jesus by God’s grace and mercy. Old sexual immorality, the degrading
degradation of marriage, it comes at a high cost to a culture.
It’s damaging to our emotional lives, our relational lives,
our physical lives. You think of the diseases that
have been spread around. You think of the relationships
that are are trashed and and destroyed and left peppered all
over our culture. You think of the mental and emotional
anguish that has come because of our unrestrained. May God
have mercy on us. so that we might hold marriage
as precious and honorable and keep it undefiled. And may God,
by his grace in Jesus, grant forgiveness where it’s necessary
so that judgment does not come to those in the household of
faith. Well, as if that isn’t meddling enough, God speaks of
marriage. He speaks of money and marriage,
two very hot topics in our culture, in our private lives, even in
our Christian world. And so He speaks secondly of
money. And He says in verses 5 and 6, keep your life free
from the love of money and be content with what you have. And
then He gives these several Old Testament allusions or quotes.
He says, I will never leave you or forsake you. And then we can
confidently say, the Lord is my helper. I will not fear. What can man do to me? Now, the
audience of Hebrews, those who received this original epistle,
had probably been, because of persecution by Romans, been defrauded
of their money. They had been robbed. They had
lost their livelihoods. And so money was on the forefront
of their minds. Now remember also that in previous
verses, the writer of Hebrews has encouraged them to be hospitable,
to take strangers in, to welcome Christians who are traveling
and don’t need to stay in hotels and other types of immoral places. Bring them in. Well, what’s the
first thing that comes to mind when you’re going to bring somebody
in? I’m going to have to feed their horse. I’m going to have
to feed their mouths, their children. I’m going to have to provide
food and drink. I’m going to have to give up my spare bedroom. All
those sorts of things. What is he saying to them here?
Don’t let money drag you down. If you don’t have any because
it’s been taken, if it’s been defrauded, don’t love it so that
you miss it greatly. If it’s going to cost you to
be hospitable, don’t worry about it. What does he say? Keep your
life free from the love of money or from greed. Keep your life
free from greed. He’s giving them confidence in
the provision of Almighty God to His children, so that when
they live in times of uncertainty, when the stock market goes down,
when the presidential election, whatever its outcome may be,
brings weariness to our thoughts and our hearts. He’s saying,
have confidence in God. He will never leave you or forsake
you. And you can confidently say,
He is my helper. My God who provides, I have no
reason to fear. What can man do to me?” He’s
essentially saying this, dear Christians, as you’re making
your way from Babylon to Zion, as you are sojourners and pilgrims
and strangers in this foreign and weary land, God is with you. He will never leave you or forsake
you, and He will not leave you high and dry or in the lurch.
related to hospitality. Think of Elijah and the widow
whose oil and flour never ran out. Or think about Jesus’ words
to his children. Consider the lilies of the field
or the birds of the air. God cares for them. How much
more will he care for you? What he’s saying to you is, as
you’re making your way to heaven, don’t worry about money. Don’t
fret over it. Don’t be greedy. Don’t think
that God will not care for you or provide for you. He’s saying
actively trust Him. In an ongoing lifestyle type
way, trust the Lord and walk with Him. God owns everything. God is sovereign over every economy. He’s over elections and stock
markets. God is the one who, when his
people were in the wilderness, gave them bread daily from heaven. How much more, brothers and sisters,
will he take care of you? Now I know some of you worry
about your stock tickers. Some of you worry about Tuesday’s
election. Some of you worry whether your life will outrun your supply
of money. Some of you worry about your
health. Others of you worry about your children. You have worry
after worry after worry. And God has said to us over and
over in scriptures, and he’s echoing this here, pagans worry.
Christians don’t. I mean, yes, we work. Yes, we
save. Yes, we care about those things,
but not to the degree that we love money and are so greedy
that we cannot be content. He says, free yourself from the
love of money and be content with what you have. And he gives
a couple of reasons for that. He gives Old Testament reasons.
