Weaponized Homes
Transcript
Good morning, what's up guys? My name is Raz. I'm one of the pastors here. We're in this series at the moment called Extraordinary. And in this series what we're doing is looking at all of the little, little, independent, ordinary aspects of life and seeing how they can be given significance in order to make those ordinary situations in life extraordinary. And we've seen a couple of different ways so far in which that happens.
And today, that's our goal for this series. But what we're talking about today specifically is going to be hospitality. We're going to talk about how Christians in their everyday, ordinary lives can give significance to hospitality and invite people into their homes and into their lives. and that those people will be able to see a little, itty-bitty glimpse of the gospel in each of those moments. And that's kind of our goal for today. We're going to see what the Bible says about hospitality. But I think we'll find very quickly that it's quite clear.
There's not a whole lot of wiggle room. It's not one of those situations where we have our guard up and we want to kind of fight with it. So because it's pretty clear, we're going to kind of power through that. We're going to get through it pretty quickly. And we're going to spend most of our time today talking, looking at examples, seeing some kind of applicable ways that we might put this into practice in our lives or see how the concept of hospitality can transform the church in such a way that Jesus is made known through us in our homes, that kind of thing. We looked earlier in this series about how we have one Job.
And this is one of the first sermons is we have one Job. And that one Job that we've been given is to make disciples. And I think that chances are we could be neglecting the best tool that we have to accomplish that. And that's our homes. And so I'm going to pray. And then we're going to talk a little bit about why hospitality, what God says about why we should be hospitable.
And then we're going to spend most of our time talking about how to actually accomplish that. So let's pray. God, I thank you for the opportunity to look to Jesus as the ultimate example of how we can be welcoming to others. And I pray that as we look today at what it would look like to open our homes, to see people know you through interactions with us in our everyday life, that you'll be empowering us to go out and actually do this. That we can see the value and the worth of opening up our homes so that people can see Jesus in our lives. It's in his name we pray.
Amen. Before we launch headfirst into this, I just want to make sure that we're all on the same page definitionally about what we're talking about. So there's a chance that you might think, oh, I am hospitable. I'm a very hospitable person. I'm super welcoming at work. I'm super welcoming at other people's house.
I'm super welcoming on Sunday mornings. I'm a really hospitable person. And that's good. Those are all noble. We want that for you. We want that for your friends.
We want that for your life. That's great stuff. But definitionally, we're going to be honing in a little bit on what that hospitality actually looks like. I was going to go to a Bible dictionary for this, but I thought I'd ask Siri first. And I actually like Siri's definition a lot. So I asked Siri.
I'm sorry if I trigger anyone's phone in your pocket right now. I just realized that might happen. Siri's definition of what hospitality means is the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers. Now, that covers a lot. But we're going to roll with it because I like it because it highlights two important factors about hospitality that we might overlook.
And the first one of those is that it's about reception. It's about receiving people in. It's not about going to people where they're at. It's about having people to you where you're at. And specifically for us, we're going to be talking about what that looks like in your homes, bringing people from outside of your sphere inside of your sphere. It also talks about the second thing is that it focuses on.
Now, it doesn't only allow. Like, it's not an exception clause, but it focuses on. It pushes us towards. It leans towards strangers and outsiders. Now, it's perfectly reasonable for you to be hospitable to your community group, to your friends, to the people that you're already surrounded by, like normal people that you interact with on a daily basis. But this definition pushes us a little bit in the direction of what would it look like to be hospitable to people outside of that normal sphere?
What happens when you have to push a cultural or a racial or a socioeconomic barrier in order to have someone else that you wouldn't normally hang out with in your life? What would it look like for a 27-year-old person to have a 60-something-year-old person they didn't know over in their house? How could they see the gospel in that situation? So we're going to kind of be leaning into that a little bit and leaning into that aspect of this definition. Okay, so why hospitality? Let's take a look at what the Bible says about hospitality.
And I think we're going to see pretty clearly and pretty early on that we are commanded repeatedly throughout the Bible to be hospitable. Some people seem, I think this is normal for us, I think this is cultural for us, to think that hospitality is optional. That if you have the right house or the right age kids or the right amount of money or add any kind of qualifier onto that thing, as long as you check all those boxes then and only then, maybe, you could consider being hospitable. But I think we'll see that there's not that much wiggle room because according to the Bible, hospitality is a command, not a suggestion.
And we're first going to look at Romans 15, 1 through 3. Typically what we'll do around here is open up the Bibles in the chairs, sit in one passage for most of the day. But we're actually going to be bouncing around quite a lot. So if you're not super quick with searching around the Bible for passages, everything is going to be appearing on the screen today. That's not normal for us, but because we're bouncing a lot, you can just check it out on the screen if that suits you better. We're going to be in Romans 15, 1 through 3.
