1 Peter 4:8 Above all, love each other deeply, because love covers over a multitude of sins. 9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling. 10 Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God's multifaceted grace. 11 If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.
Introduction
I read this week that in a hurricane, if the wind speed is over 150 mph sustained for at least six seconds on a building, it will cause serious rupturing damage no matter how well the building is engineered. Imagine for a moment that you are huddled together with your family or friends in a house that is being hit with a category 5 hurricane. The trees outside are all down, massive damage everywhere, the storm has just started, but already wind speeds are around that 150 mark, it sounds like a freight train outside, and you can just see the house bending and shaking and it feels like at any moment the whole thing could just become splinters. And you find yourself wondering things about the structural integrity of the house that you never cared about before. How much pressure can a house withstand? Sometimes in places that have hurricanes people build with 2X6's instead of 2X4's. There are things you can do to make a house stronger.
What about God's house? How much pressure from the outside could we withstand here at Agape? As the end draws nearer and persecution and trouble increase, the structural integrity of every church is going to be tested to the limit. Not the buildings - the church itself (the people). So what are the structural components in a local fellowship that will make us strong or weak? Peter has been talking about that pressure for the last couple chapters, and now midway through chapter 4 he stops to tell us about three structural components - three things we can do on the inside so we will be able to handle all the pressure from the hurricane outside. The first of those three we saw last week: tenacious love that covers over repentant sin. We cannot be picking at each other over all our failures and weaknesses, we cannot be bringing up the past. We cannot have people who have committed certain kinds of sins be forever relegated to second-class status. And we cannot allow our affection for one another to be diminished by resentment over sin. We need tenacious love that buries repentant sin. That was last week. Today let's look at the other two. Two more massive beams that will give internal strength to this house that can withstand anything from the outside.
Welcome One Another
1 Peter 4:9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.
The word translated hospitality is a word we have talked about before - philozenos.
philo - love
zenos - stranger
Stranger love. Every time you see the word hospitality in the Bible the literal meaning is stranger-love. It is the kind of love that welcomes and includes an outsider into your circle of love. That person is outside the boundaries of your warmth and care, and you bring them inside. It can range all the way from welcoming them into your home when they do not have a place to live all the way to drawing them into a conversation. You are standing there having a conversation with a couple friends, and you see someone who no one is really paying attention to, and you draw them in with your group. Hospitality is the act of pulling someone closer to you. So first we need tenacious love. Second we need welcoming love.
Receiving One Another
So to one degree or another we need to show that kind of love to everyone. Because no matter how close you are with someone, you could draw them in closer, right? Even your spouse. Isn't it true that sometimes your spouse is on the outside looking in on your life to some degree? For whatever reason you have them at arm's length. So sometimes you need to show stranger-love even to your spouse or your kids or your close friends because something has happened to where they have become like outsiders to you. Any time a relationship is not nurtured there is a drifting apart, and a need to draw the person back.
Romans 15:7 Receive one another, just as the Christ also received you
The word receive is proslambano – it is used to describe the act of physically grabbing someone and pulling him close to you. It is the word used to describe Peter pulling Jesus close so he could talk to Him in private (Mt.16:22 – see also Acts 18:26). It is even used to describe the act of eating – receiving food into your body. You have the responsibility to grab the people around you and pull them in close – right inside your personal world. Right inside your intimate circle of friendship. Into your home. Into your living room. Up to your dinner table. Into your conversations. Into your heart. One writer said, "Through … hospitality we share the things we value most: family, home, financial resources, food, privacy, and time. In other words, we share our lives." The unbelievers you know at work might be friendly enough in the office, but you are not a part of their life in any other area. Certainly not in their home. But in the church it is different. We are family. We are welcome in each other's homes and private lives - even people we are not close friends with. When we get so all our fellowship is only at the church, then we go home and we have our own cozy, comfortable, private existence with just our family and no one else - then we have slipped from Christian hospitality and stranger-love. We do not have anyone over because we never want to sacrifice any family time, or we don't want the hassle of having to clean up the house, or we don't want to give up our lazy routine of watching TV all evening - when that happens it means those things have risen above stranger-love in our priorities.