Do you remember when Moses was about to die and Joshua was going
to become the leader of God’s people? God gathers Israel and
Moses and says, Moses is gonna die and Joshua is gonna take
over. And he says to Joshua, I will never leave you or forsake
you. And so Joshua is able to confidently say to the millions
of Israelites who are about to enter the promised land, they’re
about to have to fight great battles to take over the land
that God is giving them. And he’s saying, look, God is
on our side. He will never leave us or forsake us. He is our helper.
The other example that we have in this passage where it’s echoed
from King David’s Psalms David, who had it all, found himself
often in trouble, and when he was surrounded by enemies, he
could say, God is my helper. What can man do to me? And so if your troubles are money
or persecution or whatever difficulty, you say, I can be surrounded
on all sides, but God is my helper. He is my strength. He will never
leave me or forsake me. I don’t have to fret. I don’t
have to worry when pressed down. The God of the universe who has
always been with his people is with me.” Notice again what he
says in verse 5. Keep your life free from the
love of money. Be content with what you have. You know, we’re to worship not
the creation, but the creator. God has given us all things in
creation to enjoy and to use for our good and his glory. But
we never let them eclipse the creator. We worship the creator
and not the creation. We’re to be content with all
that we have and rejoice when others are blessed by God in
different ways. We should look to God with thanksgiving
for what he has given us, but also look to God with thanksgiving
for what he has provided others, that we may never be covetous,
that we may never be jealous or brooding or wish we had something
that is not ours. Some of you have nothing, others
of you have lots, but we all must trust God. Some of you are
worried about what will take place this Tuesday, but we must
trust God. Some of you are concerned about
persecution or what Christians will face in the coming years.
We must trust God. You fill in the blank, you’re
worried about something, you’re fretting over something. We must
trust God. He will never leave us or forsake
us. God is our helper. He will. We have nothing to fear. What can man do to us? So marriage and money. These
are two areas where God here exhorts us to have them in proper
perspective and to make sure that our behavior toward them
and in our use of them is correct. These are two realities that
are big in life and huge for Christians. Remember these two
truths. Whatever your economic estate
is on this earth, whatever dollars you have or don’t, whatever real
estate you own or possess, remember this, it will all pass away with
you. But you are joint heirs with
Jesus. And you will own the riches of
heaven together with him. Think about marriage. We’re up
in arms at times as Christians about what the courts and what
the laws and what culture has done to marriage. But friends,
this reality will never change. Marriage is a picture of Christ
and his love for the church. And you know what politicians
and judges and activists and all these others can’t do? They
can’t find their way to heaven on the great day. when God gives
the nudge to His own Son and says, go and take your bride,
your church, who I have been making ready by washing with
the Word and the Spirit, go and receive them, bring them into
your heaven. Friends, that reality cannot
be squashed or snuffed out or destroyed or degraded or reconstructed
or redefined by our culture. Oh, yes, we get up in arms about
what’s happening to marriage in our world. But friends, the
reality of marriage and the heavenly of heavenlies cannot be changed
or altered. And while the world lives an
unrestrained life. even lives in an animalistic
way related to money and marriage. That cannot be so for the Christian. We have been saved from that
enslavement. We have been brought out of darkness
into light. We have died to these things.
And so what does God tell us as his children? He says we ought
to live in light of culture and all the wackiness that is out
there. We ought to live holy and blameless lives before his
holy face. Amen. Let us pray together. Our
great God, we thank you that you. You show us these things
in order that we might know how we ought to live in light of
the gospel and in light of your ethical and righteous demands.
