A Christian Lifestyle (Part 1 of 2)

As believers were part of God's family. 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 will discover the Christlike qualities that reveal that where his children were in Hebrews 13 here's Alister Bank.

How can I invite you to take your Bibles and will pause for a moment in prayer before we turn to the word of God our father, we bless you for the truth that our sins had left a crimson stain and you wash 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. We pray that we might be freed from every distracting influence that we bring to bear upon these circumstance so that any hearing you. We might understand and we might obey and we ask it in Jesus name on 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 is all the difference between reading about what it means to write a bicycle are describing what it means to write a bicycle and actually helping somebody to get on the saddle and paddle away and learn the making of the 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 trying and of the times that I've tried it just seemed horribly complicated. What I needed was hands-on activities somebody to live it in front of me and do it before me and then have me try my hand at it to.

I listened as medical students have told me the great difference that they felt that came about as a result of making 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 is one thing to put down on a sheet of paper. The way in which the law. The aerodynamics operates and then quite another to feel the amazing thrust of all those thousands and thousands and pounds of power as long aerodynamics takes over from the law of gravity and you fly now 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 were supposed to care for strangers, but we can experience what it means if we are 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 the 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 is 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 and 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 were about to consider is demanding it takes time and 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 really learn a lot from a video you can learn on or by remote control.

You can't understand faithfulness simply because you discover it on a website know if we are to be contented people, fewer people loving people despicable people, submissive people, then that is going to have to be discovered and worked out in the reality of a family of faith. Now use the phrase family of faith purposefully because my said church you would just take it in your mind what is that supposed to happen in church, but one is church I see church as a building know it's not razor churches people.

While it is in part, but one is that you want is to be the reality of a company of people being brought together it is that they are to be brought together as a family there 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 other some classic examples of this. For example, in the Amish community. As the evening in the company of others. I find 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 is not simply because they're committed to them and I had knowledge is because they are absolutely committed to living them out when they saying I'm seeing my father and me. They know exactly what they mean because they literally look like their dad's that you young boys start to look like the older men that the younger women start to look like the older women younger women start to live like the older women. What is this about. It is about principles.

Normative regulative moral ethical principles established not enough fierce individualism, but established in the reality of a framework of faith in which men and women are accountable to one another.

The one thing that mitigates against our being able to discover and display the principles were now about to consider is the fact that most of us are endemically fierce individualists and it is being Brandon as with our mother's milk.

We 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 flat-out decided were going to pay attention to, and the rest can go fly a kite. So when anybody says now listen these principles. I don't have to be founded and framed and established and developed within a committed family in which faith is an action that presupposes a lot.

Once and I want to work it out for you in the time that I have now. Probably it would've been better from some perspectives. If chapter 12 had ended with verse 27 ended in chapter 13 had begun with and therefore verse 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 is it mean to be thankful and worship God acceptably well. Interestingly, JB Phillips paraphrases it in this way.

Let us serve God with thankfulness in the ways which pleased him. If you are taking no generate that phrase. Now it is a paraphrase of the phrase. Let us be thankful and worship God acceptably. Let us be thankful in ways which pleased him that was being read out to the congregation as it was for the first time the people listening to it being read would've said to themselves, at least in their own minds to present what 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 is it mean for me to live. Thankfully, before God and please send it means that I would love my brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ. Let me just simply mention in passing that these principles here are founded upon all of the previous 12 chapters and in those 12 chapters. The writer is made it clear that he is writing to those who have come to hold firmly to Christ.

In other words there acknowledge their sin 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.

The engine attached to the tracks, then it is it's it's an impossibility because all we have are these trucks one Mark glob one Mart purity one Mark contentment and the notion is ureters poster try and pull these trucks in your life know that's not the message of the gospel. That's the message of externalize religion. The message of the gospel is the Lord Jesus comes as a where the gift was a very engine which drives the powertrain, 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 Bible doesn't and English well enough now to know that this is Philadelphia two words. One of their filet all means to love or to have great affection for same thing and Adele Fosse now which means brother or from the same womb from the same womb ice is what I want you to do is to love those who came from the same womb. What is this mean what 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 dye mention 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 is two girls Maureen and Kathy 14 and half years younger 19 years young is unthinkable to me that I would be abusive to them that I would offend him that I would do anything to denigrate them but only that I would love them as a brother should honestly love his sister, now I can always feel that way when I was 10. I did nicely feel that way when I was 15, but maturity yield something I understand it now that we are using the lessons of the great three 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 relationship. 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 yourself.

