Text:\u00a0 Hebrews 13: 1-8<\/p>\n
I was doing some pre-marital counseling the other day in Windsor.\u00a0 We were talking about communication, which is so vital in a marriage.\u00a0 Two words came to mind.\u00a0 Never and always. \u00a0Two words that can be so unfair when dealing with one another.\u00a0 You never do this\u2026 You always forget.<\/i>\u00a0 That\u2019s rarely true.<\/p>\n
Then there are the good things we promise each other.\u00a0 I\u2019ll always be there for you.\u00a0 I\u2019ll never let you down.<\/i>\u00a0 But even our best intentions can fall through the cracks of life.\u00a0 A young person loses his mom or dad in a car accident.\u00a0 Our best friend has to move away.\u00a0 Our high school sweetheart finds another.\u00a0 What happened to that always, to that never, we thought we could count on?<\/p>\n
Yet there is One we can count on absolutely, without exception.\u00a0 This letter to the Hebrews is about Him.\u00a0 Jesus\u00a0 Christ<\/p>\n
Jesus Christ, ALWAYS my Lord and Savior
\n<\/b>I.\u00a0 Trust him with your eternity
\nII.\u00a0 Live now as one of his people<\/b><\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever<\/span>.\u00a0 You know sometimes, the same gets old.\u00a0 The same breakfast cereal.\u00a0 The same routine day after day.\u00a0 The same can get boring.\u00a0 But think of what the same<\/b> Jesus Christ means for you.<\/p>\n Think of his cross. The wood of that cross has long since rotted away, but not what Jesus did for you there.\u00a0 In chapter 7, we read:\u00a0 He sacrificed for their sins (our sins) once for all when he offered himself<\/span>.\u00a0 Did you hear that blessed sameness?\u00a0 Once for all.\u00a0 All of us, every one of us.\u00a0 Once for all.\u00a0 All the stupid, thoughtless, ugly things we have said or done.\u00a0 All the love we have failed to give.\u00a0 He paid the price for always.\u00a0 So there is never a time that we cannot come to God in repentance and know our sins are forgiven.\u00a0 For Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever<\/span>.<\/p>\n That goes for his promises.\u00a0 His always. Surely I will be with you always.<\/span>\u00a0 Or His never, the promise here in this Word:\u00a0 \u201cNever will I leave you; never will I forsake you.\u201d<\/span> \u00a0\u00a0No matter how things seem in your life, no matter how they feel, you can count on that always.\u00a0 You can count on that never.\u00a0 Not just today, not just tomorrow and not just until we breath our last.\u00a0 For what is Jesus\u2019 promise to you?\u00a0 Your risen Savior promises this:\u00a0 Because I live, you also will live<\/span>.\u00a0 So trust him not just for today of tomorrow.\u00a0 Trust him all the way.\u00a0 Trust him with your eternity<\/b>.\u00a0 For Jesus is the same yesterday and today and forever.\u00a0 He is ALWAYS my Lord and Savior. <\/b><\/p>\n There are those who encourage us to remember that.\u00a0 We all need them. Maybe our mom or dad or a Christian friend. \u00a0Here we think of pastors and leaders who display that confidence.\u00a0 7<\/sup>Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith<\/span>.<\/p>\n Years ago I traveled to Texas for one of our member families.\u00a0 A wife and mother had to have a liver transplant.\u00a0 There were complications.\u00a0 So I went to be with them.\u00a0 Up till then another pastor had been visiting her who served in Texas.\u00a0 This was a man who had come to Texas with a heart problem.\u00a0 I was so impressed by his faithful visits,I had to tell him.\u00a0 He said this:\u00a0 I would do anything for my Savior.<\/i>\u00a0 He knew him and wanted you to know him.\u00a0 Jesus Christ, always his Lord and Savior.\u00a0 Here the Word encourages us.\u00a0 Remember leaders like that.\u00a0 Imitate their faith in Christ.\u00a0 And like them:\u00a0 Trust Jesus with your eternity.<\/b><\/p>\n But more than that.\u00a0 The fact that Jesus does not change, has something to say about my life here and now.\u00a0 What do I mean?\u00a0 Jesus Christ, always my Lord and Savior calls for me to be different.\u00a0 That I live now as one of his people<\/b>.<\/p>\n There are times when we Christians can get on each other\u2019s nerves.\u00a0 We disappoint each other.\u00a0 We may hurt someone\u2019s feelings.\u00a0 That can always happen when one sinner rubs up against another.<\/p>\n Yet there is no excuse for nastiness or playing favorites.\u00a0 There is no excuse for holding grudges.\u00a0 We are brothers and sisters in Christ.\u00a0 We are family.\u00a0 That calls for kindness.\u00a0 It calls for this at the very beginning of our text: Keep on loving each other as brothers<\/span>.<\/p>\n That goes for the stranger too.\u00a0 These Christians were suffering persecution.\u00a0 If a stranger came among them, the couldn\u2019t be sure if he was a believer chased out of town or someone looking to turn them in to the authorities.\u00a0 So the temptation was to hold them at arm\u2019s length and keep your distance.<\/p>\n We don\u2019t have that fear in our country but we do have strangers come among us.\u00a0 They may speak another language or have a different skin color. \u00a0So we too may be tempted to keep our distance.