Message: In the final chapter of Hebrews the author was giving the church some reminders about who they were and what kinds of behaviors should mark their lives. He was careful to point out the difference between obeying God in character as opposed to showing their spirituality by abstaining from certain foods like the Jews had been required to do under the law. The Jews were proud of their obedience to the food laws. It marked them and set them apart from everyone else as God’s chosen and favored people. This made me think about some of the things Christians tend to focus on. There are a whole bunch of things listed that Christians should “do”. The list includes hospitality, sharing and honoring marriage and submitting to leaders who are accountable by God for leading them. While I believe there are many Christians who live this way, we tend to hear more about Christians taking a stand for what they disagree with in the world. Many people don’t know who or what Christians are for, but they know and hear very loudly what Christians are against. I’m not saying that we should change our convictions. What I’m saying is that our lives should be marked and known for these points of character that we are reading about. Hospitality, generosity, honoring marriages and submitting to leaders are just a few of those things. What if we were known by those things? What if our focus was on these character traits? It should be expected that we as Christians won’t violate ourselves by participating in sin, but if we are not intentionally pursuing godly character what difference does it make? Verse 14 reminds us that the world we live in is not the enduring city we should be investing in. We are investing into a world to come so instead of trying to get non-believers to act like Christians in this world, we need to be a light of how believers behave so that the world will not just act like us, but become part of us in salvation.
