Message Date: September 29, 2024

Setting the Table, Part 4: Hospitality & Holiness

Victory Life Church — Sunday, September 29, 2024

Romans 12:13b (NLT) Always be eager to practice hospitality.

Christian Hospitality is setting the table for others to encounter Jesus.

This is our personal tables, but also our corporate table. Our services are setting a table for people to encounter God’s transformative love.

“Hospitality means primarily the creation of a free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people but to offer them space where change can take place.” ~ Henri Nouwen

Christian Hospitality is creating a space for others to encounter Jesus.

Creating Space // Setting the Table

The space that we create should be our lives expressed around our tables. Hospitality will cost us something, but love is costly, discipleship is costly, spiritual formation into Christlikeness is costly. We are called to sacrificially give our lives to show God’s love with everything he has entrusted into our hands.

Acknowledging the tension: is our calling to practice hospitality an extension of condoning sin in people’s lives? Is our accepting people at our tables or in our services the same as accepting sin?

“Because of the blood of Christ, because Jesus dined with sinners but did not sin with sinners, because repentance is the threshold to God, table fellowship is both comforting and challenging. It meets you where you are and asks you to die so that you can live. Practicing hospitality in our post-Christian world means that you develop thick skin. The hospitable meet people as strangers and invite them to become neighbors, and, by God’s grace, many will go on to become part of the family of God. This transition from stranger to neighbor to family does not happen naturally but only with intent and grit and sacrifice and God’s blessing.” ~ Rosaria Butterfield

As with all other matters of truth and discipleship, we look at Jesus, specifically Luke’s Gospel.

“In Luke’s Gospel Jesus is either going to a meal, at a meal, or coming from a meal” ~ Robert J. Karris

Luke 5:12-13 — The Leper is cleansed // Luke 5:27-32 — The tax-collector is called

Luke 5:12–13 (NLT) 12 In one of the villages, Jesus met a man with an advanced case of leprosy. When the man saw Jesus, he bowed with his face to the ground, begging to be healed. “Lord,” he said, “if you are willing, you can heal me and make me clean.” 13 Jesus reached out and touched him. “I am willing,” he said. “Be healed!” And instantly the leprosy disappeared.

Luke 5:29–32 (NLT) 29 Later, Levi held a banquet in his home with Jesus as the guest of honor. Many of Levi’s fellow tax collectors and other guests also ate with them. 30 But the Pharisees and their teachers of religious law complained bitterly to Jesus’ disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with such scum?” 31 Jesus answered them, “Healthy people don’t need a doctor—sick people do. 32 I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners and need to repent.”

Christian Hospitality welcomes sinners without sinning with sinners.

The church can welcome sinners around our tables or in our services because Jesus’ power to heal and forgive is greater than sins power to contaminate. We can recognize people’s value because of what Christ has done for them, not see them through the lens of their current sins.

Romans 5:8 (ESV) but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Loving a sinner means loving people where they are for who they are, not where they are not or where we think they should be or not be.

“And here is the edge: Christians are called to live in the world but not live like the world. Christians are called to dine with sinners but not sin with sinners. But either way, when Christians throw their lot in with Jesus, we lose the rights to protect our own reputation.” ~ Rosaria Butterfield

Walk in the fear of the Lord, not the fear of man or the fear of sin.

Walking in the fear of the Lord maintains your attention where it should be: on the Lord. Our agenda and focus should be none other than to walk humbly before the Lord Jesus, living a life that pleases him. Our hospitality is an extension of our fear of the Lord and our transformation into his image. Our hospitality is not because we are trying to win approval from a person or people group. Nor is avoiding hospitality because we are afraid of people’s sin, or afraid of what people will think of us, good or bad. Hospitality is not about you at all, it’s about Jesus. And when we follow Jesus, we lose the right to protect our own reputation. We simply obey.

Secure your lifeline before you throw one.

You secure your “oxygen mask” before helping others with theirs. You can help a drowning victim, but not get drowned with them. You do not “touch” a drowning victim or you will get pulled down in their terror and desperation. That does not mean you do not “help” a drowning victim! Of course you help. But it is important to be secure in your identity in Christ and belonging in a community of believers as you extend the table of hospitality.

Belonging to a secure, stable, loving community is the foundation for hospitality of others.

You cannot share what you do not have (we’re not the federal government). You cannot bless others with what is not yours. You cannot extend a table of hospitality you have not joined.

Be aware of who wields the greater influence.

Many of you have been delivered from tragic and desperate situations and substantives and challenges (Ex. drugs, alcohol, gossip, sexual perversion). Some of you may have only recently have become victorious over these things, or may still be early in overcoming the struggle with them. You may not be in a position to offer a stable table of hospitality to those who still live in the midst of these issues without falling back into them. It is ok to make a clear break from that influence until the point your victory is strong enough to influence those still in them toward victory.

Christian Hospitality is creating a space for others to encounter Jesus.

If you cannot create the space for others to encounter Jesus, but may succumb to temptation, then remain at the table for Jesus to deepen your victory before you open the table for others. There are other ways to serve and to love people without opening yourself up to temptation.

Conclusion

James 5:19–20 (NLT) 19 My dear brothers and sisters, if someone among you wanders away from the truth and is brought back, 20 you can be sure that whoever brings the sinner back from wandering will save that person from death and bring about the forgiveness of many sins.

James 5:19–20 (MSG) My dear friends, if you know people who have wandered off from God’s truth, don’t write them off. Go after them. Get them back and you will have rescued precious lives from destruction and prevented an epidemic of wandering away from God.

To love someone means to will the good for them and act upon it. Loving people does not mean tolerating or condoning sin and sinful behavior. Loving someone means for their good you can speak the truth of sin’s damage to our lives and relationships, but not reject the person or refuse to acknowledge their value based on their sin. To will the good for someone that is in sin includes being clear about sin’s effects, but equally clear about Christ Jesus’ abundant forgiveness and mercy and grace.

Romans 2:4–5 (NLT) 4 Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin?

5 But because you are stubborn and refuse to turn from your sin, you are storing up terrible punishment for yourself. For a day of anger is coming, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.