It says, We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failings of the weak and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good to build him up. For Christ did not please himself, but as it is written, the reproaches of those who reproached you fell on me. We see in this that in Christian maturity, those who are strong have the obligation to lift up and benefit those who are weak. And looking to Christ, we see that he willingly took that burden onto himself. That was his goal as well.
He wasn't pleasing himself. He was sacrificing himself on behalf of others. He was sacrificing his comfort for the sake of other people. And when I look at that, and when I look to his example, I see this kind of glaring place in our lives where we kind of just don't really follow that. We don't sacrifice our comfort a whole lot, at least not in the way that Jesus does. And I think that way that we don't do it is in our homes, right?
In our homes, you get to... Homes are an interesting thing to think about. In your home, you get to control everything. Like, unlike anywhere else in the world. In your home, you are the boss and you control everything. Ish.
I mean, roommates, wives, like children, like you've got to compromise some, maybe on some of the things. But at least in the grand scheme of things, like you get to control the temperature. You don't get to do that everywhere. You get to control the sounds that the rooms make, like the music or the TV. You get to control the color of the walls. You get to control every little piece of what happens in our house.
And typically, I think, what we see that the purpose of home as is our refuge away from the world. Where we get to kind of ignore everything that happens outside and have our little space that's exactly how we want it. And if you think about it, like over time, as technology has increased, we've actually built homes specifically more and more to accomplish that goal. This may not be you, but this person exists. And you can definitely visualize this. You're driving home.
This may not be you, but somebody does this. You're driving home. And as you pull into your little driveway, you look up to your... I don't know what the thing's called here. We call it a visor. It's like the little flap thing that blocks the sun from your eyes.
Also a visor? Thank you. Good save. The visor thing. And you click the little thing on it and you push the button. And the button communicates with the robot inside your house.
And the robot inside your house opens the wall. And you drive your car through the wall inside your house. And you push the button and the shield comes down behind you. So that you get to block out everything on the other side of it. Like that is a real thing. And if someone's out on the street screaming your name, you can just like pretend that that never happened.
You can sit in the car until that shield goes right at the bottom. Then you get out and go into your house and pretend nothing ever happened. We recently bought a house and I was thinking of all the cool technology and stuff we could put on it. Put into the new house. And one of the new things that they've got is a doorbell that it senses movement. And so before someone even rings your doorbell, like if someone approaches your house, it'll text you a photo of that person.
So that you could be upstairs or at work or anywhere and you'll have a photo of the person who is approaching your house. And before they even ring the bell, you can decide to ignore them. And it's really easy if they're wearing like a Time Warner hat or something. But if it's just a stranger, you get to make that call. I'm too tired. I can't be bothered.
And the rest of us have to walk up to the little pokey hole thing where you look through. And then you decide. But they've heard you at floorboards creak by that point. They at least know your home. And we don't have the garage shield thing. So they can see my car as well.
So we always have to answer the door, at least sort of mostly. We've structured it. I mean, just as society, technology-wise, we've developed systems that mean we don't have to pay attention to the world. You can get your groceries delivered to your house. You'll get a notification on your phone with a photo of the guy delivering them telling you that it's there. And you can ignore it until you watch him walk away.
And then you can open the door and pull your groceries inside. And they're in a perfectly little refrigerated box thing. You don't even have to speak to cashiers anymore. Even if you go to Walmart, you prefer the line that you don't have to talk to anybody in. We've developed a cultural world, a technology world, where in our homes and in our lives, we don't have to relate to people. And I think at home, amongst all places, that's kind of where we focus on the most in keeping people out.
Because in your home, you're the boss, and you do what you want to do when you want to do it, right? That's the point. That's the point of being at home. Shut the door. Lock it. Deadbolt it.
Put the little chain thing on that doesn't look like it had stopped very much. Keep the world out. That's what home is. And yet in verse 2, it said, Let each of us please his neighbor for his own good to build him up. In following Christ's example, we ought to be taking that posture of sacrificing our refuge, sacrificing that safe zone that we have in order to be able to engage people and invite them in to build them up. And so it's not surprising when, if you kept reading in that section, you get down to verse 7.
And Paul says in verse 7, Therefore, welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God. In light of the gospel, since Christ has welcomed you, your role now in the world is to be welcoming to other people. And that includes into your safe zone, into your refuge, into your home. And if we are a people who are welcomed by God, we will be a people who are welcoming to others. Because hospitality is rooted in the gospel. Here's the gospel.
