Text:  Hebrews 13: 1-8

I was doing some pre-marital counseling the other day in Windsor.  We were talking about communication, which is so vital in a marriage.  Two words came to mind.  Never and always.  Two words that can be so unfair when dealing with one another.  You never do this… You always forget.  That’s rarely true.

Then there are the good things we promise each other.  I’ll always be there for you.  I’ll never let you down.  But even our best intentions can fall through the cracks of life.  A young person loses his mom or dad in a car accident.  Our best friend has to move away.  Our high school sweetheart finds another.  What happened to that always, to that never, we thought we could count on?

Yet there is One we can count on absolutely, without exception.  This letter to the Hebrews is about Him.  Jesus  Christ

Jesus Christ, ALWAYS my Lord and Savior
I.  Trust him with your eternity
II.  Live now as one of his people

            Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.  You know sometimes, the same gets old.  The same breakfast cereal.  The same routine day after day.  The same can get boring.  But think of what the same Jesus Christ means for you.

Think of his cross. The wood of that cross has long since rotted away, but not what Jesus did for you there.  In chapter 7, we read:  He sacrificed for their sins (our sins) once for all when he offered himself.  Did you hear that blessed sameness?  Once for all.  All of us, every one of us.  Once for all.  All the stupid, thoughtless, ugly things we have said or done.  All the love we have failed to give.  He paid the price for always.  So there is never a time that we cannot come to God in repentance and know our sins are forgiven.  For Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

That goes for his promises.  His always. Surely I will be with you always.  Or His never, the promise here in this Word:  “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”   No matter how things seem in your life, no matter how they feel, you can count on that always.  You can count on that never.  Not just today, not just tomorrow and not just until we breath our last.  For what is Jesus’ promise to you?  Your risen Savior promises this:  Because I live, you also will live.  So trust him not just for today of tomorrow.  Trust him all the way.  Trust him with your eternity.  For Jesus is the same yesterday and today and forever.  He is ALWAYS my Lord and Savior.

There are those who encourage us to remember that.  We all need them. Maybe our mom or dad or a Christian friend.  Here we think of pastors and leaders who display that confidence.  ⁷Remember your leaders, who spoke the word of God to you. Consider the outcome of their way of life and imitate their faith.

Years ago I traveled to Texas for one of our member families.  A wife and mother had to have a liver transplant.  There were complications.  So I went to be with them.  Up till then another pastor had been visiting her who served in Texas.  This was a man who had come to Texas with a heart problem.  I was so impressed by his faithful visits,I had to tell him.  He said this:  I would do anything for my Savior.  He knew him and wanted you to know him.  Jesus Christ, always his Lord and Savior.  Here the Word encourages us.  Remember leaders like that.  Imitate their faith in Christ.  And like them:  Trust Jesus with your eternity.

But more than that.  The fact that Jesus does not change, has something to say about my life here and now.  What do I mean?  Jesus Christ, always my Lord and Savior calls for me to be different.  That I live now as one of his people.

There are times when we Christians can get on each other’s nerves.  We disappoint each other.  We may hurt someone’s feelings.  That can always happen when one sinner rubs up against another.

Yet there is no excuse for nastiness or playing favorites.  There is no excuse for holding grudges.  We are brothers and sisters in Christ.  We are family.  That calls for kindness.  It calls for this at the very beginning of our text: Keep on loving each other as brothers.

That goes for the stranger too.  These Christians were suffering persecution.  If a stranger came among them, the couldn’t be sure if he was a believer chased out of town or someone looking to turn them in to the authorities.  So the temptation was to hold them at arm’s length and keep your distance.

We don’t have that fear in our country but we do have strangers come among us.  They may speak another language or have a different skin color.  So we too may be tempted to keep our distance.  They’re not one of us.

But our Lord calls for something different.  Kindness to strangers.  In fact he tells us that stranger may be more than we realize.  ² Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.  So Christian, when it comes to those we do not know, let kindness be the rule of the day.

Then think about persecuted Christians.  What picture comes to mind?  We may think of the Roman coliseum long ago.  But think again.  Think of a woman in Pakistan under a death sentence because she drank from a Muslim well.  Think of the Coptic Christians in Egypt.  They may not be prisoners in a jail.  But some are prisoners in their own neighborhoods living under threat of kidnapping or death.

Live now as one of Christ’s people.  Keep them in your prayers. For the prayer of God’s believing people is powerful and effective.  Give to organizations that can help them.  Write your congressman about them.  Talk about their plight.  ³ 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.

Someone once said, everything changes but nothing changes.  We might say that about God’s gift of sex and marriage.  We live in a day much like these believers.  Sex and marriage are treated in ways God never intended.  Perversion fills the internet and is paraded before us on TV.  And the results are quite predictable.  Broken  homes, broken hearts, broken lives.

Of course, we look around and might conclude.  Everybody’s doing it.  Moving in with their boyfriend or girlfriend.  Going into marriage like a trial period and then tossing their spouse away into the recycling bin.  Bringing kids into fatherless homes.

It might seem like everybody’s doing it.  But even if it is, you are not an everybody.  You are a somebody, a somebody redeemed by the blood of God’s own Son shed for you.  You are a somebody that the Holy Spirit has chosen to make his home.

So you are not to be one of this world’s every bodies.  For Jesus has not changed.  Our Lord’s 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.  ⁴ Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and all the sexually immoral. Live now as one of Christ’s people.

Then finally let’s talk about a real danger for us who live in this materialistic society.  But also a real opportunity that is ours in Christ.  ⁵ Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have,… I once knew a man.  He was a Christian man who wracked his life and others because he let money fill his heart. He ruined one man’s plumbing business.  He embezzled the life saving of an elderly woman.  He went to jail for what he did.

For you see, money is a good thing.  It is a gift of God that we can use to do so much good.  A young man went to Bible camp because people gave of their money.  Karen and I got to buy a house because my father left us some money.  Money is a gift of God.  But the love of it is an ugly thing.  And you know the worst of it.  What happened to that man’s heart.  His love for money took Jesus’ place.

You see, he lost sight of what all of us can know.  Some of us have more.  Some of us have less.  Some of these Christians had their homes taken away from them.  Yet the Lord who created us promises us this:  Never will I leave you or forsake you.  So the river may rise and flood my living room. The ground may shake our house down to its foundation.  Someone may find a way to steal our identity and empty our bank account.  But we are not alone to fend for ourselves.  We have Jesus Christ, always our Lord and Savior.  And with Him, we can be content. We can live now as one of his people.  For he gives us the right to say with confidence:  the Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid.

That’s a good always.  That’s a great never.  My Lord who bled and died for me and rose again is always a prayer away.  My Lord who set me free from guilt and death will never let anything steal me away from his love.  So yes there are times when I am afraid.  But I don’t have to be.  And why?  Jesus Christ.  Jesus Christ, always my Lord and Savior.  How blessed you are!  Amen.