\u00a0 They\u2019re not one of us.<\/p>\n But our Lord calls for something different.\u00a0 Kindness to strangers.\u00a0 In fact he tells us that stranger may be more than we realize.\u00a0 2\u00a0<\/sup>Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.<\/span>\u00a0 So Christian, when it comes to those we do not know, let kindness be the rule of the day.<\/p>\n Then think about persecuted Christians.\u00a0 What picture comes to mind?\u00a0 We may think of the Roman coliseum long ago.\u00a0 But think again.\u00a0 Think of a woman in Pakistan under a death sentence because she drank from a Muslim well.\u00a0 Think of the Coptic Christians in Egypt.\u00a0 They may not be prisoners in a jail.\u00a0 But some are prisoners in their own neighborhoods living under threat of kidnapping or death.<\/p>\n Live now as one of Christ\u2019s people.<\/b>\u00a0 Keep them in your prayers. For the prayer of God\u2019s believing people is powerful and effective.\u00a0 Give to organizations that can help them.\u00a0 Write your congressman about them.\u00a0 Talk about their plight.\u00a0 3\u00a0<\/sup>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.<\/span><\/p>\n Someone once said, everything changes but nothing changes.\u00a0 We might say that about God\u2019s gift of sex and marriage.\u00a0 We live in a day much like these believers.\u00a0 Sex and marriage are treated in ways God never intended.\u00a0 Perversion fills the internet and is paraded before us on TV.\u00a0 And the results are quite predictable.\u00a0 Broken\u00a0 homes, broken hearts, broken lives.<\/p>\n Of course, we look around and might conclude.\u00a0 Everybody\u2019s doing it.<\/i>\u00a0 Moving in with their boyfriend or girlfriend.\u00a0 Going into marriage like a trial period and then tossing their spouse away into the recycling bin.\u00a0 Bringing kids into fatherless homes.<\/p>\n It might seem like everybody\u2019s doing it.\u00a0 But even if it is, you are not an everybody.\u00a0 You are a somebody, a somebody redeemed by the blood of God\u2019s own Son shed for you.\u00a0 You are a somebody that the Holy Spirit has chosen to make his home.<\/p>\n So you are not to be one of this world\u2019s every bodies.\u00a0 For Jesus has not changed.\u00a0 Our Lord\u2019s will for us, his plan to bless us has not changed. And so too his warning to those who trash his gifts, whether married or single.\u00a0 4\u00a0<\/sup>Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral.<\/span> Live now as one of Christ\u2019s people. <\/b><\/p>\n Then finally let\u2019s talk about a real danger for us who live in this materialistic society.\u00a0 But also a real opportunity that is ours in Christ.\u00a0 5\u00a0<\/sup>Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have,<\/span>\u2026 I once knew a man.\u00a0 He was a Christian man who wracked his life and others because he let money fill his heart. He ruined one man\u2019s plumbing business.\u00a0 He embezzled the life saving of an elderly woman.\u00a0 He went to jail for what he did.<\/p>\n For you see, money is a good thing.\u00a0 It is a gift of God that we can use to do so much good.\u00a0 A young man went to Bible camp because people gave of their money.\u00a0 Karen and I got to buy a house because my father left us some money.\u00a0 Money is a gift of God.\u00a0 But the love of it is an ugly thing.\u00a0 And you know the worst of it.\u00a0 What happened to that man\u2019s heart.\u00a0 His love for money took Jesus\u2019 place.<\/p>\n You see, he lost sight of what all of us can know.\u00a0 Some of us have more.\u00a0 Some of us have less.\u00a0 Some of these Christians had their homes taken away from them.\u00a0 Yet the Lord who created us promises us this:\u00a0 Never will I leave you or forsake you.<\/span>\u00a0 So the river may rise and flood my living room. The ground may shake our house down to its foundation.\u00a0 Someone may find a way to steal our identity and empty our bank account.\u00a0 But we are not alone to fend for ourselves.\u00a0 We have Jesus Christ, always our Lord and Savior.<\/b>\u00a0 And with Him, we can be content. We can live now as one of his people.<\/b>\u00a0 For he gives us the right to say with confidence:\u00a0 the Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s a good always.\u00a0 That\u2019s a great never.\u00a0 My Lord who bled and died for me and rose again is always a prayer away.\u00a0 My Lord who set me free from guilt and death will never let anything steal me away from his love.\u00a0 So yes there are times when I am afraid.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t have to be.\u00a0 And why?\u00a0 Jesus Christ.\u00a0 Jesus Christ, always my Lord and Savior.\u00a0 How blessed you are!\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Text:\u00a0 Hebrews 13: 1-8 I was doing some pre-marital counseling the other day in Windsor.\u00a0 We were talking about communication, which is so vital in a marriage.\u00a0 Two words came to mind.\u00a0 Never and always. \u00a0Two words that can be so unfair when dealing with one another.\u00a0 You never do this\u2026 You always forget.\u00a0 That\u2019s rarely true. 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