All of humanity was sinful. All of humanity falls short of the glory of God. We deserve nothing but death. In fact, we're told that we have earned the wages of death. All that we've accomplished, all that we've done, we deserve death as a result of that. But since God loves us, he sent his son Jesus, who lives a perfect life, so that when we killed him, his death was able to pay the penalty for the sin that we deserved.
His death was able to take that on for us. God welcomes us in, even though we are estranged from him. And for that reason, we're able to welcome others in. Our hospitality, our kindness to others gets to be a tiny little picture of the gospel. A tiny little image of what God has done for us. When we welcome others in, we get to show them what it was like when we were welcomed in.
Our homes are not refuges for ourselves. Our homes are weapons for the gospel. Our homes are a platform for building others up, not keeping them out. Let's look through some more examples. The next one is Leviticus 19. It's an Old Testament example.
This is God talking to the people of Israel. It says, this is verse 33 through 34. It says, 1 Peter 4, verse 8 and 9. It says, Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. If you ask me, that doesn't sound very much like optional language.
And I think that's because the Bible treats hospitality like it's expected. It's demanded. It's a command, not a suggestion. Actually, in Titus 2, it's one of two places in the New Testament that gives like a really good, clear definition with a list of what's required of elders in the church. What a pastor has to be in order to be qualified to be a pastor. And one of those things in the list is hospitable.
If someone is not hospitable, if a pastor is not hospitable, they are unable to model the Christian life for the church. If a pastor is unable to be hospitable, they are unable to pastor. They should not be leading the church. So, why hospitality? I think because it's demanded by and rooted in the gospel. Because in Romans 15, 7, that we just read earlier, it says, Therefore, welcome one another in as God welcomed you, as Christ has welcomed you.
We're told, be hospitable because God was first hospitable to you. Be hospitable because in so doing, you give these tiny little images throughout your life of what the gospel looks like. You were welcomed, and so you welcome. Here's a fun fact that I learned this past week. It tends to happen with people who've studied languages. You develop an interest for words.
I never really had that before college. And you start to see similar words and wonder, how are they actually related? Like, why would they be so similar in that way? And so this week, while I was, I mean, I've said already this morning the word hospitable like 500 times, and it made me think of like, what is the connection between hospitable and hospital, right? Those are very similar words, and there's got to be something going on there. Now, as I say this, this doesn't, the connection doesn't date back all the way to Jesus' time.
I'm not trying to say he meant this when I talk about this, but this is just an observation that the English words hospital and hospitable share a Latin root word. And that Latin root word is hospice or hospitalia, depending on the age in Latin. And that word in Latin means room for strangers or guest chamber. And I think that's really interesting, that hospitals were named after a place where strangers are welcomed and helped. And it got me thinking, and this isn't straight out of the Bible, this is like a step removed, but this is just observation. What would it look like?
I mean, we know that people who need medical attention end up at the emergency room at the hospital to receive that medical attention. What would it look like if people who need or require emotional or spiritual attention felt that same welcomedness in our homes? If our ability to be hospitable for those who need spiritual attention equaled that of hospitals to cure medical things, what would that look like in our lives? And I think that the more we're able to see that inviting people into our lives gives them that little picture of the gospel, the more we're able to see that our lives declare the gospel the more willing we'll be to open up our homes so that people can see that in our lives.
So what then does it look like to be hospitable? How do we do this? What does that look like in everyday life? How would that affect me? If you've been terrified all this time so far, because hospitality is just like a word that invokes fear in your soul. I think this is where we start making it easier for the rest of the time, right?
Because chances are that if the word hospitality or the idea of having people in your safe zone scares you, chances are that you're viewing it through a very, very cultural lens that tells you there's a bunch of expectations that you have to perform. It can be all kinds of different things, but most people who feel that pressure are thinking party planning, cleaning, like being presentable, cooking really, really well, making sure that the children are well behaved. Like if all of those things are piling on your soul that make you think, oh, this hospitality thing sounds horrific, then that's okay. Well, that's not okay, but we're going to kind of start dismissing those things because actually we don't need to be worried about what the cultural expectations of hospitality are so much as what real authentic biblical hospitality looks like.
Because hospitality is not about image management. And I think the cultural way of thinking about it is all about how to present a good image. So if your goal in anything is to impress people, then chances are you won't point them to Jesus. You'll point them to how impressive you are. So when you try to impress people, you'll point them to how glorious your house is, how great your cooking is, how clean you can be, how well decorated your house is, how good your children are, how great your music playlist is.
Look at your garden with all the pretty flowers. And what you won't end up doing is pointing them a whole lot to Jesus. That is, if this is your sole purpose in doing that, like if you're doing this so that people will recognize your talent, your ability, then you're pointing them to yourselves. Now you could be a naturally clean person. That's a perfectly fine category of human. And if you're naturally clean and you're naturally tidying, you naturally have flowers and you naturally, you know, just enjoy that kind of thing, that's fine.
