‘Show hospitality’. Is there really much to say about that? Doesn’t showing hospitality look the same for everyone? Well, it depends on your definition. If you think hospitality is fundamentally opening your home and giving people meals (which is a great way to be hospitable) you have to ask how a believer who doesn’t have a home, or a dining table, or potentially any food, could achieve that? If they can’t, then perhaps the issue lies with our definition. Christ’s universal commands that apply to all believers everywhere must be achievable by all believers everywhere in some respect.

At church, we are fast approaching the end of our series in Hebrews. Yesterday, was the penultimate sermon covering the first part of chapter 13. In essence, the passage gave the instruction to ‘let brotherly love continue’ and then outlined four ways we are specifically to do that. Whatever else you might want to say about Hebrews 13:1-6, it ain’t a very tricky passage.

At least, it’s not tricky to understand. It is, however, a little bit tricky to preach. Not because the meaning is hard to convey (it isn’t), but because it is difficult to know exactly how best to preach a list of instructions without descending into moralism or a 30-minute guilt trip. It’s so easy to end up preaching a do-this-and-live style sermon – which really is not what these instructions are there for – or, if we avoid that, to basically make people feel guilty over these various things. I’m not 100% sure either is the most helpful. I’m not 100% I always manage to avoid these things. I suspect I probably don’t preach moralism, but I might well fall into guilt trips.

So, how do you preach lists of instructions without making your message moralistic or spending the whole sermon guilt tripping people about their efforts in these different areas? Here are some things that might help.

Be clear about context

Most New Testament instructions are not given in a vacuum. Usually, they come in the context of other theological points being made or other things going on in the wider context of the book. The particular instructions in Hebrews, for example, come off the back of the writer encouraging his readers to pursue holiness and serve the unshakeable kingdom of God as the only thing of any lasting and ultimate value. So, the instructions are not given as “four steps to Heaven”, but rather as outworkings of what it means to serve the kingdom that will last. If nothing but the kingdom matters, then do these things because they will have lasting value and worth on the last day. Knowing that context makes a bit of difference to how we understand the instructions. The same is true for any of the instructions in scripture.

Be clear about the gospel

If we know the gospel, we know that we are not saved by our works. If we know the gospel, we know we are not saved by faith but then kept by our works thereafter. If we know the gospel, we know that our holiness and justification are not a product of our works, but the work of Christ. I know it’s not it’s not rocket science, but when we are clear about those things we know that the approach to these New Testament instructions can’t be that we are made holy by doing them or that we are adding to our salvation through them. They must be achieving or accomplishing something else.

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