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This page was last updated 11/15/08
Week of: September 7, 2008
Title: The Grace of Forgiveness 1
Series: Study of Spiritual Formation - Part 9
Scripture: Luke 15:11-24
For the last couple of Sunday’s, I’ve been emphasizing what’s been called “relationship spirituality.” It is based on the four basic relationships that you find in the Bible: God, other people, ourselves, and creation. It is simply the understanding that we grow in Christ by focusing our time and energy on these four relationships.
2. Today, I would like to talk about something that is basic to all relationships—forgiveness.
3. All true and lasting relationships are based upon forgiveness. Only short and very shallow, superficial relationships don’t need forgiveness. In fact, the more permanent, deeper, longer, and hopefully lasting relationships have to be built upon forgiveness. You cannot have friends and even family without learning to one degree or the other to practice forgiveness. When forgiveness in our relationships breaks down, everything falls apart.
4. As Christians, our belief is that the number one relationship we need help with, and therefore need to experience forgiveness, is with God! We believe that we need God’s forgiveness! Most people who are not Christian and who don’t want to become Christian believe that they have done nothing wrong that needs forgiveness. Their attitude is either that they are not a bad person therefore not in need of forgiveness, or if there is a God, he simply doesn’t care what we do. Either way there is no need of being forgiven by any deity.
5. But the understanding that Christians have is that people do desperately need forgiveness from God. It is basic to everything we try to do here. Everyone needs forgiveness no matter who you are: no matter how good and upstanding citizen of St. Paul-Castlewood, Va. you are; and no matter how a law abiding citizen that you think of yourself as being in our great state. No matter how pure you believe your actions, motives, and thoughts are, you need forgiveness. And no matter how much better you think you are to other people in our town, you need forgiveness. We all need forgiveness.
6. The dynamics of forgiveness revolve around three things:
one is admitting that you do things wrong;
two, being sorry for what you have done wrong, and
three, confessing what you have done wrong. Let’s look at this for just a moment.
7. How many of you are willing to admit that you have done things wrong (or sinned) in your life? Raise your hands!!
8. How many of you are willing to admit that you still sin in your life? If you don’t believe you still sin then you are calling Jesus a liar! Why? Because 1 John 1:8-10 says that “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.” This was written to Christians.
9. Is anyone willing to admit that they have sinned today or at least as recently as yesterday? How many of you would be willing to admit that you sin at least every day, so that at least at the end of the day you need to say: “Lord, forgive me for I have sinned.”
10. Bear with me, there is a point to all of this. How many of you would be willing to admit to a specific sin problem? Pride, envy, gluttony, lust, lying, gossiping, dishonesty, thievery, adultery, idolatry, addiction, alcoholism, drug abuse, hatred, murder, just to name a few.
11. For the most part, we can admit we are sinners. Saved sinners, but nevertheless sinners. But the more public it gets, the more specific it gets, and the more shameful it is, the more reluctant we get to admitting we are wrong—to one another, and even to ourselves.
12. But confessing our sins to God, is more than just admitting we are sinners (even though that would be a good start for many people), but it is naming them one by one.
13. Why do we need to name them one by one? Let me share with you what I believe about forgiveness and confession of sins. You may not agree with me, or even understand what I am saying, but I believe that at the moment I became a Christian and asked God to forgive me for my sins, He accepted me as a child of God and forgave me for my sins past, present, and future. I live, so to speak, in a sphere of forgiveness in which God has forgiven me for every sin I have committed, that I am committing, and that I will ever commit.
14. Preacher, are you saying that if you went out and murdered someone this afternoon, that you are already forgiven for that?
Yes!!! I believe that!!! Without even having to ask for it? Yes.
15. Well, as far as being a Christian is concerned, what keeps you from committing some crime if you know that you are forgiven? Well, what restrains anyone who believes that all sins can be forgiven by simply asking for forgiveness? The same thing, the love and grace of God keeps anyone from abusing the forgiveness of God in any shape, fashion, or form.
16. But preacher, you just read 1 John 1:9 and it says: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” How do you believe that and believe what you say?