You can invite people into that. I'm just saying a lot of people aren't like that and feel that burden to perform when it comes to hospitality stuff. But I think we'll find that there's more power in sharing your actual real life with people than there is in faking it so that you can present a good image. So for some people out there, life is chaos. That's fine. Invite people into that.
I enjoy chaos. Like our community group can be chaotic at times. We have multiple small children. We have a dog. There can be like up to 25 people sitting in a very small room. Like it can get out of control and I kind of thrive on those things.
But other people hate it and I get that. That means you're a different personality type. You're good. You're allowed to exist. For some people, life is structure. Calendars.
Life spreadsheets. The smell of carpet cleaner and bleach in the morning. We've got some of those people over here. If that is you, if that is your life, if you enjoy that kind of thing and you're not actually doing it as some kind of performance to fake it so that people think you're a great host, then that's fine. Be that. Invite people into who you are.
Invite people into your life, into your safe zone and accommodate them as you normally would do in life. Because if you're faking it, you're going to point to them to someone that's not actually you and Jesus isn't going to be able to be seen in that. Let me give you a picture. Let me tell you how that happens in our house. We host a lot, but I don't think we put a whole lot of thought into it. I don't think we really match a whole lot of the things that you're supposed to do when you host.
My wife, Christina, she hates the feeling of dirt and sand on the bottom of her feet. So we have hardwood floors in our living room. Almost every single day, she will sweep the hardwood floors because she hates that feeling of sand on the bottom of her feet. I wear shoes. Easy solution for me. Or socks.
Whatever. And I feel like the guests that come to our house will probably arrive in shoes as well. If they arrive in bare feet, then they'll pick up the sand on the way in anyway, and they won't even know that there was sand in the living room floor. So I'm not super concerned about the whole sweeping the floor thing so that people don't get sand on their feet. I am kind of concerned because we have a dog, and the dog has about five billion toys. I'm not sure where they all came from, but they are spread all around our house, including little chunks of bone that have been destroyed and distributed so that they can always be found easily.
I don't like that because it's kind of like a tripping hazard. I'm not so fussy about people's feet getting dirty, but I don't want them to break an ankle because this is American. You get sued for that kind of stuff. So I'll at least kind of kick all of those things into corners, maybe shut a door. But even that doesn't work so well in our house because whoever designed it, look, I only have bad thoughts for that person.
But our ground floor has one bathroom in it, and it's the master bathroom, which means we can't shut our door because then no one has access to the bathroom on level one. So they literally have to walk through our bedroom to get to the toilet if that's something that they need while they're there, which means our bedroom is like fair game. Like people are going to see it. So we don't even have that option in our house. Here's what happens if you come and eat at our house. Our dining room table has four chairs, four chairs that match the table.
We've got more chairs, but they don't match the table. If you're the fifth person or the sixth or the seventh or whatever, like added people, only four people get matching chairs. And I'm not really concerned with matching styles so much as matching heights. If you're the fifth or the sixth person, you'll be in a camping chair. And even if you're tall, your chin will be at table height, which depending on how you eat can be, I mean, it can be a great thing. You can just kind of scoop.
But what happens is most people end up having to eat out of their lap because the height difference thing. The point I'm trying to make is that it doesn't like you won't leave our house thinking, wow, everything was magical and perfect. Like there's some thing like we'll put a little bit of effort in here and there. Like, but for the most part, pretty. You're just coming in and seeing our life as it's lived. We've recently upsized from an apartment to a pretty decent sized house.
We don't have enough furniture to fill it. There is like deck chairs and stuff in our living room. You'll be sitting on plastic. You're welcome. But that's just kind of like how normal life is.
It's not the prettiest, but that's what our house looks like. And it doesn't stop us having from having people over. And we just because I think it's easy, we do food most often. Like that's that's a thing. We were not amazing at cooking. And actually, I think it's become easier for us since we moved into the house because with a house, we got a grill and with a grill is really good, cheap and nasty food.
Right. Since getting a grill, we feel we feed people like brats, burgers and hot dogs all the time. Like all the time. Like if you're coming to our house, expect one of those options. Hot dogs are like 20 cents, 30 cents a piece. If you go all the way like to the premium ones, you might pay 45 cents.
I don't know what's in a premium hot dog. That kind of scares me even more. But tell you what, average food. People, people still love that junk. Like I've learned very quickly, feed, feed Americans hot dogs. They will be your friend.
It's just not the same in Australia. It's like, what is this? Like, what are you? Seriously? Okay. But in America, you feed a man a hot dog.
