Calvary Road Baptist Church
“MORE THAN JUST A WELCOME MAT”
Romans 12.13b
The city of Rome. A city of conquest. A city of power. A city of might. A city of majestic architecture. A city of immense wealth. A city teeming with life. But a city crawling with death.
Were it possible for you to pass out that door and suddenly arrive in the city of Rome as Paul was to come to know it, the impact would be devastating. Assaulted in every possible way without hesitation, without interruption.
Rome was a city of stench. The acrid smell of burning wood. The stomach-turning odor of rotting flesh in the marketplace. The gagging invasion of your nostrils by the raw sewage that ran down the open gutter in the center of every street, every avenue, every alley. Suddenly the importance of someone offering to wash your feet as you enter their house takes on a significance unknown to rural folk.
Rome was a city of taste. On a dry and dusty day, when the sun is bearing down on the slaves, for only slaves would be out and about during such heat, you could taste the civilization. You could taste the dust that was stirred up as people and animals move about. You could taste the sweat running down your face. And you could taste the air. So much so that you could tell by the taste of the air, whether you were in the market or near the cattle pens, whether you were near poultry or swine, whether there was grain nearby or brick kilns. Rome did not taste clean and sweet like most of the rest of the world, like where you come from.
Rome was a city of touch. More so than anywhere else you have ever been you feel violated by the jostling that you are subjected to. Everyone is colliding into everyone. The crowds are enormous. Everyone is anonymous. The shoulders and elbows, the pushing, the shoving, the backing into you, the backhand to your cheek that comes as someone expresses himself. You have never been so physically beaten up in your life without being in a fight as when you walk the streets of Rome, for the collisions of humanity and the groping and touching and probing are constant.
That is just at the street level. From above, there is greater danger. The danger of refuse, waste, and garbage being tossed down from dingy little apartments, some of it hard and some of it soft, some wet and some dry. But all tossed out with absolutely no regard for those below.
And the noise. Does everyone yell? Does everyone shout and scream? Do all the donkeys bray? Do all the roosters crow, and the hens cluck, and the dogs yelp, and the cats meow all the time? It seems so. Rome is a city that may lay down and rest, but she never goes to sleep. One can always hear the sounds of men beating women and women cursing men. There is no end to the drunken laughter and wretched moaning in the background. In Rome, it is never quiet. And just when quietness threatens, the crack of the whip and howl of pain spoil any possibility of silence.
Perhaps it is the sights of Rome that are most memorable. For it is the pictures that our minds see that are most easily recorded for later reference. And in Rome, there are endless sights to see. There is the Coliseum and its gladiators.[1] There is the Circus and its chariot races. There are the innumerable temples and shrines and baths and statues. Why there is even a pyramid in Rome. But it is the cruelties of Rome that scar the memory, for Rome is first and foremost a cruel city.
Crosses everywhere, with so many, nailed to them and dying such slow and agonizing deaths. Rome consciously reminded her visitors that she knew how to kill, and torture, and beat into submission, anyone who threatened her grip on world domination. Perhaps it is for that reason that the thousands upon thousands of slaves had such hopeless and desperate looks on their faces — the haunting eyes.
The freemen, especially the wealthy, had such gluttonous looks of boredom on their faces. With their drunken parties, gulping themselves to the full before vomiting, and then gorging themselves on food and vomiting, over and over and over again. Attempting, in every possible way, to thrill and excite themselves, they became so bored with it all. Until at last, even the most depraved and debauched wildness seemed passe to them.
But it is all so shocking and horrifying to you because you are a visitor in Rome. You have come on the Lord’s business. There are urgent messages that must be passed along to expedite the spread of the Gospel. But after your long journey, you are bone tired. You have traveled, it seems, forever. And the city is so strange. So foreign to you. So wicked.
You have some money. But do you dare stay at an inn, with the harlots, with the drunkards, with the sodomites, with the thieves, with the murderers, that so commonly frequent such places? Not just for the child of God is such a place an unwise venue to rest and eat. So, instead, you pray. You pray for help from the Lord. You pray for a Christian to be brought across your path, a believer who will offer you a place to stay, though no one is expecting you.
As the sun begins to set and the crowd begins to thin out just a little as you make your way through the streets, you notice a man. Then you notice that he notices you. He is not obviously different from anyone else, but for two things: He looks at people, not past them. Into their eyes, though no one looks back. And his countenance. His face is just as dirty as anyone else’s, but his face seems to shine. His eyes are bright.