I realize not everyone has a house that works well for entertaining. You live too far away, or your spouse will not allow it, or you work crazy hours or whatever. There are some valid reasons why you might not be able to bring people into your home, but you can still draw people in to your life. We can hold everyone at arm's length or we can draw people in.
Excuses
And there is no end to the excuses why we hold people at arm's length. The most common is probably the old, "I've been burned in the past," excuse. "I don't want to get hurt again, so I'm just going to opt out of the whole loving one another thing at church." Or maybe we convince ourselves it is for everyone else's benefit.
"I'm such a lousy person, no one would want to be close to me. No one would enjoy friendship with me. If I draw them close it will just make them uncomfortable, so I'll just spare them that discomfort by not even offering."
Some of our excuses can make our failure to love sound very selfless and noble. But disobedience is disobedience, no matter what the excuse. Every one of us is called to stranger love. If people do not receive your love, fine. But we do not have the option of assuming they will not receive it and then not even offering it. If someone does not receive your love then move on to someone else, because I can assure you - there are people in this church who would gladly receive anyone's love. They are so lonely, so left out, so neglected that they would be thrilled to receive attention from you. So just keep trying until you find one of those folks.
Hospitality is a kind of love we need to show everyone, but especially strangers. The farther outside the inner circle someone is, the more stranger-love is called for.
Agape Is Doing Well
I see this happening at Agape. Recently a woman came up to me in tears and said, "I've never been in a place like this. Three weeks ago I came here for the first time, and I mentioned that I had just been diagnosed with cancer, and a group of people gathered around me and prayed for me. The following week I had surgery, and Jeff and Marie Grow were there and prayed with me." That is welcoming a stranger.
Recently I heard of a girl who visited the youth group for the first time and when she came home she was crying. And her mother said, "Oh boy, what happened?" And she said, "Mom, for the first time ever a youth group finally accepted me." They were tears of joy. Two of the people who were baptized a couple weeks ago told the story of how the very first day they came to Agape they were welcomed by Bob and Diane, who exchanged phone numbers with them and helped them through some hard times and encouraged them and ended up leading them to faith in Christ. I believe we are doing well with stranger-love. But we always need to be exhorted to improve.
1 Thessalonians 4:9 Now about your love for one another we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. 10 And in fact, you do love all of God's family … Yet we urge you, brothers and sisters, to do so more and more
We Could Do Better
We could do better. Especially in the really simple things - just making visitors feel welcome. Our building is too small, our foyers are too small, our hallway is way too small, between services people are coming and going and picking up kids and tracking down someone they need to talk to, and the whole church turns into a kind of a Chinese fire drill in that time after our one-another's hour right before the 11:00 service. And that is right when most first-time visitors come. But even in the other services – it is so easy to slip into doing what is easy. And what is easy is coming in, finding the person you are most interested to talk to, and making a bee-line for that person. Or just making a bee-line for your chair. And we become oblivious to new folks. We would never dream of treating visitors to our home that way. They walk in the front door and you do not even acknowledge they are there. No, you greet them at the door and do everything you can to make them feel welcome and comfortable. How much more enthusiastic should we be when it comes to welcoming people into the household of God?
Practical Ideas
Look around. When the sermon is over and you get up to leave, just look around. Try to spot someone who is out on the fringes of your life. Maybe that person has more friends than you do, and they are perfectly fine. But maybe not. Maybe that person is on the fringes of everyone's life, and no one has drawn them in. Instead of immediately trying to catch that person you really need to talk to, first try to catch that person who does not have a nametag. The person you don't know. Try to spot a person no one is talking to. Do what you can to make them feel welcome. And if it turns out to be someone who has been a member for a long time, exhort them, "Wear your nametag!" Wearing your nametag is an act of love for people who feel uncomfortable asking your name again. And it is also an act of love for visitors, so those among us who are good at greeting and welcoming and are gifted with hospitality can use their gift.