You have made yourself a friend. The food can be average. And the point in that is the food's actually not the important thing. The connection that you make with a person over the food is more important than the quality of the food that you present. As long as it's edible, I think you're okay. It doesn't have to be meals, though.
I think meals are really easy. But hospitality can take many forms. It can be coffee. It can be inviting people over to just sit and talk. It can be movies. It can be TV.
It can be games. It can be sports. It can be a whole bunch of things. I just think that, for us at least, meals are really, really easy. But it doesn't have to be anything special.
It's not difficult. Hot dogs by the pool, not very difficult. It doesn't take a whole lot of planning. You can pick all of that stuff up on the way. Well, you can't pick a pool up on the way home. But you can pick up the ingredients on the way home.
You don't have to forward plan for that kind of stuff. It's not a big ordeal. It's just inviting people into the life that you already have and interrelating as you do it. It's seeing opportunities in the normal to show people what life actually looks like for Christians. I'm about to give another example from our church family. And there's a number of reasons that I'm hesitant to do that.
One of them is that they're not currently in the room this morning, and I only found that out this morning. And so your immediate reaction to the words that I'm going to say, I'm just going to give you a heads up. I'm going to be talking about the Pabone family. And your immediate reaction to a lot of the things that I say, you're going to think that I'm kind of throwing them under the bus, that I'm making fun of them, that I'm being mean. Like your reaction is like, wow, that was a really mean thing to say. But I think the immediate reaction is something along those lines is that the baseline that we compare things to in order to decide whether or not that's right, if they're doing it good or if that is a mean thing to say is this cultural image based like this is what a hospitable person is supposed to look like.
And so when I talk about the Pabones and they break a lot of those rules, you're going to think I'm throwing shade on them and being like really, really mean to them. But what I'm actually trying to do is hold them up as a really good example of how you can be hospitable in everyday life. So as I talk about them, you get to think initially, wow, that was a really mean thing to say. But it's not. I promise you, I'm trying to say this is actually a really good example. And you know what?
I went to the extra step. Right here on my sermon sheet. That's Josh Pabone's signature. I want you to know that he's up in Kid City right now and his wife's out of town. But Josh has read this and he completely approves of this message.
And I feel like that validates everything regardless of whether or not you actually think it's me. I don't know if you know the Pabone family. The Pabones are community group leaders in our church. Most Sundays you'll see Josh up here playing bass and Nadine is very involved with Kid City. If you ever go to their house, let me just give you some advice. If you ever go to their house, you will experience what most people call chaos.
That's not mean. That's what their life looks like. They have four kids. You kind of can't avoid that. This is just who they are and what's involved. Let me give you some advice.
Wear shoes. That's not like a medical tetanus advice piece of advice. That's like they have kids. There's Legos around. Wear shoes. Like just avoid that trap.
They have four kids. At least one of them throughout the night is likely to sneeze on you. This wasn't supposed to be audience participation. Take hand sanitizer. Hand sanitizer is your friend. Not because their house is disgusting, but because they have kids and kids get sick.
And just do that. At dinner time, you're going to share the bench. You don't get your own seat. And this is probably genius. We could implement this in our house. But you share the bench at the Pabones house.
And you share the bench. The bench. You share the bench with at least two other children. Not other children. Two of their children. And you will have probably a child on either side or two children on that side.
And they know better. They're pretty well trained. But they just might anyway touch your food. And it'll be for something trivial. Like there's no reason for them to. They'll just be like, that's spaghetti.
Yes, it is. And you get to take your hand sanitizer and rub it on the spaghetti and go for it. That stuff's okay. You can eat that. I don't know if that's true. Don't do that.
The Pabones have the only cat in the world that I've ever seen do this. They might exist. But they have like Ninja Cat. His name is Lincoln. But it more takes after the vampire slayer version of Lincoln that you might know.
The one that knows karate. Their Lincoln will literally steal food out of your hand. Like, bam, gone. And you would think, when I say that, you would think maybe it's the food that you're like reaching down to feed him. No, it's the food that you're reaching up to eat. Bam, disappears real quick.
They have a dog, Miley. He's like little. He's like a little dog. Miley will bark at you for seven minutes when you arrive. And not like the cute little puppy dog bark. Like the, you're an intruder.
Get out of my house. Like that's their dog. And you'll sit down. And maybe ten minutes later, he'll jump up on your lap and start licking you. And then like, he's your best friend ever. And then a noise will happen.
And bam, straight off over to the noise. That's kind of, this is just what going to dinner at the Bones house is like. And it's not that they're doing anything wrong. They're not. That's just what life looks like in their house. They actually have some really cool mottos and sayings that they have to try and model this.
