Y'all would open your bibles to first Peter chapter 4. As we continue our study through first Peter. 1st Peter chapter 4, and I'll begin reading in verse 7. The end of all things is at hand. Therefore, be self controlled and sober minded for the sake of your prayers.
Joel Brooks:Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. This is the word of the Lord. Pray with me. Our father, we ask that in this moment through your spirit, you would quiet our hearts before you.
Joel Brooks:Lord, that we might listen to your word and be changed by it. Lord, we can be changed by your words because it's not just black words on white pages, but through the power of your spirit, you breathe those words into us. You write them on our hearts. We can hear Jesus speaking and transforming us. We ask that that would happen in this moment.
Joel Brooks:Lord, may my words fall to the ground and blow away, and Lord may your words remain, and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. Rosaria Butterfield in her book, The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert, She describes her life as this quote, a radical lesbian feminist professor, and she was. At the age of 36, she was already tenured as a professor at Syracuse University where she taught English and women's studies.
Joel Brooks:She was a leading voice in the lesbian and the gay community speaking at rallies, leading advocacy groups. She would openly mock Christians, thinking them to be ignorant, close minded, not to mention judging and hateful. Christians were, in her words, bad Republican or bad they were bad thinkers who voted Republican, homeschool their children, and refused to inoculate their children against diseases. They were dangerous because they made immoral choices always claiming that God was on their side. After Pat Robertson made his famous statement at the Republican National Convention claiming this, quote, feminism encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.
Joel Brooks:She thought she'd write a book about this. So she thought she would write a book about the religious right, And it was actually during her research in writing this book that God changed her life. She had just written and had published in a local newspaper a critique of the Promise Keepers Movement. And, she was receiving a bunch of letters, a lot of fan mail and a lot of hate mail, but the letters kept pouring in. And what she would do is she made 2 stacks on her desk.
Joel Brooks:One for all of the hate mail, and one for all of the fan mail. And she did this for weeks, but she got one letter from a pastor that she couldn't put in either stack. This pastor was not hateful. He was not arrogant, yet he was very firm in his convictions, and he asked some questions of her to think about. And so she said this this letter sat on her desk for an entire week, and and she was a very organized person, and she just she it drove her crazy.
Joel Brooks:She didn't know what to do with it. So finally she decided, I'm just gonna have to call this guy, and I have to call this pastor. And so she called up Pastor Ken. When she called him up, Pastor Ken was quick to invite her over for dinner. Said, come to my house.
Joel Brooks:Let me and my wife, Floyd, talk with you and you can explore those questions. I don't like to use long quotes, but let me quote you in her own words from her book. We had a nice chat on the phone and pastor Ken invited me to dinner at his house to explore some of these questions. Before we ended our phone call, almost as an afterthought, Pastor Ken also said that if I was afraid to come to some stranger's house, that he and his wife would meet me at a restaurant. I thought that was very considerate of him.
Joel Brooks:Almost chivalrous. I was comfortable with the idea of going to his house. The gay and lesbian community is also a community quote given to hospitality. I honed my hospitality gifts serving pasta to drag queens and queers, people like me. I prefer discussing matters of disagreement around a private table.
Joel Brooks:Plus, I really wanted to see how Christians lived. I had never seen such a thing, so I took him up on it. I was excited to meet a real born again Christian, and find out why he believed such silly ideas. I assume that this dinner was another aspect of my research. Pastor Ken lived about 2 miles from my house.
Joel Brooks:His house is also in the University District. I knew exactly where he lived. In fact, his house was on my running route, so I wasn't too nervous about our first meeting. So So I went alone. She says that the most memorial part of this meal was Ken's prayer before.
Joel Brooks:I had never heard anyone pray to God as if God cared, as if God listened, as if God answered. It was not a pretentious prayer uttered for the heathen at the table to overhear. I've heard a few of those at gay pride marches or in front of planned parenthood clinics. It was a private and honest utterance. I felt as though I was treading on something real, something sincere, something important, and something transparent, but illegible to me.
Joel Brooks:Ken made himself vulnerable to me in his prayer by humbling him humbling himself before this, quote, God of his. I took note of that. And during our meal, I remember holding my breath and waiting to be punched in the stomach with something grossly offensive. I believe that this time that God was dead. And that if he was alive, the fact of poverty, violence, racism, sexism, homophobia, and war was proof that he didn't care about his creation.
