We're gonna look at Romans 12 verse 13 this morning, as well as multiple other verses, but that's where we will look right now as we read from God's word, where it says, seek to show hospitality. If you'll join me, the grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of our Lord will stand forever. Let's pray together. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we come now to your word. We come to you to hear from you. We pray that your Holy Spirit would come and move among us and do what only you can do. And that is teach us, convict us, challenge us, and welcome us into your arms, we pray. Father, would you come and share with us your very words for us, your people? We ask it in Jesus' name, amen. I wanna begin this morning really by just sharing a personal testimony on God's working in my life. I want you all to know very clearly that God has used Dr. Paul Koistra as well as the Living in Grace series to change my life, honestly. And now when I say that, I don't mean so much in the sense of bringing me to faith in Christ, but I mean that in the sense of bringing me to freedom in Christ. I became a Christian in college on December the 30th, 1996 in Gatlinburg, Tennessee at a campus outreach Christmas conference many years ago. On that day, like Paul the apostle, something like scales fell from my eyes, where he talks about in Acts chapter 9, and I could see anew, as if for the first time I could see as a new person. I experienced forgiveness of my sins. I experienced a peace with God that surpasses all human understanding. I was a brand new person in Christ with a brand new heart that was beating for Christ. I knew I was saved by grace. I did not, I could not earn my salvation in any way. God's love was given to me freely. It was a gift that I received. And so I began living the Christian life. and doing the things that Christians do, knowing that the old man had passed away, but the new man had come. And then somewhere along the way, many years, I began to learn something else. I began to learn that I needed to earn God's love in my day-to-day life. My salvation was by grace, but I learned over time that my standing with God was by my performance. Justification by grace, sanctification by works. So I did the things I thought I was supposed to do as a Christian. And if I did those things, then God would love me more. But if I didn't do those things, the things I was supposed to do as a Christian, God would be mad at me. Or maybe not mad, but at least he wouldn't be happy with me as his child. Now, I didn't say this out loud. You would have never heard me say this to anyone else. I didn't say it out loud, but it was pretty clear in my life, the way I spoke to people, the way I treated myself, the way I treated people. I was really living in fear. That is fear of failure, fear of somehow losing God, losing my salvation. I was really in fear of God, but not in the fear that Proverbs talks about that brings wisdom. Not in that fear. I was scared. I was living really by perfection. If God said it, then I was going to do everything I could to do it. And I didn't understand why everybody else who was a Christian wasn't doing it too. I was quite judgmental, sometimes bitter, often unforgiving, until I began to understand that I couldn't do it. I couldn't live the Christian life that God wanted me to live. I wanted to be obedient to God, but I kept messing up. My performance as a Christian just wasn't good enough. I was experiencing the love of God less and less because I felt like he was just disappointed in me more and more. Enter here, Dr. Koistra is preaching on living in grace. You know, I mean, we've had at Chestnut Mountain Dr. Korstra here many times to preach. A couple of different mission conferences. We had him for Weekend of Living in Grace. And I listened to this material. After the Living in Grace weekend was over, I bought the CD box set. I don't even think you can get that anymore. But I listened to it over and over and over again. I listened to all the talks that he's going to be preaching. over and over again. And then I was asked to teach a Living in Grace weekend in the Philippines. for a group of orphanage staff, national staff that take care of street children. I was on the board of directors and they asked me to come and I did several different weekends on living in grace, getting a chance to teach on it. And so as I began to study and to prepare to teach on grace, God began to change my life. I was moving from failure in Christ to freedom in Christ. from God's disappointment with me to God's smile upon me. And friends, I'm gonna tell you, grace will change your life. A couple of other things happened during that season. We had children. More so, I became a parent. And if you're a parent and you don't need grace, I need to know your secret. because becoming a parent changed my life, and it changed my thoughts on grace. I saw youth, I was the youth pastor at that time for a while, and I saw youth that I'd really poured my life into, and I saw them, after they left, they walked away from the faith. And that's hard to watch. During that time, I lost my son. I lost my brother, and I lost my father, back to back to back. I almost walked away from Jesus myself. I spent some time around a guy named Bruce Birch for a while, and he and I spent some time studying God's Word together. We invited some younger guys to study God's Word with us. I