Could it be? You must be careful. Rome is such a dangerous city for believers. You stop, and he slowly approaches you. Then, when he is only inches from you-you say, “He is risen,” and he breaks out in a grin that spreads from ear to ear and says back to you, “Yes. He is risen.”
Then he takes you by the arm and guides you through the throngs of people and the maze of alleys to his home, his wife, his family, his friends, his food, and his friendship. There he ministers to you. As you drift into the comfort of sleep you thank God over and over again for this man, this God-sent man, who helped you when you most needed help.
My friends, such episodes as this are not uncommon. They have been repeated hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of times since Paul’s day. We must not ask ourselves, “What was that man doing visiting Rome?” For we can imagine. No. What we must ask ourselves is, “What was that second man doing, out in his own city and walking the streets, looking for such a man as who prayed to God for help?”
Want to know what the second man was doing? First Peter 4.9 gives us an idea:
“Use hospitality one to another without grudging.”
He was not reluctantly responding to his pastor’s request that a visiting Christian be housed and fed. Want to know what the second man was doing? Hebrews 13.2 gives us an idea:
“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”
He was not throwing his house open only to those he knew in advance he could have a good time of fellowship with, or to those who he was related to.
Want to know what the second man, the one who spotted our stranger in the crowd, was doing? He was “given to hospitality,” Romans 12.13. He understood that “hospitality” primarily refers, not to your fondness of being a gracious host to your friends and acquaintances, but to those you do not know, to those you have never before met. He understood another thing, as well. He understood that “given” refers not to being willing to be hospitable only when someone asks, but to eagerly pursuing opportunities to use your home to minister to others.
Take a look at Romans 12.14. See the word “persecute”? It is the same word that is translated “given” in verse 13. It shows us that what Paul has in mind is for the Christian to vigorously pursue opportunities to be hospitable, to use our homes to glorify God with the same vigor that they were being hunted by the enemies of Christ, who hunted them like animals.
However, the exhortation from Paul to be “given to hospitality” was not for them who lived in Rome only. We, too, are to be “given to hospitality.” This we must do, since we and ours are just as much strangers and sojourners in a foreign world here in 2019 as were those two men in the first century. What caused that second man to do what he did? Why did he go out and aggressively seek the use of his home to minister to another, rather than wait for that first man to stumble to his doorstep, or to wait for the pastor to announce from the pulpit that a place is needed for someone?
Perhaps a more appropriate question would be “What must happen in my life to be willing to do the same thing that man did? What must happen in my life to become one who is given to hospitality?” Do you know Jesus Christ as your Savior? If you do (and only if you do), three things go into the making of a Christian who is “given to hospitality.”
First, THE RECOGNITION OF OWNERSHIP
Consider this issue of ownership as it relates to hospitality.
Hospitality suggests two things: Hospitality suggests your house or the place in which you dwell, and hospitality suggests your family, the people you live with who, with you, give hospitality. For our discussion, I will refer to the combination of your house and your family as your home. The tool with which you exercise hospitality is your home, comprised of both house and family.
But whose house is it? And all jokes about the bank owning it aside, the fact of the matter is, “The earth is the LORD’s, and the fullness thereof.”[2] Everything there is owned by God. Perhaps you are the temporary steward of that house, but the owner is God. Amen? That means you are to use that house in a manner that pleases God.
That is fine. Now let us consider the family. To whom do they belong? They do not belong to you, nor do you belong to them. Neither do you or they exist for your pleasure, but God’s, according to Revelation 4.11.
Completely setting aside, for a moment, what you or your family want to do in or out of the house or apartment you live in, the fact is, the house is God’s, your family is God’s, and you are God’s. Amen? He owns it, not in the abstract, but the concrete.
I would suggest to you that someone like the second man of my illustration is someone who recognizes that God owns him, who recognizes that God owns his family, and who recognizes that God owns his house. Not just because God made it and them, or because God redeemed them, but because, Romans 12.1, this man consciously presented himself, and does continually and does daily present himself and all that is his, to God as a sacrifice, for God to do with as He pleases, according to His Word. Recognizing ownership is the starting point for the Christian.
Second, THE RECOGNITION OF OBLIGATION
Recognizing that God has ownership rights that He wishes to exert through us as we exercise responsible and obedient stewardship over what He has loaned to us, we must also recognize that the great blessings of God place us into a position of tremendous obligation.