Joel Brooks:I believed that religion was, as Marx wrote, the opiate of the masses. An imperialist social construction made to soothe the existential angst of the intellectually impaired. But Kinzgad seemed alive. Three-dimensional and wise if firm, and Ken and Floyd were anything but intellectually impaired. Our conversation was lively and fun.
Joel Brooks:If Floyd was, quote, a submissive wife, she was also gifted, smart, perceptive, well read, and a great cook. If Ken was the quote, bible thumping pastor, he was also a good listener, a balanced interpreter, a lover of good poetry, and a reader of politics, and a husband who clearly adored, relied upon, and valued highly his wife's counsel. These people simply didn't fit the stereotype, and I simply didn't know what to do with this. Like his letter, Ken wouldn't be filed away easily so that I could just go on with my life. Ken and Floyd did something at the meal that has long that has a long Christian history, but has been functionally lost in too many Christian homes.
Joel Brooks:Ken and Floyd invited the stranger in. Not to scapegoat me, but to listen and to learn and to dialogue. Ken and Floyd have a vulnerable and transparent faith. We didn't debate worldview. We talked about our personal truth and about what made us tick.
Joel Brooks:Ken and Floyd didn't identify with me. They listened to me and identified with Christ. They were willing to to walk the long journey to me in Christian compassion. During our meal, they did not share the gospel with me. After our meal, they did not invite me to church.
Joel Brooks:Because of these glaring omissions to the Christian script, Isaiah has come to as I had come to know it. When the evening ended and pastor Ken said he wanted to stay in touch, I knew that it was truly safe to accept his open hand. This went on for about 2 years. After 2 years of dinners and a growing friendship, Rosaria came to know the Lord. It was through the hospitality of Ken and Floyd that Rosario was able to experience in a tangible way the love of Christ.
Joel Brooks:The key to 21st century evangelism is hospitality. Let me repeat that. The key to 21st century evangelism is hospitality. How else are we going to reach people for Christ? You used to be able to set up a tent.
Joel Brooks:Know, you set up a tent, you have a tent revival, and everybody would come, you know. So if I were to do that, you know, across the parking lot in the field there, set up a tent, we or to advertise a revival, do you think that would be a good strategy for bringing people to Christ now? It wouldn't. When the tent revivals no longer worked, and the street preachers no longer worked, it was just the handing out of tracts. And then we went from the handing out of tracts to evangelistic events.
Joel Brooks:We rented stadiums, and brought in speakers. Hard to do now. Those things rarely work. But but there is a strategy. There's one strategy that the church has always had and that is still effective today.
Joel Brooks:Possibly more effective today than it was 2000 years ago, and that is hospitality. If you read through your Bible and you look for it, you will be surprised at how many times the theme of hospitality comes up. It is not a minor theme in continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unaware. Both in 1st Timothy and Paul's letter to Titus, he says that a requirement for being an elder is not only that they teach, but that they are and In Romans chapter 12, he says this, rejoice in hope.
Joel Brooks:Be patient in tribulation. Be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints, and seek to show hospitality. And of course, we see the, the importance that Peter places on hospitality by the his positioning of this text within his letter, and how he he builds up to it. Look at chapter 4 verse 7 again.
Joel Brooks:The end of all things is at hand. Therefore, be self controlled and sober minded for the sake of your prayers. Do you remember the story of Jesus? It's in Mark chapter 5, and he encounters the demon possessed man who he lived among the tombs, people tried to bind him, and he'd always break through the bind the binds, and he'd cut himself with stones, and he'd howl at nights. Do you remember that story?
Joel Brooks:It's in Mark 5. And Jesus, he went to this man, and he healed him. And the description is after this man was healed and the the demon was cast out, the many demons cast out, he sat down next to Jesus, and he was sober minded. It's the exact same word that Peter uses here. He was of clear mind.
Joel Brooks:Now let me ask you a question. Be truthful. Do you think it would have been more likely for this man before he encountered Jesus to be holding up a sign saying the end is near? Versus after he was healed and the demon was taken out, and he was no longer crazy, and he was of sound mind holding up a sign saying the end is near. Which do we associate with the crazy person?
Joel Brooks:The possessed person. Well, obviously, the one who's preaching the end is near, and Peter says, no. That is a person who is of clear thought saying that the end of all things is at hand. Now let me be clear, Jesus told Peter that even he doesn't know when he was going he's going to return. He also told Peter that it wasn't for Peter to know the times or the season when he was going to return.
Joel Brooks:So Peter is not giving us a date here. That's that's not what Peter is doing. If that was the case, Peter's wrong because it's been about 2000 years. Alright. He's that's not what he's saying though.
