In my daily bible reading I've been in Hebrews my what a fantastic read. So much to help in my walk with Christ. Today I want to talk about 13:1
"Let brotherly love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entrained angels unawares." Heb. 13:1 esv
Have you ever ran into someone who you didn't know, that needed help, may have seen that was having a bad day, needed a tire changed, was homeless, or just seemed like they were struggling. This may have been an angel and you didn't know it. Angels are among us here on earth. They walk around even though we don't know it, they don't show their true selves because it would frighten us. For purposes of what we're talking about today I'm going to keep it pretty simple, this is actually a deeper subject that down the road we'll get into.
This verse is pretty straight forward. We are called as Christians to show hospitality to be generous with others. Even Jesus told us that as we do unto others we do unto Him. Matthew 22:39, "And a second is like it: love your neighbor as yourself." But we need to stop for a second and look at the verse before, v. 37-38 says "And He said to him, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. v. 38 This is the great and first commandment." This is the number one thing that we as Christians are supposed to do to love God with our whole heart. That's the number one thing nothing else matters if we don't do that, but Jesus follows up with the second, love your neighbor as ourselves. We all love ourselves right? It's pretty easy to do. I make sure I'm fed, have clean clothing, get what I need first. If we love God won't we be more likely to serve others? I would venture to guess that if we do truly love God we want to follow His commands. Who is your neighbor? Dictionary.com defines neighbor as: "a person who lives near another. a person or thing that is near another. one's fellow human being"...it's those next to us whether we know them or not, so when Jesus said to love your neighbor it means those who are near us, down the street, in our town/city, next door to our home.
The point of our focus verse is not that we should just show hospitality to someone because they could be an angel but that we should show people hosptialty because Jesus called us to show love regardless of whether they are an angel or not. In doing that we show the love of Christ. Our witness is less about our words and more about our actions.
~Blessings
Nick
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