17. Let’s put it this way! Let’s imagine that your son, daughter, grandson, or granddaughter did something to harm you in some way. I am not talking about something that is small, but something very grievous to you. Anyway, they come to you and ask you for forgiveness. You can tell they are serious and very genuinely sorry for what they did. But you say: “Son I don’t believe you, show me that you are really sorry! Beg at my feet, do a thousand “Hail Mary’s” (for the Baptist-Catholics), mow the yard, take out the trash, do anything to show me you are genuine about what you are saying.” No you wouldn’t say that, you would say: “Son, I’ve already forgiven you, I am just glad your back.”
18. Does that sound familiar to you? Do you remember what the loving father did when he saw the prodigal son coming home? According to Luke it says: “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.”
19. You see, I think that God (metaphorically) stands at Heaven’s door, with forgiveness and love in His heart, and that when he sees us coming, he runs and throws His arms around us.
20. The forgiveness is already there. He does not have to forgive us any more or less than he already has. The forgiveness has been made possible by Jesus Christ’s death upon the cross, because we have become sons and daughters of God. But until we come back home, until we ask Him for forgiveness, we are not going to experience His loving arms around us.
21. Once a Christian, confession and therefore repentance enables us to experience the forgiveness of God that is already been made available to us by Jesus. It does not insure our forgiveness, Jesus Christ has already done that.
22. Your experience of forgiveness, and therefore the quality of your relationship with God, depends on three things:
one, willingness to admit in your wrongness in all the gory detail,
two, it depends upon your willingness to be sorry for those wrongs, and
three, your willingness to confess your regret before God.
Week of September 14, 2008
Title: The Grace of Forgiveness 2
Series: The Study of Spiritual Formation - Part 10
Scripture: Colossians 3:3-14
1. Gordon MacDonald wrote a book entitled “Restoring Your Spiritual Passion” in which he identified five different types of people that you might come in contact with. Let me give you those types.
2. First are VRPs- very resourceful people who add to our lives and help ignite our passion for God and things around us. These are our mentors, people who are willing to share their wisdom and experiences with us.
3. Second are VIPs-they are the very important people who share our passion with us. Everyone who loves our church and loves our Lord is a VIP to us because they share our passion and love of God. They also share our love for one another.
4. Third are the VTPs- very trainable people who catch our passion for Jesus. Human emotions and attitudes are very easily communicated to others. What one person has, another person is likely to get. If it is passion and excitement for Christ then others can experience it as well. There are people here today, there are people all around us, who are by their very nature and position in life, very trainable and waiting for someone to have a positive influence on them.
5. The fourth kind of persons he mentions are the VNPs- the very nice people who enjoy our passion but don’t contribute to it. MacDonald says the large majority of congregations in the Western civilianization make up these people. He says that most church programs are about babysitting them and their needs.
6. The fifth kind of persons are the VDPs-they are the very draining people who sap our passion and strength by causing conflicts, fusses, and all sorts of problems. They are people that are not happy and fulfilled, and consequently, don’t want other people to be happy and fulfilled.
7. The VRPs, VIPs, VTPs, VNPs, and VDPs all have at one thing in common. Do you know what it is? They are all human beings, and everyone needs to be forgiven. As said last Sunday, all of our relationships are based on forgiveness. If you don’t learn to practice forgiveness you are not going to have long lasting relationships.
8. According to the Bible, as Christians, we have some special reasons to practice forgiveness. Let’s look at some reasons why.
9. In Colossians 3rd chapter, Paul is laying down the rules for holy living and in doing so he uses death and resurrection language. For example, 3:1 says, “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above…” The “raised with Christ” reminds us of our baptism as were raised out of the water to symbolize being raised again to the new life in Christ Jesus. He says this to remind all of us we were raised with Christ so we should desire things fitting of that resurrection experience.
