God clearly shows amazing hospitality towards us from Genesis through Revelation, and yet we rejected Jesus, and we continue to reject countless others day by day. We have a superiority issue that Jesus confronted throughout his ministry, and he taught us to live a better way. It’s time for us to learn and practice some genuine hospitality!
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Choosing Hospitality
• Seth McCoy
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The “Throughline” that we’ve been talking about in this series is God’s love – we should do nothing that doesn’t look like God’s love. Because we believe in a Jesus-looking God, we should be a Jesus-looking Church full of Jesus-looking people. But how are we going to carry that out?
One important practice that followers of Jesus need to develop (and one that churches like ours don’t often do well) is hospitality. We’ll define hospitality as “making space for someone when you don’t have to”.
The Bible begins with hospitality, as God created a place for us even though he didn’t have to. He made the universe, a planet, a garden – then he put us in the garden and invited us into his family. The Bible also ends with hospitality – with Jesus going to prepare a place for us, and in the book of Revelation God is building a house with many rooms for us, even though he doesn’t have to.
We certainly haven’t done anything to deserve to be in God’s family, or to deserve to have God bring us home to live with him forever – but God practices hospitality by loving us and honoring us even though he doesn’t have to. It’s heartbreaking to see that between those two Biblical narratives about God’s hospitality, we read the story of Mary and Joseph – Jesus’ parents who, despite her being pregnant and ready to give birth, not one single person welcomed into their home. Is that how we thank God for his hospitality to us?!
During Jesus’ ministry, he often confronted humanity’s “disease” of superiority. Imagine Jesus – God in the flesh coming to serve us – seeing us flawed and judgmental people constantly putting others down, taking the best seats for ourselves, and so on… So Jesus told lots of “anti-superiority” stories – like “The Good Samaritan”, where a man that the people looked down on practiced loving hospitality when even a Priest did not. And “The Woman at the Well” tells of Jesus practicing hospitality with a woman who clearly held the lowest of standings even among her own people, who themselves were often seen as subhuman. Jesus rejected his cultural norms and risked even his own life to show hospitality to people who didn’t deserve it.
In fact, God does that with all of us, doesn’t he?! How many of us deserve the gracious hospitality that God continues to offer all of us year after year? As soon as we meet someone who we think doesn’t deserve our gracious hospitality, we would do well to remember how God treats us…
Recent Pew research shows that young people are leaving the church in record numbers, and most churches are trying to figure out how to keep them in the church. Seth came across an article recently that said there are 2 ways to keep sheep in a pen – fence them in, or dig a well. Seth suggests that most churches are trying to fence people in, and suggests that we get intentional about digging a well so that people who come here can drink living water. We also must practice hospitality, like scooting in to give others the better seat – and not just the people who can give us something in return, but anyone and everyone we meet. To be a Jesus-looking church, we must treat others like God treats us!
Hide Extended SummaryTopics: Love, Relationships, Sacrifice
Sermon Series: Throughline
Downloads & Resources
Focus Scripture:
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James 2:1-4
2 My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? 2 For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, 3 and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,” 4 have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?
5 thoughts on “Choosing Hospitality”
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Hi folks,
We’ve got the video mostly figured out! We still have to work on embedding it on the blog (above), but you can watch this week’s video by going to the Sermon Downloads page, right-clicking “High Quality MP4,” and downloading it to your computer. You can also stream it by just clicking the link if you use Chrome as your browser.
Thanks for your patience.
Connor
Your high quality is still only coming out as 360p which is really low quality. Is this the finished resolution your new uploads will be at, because it’s the same as before?
this one plays great on mp4 but i’m a week behind and still want to see Greg’s last message before i see this one, please; it can be low rez flv or wmv; i don’t care. thanks
What’s that annoying beat in background of the soundtrack? Very distracting, adds nothing, detracts from the audio.
Get Off My Lawn,
I’d have to agree there; that music doesn’t make them anymore cool and trendy than they already are – Ha!
But I gotta get me one of those groovy chairs though – IKEA?
“Not in My Back Yard!”