A Christian Lifestyle (Part 1 of 2)

As believers, we're part of God's family and just like brothers and sisters in an earthly family, all of us are different and we might not always agree.

But we've all been called to live in a way that pleases our Heavenly Father. Today on Truth for Life, we'll discover the Christ-like qualities that reveal that we're His children. We're in Hebrews 13.

Here's Alistair Begg. How can I invite you to take your Bibles? And we'll pause for a moment in prayer before we turn to the Word. O God our Father, we bless you for the truth that our sins had left a crimson stain, and you washed them white as snow. We thank you that this truth runs through all of our studies in Hebrews, the wonder of the sacrifice of Christ, and then the implications of what it means for that sacrifice to be worked out in our lives. We pray now that you will teach us through your Word that far beyond the voice of a mere man we might hear your voice. We need to, we want to, and we pray that we might be freed from every distracting influence that we bring to bear upon these circumstances, so that in hearing you we might understand and we might obey. And we ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen. All of us understand the importance of hands-on experience, especially if we have the responsibility and privilege of tutoring others in some area of activity. There's all the difference between reading about what it means to ride a bicycle or describing what it means to ride a bicycle and actually helping somebody to get on the saddle and pedal away and learn. The making of a cake seems to me, at least, to be fairly straightforward when I look at the recipe books. But I haven't had any success, mainly because I've never really tried, and that the times that I've tried just seemed horribly complicated. And what I needed was hands-on activity, somebody to live it in front of me and do it before me and then have me try my hand at it too. I've listened as medical students have told me the great difference that they felt that came about as a result of making an injection into living tissue, as opposed to injecting those big plastic dummies that they have in nursing school. You can describe it, but it's another thing to live it.

It's one thing to put down on a sheet of paper the way in which the law of aerodynamics operates, and then quite another, to feel the amazing thrust of all those thousands and thousands and pounds of power as the law of aerodynamics takes over from the law of gravity, and you fly. Now, I begin like this this morning because the ethical terms of Hebrews 13—these moral principles which are here—are to be trained and formed in our lives not so much as a result of learning to apply abstract principles but as a result of learning to see these principles worked out in a family of faith. So, for example, we can read about what it means to love one another, and we can observe what it is in the life of loving people. We can understand that we're supposed to care for strangers, but we can experience what it means if we're brought up in that kind of home.

We can read the principles and the demands for sexual purity, but we will do far better as a child living in the framework of a home where those principles are modeled. We can learn what it means to live contented with what we have, but far better if we find ourselves in the company of someone who, as we drive to work with them every day, lives out the principles of contentment. Or if we find ourselves going on a trip with our grandparents and discovering that they model the reality of a contented heart. You see, I think the myth which is an all-embracing myth at the moment is this—that we can cover all of this kind of material in one great sweeping movement. That if we just simply introduce a movement of some kind, then we will all be caught up in the movement. If we can all commit to certain things, then we will all be inevitably committed.

But in point of fact, the establishing of these ethical norms which we're about to consider is demanding. It takes time, patience, and it takes involvement of our lives. It cannot be achieved on large-screen videos, and it cannot be achieved by simply throwing it up on the web.

There is a notion abroad that as long as we can disseminate enough good information simply to get the information out will be to see it happening. But you can't really learn love from a video. You can't learn honor by remote control. You can't understand faithfulness simply because you discover it on a website.

No! If we are to be contented people—pure people, loving people, hospitable people, submissive people—then that is going to have to be discovered and worked out in the reality of a family of faith. Now, I use the phrase family of faith purposefully, because if I said church, you would just sort of tick it in your mind. Oh yes, that's supposed to happen in church. But what is church? Oh, you say, church is a building.

No, it's not. We say church is people while it is in part. But what is to be the reality of a company of people being brought together? Well, it is that they are to be brought together as a family.

They are to be brought together as a family of faithful people, and those faithful people are supposed to be revealing their faith in action. And it is in that environment that you find the necessary condition for passing on these principles from one generation to another. Now, there are some classic examples of this, for example, in the Amish community. Last evening, in the company of others, I found myself with the opportunity to speak with two young ladies from the Amish community. And in the course of a fairly prolonged discussion with one of them, I was struck most forcibly by the wonderful way in which the Amish are able not only to share their values but also to pass them almost untainted from one generation to another.

Why is that? It's not simply because they wrote them down. It's not simply because they're committed to them in a head knowledge. It is because they are absolutely committed to living them out.

When they sing, I'm seeing my father in me, they know exactly what they mean. Because they literally look like their dads. The young boys start to look like the older men. That the younger women start to look like the older women. That the younger women start to live like the older women.

What is this about? It is about principles—normative, regulative, moral, ethical principles—established not in a fierce individualism but established in the reality of a framework of faith in which men and women are accountable to one another. And the one thing that mitigates against our being able to discover and display the principles we're now about to consider is the fact that most of us are endemically fierce individualists. And it has been bred in us with our mother's milk, we're regarded as part and parcel of our American heritage, that we really need to pay attention to very few people. And indeed, the ones to whom we're going to pay attention are only the ones that we have flat-out decided we're gonna pay attention to. And the rest can go fly a kite. So when anybody says, Now listen, these principles are gonna have to be founded and framed and established and developed within a committed family in which faith is in action, that presupposes a lot, loved ones.