But gifted or not, Peter is calling every one of us to this ministry. And if you are not a great conversationalist, that's OK - I'll tell you what to say. Just say this, "Hi, my name is…," and then say your name. Usually at that point they will say their name. If they don't, ask them, "Tell me your name." Then you can ask them, "Are you new here?" Then say this, "If you haven't already been invited to someone's prayer group, we'd love to have you join ours. We meet right over there at 9:45. I'd like you to come as my guest." Wouldn't it be great if each new person who visited this church had to decide between three or four different offers to join someone's group? Could we do that? We have over 300 at this campus, and usually less than thirty visitors. How hard could it possibly be for 300 people to make sure thirty people get a warm welcome?
But don't stop with just the visitors. What about the person who has been coming for a year but still hasn't really made any friends? Still always seems to be alone. I talked to a guy recently who has been part of Agape a long time, but his attendance is kind of hit and miss. It turns out that is because he lost his job a while back, and ran out of money and had to sell his car. The bus stop is a long walk from his house, and he has a young son. And there are something like thirty stops between his house and here. He has no job, no car, and his wife left, so he spends most of his time alone. All his relatives are Muslims, and won't listen to him when he shares the gospel, and he just craves the chance to talk to someone about God's Word who is like-minded. He is not real needy or anything - just longs for a chance to sit down with someone who shares his beliefs and have a conversation. How many people like that might be seated around you right now? Who is going to be the one to befriend someone like that?
Your responsibility
Maybe you are one of those people. You might be thinking, “I’d like to have friendships, but no one is reaching out to me.” The command is not “Be reached-out to.” The command is not “Be loved and received and welcomed.” Don’t worry about whether you are being loved and reached-out to and received and welcomed. Just worry about whether you are receiving and welcoming and reaching out to and loving others – especially those people who are not being received and welcomed by anyone else.
Remember, the standard is Jesus Christ. He did not wait around until He was received with open arms before He received us. Instead of open arms He got closed fists, but that did not stop Him. And that is our example. Even if no one reaches out to you from now until the day you die that does not excuse you from your responsibility to love like Jesus loved. Remember, Jesus knows what it is like to be an outsider. But that didn't stop Him.
You are all alone, and you are waiting for someone to befriend you. Stop and think - could it be that the close friend God has for you is someone you need to reach out to? Instead of waiting for someone to reach out to you, maybe you should step out and show some interest in another lonely person. You have unique insight into what it is like to be lonely, and so you are just the person to have compassion on someone else who is all alone.
I am not talking about total transformation of your personality type. If you are the quiet, introverted type, that's fine. You do not have to change that. But can't you be that way and still make a little more progress in showing interest in people? Could you take just one step beyond where you are now?
For others of you, this ministry is not really that hard at all. It is your gift. If you put just a little time and effort and thought into it, maybe did a little reading on the subject, you could be really, really good at this. You could have profound impact on people's lives. People could enjoy spiritual benefits for all eternity because of your ministry.
What are your strengths and weaknesses in this area? What are your resources? Do you have a house? Do you have conversational skills? Do you have time? This is really a wonderful ministry for people who are retired. People's schedules are so crazy these days that if you are retired, that gives you the advantage of having lots of flexibility in getting together with people. You invite someone over for lunch after church and they say, "I’m sorry, I've got to go straight to work. The only time I have free is mid-afternoons on Tuesdays and Wednesdays." If you are retired you can just say, "Great, how about Tuesday at 3:00? We'll have a late lunch."
Most of us, in order to make this happen, would have to just put it into our schedules. Some of you should be having someone over two or three times a week. Others, maybe once a month is the best you could do. Or once a quarter. If it is just once a quarter, fine - three times a year, put it on your calendar, make plans, and make it happen.