At this point, let me strongly state what is not our obligation, what is not our debt. One of the confusing things about the Christian life to lost people comes as a result of thinking that salvation is a blessing that is earned and paid for by the Christian. Of course, since salvation is by grace through faith, we deny any of the assertions that God can in any way be paid back or be paid off by us for giving His salvation to us. My friends, we have not the ransom price for our salvation. Only the shed blood of Jesus Christ could pay my sin debt and yours, not any measly good works that you or I attempt to perform to bribe God into letting us into heaven. The life that the Christian lives before God is a life of responsive appreciation, not a life of attempting to pay for what God has done for us. Jesus paid it all. Amen?
That said, let me go on to say that Christians do have obligations. We are indebted. But to whom are we indebted? In Romans 1.14, Paul indicated that he was “a debtor both to the Greeks and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise.” What Paul was referring to there is a moral obligation. He had, to use a rather common phrase, “Good Samaritan” responsibility. Just as we recognize the moral responsibility, we have to stop in the middle of the desert to give water and perhaps a ride to the nearest truck stop to a stranded mother and her child, so it is in the spiritual realm. Those of us who know Jesus Christ as our Savior, and who have families and homes, have a moral obligation to use what is at our disposal to minister to those in need in a Biblical way. But there is another debt Paul refers to in Romans. In Romans 8.12, he sort of backs into another obligation that Christians have:
“Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh.”
Reading on will show you that Paul is strongly suggesting, if not outright stating, that Christians are obligated to allow the indwelling Holy Spirit to show Himself in our lives by the way we live. That is, we are indebted to the Holy Spirit to respond to the tremendous blessing of having Him in our lives by allowing Him to work through us to live and behave in ways that lost people never could or would. So, how do lost people regard their families and their houses, how do they regard their homes? Do not lost people mistakenly regard their families and their houses as their retreat, their resort, to get away from the cares and affairs of the day, to find refuge from the cold and cruel world? Christians, on the other hand, should look to their families and their dwellings as a resource through which they can launch a massive assault on this Satanic stronghold we call the planet earth. We are obligated, Christians, in a way that lost people simply do not understand when applied to spiritual things. We have moral obligations. We have a moral obligation to seek the salvation of the lost, and we have a moral obligation to allow the indwelling Holy Spirit to use us to do what He wants to do. And we know that what He wants us to do is bring men to Christ. Amen? We have that obligation.
Finally, THE RECOGNITION OF OPPORTUNITY
It is not enough to recognize God’s ownership of you and your family, your home. Nor is it enough to additionally recognize that you have a moral obligation by all that is right and holy to serve God and seek to win the lost through the family God has given you. All is for naught if you fail to realize the great opportunity that God has given to you to serve Him with and through your family.
It is a pity when a Christian loses sight of the fact that his home is a microcosm of the Church, and that through his home he can work to fulfill the Great Commission of our Lord Jesus Christ. When a lost man comes to Church, he may not quite figure out what is going on, but he does know that something quite unusual is going on here. When the Holy Spirit begins to deal with him, he will recognize that God is at work amid the people.[3] Much the same thing happens, or ought to happen, in your home.
As a result of what God has done in your life and your home, your hospitality will expose both lost and saved people to something they will experience only in Christian homes: Husbands who lead and love their wives like Christ loves the Church, wives who are devoted to their husbands and who demonstrate a godliness that is captivating, and children who are being nurtured and trained actually to honor their father and mother. In that environment, someone with an open Bible, ready to meet the spiritual need at hand, has a great opportunity to bear fruit.
It is a pity that so many are short-sighted and selfish with their homes, and do not extend hospitality, do not aggressively seek to bring others into their homes. Perhaps they have simply not thought of their home as a tool with which to serve God. However, I can think of no greater compliment a husband can pay to a wife than to bring whoever he can home to meet her and her children. What a testimony to the children of his approval than when a man brings friends, co-workers, strangers, home to see what God has done and is doing in their lives.
I am reminded of an Arab man I once met in Europe some years back. He had become a Christian as a teen as the result of a Christian teen who he had repeatedly persecuted inviting him to his home one day after school. It was in that Christian family’s home in Cairo, Egypt that he saw something he had never seen in his Muslim home where his father had two wives. In the Christian home, he witnessed love and tenderness, as opposed to the infighting and jealousies that ruled in his home. That led to his consideration of the Gospel and his eventual conversion to Christ. Cairo is not the only city where something like that can happen.