devoured anything and everything I could get my hands on that talked about grace. Romans 8, from the beginning of the chapter to the end of the chapter, there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ and there's no separation from Christ. The Psalms. I spent much time in the Psalms and they changed my life. I began to realize that a lot of sermons that people preach are just bad news with good advice. And I didn't want to hear good advice. I wanted to hear about Jesus. Good advice will only work for a time. And when I didn't live up to the good advice, I needed Jesus. Because He lived the life that I couldn't live. So, last Sunday and this morning, as we embark on this series of Living in Grace, I really want us as a church to be very intentional and very mindful of what God wants to do in CNPC over the next few months. Not that we're not intentional and mindful already, but this is a new year. It's a new series. Grace has been around forever. The idea of grace has always been around. If you're walking with the Lord, if you're in Christ, you know that grace is something that's been around. But maybe God wants to reveal grace to us in a brand new way this year. With this in mind this morning, I want us to consider hospitality as the reception of grace. I want us to walk through the Bible focusing on the word hospitality or hospitable so that we can get a good biblical portrait or picture of what it means to receive people gracefully. First place we go. That is, the Bible says, be hospitable. We go to 1 Timothy 3, verse 2, and you can go to Titus 1, verse 8. You don't have to turn there. It simply says, be hospitable. You've probably heard before the phrase, where the head goes, the body follows. You've probably heard that before, meaning that people will follow their leaders. They'll imitate their leaders. They'll do what they do, or they will not do what the leaders don't do. Not always, but often people will follow their leaders. If you know your Bible well, you know that 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1 are characteristics to look for when looking for a leader in the church. The Apostle Paul is writing to Timothy and Titus on how to spot and how to put into place leaders of a church. Now, these lists are quite full. And they're full of things like a leader must be able to teach, a leader must have a good reputation, a leader is not easily angered. Nobody here or anywhere else is sufficient for these lists, to be sure. Nobody's able to live out these characteristics perfectly, but one characteristic that's at the beginning of both of these lists is a leader is to be hospitable. Well, what does it mean to be hospitable? What does it look like in a leader's life to be hospitable? The original wording here is important because in every instance in these, as well as the other passages that we'll look at this morning, the root words are friend, and stranger or foreigner. Could be stranger or foreigner. I think this is really interesting because when I grew up, my mom taught me stranger danger. Your mom probably taught you the same thing as well. Don't talk to strangers. Walk away from strangers. And in today's world, I think you would probably agree with me, this mentality is on steroids, right? Don't be alone with strangers. Don't share information with strangers. Don't make eye contact with strangers. And I agree with this in many instances, particularly with children. Absolutely agree. But you know, as a preteen, I would ride my bicycle or sometimes my skateboard across town, across small town, but nevertheless a town through the middle of town. And I would go to play with my best friend, Jason Wallace. And as I was running out the door to get my bicycle, my mom would yell, don't talk to strangers. I cannot imagine my daughters doing that right now, just going out with me, not saying don't talk to strangers. But the leaders of the church in some ways should be different. They're going to be the ones that engage the stranger. Can also be translated a lover of strangers. In the church, to be sure, but it's also outside of the church, the leaders of the church are the ones that stop on the side of the road for those who've been robbed and beaten and stripped and left for dead, like in Luke chapter 10. The leaders of the church are the ones that see the least of these and they give and they care for the least of these, like we read earlier in Matthew 25. The leaders of the church are the ones that when they give a feast or they give a banquet, they invite the poor and the crippled and the blind and the lame, like in Luke 14. When the leaders of the church are friends of strangers, they tangibly love like Jesus. And where the head goes, the body follows. How do we know that the body follows? Well, you go to 1 Timothy chapter 5 verse 10. I want to read that for us. 1 Timothy 5 verse 10 says this. Well, let's start in nine. Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than 60 years of age, having been the wife of one husband, and having a reputation for good works. If she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work. The apostle Paul is holding up this widow that is to be honored. among the congregation. And one of the good works that he mentions is that this widow has shown hospitality. She has welcomed the stranger. This godly widow is someone that we look up to, to honor, and we aspire to be like her someday. I think this is the case that he talks about a widow because a widow knows what it's like to be alone. A widow knows what it's like to be on the outside. A stranger is someone is on the outside. A stranger is someone waiting to be welcomed in. The next place we'll go to is 1 Peter 4, verse 9. If you want to turn there, we're going to read 1 Peter 4, 8 through 10. The Bible here says, again, simply, show hospitality. But let's read 8 through 10. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling." Ooh. The context here is stewarding God's gifts of grace. Hospitality is a stewardship issue for us, which makes it a discipleship issue for us. Which means in some cases, if not many cases, this is a discipleship thing that people just don't know about. And maybe they haven't been doing it, or they just simply don't know how to. It's a discipleship issue, but at the same time, it's something that we can grow in. That's the idea, to grow in grace. That's the whole message of living in grace, is to grow in grace. That's why verse eight is so important. First, in the church, we're called to love one another. And then second, we're called to show hospitality as a tangible expression of that love for one another. Hospitality is the practical outworking of love your neighbor as yourself. Many years ago, there was a young man that was highly involved in the youth ministry back when I was a youth pastor. Not so much involved in the church at large, but very involved on our Wednesday night gatherings, all the retreats, he came to all that stuff. And so I began to spend some time with this guy. And I'll just simply say he fell on some really hard times. And through a series of events, he found himself homeless, And so when we found that out, Katie and I really had a decision to make. We could have just told him to get it together and get a job, or we could invite him to move in with us and help him find a job. Now, you need to know that this is not me. I'm not the compassionate one in our family. Katie is much more compassionate than I am. But the second thing was that there was a guy named Will Witherington in my life when I was in college that did the same thing to me. Will didn't actually invite me to live with him because I wasn't homeless, but he did give me a key to his apartment. I was not a believer. And I was spending some time with him. He was spending time with me. I couldn't shake him. But I was also the president of fraternity at that time, living in the fraternity house. And he said, if you ever need to get away, here's the key to my apartment. You can come hang out. You can come study. You can come over and you can eat. You can just come and be here. Side note. A few weeks after him giving me a key to his apartment, God gave me a brand new heart because Will Witherington continued to share his life with me and the gospel, and I became a Christian after that. Now, I wish I could say the same for the guy that moved in with us, but I can't. I did later lead him to Christ, but that was after we had to kick him out of our house because he wore out his welcome. He ate most of our food, he didn't get a job, and he stayed on the couch most of the day until about noon after we would go to work. Now, I tell you all this because we need to see that showing hospitality is the practical outworking of loving another. It's the flesh and blood of loving another. Is it hard? Almost always. Are we still gonna get hurt in the midst of it? Are we gonna get taken advantage of? Probably, most likely. But are we called to show hospitality? Absolutely. The scripture says so. In fact, Peter throws something in here extra, just a little bit more measure here for us to be a little bit more convicted, and he says, do it without complaining. So when somebody comes in and eats all your food and sleeps on your couch, do it without complaining. When aspects of our discipleship are transformed from duty to delight, that's when grace is making an impact in our lives. So let's move on to our text, Romans 12, 13. So we've seen hospitality as a leadership issue, it's a stewardship issue, and now we're gonna see that it's something that we need to be very intentional about. The reception of grace requires intentionality. Romans 12 says, contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. There's an additional emphasis in this text that is very helpful for us, namely, hospitality is something that we need to pursue. We seek after it. Another possible translation is to devote ourselves to showing hospitality. It's intentional pursuit. But that's just like many other things in the Christian life as well. When the Apostle Paul and the Apostle Peter are writing these letters, they're encouraging New Testament Christians to be a friend to strangers. But they were very real needs that were to be met. During this time period, there weren't really any hotels, there weren't motels, there weren't Airbnbs. These places were scarcely available, but when they were available, they were quite dangerous. And in some cases, several cases, they were more like brothels to stay in, and Christians didn't want to stay in those places. Additionally, the Christians that needed to travel, whether it's work or missionary service or because of persecution, they were very poor in general. And so providing a place for these people to stay, shelter, warmth, food, these were all very real needs for Christians. It was not