Text: Hebrews 3:1-6
Date: October 17, 2021
Event: The Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost, Year B
Hebrews 13:1–6 (EHV)
Continue to show brotherly love. 2Do not fail to show love to strangers, for by doing this some have welcomed angels without realizing it. 3Remember those in prison, as if you were fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated, as if you yourselves were also suffering bodily.
4Marriage is to be held in honor by all, and the marriage bed is to be kept undefiled, for God will judge sexually immoral people and adulterers. 5Keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have. For God has said:
I will never leave you,
and I will never forsake you.
6So then we say with confidence:
The Lord is my helper, and I will not be afraid.
What will man do to me?
Help as God has Helped You!
“Hey, could you help me with something?” What’s your immediate, gut reaction to that question? Perhaps it’s excitement to lend a hand and to feel needed. Perhaps it’s a bit of caution—am I going to be holding one end of a measuring tape or loading a moving truck? Or maybe it’s somewhere in-between, with a willingness to offer assistance, but also wanting more information to figure out how possible that would be.
Why do people ask for help? Rarely is it because they are too lazy to do it themselves. More often, it’s because it would either be impossible or much less efficient to do it with one set of hands compared with two or more, right? Think of how much easier it to measure something that is long and off the floor with two people on the measuring tape rather than just one. Possible but not easy to do for just one person. But then consider moving a heavy piece of furniture. Size and weight may make that task absolutely impossible for one person to do on their own, no matter how strong they are.
But when someone needs help and you rise to the occasion to do it, what a blessing for all involved! You are helping that person in need and they are rescued from their difficult or even impossible situation!
And this is the general area where the writer to the Hebrews wants us to be focused today. We can depend on a lot of things for safety and security, especially money as was made clear in our Gospel. But that’s not where we want our focus to be. We want our focus to be on God who is our eternal helper, who then empowers us to be helpers to others in their earthly needs and to point them to the eternal help given by God.
These are near the closing words to this letter written to Jewish Christians near the end of the apostolic era. These Christians were being pulled away from the faith by trouble and persecution for being Christians. And the author’s letter is, in part, an encouragement to not get whisked away from the faith but to bear those crosses in the here and now for the blessings that will come in heaven.
And at the tail end of our reading, he makes clear what those blessings are. What are the promises of God? He quotes from Deuteronomy, “I will never leave you, and I will never forsake you.” And again he quotes from the Psalms, “The Lord is my helper, and I will not be afraid. What will man do to me?” And there’s where our motivational focus for life and eternity is. God has promised to be our helper who will never leave nor forsake us.
And God’s definition of helper is someone who does for us what would be impossible on our own, or more accurately impossible for us at all. When God is our helper in the primary sense, he’s not helping us lift the couch; he’s moving the couch all on his own for us. He is primarily our helper in dealing with the problem of sin. That was not something we did or even could lend a hand with. Solving sin and hell had to be God’s work alone.
And so it was. Jesus came as that helper we needed. He took our place in all things, both living a flawless life and dying an innocent death. So, by God’s work in our place and completely without our assistance, he rescued us from sin, death, and hell. We are free from the eternal ramifications for our sin because Jesus undid them and suffered them in our place. There is no doubt or worry or concern that something might be left undone. There is no slack to pick up or contributions we have to make. We will be in heaven for eternity because our sins are gone. Thanks be to God!
So what does God being our helper then mean for us in the here and now? It means that we are freed, encouraged, even emboldened to be helpers to those around us. And the writer to the Hebrews lists off many different ways that God’s work for us will reflect in our lives. At the start of our lesson he rattles off a rapid-fire list: Continue to show brotherly love. Do not fail to show love to strangers, for by doing this some have welcomed angels without realizing it. Remember those in prison, as if you were fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated, as if you yourselves were also suffering bodily.
All of these can probably fall under the umbrella of thinking of others as more important than yourself. The author is encouraging us to take a Christ-like view of our fellow people, no matter what your relationship to them is. Perfect stranger? How can you help them? Someone in prison? What might they need? Someone struggling with circumstances that restrict them? What would you want someone to do for you if you were in that exact same boat?
And these don’t need to be heroic things, and sometimes maybe it seems to be more in the realm of just common sense or common decency. Not being short with that person at the grocery store. A kind word to someone you’re walking past on the sidewalk. Offering to help someone carry something. There are a million different ways that the opportunity to be a helper presents itself in our lives, even if they seem small to us. But nothing is truly small; Jesus even commended people who gave his believers a cup of cool water.
The writer to the Hebrews goes on: Marriage is to be held in honor by all, and the marriage bed is to be kept undefiled, for God will judge sexually immoral people and adulterers. This ties in well with what we considered last week. Marriage is a special bond and God is protecting it and the family. And it’s interesting that this is not just aimed at married people, that they should guard what they have, nor is it just aimed at single people, that they should respect other people’s relationships. No, marriage is to be held in honor by all. Husbands and wives can and should be helpers for each other. Those who are no married should not only not look to undermine those that are married but also live their lives in a way that respects how God has designed this, especially in terms of the “marriage bed,” that sexual relations of any kind are reserved for only within the committed environment of marriage.
But then the writer to the Hebrews gets at what Jesus is focused on in our Gospel for this morning: Keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have. Loving money has no place in a Christian’s life. Materialism, worshiping at the altar of “stuff” is not part of a Christian’s life. Because our hope, our confidence, our helper is not found in bank or investment account balance nor in having the latest and greatest clothing, shoes, car, phone, game, whatever. Our confidence doesn’t rest on this earthly stuff. Money is not our helper; God is our helper. Money and things are tools we use to support our families and other people; they are not ends in themselves.
So that really is our question: what do we trust to truly help? Our help should come from God, and perhaps it’s God working through others. Our confidence is in him who has done everything we need and we trust in him to provide for our needs, especially our eternal need of forgiveness and rescue from hell. Likewise, we take that trust and confidence and in joy and gratitude be helpers to others, supporting them in their needs, being a blessing to their families, and recognizing the appropriate place of material things in our lives.
It all comes down to God, who has helped us, enabling us to help others. God, open our eyes to see the myriad of ways that you have helped us, especially by rescuing us from sin and hell through no work on our part. Open our eyes to see the opportunities you place before us to help and love others as you have helped and loved us! Amen.