We 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 I am a pain in my own so would not be a surprise as a pain in anyone else's neck. So for you to love me is to love me. Alister, the pain in the neck 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 low pain in your neck as well. I gotta love you PC is not a call to all do all this boozy stop is to say you know what you bug me. You absolutely drive me nuts to understand that I will love you as a brother is a file from your sometimes. I know you feel like throwing me out. Sometimes I feel like ignoring your sometimes I feel like avoiding you know what the Bible says that I'm to keep on loving you as a brother in 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 were not here doing church stuff. The unifying factor is we both came from the same place the same grace of God was redeeming me as a very unlikely thing for God to do is the same grace was redeemed you was frankly looking at you was a rather unlikely thing right so we all start on the same basis.

What I'm doing. All a bunch of sinners.

While a bunch of limp words and were just a bag of bones from destined us through many dangers, toils and snares. If you only live the person when they're lovable how many days in the year you last days and there are sunny days in Cleveland, but if we make a commitment to live irrespective of whatever we can love 365 day that's the call.

The unifying factor is Christ. It's not racial. It's not cultural it's not social.

Colossians 3. All rights of the church. He says listen here, here, there is no Greek Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian city and slave or free. Christ is all and is in all, there is a revolution is not. It was a revolutionary and as they of course it was because what is society to society divided itself on the basis of all these things weeks over here Jews over there. Refreshments regressions barbarians hang out in this club sit ins 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 game is not interesting because that's the only place you can find them in contemporary American culture provided in omega is too expensive. The only place that you can find all this racial social integration is in sporting events. By and large, or in the church of Jesus Christ.

See, unless there is an energizing force from outside of a man or woman that diminishes our external preoccupations with social economic class with race, color, and all of those things unless that power comes from outside of an individual to engender in his unifying principle, a reality that is unknown elsewhere then is 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 what is that mean does it mean the social economic factors are really irrelevant know this is what it means not coursing for 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 specially bourgeois churches such as ours are riddled with all other stock were full of. We are so infected when we don't even know I'm thinking whether we actually are. Now this is not to condemn us. This is to say Calen step what is going to member Dusty Springfield is a rhetorical pricing arrived answer is fine. Remember a song I can't stop loving you know what I missing it for you right now is I can start by I can't stop loving you I've made up my mind now there's an interesting phrase in angle I can't stop loving you. I feel it in my gut, I can start 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 and all of these other things fall into the place where they're supposed to follow. But until we make up our minds to do so you can you can have some extent up here to the blue in the face only one good because it is volitional. It is a commitment is an energized commitment by the power the Holy Spirit. It is an instructive commitment by the truth of God's work, 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 your how in the world can you bring all those disparate people together. How is it that they all come together.

What is the region.

What you doing what are you offering them what's happening in there and when they come in is a only Jesus.

Jesus changes are not. You see, community, and the basis of the lowest common denominator.

It is a community that is based on the fact that will come from the same womb because we all come from the same womb doesn't mean we all equally like each other because we find out don't and it doesn't mean that were 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 less 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 friends over the house having a few friends over the house is okay were allowed to do that. Indeed, we should do that as part of what makes life life but having people we like over to our house is not the fulfilling of the principal here in Hebrews chapter 13 is not a friends: this is having strangers over the house and we don't know if somebody we don't know over to the house. We don't know no one else knows no one else knows him warily. No names, no faces, no place so who's going to take the no-name no place if you don't, or if I assume you will you assume that I will and neither was not listening to the first part of the message. I'm living the Christian life from Alastair Berg on Truth for Life will continue this message on Monday. If you're not listening to Truth for Life on the Truth for Life app today if you'd not yet downloaded to your mobile phone or tablet me remind you, it's easy to do.

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