And I want to work it out for you in the time that I have now. Probably, it would have been better from some perspectives if chapter 12 had ended with verse 27, and chapter 13 had begun with the therefore of verse 28. Now, I say that simply to make the point that the therefore, which begins verse 28 at the end of chapter 12, introduces us to the responsibility and privilege of being thankful and worshiping God acceptably. What does it mean to be thankful and worship God acceptably?

Well, interestingly, J. B. Phillips paraphrases it in this way. Let us serve God with thankfulness in the ways which please him.

Now, if you were taking notes, you ought to write that phrase down. It is a paraphrase of the phrase, Let us be thankful and worship God acceptably. Let us be thankful in ways which please him. Now, if that was being read out to the congregation, as it was for the first time, the people listening to it being read would have said to themselves—at least in their own minds, they would have said, Well, I wonder what some of the ways are in which we can express our thankfulness by pleasing him. And then they would have been so gratified to discover that chapter 13 would be the very answer to that question. What does it mean to live in the kind of thankfulness which pleases God?

Answer number one. Keep on loving each other as brothers. What does it mean for me to live thankfully before God and please him? It means that I would love my brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, let me just simply mention in passing that these principles here are founded upon all of the previous twelve chapters. And in those twelve chapters, the writer has made it clear that he is writing to those who have come to hold firmly to Christ. In other words, they have acknowledged their sin, they have embraced Christ as their Savior, they have been included in the family of faith, and these principles are not a list of regulations whereby individuals may make themselves acceptable to God and one another, but these principles are the principles which are to be worked out of the life of faith which reveals itself in a certain kind of lifestyle. For those who do not have the engine attached to the trucks, then it's an impossibility, because all we have are these trucks—one marked love, one marked purity, one marked contentment—and the notion is, you're supposed to try and pull these trucks through your life. No, that's not the message of the gospel. That's the message of externalized religion, the message of the gospel is that the Lord Jesus comes, as it were, to give to us the very engine which drives the power train, which enables us to do the very things that he calls us to do. So our lifestyle is an evidence of our life.

These principles do not create the life. They reveal it. Now, with that, let me look at this. Keep on loving each other. Love shared among us. Now, you know your Bibles and English well enough now to know that this is Philadelphia. Two words, one a verb, phileo, which means to love or to have great affection for—same thing—and adelfos, a noun, which means brother, or from the same womb.

From the same womb. Now he says, what I want you to do is to love those who came from the same womb. What does this mean? Well, it means that the level of commitment is on the basis of a shared experience. And the experience is the grace of God, whereby he has brought us to an understanding of our need of a Savior and introduced us to the reality of forgiveness. And while the Christian family is marked by diversity of all kinds of dimensions, those things, he says, are to be subservient to this one great unifying principle—that we all came out of the same womb. Now, I came out of the same womb as two girls, Maureen and Kathleen—one four and a half years younger, one nine years younger.

It is unthinkable to me that I would be abusive to them, that I would offend them, that I would do anything to denigrate them, but only that I would love them as a brother should honestly love his sisters. Now, I didn't always feel that way when I was ten, and I didn't necessarily feel that way when I was fifteen, but maturity yields something, and I understand it now. Now, he argues from the lesser to the greater. He says, you know, in the same way that family life is supposed to work, where we would not be abusive of one another within those brother-sister relationships, he says, let that kind of thing be the hallmark of your relationships with one another. Because after all, we are all God's children. And we ought, then, to treat one another with humility.

Philippians 2. In humility, treat others as better than yourselves. Now, you see, loved ones, this is not a call, as I've told you so many times, to some kind of mushy sentimentalism.

This is a call to realism. Keep on loving each other as brothers and sisters. This means that we should be free to acknowledge when someone is a pain in the neck, as I frequently am. I am a pain in my own neck. So it would not be a surprise if I was a pain in anyone else's neck. So for you to love me is to love me, Alistair, the pain in the neck. It is not that you need me to quit being a pain in the neck so that you can love me.

Because, frankly, you may have a little pain in your neck as well. And I've gotta love you. You see, it's not a call to do all this oozy stuff. It's to say, you know what? You bug me. You absolutely drive me nuts.

Do you understand that? But I'm gonna love you. As a brother. Sometimes I feel like throwing you out. Sometimes I know you feel like throwing me out. Sometimes I feel like ignoring you. Sometimes I feel like avoiding you.

But you know what? The Bible says that I'm to keep on loving you as a brother. And the unifying factor in our relationship is not that we both came from the same social background. It is not that we both like the same kind of music. It's not that we both do the same kind of things when we're not here doing church stuff. The unifying factor is we both came from the same place. That the same grace of God which redeemed me was a very unlikely thing for God to do is the same grace which redeemed you which, frankly, looking at you was a rather unlikely thing for him to do.