Joel Brooks:What he is saying is that we are now living in what we will call the last days. That think of it this way, we are the last act in the drama that has been unfolding in human history. You had creation, then you had the fall, and then you have the call of Abraham, then you have the giving of the law, and then you have god sending all the prophets, and you have the kingdoms there. And then finally, you have Jesus, and he lives, and he dies, and he rises again, and now he's ascended on high, and he's given his spirit to his people who he has made a covenant with, and now this age of the church filled with his spirit, and all that is left is for him to return. So so we're in the final act.
Joel Brooks:We're we're in the very end of this great drama that is going through history, and that is what Peter is saying that the end of all things is at hand. You could also apply this personally. For every person here, the end is near. You live in a shadow of eternity. Someday you will die.
Joel Brooks:Actually for me, it is even if I die of old age, there is a good chance that there are less days in front of me than there are behind me. My dad died when he was just 13 years older than me. We we all live in the shadow of eternity. The end is near. And Peter says that knowing that should sober us up.
Joel Brooks:It should shape the way we live, the way we think. It should shape the way we pray, the way we love, and the way we are hospitable. He's saying, life isn't a joke. Okay? It's it's not a joke.
Joel Brooks:Everything we do at this stage of the game towards the end is of vital importance. We need to be always thinking, thy will be done in every circumstance. We we can't just stroll through life moving from entertainment to entertainment. Always just living for the next big game, week to week. Always living to look at our phone for whatever the next decorating tip is.
Joel Brooks:We we are so shallow in what we think about. Peter says, wake up. You're in the last stage of human history. You're living in a dream world. So we're up.
Joel Brooks:There's bigger and better things for us to do, and your prayers need to reflect that. The way you love one another needs to reflect that. The way you're hospitable to one another needs to reflect that. Petty And when you have that in the forefront of your mind, the petty things you pray about just kind of fade away, and you focus on more weightier matters. Peter actually takes things up a notch now.
Joel Brooks:Up another notch in verse 8. Above all, keep loving one another earnestly since love covers a multitude of sins. Above all. Alright. He just he just gave a pretty big opening statement with there where the end of all things is at hands, and now he's like, and above all above everything, this right here.
Joel Brooks:This is of highest priority. Love one another. Then he says earnestly. In Greek, this word earnestly, it means to stretch out. It's the word that could be used to describe a runner as he's crossing the finish line, and he stretches out as hard as he can to finish the race.
Joel Brooks:And Peter says, that's how we love one another. Straining, striving, reaching towards one another in love. Above all, he says, we do this because love covers a multitude of sins. This is another way of saying that love is going to set the stage, create the environment for us to forgive one another, be patient with one another, live life with one another. Love is gonna set the stage for us to become hospitable people.
Joel Brooks:So after quite a build up, we now come to hospitality. Peter Ashley, he he links hospitality and the gifts of the spirit both within this context of love. I wanna look at hospitality tonight. I wanna look at the gifts of the spirit next week. As I was looking through this text, I became aware that possibly the biggest obstacle that we have to understanding hospitality is the word itself, the English word itself because when we think of being hospitable, the first thing you think of is Martha Stewart.
Joel Brooks:Okay? You think of Martha Stewart, you think of Southern Living Magazine, we think of hospitality is entertaining. You know, entertaining people. And just know that that is much too shallow of a definition for biblical hospitality. It's also a very misleading definition for what the Bible means when we come upon this term.
Joel Brooks:The Greek word for hospitality is actually a combination of 2 words. It combines the word love and the word stranger. Love the stranger. That's hospitality. It is not entertaining.
Joel Brooks:And I think we really need to make a distinction between this, especially living, you know, in the south here, because we do a lot of entertaining. But entertaining has with it that that notion of we're putting on a show. You know, that's really what kind of southern hospitality is. It's showing off the house, you know, showing off the the, you know, the new kitchen or the new furnishings. Now that's not everything that entertainment entertaining is, but it certainly is an aspect of what entertaining is.
Joel Brooks:And that's why when you seek to entertain, it can be burdensome. Because pressure is put on you when you're trying to entertain because you're not merely having people over for you to get to know. You're having people over for you to get to know and impress. And trying to impress people is what puts the pressure on you, and it becomes a burden. Let me give you a definition of hospitality.
Joel Brooks:Hospitality is inviting a stranger into your living space and treating them like family. Hospitality is inviting in a stranger to your living space, and treating them like family. Now notice I didn't say inviting them to your home. I said living space, because you don't necessarily have to have a home to be hospitable. Your living space is where you go to, to really be you, to be yourself, to unwind.