10. He continues by saying, “Put to death your earthly nature with all your “sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed….Do not lie to each other, put on your new self, which is being renewed in the knowledge in the image of its creator.” The “putting to death” is also a reference to our baptism and our death and resurrection in Jesus Christ. Paul likes to say that at our conversion and our baptism a part of us called the old self is crucified, killed off, or at least starts a process of dying daily. That old self represents the lists of sins that he sites throughout all of his letters. Hopefully then with the sinful human nature on the decline and a new life in Christ on the rise, he states in verse 12:
11. “Therefore…clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”
12. It is interesting that Paul lists compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, but elaborates on forgiveness and love. To Paul, the main concern he has in all of his churches is unity. And the only way to achieve unity is through forgiveness and love. Every community and every church cannot stand for long without forgiveness and some degree or the other, some form or the other, love.
13. It is almost laughable for a church to believe that they can be anything like what Jesus expects them to be without practicing forgiveness and love.
14. And as I said last Sunday, no relationships, at least, not lasting relationships, can continue very long without forgiveness. Everything begins to fall apart without love and forgiveness. Love is the greatest of all human endeavors, and forgiveness is the greatest expression of love.
15. Love is the glue that holds everything together and (get this) without forgiveness there can be no love. For all the talk about how we say we love one another, if we don’t learn to forgive, our love is garbage.
16. But there is another reason to forgive! Look at Colossians 3: 13, the last part of the verse says: “…Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” In Ephesians 4: 32 Paul writes: “Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.” We should forgive one another because we believe that Christ has forgiven us. So when we forgive one another, we acknowledge that we too have needed forgiveness many, many times in our lives and that really and truly we are not any different from the person that has offended us. We might think we are better than those people who from time to time hurt us but really we are not. We are all sinners, some of us who have been saved by grace and some of us who have not, but we are all sinners.
17. So in Christ, when we practice forgiveness, we offer grace to them rather than justice. Justice is a wrong for a wrong, word for word, hurt for hurt, pain for pain, hatred for hatred, and violent deed for violent deed. For the most part justice feels so good, when it is served.
18. But forgiveness, at least in our minds, is often thought of as being unnatural, because it doesn’t seem fair to overlook a wrongful deed or a hurtful word. But forgiveness means to deal graciously with, like God deals so wonderfully gracious with us. Would we want God to deal justly with us? No. I would have been wiped out a long time ago. I want mercy and grace, don’t you? Then why won’t I deal more graciously with other people than I do?
19. Let me give you one more reason why you should forgive those who wrong you! Because harboring grudges, refusing to let go of anger, hatred, and resentment is like a cancerous growth inside you. You may think that by not speaking to someone you are punishing them, but in reality, it is you who are being punished. Because you are a prisoner to your own feelings and emotions. There is this malignant tumor in your heart that is eating you up, and as one writer says: “When you release the wrongdoer from the wrong, you cut a malignant tumor out of your inner life. You set a prisoner free, but you discover that the real prisoner was you.”
20. Ok! How do you do this? Quickly, three or four things. First, in a conflict situation, pray and ask God to help you want to forgive that person. Second, if you’re brave and in control, you can talk to the person and try to find another way of seeing the source and cause of the conflict. Don’t go while you are mad and angry, it is just going to result in more bad feelings.
21. Third, as a exercise before God, you could take a piece of paper and write down the names of those who have hurt you over the years and offer this list to God with all the pain that it represents. And, make a choice of faith to forgive that person because you know that God can and will take care of the pain, hurt, and resentment. Listen, to forgive is an act of faith, based on the truth that it is only God and not us, who can change another person. It is also in terrible and horrible crimes an act of faith that God is the one who can and will be our avenger.
22. Fourth, make yourself speak to that person. There is not a person in this room who cannot nor shouldn’t not speak to anyone in St. Paul. To which some might say “preacher I am not going to speak to a person that I don’t feel like speaking to.” And that is the very reason that you will never be set free of the resentment that binds your heart. That is the very reason that so-and-so will always control you.
23. Let me tell you this, several years ago there was a person who would not speak to me. And to be honest, I didn’t take the time or the energy to investigate why. Anyway, I would see this person around in town and they wouldn’t speak. So one day I saw this lady and her daughter in Food City, and we were the only ones going down the same aisle. I remember thinking “man this going to be awkward.” But I thought well, I would speak anyway. So I did and sure enough she didn’t and walked on by. I turned the aisle and realized that we were going in the same direction, I thought “Oh, not again.”