Your house does not have to be immaculate. So what if a laundry basket is still sitting out? Is it really that important that everyone in the church think that we never have laundry baskets sitting out? And it does not have to be the greatest gourmet meal ever served either. If the point is to welcome the person into your life, just welcome them into your regular life. You can have just as good a conversation over some hot dogs and beans as over any other meal. One of the most generous and impactful acts of hospitality I ever received was a few years ago when I visited John Piper's church and he invited me over to his house for lunch after church. He didn't know me from Adam. I just asked if I could meet with him and he said, "Just come over for lunch." I showed up at his house - a small, older house in the city, mismatched furniture that looked like it was from Goodwill, his whole family was there and two or three other random strays that he had invited to join in. Noel made a big pot of something. I don't remember what it was. It tasted fine, but it wasn't something I wanted to take pictures of with my camera phone and post on Facebook or anything. Just a pot of soup or something. I got the feeling she just made a real big pot of something every Sunday because who knows who John is going to invite over. It was not any big production, no dessert that I remember - I just felt like I was in on a regular, normal family meal. Isn't that what inviting someone into your circle of love means? They get to get in on what it is like to be part of your family.
That is especially important at the holidays. I think of my mom and dad - every Christmas and Thanksgiving we have a big family get together and a big meal, and it is never just Fergusons. There are always some other people from the church who are new or who don't have any family in the area or whatever. Most of my gift of hospitality is inviting people over to their house for meals. I don't even have to ask them - mom just needs a number so she can prepare enough food. That is the Luke 14:13 principle.
Luke 14:13 when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind
If you are preparing a big feast, invite some folks over. And make it a time of fellowship. My dad will read a passage of Scripture before we eat, or give a little devotional, or pass out printouts of verses for each person to read around the table. Or maybe just think of a question to ask each person that will help everyone get to know each other.
And if you are the quiet type and not a great conversationalist, invite more than one person over. Think of two people or two couples in the church that you think might be friends if they knew each other, invite them both. Ask them both about their background or how they became Christians and get them started talking to each other and you might not have to say anything. If we put just a little thought into this, we could all improve in showing stranger love.
Without Grumbling
And the Lord asks one more thing of us. Could you do it with a joyful attitude?
9 Offer hospitality to one another without grumbling.
Any time you welcome a stranger, you are taking a risk. The fact that the person is a stranger means you do not know him or her. You do not know what they are like. And it may very well be that they are outsiders for a reason. Maybe they are alone because they are hard to get along with. Maybe they talk way too much, or they are very selfish and demanding, or easily offended, or obnoxious or immature or judgmental or needy or legalistic or rude or dishonest.
Showing kindness to someone with a resentful attitude is not showing kindness - even if the person does not know about your attitude. Stranger-love has to be real love. If we just grudgingly do all these things because we got guilted into it by a sermon, but we don't really want to do it - eventually we will start to resent the very people we are supposed to be loving. Stranger-love will turn to stranger-resentment. We will resent them for being an intrusion on our lives. This ministry will completely backfire if it is not done eagerly and gladly and joyfully.
Grumbling about doing what is right is something God really hates. God once killed an entire generation of Israelites for the sin of grumbling and complaining. Being chosen by God to be the one who gets to deliver His love and grace to strangers is a great privilege, not a burdensome duty. Back when Andrew and I handled all the benevolence ministry, one of the things I really loved about that was the fact that I got to be the one to deliver the gifts. It is really a lot of fun to show up at someone's house - someone who is really struggling and does not know what they are going to do, and present them with a check for $1000, and to see the tears come to their eyes and the joy and gratitude. That was the most enjoyable part of that ministry - when I got to be the one to deliver the check. Especially when it was unexpected. Do you think you would enjoy doing that? You can. God has selected you to be the one to deliver the check of His love for strangers. What a privilege! And what joy could come to us from it if we saw it for what it is.
Think for a second - why did God choose us for this work? Does God need you? Is He just too busy and burdened with other tasks that He can't get to this so He just really needs you to help Him out in the area of delivering His love to people? No. God does not need you or me or anyone or anything. In fact, delivering His love to people through me is a lot more work for God than just delivering it Himself. He has to do all kinds of work in my heart, and guide me in the right way and equip me and all the rest. Why does He bother with all that? He does it out of love for me. He want to give me the privilege of being involved in His love for people. I get to be the one to deliver it.
