Entertaining Angels

13 Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. ² Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. ³ Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.

⁴ Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. ⁵ Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said,

“Never will I leave you;
    never will I forsake you.”

⁶ So we say with confidence,

“The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid.
    What can mere mortals do to me?”

⁷ Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith. ⁸ Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

¹⁵ Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name. ¹⁶ And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.

One of the greatest joys of this life is doing something for someone without expecting anything in return and that person greatly appreciated what you did.  More often than not, the person whom you helped will return the favor in some way, shape or form.  It may not always be obvious to us how that favor will be returned but it is.  But does that make it ok to expect something in return.  Our scripture this morning would say no.  When we praise God, we should do so without expecting anything in return.  When I was more naive in my faith, I would make “deals” with God.  For example, if God would help me get out of a bad situation then I would say that I would go to church or read my Bible more often.  So when God would somehow help me in that situation, I would hardly ever keep my end of the “deal” for very long and justify my actions by taking credit away from God.  To some extent, I still do this today.  I no longer make those types of deals but it seems that I find myself praying to God for a certain outcome and when that outcome happens, I do my best to give the credit somewhere else.  Yet when the desired result does not happen, it is so easy to blame God.  So why does God receive our stress and displeasure when we don’t get the results we want but gets no credit when we do?  The true maturity of our faith is based on seeing God whether or not we see  the desired results we so desperately wanted.  When we get to the point of knowing that God always has our faith in mind as He works in our lives.  Our scripture this morning reminds us that God will not leave us and He will not forsake us.  

Our faith is a battle and we must approach it as such.  It is more of a battle of self than it is other elements.  We must prepare ourselves each and every day for this battle.  Will you decide to watch an extra half hour of tv or read scripture?  Will you help the elderly woman with her groceries or hurry back to your car to get the air conditioner turned on?  Will you help a child or widow in need or buy something for yourself.  No one knows when you are faced with such decisions, only you and God.  So when you choose not to help, it only affects you because no one else knows what you “could have” done.  But imagine the good that could be done if each of made a decision every day to help someone in some small way while expecting nothing in return.  The only person whom it affects may be you but by helping those in need, you are praising God.  Imitation is the highest form of flattery and when we help someone, we are imitating Christ.  We must actively decide that we are going to pursue a likeness of Christ in all that we do.  Are we going to help that elderly woman or that child?  Those are decisions we must think about and we should ultimately come to the point where those aren’t decisions, they just happen.  

When we think of praising or worshipping God we often think of the time we spend here on Sundays or the reading of scriptures and prayers we make a part of week.  But we can praise God through those decisions that I have already mentioned.  Every move we make, every breath we take should be a praise to God.  God’s glory should shine through us in all that we do.  This is very easy to say and it is a great goal to have but how do we get there?  The answer is that you must have a plan.  When Cheyanne and I decided to take control of our finances instead of them controlling us, the first thing we learned was to take control by creating a plan.  We are going to battle with our finances and to do so we need a battle plan.  When we go into battle with our faith, we need to have a plan.  We need to decide how we can best imitate Christ, we need to read his word, we need to surround ourselves with people who will help us in our battle and we need to train.  God sent his son His son to walk with us and to die for us, therefore He sacrificed much so we could live.  And we too must practice sacrifice in our imitation of Christ and our scripture reminds us that these sacrifices are pleasing to God.  In baseball, there is a play called a “sacrifice.”  This is when the batter chooses to bunt, pretty much forfeiting their chance to get to first just move the base-runner ahead to the next base.  We should think of our sacrifices in this sense, we give up something of ours whether it be money, time, or labor to help someone else out so they can keep moving forward.  Christ sacrificed for us so we could keep moving closer to God and we are called to do the same, we are called to sacrifice so others can also move closer to God.  When we speak of sacrifice, it seems like something that is so difficult but when sacrifice becomes a fixture in our lives, it truly becomes a blessing.  Look at the sacrifices you have made for your children or grandchildren, they can seem like sacrifices initially but in the end they are blessings that we wouldn’t trade for the world.  

God has everything yet what He wants most, is only something we choose to give Him.  That gift is the gift of praise.  God wants nothing more from us than to praise Him through our words and our actions.  When your child says momma or dada, it may have been just a babble, but to you it meant the world.  God gets that same feeling from us when we call Him Father, Lord or God.  God gets that same feeling of love and pride when we choose to call upon His name just as you did when your child called upon you for the first time.  Praising God means that we have something to give back to God that will powerfully express our love to him.   

The purpose of the message of this morning was so that you could think about your relationship with Christ. How has he blessed you? Has he been there in your trials and in those moments when you have needed a rock to hold onto? Think about the story of the cross. He told you that his body was given for you, broken for your sin as an offering to God. He told you his blood was poured out as an offering to seal the new covenant of eternal life. Jesus gave us his best gift and then he promised that it was just the beginning.  

In closing, the sacrifices we make in this life may seem to be exactly that, sacrifices, but we never know when those sacrifices will turn into blessings.  Sacrificing for others may seem so mundane, like we will never get “repaid” for those actions that seem to take away from our lives but the truth is that we have already been repaid by the blood of Christ.  We never know when our opportunity will arise to entertain angels, we never know when one of our sacrifices will be what someone needed to know and see Christ in all His glory.  Don’t miss your opportunity to sacrifice for others because you are not ready for battle.  You must have your plan ready and organized and you must have your mind, heart and body trained and ready for battle.  Your faith is a battleground and you must be ready so when your opportunity to show Christ’s love to world, you will be ready.  Amen.

God Bless,

Clinton Wallace

Fairview Christian Church