24. This time she stopped me, and said, “Look I am sorry, my daughter just told me that I looked awful silly not speaking to you…”
25. We talked and were very nice to each other and today we both speak.
Week of September 21, 2008
Title: Faith 101
Series: Football Sunday 2008
Scripture: Hebrews 11:1-3
downloadable handout - Faith 101
1. Faith is a much misunderstood word. Sometimes Christians talk about having blind faith, or taking a leap of faith, and that turns people off. Many people won’t embrace Christianity because they believe that they are being asked to leave their brains behind in order to blindly follow Jesus. Having faith is a stumbling block and a hindrance to a lot of people.
2. Do you realize that atheism is a faith? It is because it is a system of beliefs and assumptions that has to be accepted by faith. Marriage is an act of faith, in which two people make a lifetime commitment to each other based on their belief, trust, and love for each other. Trusting your football coaches to teach you and lead you to win and do your best on a football field is matter of faith. If you don’t buy into what your coaches are trying to teach you, you’ll never accomplish what you want to do playing football. That’s a matter of faith!
3. In fact, please listen and take note of this! Every day of our lives presses us beyond what we really know for sure, and requires us to exercise faith. But there is no such thing as blind faith, unless someone is being really stupid. For example, you drink alcohol or take drugs and get high or drunk you’re stupid, you drive drunk or high and you’re moron. You get in a car and ride with anyone who is driving and intoxicated and you’re beyond a moron. If you believe that a drunken person can get you home safely that is the ultimate leap of blind faith. Yet, thousands of people get drunk and drive every day and then they call Christians stupid and ignorant because we make a big deal about our faith in Jesus Christ.
4. True faith, real honest to goodness faith, is a well informed faith. In a mature faith, there are reasons why you believe what you say you do. Faith relies on knowledge and reason as we move from knowing for certain, to uncertainty about what we believe, to just plain unknown. I just have to say at times that I don’t know. I cannot prove that God exists, but I have some excellent reasons to believe so. But neither can a well informed atheist prove that God doesn’t exist, but believes their reasons are good enough, even though you or I don’t agree with them.
5. Look at your handout sheet in your bulletin for just moment. If you’ll notice the top of the sheet, it says: “Reasons for believing and not believing,” and one arrow points to the Christian side, the left, and the right to the non-Christian side. Notice that reasons 1-7 are very similar yet are opposite to one another.
6. Meaning that the non-Christian looks at prayer as being just coincidence, but the Christian sees prayer as being real and powerful, saying: Don’t you see how many more so-called coincidences there are when you pray? Just curious, have you ever prayed to win a ballgame, fellows? Well, how many are praying on the other side to win? Does it come down to who plays or prays the hardest that wins? Maybe a little bit of both, but maybe our prayers should be “let us play our best, and keep someone from being hurt.”
7. The second reason is just as two-sided. Christians! How many of you became a Christian because someone you loved, trusted, and respected told you about Jesus? Raise your hand.
8. How many of you have ever thought I’ll never become a Christian because of the way Mike Moore acts? If he is a Christian then I never want to become one. Don’t raise your hand J. As Christians, our behavior and our attitudes can become powerful reasons for or against another person becoming a Christian.
9. Bible: To a many a lost person, the Bible is just another book. At best, it is a book of wisdom, not a Holy Book, and certainly not inspired by Spirit of God for faith, salvation, and Holy living.
10. To a Christian, however, it is the Holy inspired word of God, by which we come to know God’s good and perfect will for us all.
11. Personal experiences: I had a young couple visit the church I pastored years ago in Maryville, Tennessee. The couple attended a few Sundays and I finally I got around to seeing them one evening. The wife came to the door and greeted me. I asked if I could come in to visit and she said no. Her husband and she had a family tragedy and her husband had told her that “if that was the way God treated them when they were trying to do right by him, they wouldn’t go to church to worship Him.”