In fact, it even goes beyond just delivery. If you think of the analogy of the benevolence ministry – it is not just like being the one to deliver the check. It is more like a whole bunch of the benevolence money is placed in your care, and you are in charge of deciding who gets it and how much and when. We will see that principle in more detail in the next verse. As a steward, you decide when and where and how much and to whom stranger love will be given. The love is from God, you are the delivery system, but you have been given a lot of freedom and responsibility in deciding all the details of how it will happen. Or even whether it will happen. God just tells us, see to it that it happens, and that it comes from an eager, glad, willing heart.
What to do when your heart just isn't in it
Grumbling spoils any ministry. We have talked before about the priests in Malachi 1, who were doing everything God had instructed them to do with offering sacrifices and all the rest. But they regarded it as burdensome. They were doing it, but under their breath they were saying, "What a burden," and God said, "That defiles My table when you do that. I would rather you just lock the doors of the Temple than serve Me with a 'what a burden' attitude.”
That chapter explains that serving God in ministry is like partaking of a feast. When you give to people, serve people, show love to people, offer hospitality to people in Christ's name - when you do those things you are receiving more than you are giving. God is granting you all kinds of grace. Doing ministry for God is like pigging out at His banquet table. And God says, "You're welcome at My table - just one rule - no complaining about the food." God is not honored when we sit down at His table and turn up our noses and sniff contemptuously and say, "OK, I guess I'll eat this food but it sure is a burden." No one with that attitude is welcome at His table, because that dishonors Him and lies about His grace.
So, what should you do if your heart is not in it? You know you are supposed to greet strangers at church and make them feel welcome, you know you are supposed to pull outsiders into your little clique, you know you should be having folks in to your home, but you just really do not feel like doing it. And God requires that you do it gladly and eagerly, so now what? Should you hold off until your heart is right? You tell me. What if this week I am studying for my sermon, and I get so I just do not feel like doing it. I know I should study diligently and pray hard, but I would rather just go to Redbox and rent a bunch of movies and get a bag of potato chips and spend all week on the couch. What should I do? I do not want to serve God with a "What a burden" attitude, so should I just rent the movies and stay on the couch until that moment comes when I finally feel like studying?
No. For every command God gives us, there are two things required. God wants us to do what He said to do, and He wants us to love doing it. If I am sinning by not doing the second part, the solution is not to sin even more by failing to do the first part also. The solution is to do the first part, but not to be content with just that - while I am doing the action, work hard on my heart to get it where it needs to be. If I am at home and I get a call that one of you is in the ER with life threatening injuries, but it's cold outside, and I was just enjoying a nice evening with my family, and I don't feel like going out - what should I do? Should I stay home and say, "Well, my heart isn't in it, and I don't want to be a hypocrite, so I'll just let that person die alone in the hospital"? No, I need to get up, get in the car and start driving. But I cannot be content with just going and ministering to that person. While I am driving to the hospital I need to be working hard on my heart - preaching to myself about what a grand and glorious privilege it is to be the one chosen to personally deliver the check of God's kindness to one of His children. I need to remind myself that it is like a banquet, and it can be a source of great joy for me. And I need to keep reminding myself of all that so that by the time I get to the hospital, there is no place I would rather be. If your heart is not in it, obey anyway and work on getting your heart on board. And that goes not just for hospitality, but any ministry. And that is where Peter takes us next - ministry in general.
[The remainder of the sermon was remarks taken from the sermon on hospitality from Hebrews 13:1-2 ("Talk to Strangers")]
Benediction: 2 Peter 1:5 make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; 6 and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; 7 and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. … For if you do these things, you will never fall, 11 and you will receive a rich welcome into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
1:25 Questions
1. Take a moment to think of at least once face at Agape whom you could do something to draw in (a warm welcome, invitation to your group, a meal together, etc.). When do you plan on doing this?
2. Which parts of hospitality and stranger love are hardest for you? Which come more easily? And what could you do to capitalize on the parts that come more easily?
3. What is preventing you from more generous distribution of the form of grace you are a steward of?
