Those first two words right at the beginning of our reading from Hebrews are tough! “Keep on…” I don’t know about you, but it feels as if one of the lingering symptoms of the pandemic is the simple struggle to just “keep on.” While churches have certainly been hit by that reality, I don’t think the struggle to “keep on” is by any means limited to just matters of faith and religion. It spills over into all areas of life.
It’s hard to “keep on” at work, where pandemic policies have bounced all over the place like a ping-pong ball. Companies are still trying to balance in-person vs. remote work schedules. Co-workers have quit or been let go, and often times those remaining have been expected to pick up the slack and do more without any additional help or any bump in compensation.
Students find it a challenge to “keep on” as classrooms have become classrooms again instead of zooms and sports and extracurriculars have been restored and student interaction and peer pressures all add up.
Even socializing is hard to “keep on,” as we realize that, like it or not, we had gotten used to an unprecedented level of isolation in our lives. Now our social lives are a tug-of-war between being able to socialize while also maybe yearning just a little bit for the days when we had the easy out of not having to make that decision because we just had to stay at home.
And we haven’t even gotten to the part after the “keep on” yet, which is where it gets really fun! Look what follows: “keep on… loving one another as brothers and sisters” (v.1). It’s hard enough just to keep on, and now it’s gotten exponentially more difficult if the thing we’re called to “keep on” is loving one another!
As if the writer to the Hebrews anticipated this challenge for us, he spelled out a couple of concrete ways we can love others. Show hospitality to strangers. Remember those who are in prison. Honor husbands, wives, and single people by the way we respect his gifts of marriage and sex.
These encouragements would have been uniquely challenging at the time this letter was originally written. When the church was under heavy persecution, there would have understandably been a reluctance to show hospitality to strangers, for fear that any stranger you could entertain may very well have been someone looking to turn you in for your Christian faith. Remembering those who were imprisoned simply for being Christians would have clearly associated you with Christianity, so why risk it? In other words, for Christians, back then their reasonable fear of being hospitable or caring for the imprisoned was based on a legitimate concern. If keeping on loving one another in the ways the writer describes wasn’t being done, at least they had an excuse.
But today, at least here in America, Christians aren’t under anywhere near that same type of persecution. We have no reason to worry about being turned in for showing hospitably to a stranger. So why don’t we? There’s no reason we can’t be more compassionate to those in prison. So why aren’t we? There’s no reason we can’t show higher regard than our culture does for God’s gifts of marriage and sex. So why don’t we?
I’m well aware you’ve got more than enough ammunition in your mind to offer in defense of why we aren’t doing these things more often – because I do, too. Our sinful nature specializes in doing that. But if you were to offer up those defenses to God as excuses for not keeping on loving others in the ways described, do you suppose he’d buy any of them? Not likely. So let’s just be honest about our selfishness, our inclination to love ourselves more than we love others, confess it to God, and start working on it.
Because the writer isn’t done yet. There’s still a significant “danger” sign we have to watch out for. As difficult as it is to keep on loving one another, there’s more. The writer hits on what is often a touchy topic that we might be inclined to think has the ability to solve all of our problems. Or, at least it can provide us with a little distraction from them.
What would make us forget about things for a little while? How about a little bit of money? Wouldn’t that do the trick? Doesn’t that always do the trick? Does a little bit more of that ever hurt?
Unfortunately, the writer to the Hebrews brings up money, not as a solution or a possible escape, but rather as something that has the potential to cause even more problems. So just as important as that we DO keep on loving one another is the warning that we DO NOT love money. “Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have” (v.5). Earlier this week I came across the story of a man whose downfall validated the concern of loving money too much.
One thing I can appreciate about Hansie Cronje, the man from that story? His honesty. Most of us are so good at disguising our love of money that we even fool ourselves! I hit on this in my last post by emphasizing that it’s often what we associate with money that we love, so we don’t even realize the problem, whether it’s security, status, or stuff, to name a few. We think that money is the means to those and so much more. And indeed it can certainly appear that way… for this life.
But what “matters” in this life doesn’t in the next. You’ve probably seen the images of a hearse loaded down with stuff piled on top of it while also pulling a Uhaul behind it. The reason it’s humorous of course is that it won’t ever happen. We don’t take anything we’ve accumulated in this life with us to the next. In fact, the one sure thing that you can count on is that everything you have to your name right now will someday belong to someone else.
What a sobering reminder that is to us that it was actually never ours in the first place, but rather the gracious God who entrusted it to us for a time to manage. Not only that, but no amount of money can ever buy the stuff that matters. Peace. Forgiveness. Unconditional love. Eternal life.
Do you know why these can’t be bought? Because they’ve already been purchased. They’re already paid for. What matters for the next life, which then by extension also matters greatly for this life, has already been bought and freely doled out through faith in Jesus Christ. We cannot buy it because God insists on giving it out freely through Jesus Christ. Faith in Jesus means that his selflessly obedient life and innocent death have been traded in for my selfishness and misplaced focus on so many things in this life that simply don’t matter.
Along with that faith comes a powerful set of promises that the writer to the Hebrews tapped into at the end of verse 5 and in verse 6: “‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.’ So we say with confidence, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?’”
There is something that matters, both for this life and the next! A blood-backed promise from the One who gave himself for us. He promises that no fear of abandonment, desertion, or loneliness ever needs to fill the hearts of those who are his. He promises that whatever help we need, he is by our side to offer.
These promises provide us with a real freedom, for they mean that we don’t have to look to something like money to provide us with the security we already have in Jesus. When I know that, verse five starts to make more sense. I don’t need money to provide what Jesus already does, and so contentment becomes a very real thing. And along with the blessing of contentment comes a healthy and fulfilling relationship with money. It no longer manages us, always deceiving us with the bottomless lie that just a little bit more would make everything better. Instead, we manage it, and start to see the amazing impact God can make in other people’s lives with it.
Contentment allows us to start to see God’s gift of money as a resource that enables us to excel at focusing on what the first four verses called us to do: keep on loving one another. What would it look like to have a line item in your personal budget set aside for those things? “We have this much set aside for hospitality, for opening up our home to others for dinner or game night a couple of times this month.” “We have this much set aside to support a jail ministry or simply be a blessing to the needy this month.” “We have this much set aside to prioritize a weekend marriage retreat or to sponsor a young couple who would be blessed by the opportunity to give attention to strengthening their marriage.”
See the good God can do through us! His generous promises to us in Christ Jesus, promises that have already been bought and paid for by him, free us in a way that no amount of money ever could. Then we can find real fulfillment in life, not in the burden of keeping on loving others, but in the joy of it.