Just not only for their kids, but for their community group and the people around them. They do things like they address the mess. They'll say things like deliberately, like, sorry for the living room. It's kind of always like that. We didn't have an opportunity to clean up. They won't make too many excuses for it so much as just point to it and say, nah, that's how life is.
Just push it to the side. Take a seat. You'll be fine. That's kind of their attitude towards that. They actually have a scripted thing that they'll tell guests. They say, first time you come, you're a guest.
Second time you come, you're family. Oh, it's just like, it feels like a Hallmark card, right? It's just so warm and fuzzy. Second time, you're family. But what that actually comes with is privileges and responsibilities.
So your privileges are you don't have to ask to open the fridge or you don't have to, you know, like you get to, you treat the house as if it's your own house. But the responsibilities are you're now expected to help with cooking. If you don't cook, you'll probably be on dishes. Somebody has to maintain order in the house while the cooking happens so that nobody dies. You can have any of these responsibilities on top of like just being a guest in their house. Let me tell you, you probably won't go there and leave thinking, wow, that was peaceful and perfect and calm.
Their children were just amazing little butterfly angel faces. And the food was like three star Michelin hat, whatever the ratings are. And like it was just, oh, it was so picture perfect. It could have been a movie. It was magical. And if you do experience that, that was like the fake.
Like you experienced, like they upped their game to accommodate the social norms rather than actually introducing. You experienced the fake for bones. But in amongst all of this, let me tell you the really, really good part of how they do hospitality. I'm a pastor. I'm married. I'm going to have kids soon.
And I learned things about the gospel and about life from the Pabones when I'm at their house. When you leave the Pabones house, you leave having learned something about maintaining order in a house with four kids. You leave having learned how to make time for your friends in and amongst that kind of chaos. You learn for me or for other people. You learn for your future or current parenting what it looks like to talk to a child with patience and grace that is currently in complete meltdown mode. That's what hospitality actually looks like.
Because in each of those little moments, you get to see a picture of the gospel as a Christian interacts with someone, their children, their friends, their family, as a Christian interacts with someone in a way that shows Jesus. And when non-believers are invited into that kind of a mess, they get to see life, real life, not fake life. They get to see real life handled by a Christian. And they see an image bearer of God doing what they're supposed to do. They get to see that little picture of the gospel. And for non-believing friends that we have, they need to see Christians facing the same kind of challenges and obstacles that they do in everyday life, but doing it with Jesus involved.
That's how you give people those little snapshots of the gospel throughout life. Now, if you're normally clean, if you're normally not chaotic, if you're normally structured, be that way. Do those things. Apply all of what I just said about the Pabones to your normal everyday life context. But don't fake it.
If you're cluttered, be cluttered. If you're dirty, make sure people don't get diseases. But be you and have people over in your house to see what it's like to see you relate to others as a Christian. Our homes have to be places where real life happens and others are welcomed in. Because where else in the world will a non-believer get to see that if they're not invited to your house? How else will people see Jesus in your life if you set up your home in such a way that you're deliberately trying to keep them out?
How else will people see Jesus, that little snapshot, how else will they see Jesus in action in your life if you've set up your home in such a way that if they're invited in, you show them a fake version of you? At this point, I tend to realize that we make a lot of excuses. We come up with all kinds of different excuses as to why all of this doesn't have to apply to us. It can apply to other people and we can kind of help or whatever. All kinds of different excuses as to why we shouldn't be hospitable. And if we're honest, I think most of them are pretty lame.
I think there's a couple of categories. We'll talk about these kind of categorically. For our excuses, the first one is it might be something along the lines of my house is a disaster or my kids are crazy or I'm not a very good entertainer or I can't cook. Like it's bad if I cook. I think when you boil it down, most of these, like this category of excuse, the diagnosis behind it is that you've probably bought into this whole cultural image maintenance thing. That you can't be hospitable because you can't do it like culture tells you you have to.
Picture perfect, immaculate house, perfect children, everything's clean. You're afraid that if people see your actual life, they're going to think you're not good at that stuff. You're afraid that if people see your actual life, that's something to be ashamed of. But I think that this is the truth. You don't have to be anything you're not. And if you fake it, you'll be pointing them to something other than who you are and who Jesus is in your life.
And honestly, I think if you're faking it, you kind of just need to stop that. And instead, invite people into the life that you actually have without putting all of this emphasis on maintaining the image that culture tells you you're supposed to have. There's also a category for introverts. Statistically, 50% of the people in this room are introverts. And I'm sure there's a good chance that five minutes into this, you probably just the terrified meter in your brain switched off and you just potentially just haven't heard anything until I said the word introvert. If that's the case, welcome back.