someone with an abundance inviting someone else with an abundance over for a night of abundance. It wasn't that. being more true to the biblical picture was hospitality, was God's people meeting the needs of God's people. Now, don't get me wrong. Hospitality can be friends inviting their friends over. But the biblical picture is meeting the needs of God's people. Jesus says it's like the friend that wakes you up at midnight after he keeps knocking and knocking because he needs bread. Well, hospitality wakes up at midnight and provides whatever's needed. Also in this context, we're gonna see, or we see, there are individual spiritual gifts that are given to God's people, but hospitality is part of the Christian life that all Christians need to pursue. So Romans 12, verses six through eight, those are individual gifts given to God's people. But verses nine through 21, those are things that all Christians are called to do, meaning, Those of us, if you're like me, who we're not hospitable, really, we need to seek it. We need to pursue it. We need to be intentional about showing hospitality. In other words, if you want to grow in prayer, what do you do? You devote yourselves to praying. If you want to grow in giving, what do you do? You give. You devote yourselves to giving. If you want to grow in your walk with the Lord, you devote yourselves to hospitality. You open your home. If you want to grow in evangelism, open up your home. If you want to grow in compassion, open up your home. If you want to grow in loving others, open up your home. If you want to grow in grace, open up your home. Hospitality is the act of receiving people gracefully and it will change everyone involved. Many of you have probably seen the movie, The Blind Side. I love the movie, The Blind Side. I know there's some issues with that that have come out recently, but the movie itself, I think, is excellent. It's the true story, if you're not familiar, it's the true story of Michael Orr, who was a professional football player, and basically how he grew up without a family, in and out of foster care, and how the Toohey family basically took him in and they cared for him. And it goes through the whole story of how he went from homeless to a home and then on to play professional football. But one scene in particular that I love is when Leanne Toohey is at this really fancy restaurant with her friends and they're all eating overpriced salads together. And her friends, her snooty friends are making fun of her. Because at this time, Michael had been living with their family for a while, and so they're kind of making fun of her and making fun of him. And she says to them, she actually calls them out, and she says, you don't have to approve my decisions, but you have to respect them. And then one of her friends says to her, somewhat fake, but she says, what Leanne and her family are doing. Oh, that's a great thing. She says, Leanne, you're changing that boy's life. And Leanne says back to her, no, he's changing mine. That's what hospitality does. It changes the lives of everyone involved. If you want to grow in grace in the Christian life, seek to show hospitality to those who are truly in need. The last place we'll look this morning is Hebrews 13.2. We want to read through verses 1 and 2 real quick. Hebrews is the book in the Bible that in many ways can be likened to a student who's in class and that student's kind of fallen asleep and the teacher snaps and says, hey, pay attention. Pay attention. This passage reinforces what Peter wrote. Keep loving one another earnestly, but show hospitality to one another. The writer of Hebrews, this is the last chapter, and he's finishing off this letter that he's written to the church. He's given some very specific words of application, and he says, just like Peter, love one another and seek to show hospitality. Pay attention. Don't neglect it. Because love with hands and feet is opening your life and opening your home and opening your resources to the stranger, opening yourself to the stranger. But we also see here that the stranger could be an angel or even Jesus himself. Jesus said, and we read it earlier, as you did it to one of the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you did it to me. A few years ago, I went to a breakfast for pastors that was hosted by Good News at Noon. And if you're not familiar with Good News at Noon, it's a homeless shelter in Gainesville. I'm going to go to another breakfast for pastors on January the 17th. But Ken Gossage, who many of you know, he used to be a member here at Chestnut Mountain. He was in my Sunday school class. He's now the executive director of Good News at Noon. And he invited me to come to this breakfast years ago. Our church has really been involved with Good News at Noon on and off for a really long time, and many of you even serve there. And if you don't serve there, I encourage you to go. You can talk to Jake Brazelton, go and serve there with him and others. But Ken Gossage invited me to this breakfast, and while we were there, this presentation that they had all centered around the question, who is my neighbor? The whole presentation was on that. And I don't think I have to tell you, but I will. Jesus was asked the same question, who is my neighbor? Without going into all the details, Jesus shared a story that very clearly showed who the good neighbor was, the good Samaritan. A man was robbed and beaten