Joel Brooks:Your living space is where, you can let your guard down. So everybody has a living space whether it's, you know, a coffee shop, whether it's their apartment, whether it's their home. You have some space that you consider yours, and you are yourself. And to be hospitable is to invite a stranger into this space with you, and to treat them like family. At the heart of hospitality is Jesus's words, I was a stranger and you took me in.
Joel Brooks:Now Peter in this context is telling us specifically for traveling missionaries, for Bible studies, for for home groups. They were to be hospitable towards those in the church they didn't know well, but people whom God had said, you're family. You are now family. And this is how they could show love for one another. But hospitality is not just limited to those within the church.
Joel Brooks:We have to be hospitable towards those who don't know Christ as well. Actually, this is the best way for us to share the gospel with those who are resistant to it is by having them in our homes. This is why you know you have in, Hebrews, it says that we are to have show brotherly love towards one faith as well. Something the church it's a fairly recent thing the church has started moving towards, but we tend to associate sharing our faith with someone as being the equivalent of inviting them to church. We invite them to church, and that's somehow how we have shared our faith.
Joel Brooks:That's how we evangelize. Yet for the first 200 years of the church, the church never had a building. Yet, they were exploding in growth as they used their homes. Did you know that in the bible, we never see Jesus, not even once, inviting someone to come to synagogue with him. But over and over again, you have him inviting himself to their home.
Joel Brooks:I mean, you don't get the, you know, the Zacchaeus, you come down, you're going to church with me today, You know, which is which is what we would say. Zaccheus, you come down. I'm going to your house. Jesus had a house. He'd been inviting him to his house, but he's gonna be hospitable by going to his house.
Joel Brooks:He's gonna talk about theology around a table. Inviting strangers into our homes and living spaces is still the best way to share our faith. The deepest and most life transforming truths that Jesus taught, If you look through scripture, you're gonna find that most of them are over a dinner table. And that's where he taught about himself. He was talking about faith over a meal that changed Rosaria's life.
Joel Brooks:Wasn't being asked to go to church, but is instead being asked if she'd be interested in getting back together again for another meal. And actually because she hadn't been asked to go to church, because she hadn't had the gospel crammed down her throat, she actually realized they might be interested in me and not just trying to sell a product. And in her words, she felt safe. Now realize that opening up your living space can be hard to do. Alright.
Joel Brooks:Peter Peter knows this too. I love the last line that he adds in verse 9. It says, seek to show hospitality to to one another without grumbling. Peter knows all of you home group leaders so well. Alright?
Joel Brooks:He he knows what happens in in home groups if you're hosting a home group. That that there's there's gonna be grumbling involved there. He says, be hospitable and don't grumble. But he knows that having people into your house every week, if that's you, is a hard thing to do. It's a demanding thing to do.
Joel Brooks:Peter knows that, but he also knows that the end of all things is at hand. Focus yourself. We're near the end. It's worth it. You need to show love for one another and for the world by being hospitable.
Joel Brooks:I I've heard a lot of excuses over the years for why some people are not very hospitable. I've heard a lot of them because I have given a lot of them over the years. You might think that you can't show hospitality because, because you live in an apartment, because the layout of your house is not, you know, big enough to have people over. You know, Lauren and I, our 1st apartment for the first few years, all we had was wicker furniture inside, not outside. It was wicker furniture, right?
Joel Brooks:You know, you just kinda you didn't feel like having people over for that. But once again, this isn't an excuse because you're not showing off. That's not the purpose. That's entertaining. You're inviting people into your living space and you're treating them like family.
Joel Brooks:I I've heard I heard a pastor say that one this one time. He said that the key to hospitality is to begin it. The key to hospitality is to begin it. Wherever you are in life, whatever stage you are in life, just begin it. Don't wait for a better home.
Joel Brooks:Don't wait for a better set of circumstances. Don't wait till you find your permanent residence. Be hospitable. I've heard the excuse that my house is always a disaster. Well if if if your house is not immaculate, that's okay.
Joel Brooks:If you come to our house, that is what our laundry room or closets are for. Okay? People come in and are like, wow, your house is so clean. You can't even open the door of some of our rooms because we just throw everything in there. Hospitality does not mean that you have to get all the laundry off the floor in order to have people over.
Joel Brooks:Hospitality might even mean that you have people over, and you get them to help you fold laundry. You know that that happened to to Lauren 2 weeks ago. Somebody was over, and Lauren had to do a ton of laundry, but she also wanted to talk to to this lady who came over. Will you sit down and help look full laundry? And when it spoke was not, wow, you're making me do this.