What is a home? Is it a refuge from a threatening world? Is it the place a man comes and hides at the end of a day of cowering before the might and the power of a Satan-dominated world? Or is it the place where a gathering of slobs sit in front of a television set and belch while they gaze at movies piped in by cable? I say, “No.” Your home should be more than a place with a “Welcome Mat” on the doorstep.
With very few exceptions, regardless of what you think, you have a suitable house for entertaining. My conviction is that there are not more than one or two families in this entire congregation that I would not unhesitatingly recommend that a person go to to be comforted, to be exhorted, to be loved, to be witnessed to, to be challenged, to hear the testimonies of what God is doing in your life.
Do you realize that almost every one of you has your unique testimony of the goodness and greatness of God? Do you not realize that, whether you play the host to someone of higher or lower station in life (whatever that means), you are able to captivate the attention of your guests, not by the newness of the paint on the walls or the quality of the china, but by Christ in you the hope of glory?
That second man in Rome lived in no mansion. He was a poor man, by any standards. But he recognized a few things that we would each do well to recognize ourselves:
First, recognize God’s ownership of what you have, both your family and your dwelling. He has given us what we have. What we have, both in the way of spouse and children and in the way of material possessions, is what God wants us to use when we demonstrate that you are “given to hospitality.”
Second, we need to recognize that we have an obligation. We have something no lost person has, a Christian home. Therefore, since we are obligated since we are debtors, we need to use what God has given us, use who God has given us, to discharge our obligations.
Finally, we need to recognize our opportunity. Want to make an impact for Christ? Want to win that co-worker to Christ? Invite that individual and his or her family over. No matter how your kids act when they are there if you have prayed and spiritually prepared for them before they get there, God will use your hospitality as a tremendous way of removing barriers and fears to bringing them to Christ.
We know, what with the religious weirdoes in our country, that some lost people out there think Christians are mindless idiots. But when we use our homes for hospitality we are preparing hearts by removing fears and extending love, for the presentation of the Gospel.
Remember, no one is saved unless they first hear a clear presentation of the Gospel. But being hospitable with your home and family is a great way, is a tremendous way, of giving first of yourself so you can then get them to Church where they will be so much more willing to hear the Gospel.
It was a poor Christian couple who took a wounded Maoist revolutionary into their home that so impressed Samuel Rai that he was open to their Gospel witness. Thirty years, almost a thousand congregations, and perhaps one hundred thousand converts later, that poor man and woman have crowns awaiting them at the Judgment Seat of Christ as a result of what began with their humble hospitality.
Decide tonight when you go home that you are going to, as a family, be “given to hospitality.” Prepare, pray, plan as a family to glorify God in this way. Invite neighbors, invite co-workers, and Church visitors to your home. Then let the Lord use you to accomplish great things for Him.
Our ushers have something for each of you that I want to review with you before we are dismissed in prayer.
(Handout)
FOUR SUGGESTIONS FOR SUCCESSFUL HOSPITALITY:
- Be Prepared. Keep your house in a state of preparedness for guests, but make sure that you surprise no one, if at all possible, with last minute or unannounced guests. Especially if you head a single parent home or both spouses work, being prepared is more difficult. However, working outside the home does not absolve anyone of their Christian duties and responsibilities.
- Be Prayed. Make hospitality a matter of habitual prayer at your house. Through prayer, ask God to give you and your family wisdom to minister to the spiritual needs of those in your home.
- Be Personal. Be yourself. Don’t pretend you’re someone you’re not. Being casual and relaxed is a way to get others comfortable around you.
- Be Productive. Have a definite goal in mind when you have people over. Your goal should not be to have a good time but to accomplish some definite spiritual purpose. With the lost, you want to lay the groundwork for them to be receptive to the Gospel. With the saved, you may want to counsel, comfort, correct, or encourage in some way. Whatever you do, make sure you accomplish something during that time your guests are there. You and your family might even want to discuss what it is you want to accomplish with the next guests you have over, and then review what you accomplished. Have a God-honoring plan. Work your plan and trust God to bless you.
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[1] Built after 70 AD with treasure taken from the Temple when Jerusalem was sacked.
[2] Psalm 24.1
[3] 1 Corinthians 14.25
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