Help us, we do pray in Jesus name. Amen. Let me invite the
elders to please come forward as we prepare for the Lord’s
Supper. The Lord graciously feeds us
by His Word and His Spirit. He also feeds us and nourishes
us in His sacraments. Today, the Lord’s Supper. This
meal is for those who know. Who know that they are sinners
in need of God’s mercy. Who know that they are sinners
and without their faith and hope in Jesus for salvation would
be under His wrath and His curse and His judgment. This meal is
for sinners. who need a pick-me-up. This meal
is for sinners who are hungry and who say to God, I need Your
assurance. I need to know that You love
me and care for me. This meal is for those who love
Jesus, who put their faith and hope and trust in Him alone for
their salvation and know in an ongoing constant way that they
need a Savior. And so to this table, the Lord
invites those who have professed their faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ. This table to this table, the Lord invites those who are
members in good standing of any evangelical church that professes
the good news of the gospel. This table is for those. who trust Jesus alone for their
salvation. But from this table, the Lord
excludes. And so if you do not know of
your salvation in Jesus, if you do not know yourself to be a
sinner, let these elements pass by. But don’t let this day go
by without speaking to me or one of the elders or someone
you trust in this room and say, what must I do to be saved? Friends,
these are the gifts of God for the people of God, and we are
to come by faith to this table. believing that Jesus Christ,
our Passover lamb, has died for us and has saved us. And that
in this meal, he reminds us of our hope. He encourages us on
our way to heaven. And he means to tell us how much
he loves us and cares for us. And so come by faith with thanksgiving
in your heart and feed on his body and his blood as they are
represented to us in this bread and this cup. The Apostle Paul
says this in 1 Corinthians 11, for I received from the Lord
that which I also deliver to you. Then on the night in which
Jesus Christ was betrayed, after the supper he took bread and
broke it and gave it to his disciples and said, Take and eat. This
is my body which is given for you. Eat and do this in remembrance
of me. And in the same manner after
the supper he took the cup. He took the cup of wine and said,
This is the cup of the new covenant in my blood. As often as you
eat this bread and you drink from this cup, you proclaim my
death until I come again. We will eat this meal, a greater
form of this meal, in the new heavens and the new earth at
the great wedding supper of the Lamb. But until then, God gives
us this meal, small as it is, not to feed us physically, but
to feed us spiritually and to remind us that we are his children.
Let us pray together. Our gracious God, we thank you
for this meal, special it is to us. We pray that you would
take this bread and this cup, these ordinary elements, and
we pray that they would be set apart from common use to uncommon
use, holy use, special use, and that as we eat and drink together
as a body, remind us of Jesus, of his suffering, of his death,
of his resurrection, of of the fact that we who by faith are
in him. are engaged to be the Lord’s
and that this might remind us that you have not forgotten us,
that you have not left us here on earth as orphans, but we are
indeed sons and daughters. And one day, one day soon, you
will come and take us home to be with you where you are, where
we will enjoy greater meals and greater fellowship. But until
then, use this to nurture us, we pray in Jesus name. Amen. you Yeah. you the body of our Lord Jesus Christ,
given for you. Take and eat. This is the outpouring of his
blood, drink all of it. Our God, we thank you for this
meal, for its nourishment, and for how it strengthens our faith.
And we pray that as we live life in the world that is outside
these doors, our faith would help us have the right perspective
on money and marriage but also in all sorts of other things
as we live confidently knowing that you are our helper. What
can man do to us? We thank you for this in Christ’s
name. Amen. Let’s stand together as we sing
from our hymnal 517. I’d rather have Jesus than silver or gold.
♪ Jesus, Son of God ♪ ♪ My family
is a precious lot ♪ ♪ My family is a precious lot ♪ ♪ I’ll be there when you need me
♪ ♪ I’ll be there when you need me ♪ ♪ And the rocket’s red glare, the
bombs bursting in air ♪ ♪ Gave proof through the night that
our flag was still there ♪ O’er the land of the free and
the home of the brave? Oh, say does that star spangled
banner yet wave I’m not afraid, I’m not afraid
at all. ♪ With angelic host ♪ ♪ From the
land of the free ♪ ♪ From the land of the free ♪ ♪ Sing we
the praises of our God and King ♪ ♪ Sing we the praises of our
God and King ♪ Amen. Go now with God’s blessing
upon you. The Lord bless you and keep you.
The Lord make his face shine upon you and be gracious to you.
And the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace now
and forever. And all God’s people said, amen.