There is hope for you. I'm sure it probably sounds, I don't know, something along the lines of impossible, condescending, something like that for an extrovert to stand up here on stage and say, this is simple, this is easy, everybody should do this. I get that. If you've got like a spectrum of like extroverts here, zeros like right in line with this guy, and introverts all the way over here, then I rank. I'm like king of the extroverts, 100%. People give me energy.
I love this kind of stuff. I always want people in my house. I always want people in my life. That's where I thrive. That's where I'm my best. I'm actually really sad and depressed if I have to spend too long by myself.
This is me over here. A lot of people find themselves somewhere in this category and the whole hosting and having people in my safe zone. That's kind of, it's just, it's scary and terrifying. If this is you, like you're at the extreme end of introvert, that whole example that I gave with the Pabones, I don't know if you guys know Josh Pabone, but if you look at this scale, like with me all the way at that end, then Josh is like, Josh is like over here. Josh reads Harry Potter and thinks, wow, I need to buy a house with a staircase and a little room underneath it. No one would think to find me there.
That's who Josh is. And those guys are kind of crushing this whole hospitality game where you invite people into the mess of where you are and how you do it. And so for introverts out there, it doesn't have to look like 20 people over at your house. That would crush you. But it does get to look like one person, two people, a couple, something like that.
Basic food, board games, TV, simple stuff. It doesn't have to be, like you don't have to get this kind of cultural thing where you become a party planner and a huge event thrower, holdery person. You get to do simple, small stuff that you would be doing anyway and you just invite someone in anyway. If you're going to be playing video games on the internet, make that friend come to your house, sit on your couch and play the video game on the same screen. Those kinds of things. That's not as terrifying as it sounds when I'm talking about like pool parties and hot dogs and throwing huge things.
It doesn't have to be a big step. But we come up with all these different excuses. And let me tell you who this affects. When you make excuses and decide, I'm not going to do these things. Let me tell you who that affects. The person who lives in the house across the street.
They've been there, I don't know, maybe a couple months, three months. They seem introverted. They do the thing where the robot lets them in and then they shut the world out. Like that's, they kind of seem grumpy. They never seem to have anyone over. You figure if I invited them over, they would just say no.
Like they sit by themselves. Like they don't want to do that kind of stuff. That's what you figure. But you don't know that they've only lived in Colombia that long. They've moved in from out of state. They literally have no friends.
They know nobody here except the five people that they work with. They sit at home and eat dinner in front of the TV. Pretty much every day. Incredibly lonely. Wishing they had more. If you could invite that person to eat dinner and sit in front of the TV at your house once a week, they just might do it.
And in that action, they would see a tiny glimpse of the gospel as they're welcomed in as a stranger. It might be like a co-worker, someone at work that you've never hung out with outside of work and so you've never bridged that kind of, there's a gap between co-worker and friend and there's like this imaginary thing where you've got to hang out outside of work to be considered friends. You've got this co-worker who you see at work, you talk in the lunchroom, you maybe talk when there's no one else around, that kind of thing. And you can tell that there's something weird going on at home, like you don't know what it is, but it's weird to talk about it right here where there's like customers around or whatever.
You can't just approach them on some heartfelt topics. But you know there's something going on at home, something to do with their family, something's a bit amiss. Maybe what that person needs, what that person needs most, is to see you in action with your family, to see how you react to your kids, to see how you react to your husband. What if the very thing that they're struggling with at home is something they get to witness in your own home? When we make excuses for not wanting to host people, for not wanting to have people in our house, for never reaching out to strangers, for never reaching out to guests, for only ever entertaining our own friends and the people who are already in our sphere and never bridging that gap, people who could be hearing the gospel, who could be seeing those little glimpses of the gospel, start missing out.
There are people all throughout our lives who are longing to connect, but we're so afraid. We're so afraid to be the first person to offer a hand. Culture's taught us that in order to do that, you have to present this image. You have to be clean. You have to be extroverted. You have to be a performer.
You have to be able to cook. You do not. You need to be genuine. You need to be real. And you need to be willing to have people see Jesus in your actual real life, not the fake one that you think you have to project. Let me take just a moment as we kind of land the plane to give a few suggestions of what I think will make beginning this process a whole lot easier.
The first thing is to budget for hospitality. With budgeting comes intentionality. And with intentionality, if you're intentional about something, you're much more likely to actually go and do it. And so if you set aside money each month, you're more likely to spend that money for that purpose. It doesn't have to be much. I know there's a lot of tight budgets in the room.
It can be five bucks. Five bucks buys a lot of hot dogs. We've covered hot dogs. You can make a budget that allows you to have people over. Budgets show intentionality. You won't regret it.