and left for dead on the side of the road. A priest walked by on the other side, showed no mercy. A Levite walked by on the other side of the road, showed no mercy. But then a Samaritan saw the man as he was walking by. He should have never stopped, but he did, and he cared for the man extensively. The Samaritan saw him, he stopped what he was doing, and he extended hospitality to his neighbor. So I think for us as a church, instead of asking the question, who is my neighbor, in order to justify ourselves, I think it's better to ask the question for CNPC, how can we be a good neighbor to our community? Said in another way, how can we open our doors and extend hospitality to our neighbors? Because unless we're looking for these neighbors, we will miss them. because most of our neighbors that need help are invisible to us if we're not looking for them. We cannot receive people gracefully if we don't see them. So I agree with the writer of Hebrews, pay attention, don't neglect to show hospitality. So I think as we've gone through these passages, there's a slight progression here. And I hope you see it too. Leaders, be hospitable. Seek to be hospitable. In fact, everyone in the church, show hospitality. Even more so, seek to or be intentional in showing hospitality. Devote yourselves to hospitality. And then finally, when you begin to slumber, pay attention. Don't neglect it. Show hospitality. I wanna close our time this morning with one of, this is really one of my favorite stories, and I shared this with you before. It was almost 10 years ago, so you probably don't remember, but it's one of those stories that's worth sharing again. It's a true story from Philip Yancey, and it happened in the summer of 1990 in downtown Boston. There was a couple that was going to be married, and they were gonna go have a wedding banquet in downtown Boston. They went to the place where they were gonna have the banquet and they poured over the menu, they selected the menu, they selected the flowers, they selected all the china. And they both had really expensive tastes as they were setting all the details of the banquet. And so the bill was quite expensive. It was $13,000 for this banquet. And so they put down half of that as a deposit and they left and they went to continue making preparations for their wedding. Well, the day the wedding invitations were supposed to go out, the groom got cold feet and he decided not to be married. And he walked away. He said it was just such a big commitment. The bride that was to be was devastated. She was angry at the same time. And she returned to the Hyatt the next day to cancel the banquet. And the events manager was very sympathetic. He understood. But really, business is business. And if she were to cancel, she was only going to get back 10% of the deposit. So she had to make a decision. Should she take the 10% deposit and lose a lot of money? Or should she have the banquet anyway? She decided to have the banquet anyway. But she did it this way. See, 10 years before, she used to be homeless, and she lived in a shelter in downtown Boston, and she was among the down and out at that time. She decided to host a great banquet for those who had never been invited to something like this before. And this is how the Boston Globe described it. In June of 1990, the Hyatt Hotel in downtown Boston hosted a party such as it had never seen before. The hostess changed the menu to boneless chicken in honor of the groom. Took you guys a second. She sent the invitations to rescue missions and homeless shelters, and that warm summer night, people who were used to peeling Half-gnawed pizza off the cardboard, dined instead on chicken cordon bleu. Waiters and waitresses in tuxedos served hors d'oeuvres to senior citizens propped up by crutches and aluminum walkers. Bag ladies, vagrants, and addicts took one night off from the hard life on the sidewalks outside, and instead they sipped champagne, ate chocolate wedding cake, and danced to big band melodies late into the night. And I think that's an incredible picture of grace. It's an incredible picture of hospitality. My question is, where do you find yourself in that story? I know who I am. I'm the down and out bum who didn't deserve to get invited to the banquet, but I got invited anyway. I'm the one who's been given grace and I want to extend grace to others. I'm the one who was welcomed in. and I wanna welcome in others. Where do you find yourself in that story? Let's pray. Our gracious Heavenly Father, we pause now to just give you thanks. We thank you that you have extended the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ to us. And Father, it's changed our lives. And we want to be the ones that extend grace to others. So help us to do that. We know it's not easy. We know we'll struggle along the way. But Lord, I pray that you would help us to struggle together as your church here in this community on how we can open our doors and extend hospitality to our neighbors. Help us to understand how to do that, we pray. And when we fail, turn us back to grace once again, over and over and over again, we pray. And Father, if there is by chance someone here who hasn't experienced the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, would you do what only you can do and draw them to yourself, I pray. May today be the day that they fall in love with you. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.