Right? So we all start on the same basis. What are we? We're all a bunch of sinners.

We're all a bunch of limpers, and we're just a bag of bones, from dust to dust, through many dangers, toils, and snares. If you only love the person when they're lovable, how many days in the year are you gonna love them? Less days than there are sunny days in Cleveland. But if we make a commitment to love irrespective of whatever, then we can love 365 days.

That's the call. The unifying factor is Christ. It's not racial, it's not cultural, it's not social.

Colossians 3, Paul writes to the church, he says, Listen, here there is no Greek, Jew, circumcised, uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, or free, but Christ is all and is in all. There's a revolution, is it not? Was it revolutionary in his day?

Of course it was! Because what did society do? Society divided itself on the basis of all these things. Greeks over here, Jews over there. Jewish restaurants, Greek restaurants. Barbarians hanging out in this club, Scythians in that club. Circumcised, abusing the uncircumcised, and so on—everybody all over the place. You couldn't find them together in one place at all, except perhaps at the games.

Isn't that interesting? Because that's the only place you can find them in contemporary American culture, provided they don't make the tickets too expensive. The only place that you can find all of this racial-social integration is in sporting events, by and large. Or in the church of Jesus Christ. You see, unless there is an energizing force from outside of a man or a woman that diminishes our external preoccupations with socioeconomic class, with race, color, and all of those things—unless that power comes from outside of an individual to engender in its unifying principle a reality that is unknown elsewhere—then it's a chronicle of despair. Because men and women are essentially sinful. Men and women are essentially selfish. We as individuals go with our own kind, do our own thing, hang with our own group. Who can change that?

Only Jesus. Now, what does that mean? Does it mean that socioeconomic factors are irrelevant?

No. This is what it means, and I quote Sinclair Ferguson, Whenever we find ourselves attaching importance to possessions, background, schooling, or accent as the basis of fellowship, then we are out of step with the example of Christ, and such wrongful attitudes need to be dealt with at the foot of the cross. And here's the deal, loved ones. Churches—especially bourgeois churches such as ours—are riddled with all of this stuff. We're full of it. We are so infected with it that we don't even know how infected with it we actually are. Now, this is not to condemn us. This is to say, Okay, let's step up.

What is it gonna mean? Do you remember Dusty Springfield? That's a rhetorical question you don't have to answer. That's fine. Remember her song, I Can't Stop Loving You?

Nope. Well, let me sing it for you right now. I can't stop, I can't stop loving you, I've made up my mind.

Now, there's an interesting phrase in it. Then go, I can't stop loving you, I feel it in my gut. I can't stop loving you, I'm head over heels for you. I can't stop loving you, I made up my mind. When you and I make up our minds to love each other as brothers and sisters, then all of these other things fall into the place where they're supposed to fall.

But until we make up our minds to do so, you can have somebody stand up here till they're blue in the face—it won't make one bit of difference. Because it is volitional. It is a commitment.

It is an energized commitment by the power of the Holy Spirit, it is an instructed commitment by the truth of God's Word, but it is nevertheless a commitment. But as soon as we begin to do this, believe me, they will be beating down the doors to get in here. How in the world can you bring all those disparate people together? How is it that they all come together?

What is the reason? What are you doing? What are you offering them? What's happening in there? And then when they come in, they say, Only Jesus.

Jesus changes the heart. It's not, you see, community at the basis of the lowest common denominator. It is a community that is based on the fact that we all come from the same womb. And because we all come from the same womb, it doesn't mean we all equally like each other.

Because we fry it out, don't. And it doesn't mean that we're removed from personal preferences, and it doesn't mean that we want to go to breakfast with everybody that we ever see, but it does mean this—that we are committed to loving each other from the heart. Secondly, in the community of faith, there needs to be the entertaining of strangers. Entertaining of strangers.

Now, the key word here is strangers. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers or entertain strangers. Hospitality is not having a few of your friends over to the house. Having a few of our friends over to the house is okay. We're allowed to do that.

Indeed, we should do that. That's part of what makes life life. But having people we like over to our house is not the fulfilling of the principle here in Hebrews chapter 13. It's not a friend's club. This is having strangers over to the house, people we don't know. Well, why would we have somebody we don't know over to the house? Because if we don't know them, maybe then no one else knows them. And if no one else knows them, where are they? No names, no faces, no place.

So who's gonna take the no name, no face, no place? If you don't, or if I assume that you will, and you assume that I will, and neither of us does. You're listening to the first part of a message on living the Christian life from Alistair Begg on Truth for Life. We'll continue this message on Monday. If you're not listening to Truth for Life on the Truth for Life app today, if you've not yet downloaded it to your mobile phone or your tablet, let me remind you it's easy to do. Just search Truth for Life in your app store.

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The zip code is 44139. I'm Bob Lapine. Hope you enjoy your weekend and your time worshiping with your local church. Join us again Monday for the conclusion of this message as Alistair explains more about what a Christian lifestyle looks like. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.