Second one, simplify. Simplify. You don't have to impress anyone with anything. You're not entertaining. You're connecting. Your food can be ordinary.
The food isn't the point. The conversation you have while you're eating the ordinary food is the point. Nobody has to leave impressed by the food. Keep it simple. It can be movies. It can be pool.
It can be coffee. It can be sports. It can be games. It can be anything. It doesn't have to be even food. Keep it simple.
Don't try specifically to be impressive in what you're doing. Number three is calendar. If you're not a calendaring type, I know that there's the chaotic type out there, come up with some kind of system. It can be Taco Tuesdays. It can be Neighbor Wednesdays. It can be every second Sunday of the month.
It can be anything. As long as you're showing specific intentionality, these are the days where we're going to deliberately have people over. So that kind of thing will make it more likely that you'll actually go and do it. And number four is my favorite one. I think that's because it's the most important. Number four is make it a team sport.
Like all good sports, like all good sports, hospitality is best played as a team. Ooh, shots fired. Golf isn't a team sport. Golf is boring. I'm sorry. I have a chip on my shoulder.
People beat me at golf. I'm hopeless at it. And any shot I can take, I'm gonna go for it. Hospitality. Play it as a team sport. You get to involve other Christians.
You get to involve people in your community group. And you get to do this together. There's a couple of reasons that I think that's really helpful, really beneficial. One is that you get to do the mission together. Another is that non-believing friends get to see how Christians interact with each other. When someone has a problem in their life, how a Christian will encourage that Christian with Jesus, not with advice.
How we'll give them the gospel instead of giving them some kind of good advice for their situation. They get to see that, and they get to see that little glimpse of the gospel. Another good thing about team sports is, with hospitality as a team sport, is that your non-believing friends might actually connect better with someone else. You would be a great starting point. That's planting the seed. But they might actually connect better with someone else in your community group or something like that.
You might be really socially awkward and just need to have somebody who's extroverted around at your house and be able to kind of bridge that gap. Guys, we are, we're serious about this as a church. We truly, truly believe that hospitable Christians, hospitable community groups can and will change this city. In fact, as a church, we're going to be putting those words into action, into practice a lot throughout the summer, like in the upcoming period of time. In our typical community group time, something that we coach and we train community group leaders, in our typical community group time, what we try to achieve is we try to catch up on life, we try to apply the sermon, we try to engage the heart, and we try to pursue slash review the mission.
Those are the things we try to achieve in a normal routine, week to week community group. Catch up on life, apply the sermon, engage the heart, and review slash pursue the mission. During the summer, we are going to be taking a deliberate step to remove the agenda, like the feeling that this is the list of things we have to accomplish throughout a community group. We're going to be deliberately removing the agenda from our groups so that they can be freed up to practice this hospitality stuff. We're going to be giving all of the community group leaders and the community groups a free pass on doing the apply the sermon stuff, a free pass on feeling this burden to be circling up in little groups and applying this thing and praying for that thing.
You can still do that, but the point we're going to be making is that for a good five-week stretch, your community group can be pursuing the mission the entire time. Grilling, chilling, going bowling, having a party at someone's house, doing the pool thing, whatever it is, for a good five-week stretch, we're serious about this, we want our community groups to be inviting in and enjoying time together, rather over and above doing the whole applying the sermon, engaging the heart kind of stuff. That's going to be different for us. We're used to the getting a big group and have a conversation about the sermon stuff.
This is going to be different for us. For a whole month, we're just going to be hanging out and inviting people in. But we're really excited that as a church, we're going to have the opportunity to grow in hospitality and to grow in our relationship that we have with non-believing friends. As the band makes their way back up, I really just want to... I want to encourage you to see past your fears. Because all of the fears have to do with a cultural expectation that doesn't actually have to exist.
And if we can see past our excuses, and if we can see past our fears, then we can look towards Jesus. He's the reason we do this. The gospel is the... The opportunity to give people that little glimpse of the gospel is the reason that we're doing this. And ultimately, we want to see people who are coming into relationship with him. We don't want to see hospitality be used as a tool where we get to glorify ourselves and how great we are at doing this whole hosting thing.
We want to take every opportunity to show that little glimpse of the gospel so that we can push people towards Jesus. We want to invest in real relationships, in our real lives, so that we can point other people to the love of our Savior. Let's pray. God, we thank you that you loved us first and that you modeled hospitality for us. I pray and thanks that you sent Jesus to die for us, to welcome us home. I pray that as we go about everyday life in the ordinary things that we're doing, that we can be striving to invite people in that they may see a glimpse of you in our life.
I pray that you empower us and our groups in the coming months to be a welcoming church that sees growth on account of people seeing gospel glimpses in our homes. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.