Joel Brooks:It's like, I know you're busy, and yet you're making time for me any way you can. And so I come down and I I see this woman here folding up my underwear. I'm like, wow, we have reached a new stage in our relationship. But as they're just folding clothes, they get to talk. That's treating somebody like family.
Joel Brooks:That's what that's doing. Hospitality might even mean that if you have somebody, you know, you have people come over and time to clean up afterwards, and they say, can I can I help with the dishes? You don't say, no, no, I got it. And then when they leave, you grumble. Gosh, I got all this stuff here.
Joel Brooks:I gotta clean up. And that's when you know you and your wife or whoever you're just you're fighting at this point. Why don't you say, that'd be great. Treat them like family. Oh, what I found is over the years it's those times we're now washing dishes with somebody who I've had come over.
Joel Brooks:That is the best time for getting to know somebody. That's the time when truly their guard is down, and we're just living life with one another. So can we help? Yes. Please help.
Joel Brooks:Wash dishes, that'd be great. I'd love to talk with you some more. Another excuse might be that you don't have enough money or you do not have enough time to be hospitable. I'll be blunt. You need to change your priorities.
Joel Brooks:You need to change your priorities. The end of all things is at hand. And I bet that there are certain things in your life that take up a lot of time and take up a lot of money that are just fluff. You could do away with. This week I was reading through 1st Timothy, and I could not believe the importance that Paul placed on hospitality when he was writing this letter to Timothy.
Joel Brooks:The situation is this. In chapter 5, there's a number of widows that are at the church, and these widows need help. And so what they could do is they could enroll in a program at the church. And if they were part of this program, the the church, they would give their benevolence funds to them. They would they would buy them some food or clothing or whatever they needed if they would enroll in the church.
Joel Brooks:And Paul, he writes to Timothy. He says, don't just let any widow who's at the church do this. Don't just give the money out to any of them. And so he he lists all of these things that the widow is supposed to do. He says in chapter 5, he says, let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than 60 years of age, having been the wife of 1 husband, having a reputation for good works, if she's brought up children and has shown hospitality, if she's washed the feet of the saints, if she has cared for the afflicted, if she has devoted herself to every good work, then let her be enrolled.
Joel Brooks:I'll be blunt again. There is not a person here that I know of, maybe there is, but not a person that I know of here who is worse off than a 1st century widow. Hard living as a widow in the 1st century. You you are destitute. If you're a widow, you're likely not going to have any money or really any means of making money.
Joel Brooks:You're probably trying to live in somebody else's house. Maybe you're lucky enough to have a house of your own, but it certainly wouldn't be anything large. And Paul says this, if you're gonna ask for funds from the church, you better be hospitable. Otherwise, we see giving to you as wasting our money, because the church is called to be a hospitable people. We're always to be inviting the stranger in.
Joel Brooks:It's our calling. There are no excuses. Now the reason that we are called to be hospitable people is because this reflects the gospel. Not only was Jesus always eating and drinking with sinners, always sharing his faith over a meal, But we read in Ephesians 2, it says that we too once were strangers. We were alienated from God, and yet he brought us in.
Joel Brooks:And he has made us family. It's the gospel. God has been hospitable to us, and now we are hospitable to others. Let me end with a challenge. I challenge every one of you this month to identify somebody, a stranger that you can invite in.
Joel Brooks:Somebody that you can have come over to your living space, share a meal together. I don't go anywhere beyond that. I'm not saying what you have to say, what you have to do. Just be hospitable. Invite someone who doesn't know the lord, a stranger over, and have a meal with them and treat them like family.
Joel Brooks:Always being sensitive to where the spirit might lead us. I believe that's our calling as Christians, and I believe that's our calling as a church. Pray with me. Lord, we were not just strangers. We were enemies.
Joel Brooks:We weren't walking towards you. We were running away from you, yet you pursued us, and you drew us to yourself. You treated us like family. You made us family. So, god, we just say thanks.
Joel Brooks:We say praise you. Praise you Jesus for your work. I I ask that in this moment, in this congregation here that, through the power of your spirit, you would press in on us in a way that only you can press in on us that the end of all things is at hand, and that we would wake up, realize this life isn't a joke. We would our prayers would reflect that. The way we love one another would reflect that, and our hospitality would reflect that.
Joel Brooks:Lord, make that a reality for us. May we be a light shining in a dark place. Thank you, Jesus. We pray this in your name. Amen.