Radical Love: Living with Hope and Sacrifice

"Verse 34 is very clear about how that comes about. It says you joyfully accepted the seizure of your property, now here's the key, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and an abiding one. In other words, confidence in hope that something better and abiding is coming to us, namely God and all of his promises beyond the grave, is the power that releases people to live lives of radical love here and now." [00:00:17]

"Christians had been put in jail in those early days among that church. Those who had not been put in jail were faced with a crisis as to whether or not they would go underground and disappear or whether they would identify with the suffering church and thus put themselves at risk along with their property. And here's what happened in verse 34: you showed sympathy to the prisoners and as a result they were plundered, and you accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and an abiding one." [00:01:37]

"Now my contention is that the whole book of Hebrews is written to produce that kind of people, people who consider the consequences of radical love, namely that it might cost you your property, it might cost you your life, it might cost you abuse. In fact, it says over in chapter 13:13, let us go with him outside the camp bearing abuse for him. It might cost you your reputation, a life that considers those options and possibilities and nevertheless chooses the dangerous path of love." [00:02:41]

"We've seen Christ giving himself once for all as the final sacrifice for our sins. We've seen him perfecting us for all time by a single offering. We've seen him giving cleanness of conscience to us by the blood that he shed on the cross. We've seen him being a sympathetic high priest. We've seen him interceding for us. We've seen him promise to put the law in our minds and write it on our hearts. We've seen him say I will be your God, I will walk among you, and you'll be my people." [00:03:28]

"People who risk property and life to bring the love of God to others, whether in prison or elsewhere. People who don't look to their own comforts, their own ease, their own security, their own safety, as though that's got to be. People who are free from the American assumptions of style and safety and wealth and leisure. People who know there's one life to live, one, and what is done in the name of Christ and for the eternal good of people is all that lasts." [00:04:36]

"Confidence in hope that something better and abiding is coming to us, namely God and all of his promises beyond the grave, is the power that releases people to live lives of radical love here and now. Who are not all consumed with your own affairs, all consumed with oh if I do that then I'll lose this and if I go there, if I go to Uganda, if I go to Tanzania, if I go to Tibet, I'll lose this this summer or if I make a life calling out of doing this then I'll lose this." [00:05:30]

"This is not a beautiful world we live in, in spite of getting up on a morning like this with the sun shining and walking into an air-conditioned room and experiencing sweet worship with God's people all clothed with full stomachs and places to live with a roof over our heads. It's a dream world we live in. This is a Disneyland. I was reading last night an article by Robert Cypel, the president of World Vision, you know the group that raises about $300 million a year for relief." [00:07:14]

"Are we just going to maximize comforts? Are we just going to get a nice job, move to a nice house, buy a nice boat, get another house so I can have some relief from the stress, or are we going to spend ourselves for others and lay down our lives? I mean, I don't want to pastor a church of comfortable people. I have no desire to increase the comforts of American rich people, namely everybody in this room, including me." [00:09:06]

"I want to be and to be a means of becoming Hebrews 10:34 and the whole Bible, the whole Incarnation, the Holy Spirit, and the Church of Jesus Christ exists to produce that kind of radical representation of the grace of God in the world and freedom from the bondage to fleeting pleasures of sin. And if that's the case, we might ask at this point in the book of Hebrews, what more then can he say than to us he has said to release this kind of love that he's described there in verse 34?" [00:10:03]

"Chapter 11 in the book of Hebrews is a catalog of saints from the Old Testament who have seen the reward of the better possession and the abiding one of chapter 10:34, have been able to apprehend it by faith, and who have cast themselves on it so satisfyingly that they can do incredible exploits of suffering and obedience for God. So there is something more he can say in spite of all the good news that he has given us in this book to free us from self-preoccupation and to make us radical lovers in his power." [00:10:59]

"Now Faith is the Assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of Things Not Seen. For by it the men of old gained approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. Now notice the link between these verses and verse 34 of chapter 10. The point of verse 34 in chapter 10 is that love and sacrifice were enabled by knowing that we have a better possession and an abiding one." [00:12:10]

"Faith is the Assurance, the confidence of things hoped for. So everything that's coming in chapter 11 is an illustration of the kind of life that flows when faith is the kind of faith illustrated in chapter 10:34, namely hope, hoping and knowing and being confident and assured that we have a better possession and an abiding one. So our task now is to understand first of all what is this faith in verse one of chapter 11." [00:13:07]