12. On the other hand, many a personal experience, tragedy, sickness, and death have turned others toward Christ.
13. Evolution: Many non-Christians see the world created from accidental and coincidental beginnings billions of years ago. Many Christians disagree on how long ago everything began, but they whole-heartedly agree that God was behind the beginning and the continuation of the whole process.
14. Miracles: Non-Christians often don’t see or recognize that they exist. If something happens unexpectedly good to them, they tend to pass it off as another one of those strange coincidences that happen in life. Christians learn to recognize that the smallest of blessing can be an unforeseen miracle. As far as I am concerned, every person who fully recovers from cancer is a walking miracle.
15. The world: Non-Christians can see the world as beautiful and wonderful like Christians can, but not necessarily something that gives glory to the Creator. Christians believe that the beauty and majesty of the natural world points toward the existence of God.
16. These are just a few of the reasons some people believe or don’t believe in God. There are more, for example, some people run from God not because of intellectual reasons but they are just being stubborn and prideful, and acting like no one has any business telling them what to do, even God. Some men believe that church, God, and spiritual things are just not mucho enough for them, after all, church and religious things are just for women and children to attend.
17. Can you see what I am trying to tell you? No matter how good your reasons are for believing or rejecting God, it all boils down to a matter of faith. Some faith built on more solid reasoning than others but still faith.
18. So, imagine Mr. or Mrs. Smith lost in their sins, as Christians would say, seeking the truth, but not knowing which way to go. Faith they can’t live without it, no matter which way they turn.
19. The next line down, quality of life for believers is hope, love, and holiness. Yet, Christians that don’t always act like they say they should, so who do you believe? What is life like for you? Is it hard? Could it be better, worse, or the same if you believe?
20. What is the eternal outcome to all of this? What will be the eternal outcome to your life? If Christians are right, then Heaven awaits for the believer and Hell for the non-believer.
21. If non-Christians are right, if atheist and agnostics are correct, at best nothingness is awaiting them, but if they are wrong and the Christians are right, then hell awaits the non-believer.
22. This is called Pascal’s wager. You see, I am Christian because I believe that I have everything to gain by being one, and nothing to lose. If you are a lost person, you have everything to lose by not believing in Jesus, and nothing to gain by not believing.
Week of September 28, 2008
Title: Paradigm Spirituality - Temporal Versus Eternal
Series: The Study of Spiritual Formation - Part 11
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 4:7-18
1. We are looking today at what one author calls “paradigm spirituality.” A paradigm is a way of seeing things and understanding things based upon rules and/or assumptions that shape one’s perspective of reality.
2. A paradigm shift occurs when we no longer see things from the same perspective that we’ve always seen them. It is a discovery or shift that changes our perspective on everything. In history, one of the most famous paradigm shifts or changes occurred in how we see our world and its place in the Solar system.
3. Before the time of Copernicus, the sun and planets were thought to orbit the earth. For centuries and even longer, people held to that view of the Solar system and our place in it. That was one particular theory and therefore, a paradigm of how reality was perceived. However, Copernicus challenged that and maintained that the earth was just a part of the solar system but not the center of it. He had the guts to believe that the sun was the center and the earth revolved around the sun. And he was labeled a heretic, kicked out of the church, and not even allowed to be buried in his family-church cemetery.
4. The earth was the center of the solar system, and the sun was the center of the Solar system were completing paradigms of that day and time.
5. Today, there are many competing paradigms. One is the temporal (the here and now) perspective of reality and the other is the eternal perspective. Paul says it this way, “the seeing and the unseen” views of looking at reality.
6. Many people today say they believe in God but live as if this world was all there is, while many people believe that our earthly existence is just a brief pilgrimage designed to prepare us for eternity.
7. The Book of Hebrews says that all the saints of old “died in faith…have confessed that they were strangers and exiles on this earth.”
8. By contrast, people who live “as if this world was all there is” treat the temporal (or the here and now) as through it was eternal and the eternal as though it were the temporal.
9. Let me remind you of the Biblical way of seeing what is truly important about our existence.
10. First of all, the Bible reminds us what we sometimes forget, that life is too short. Isaiah 40: 6-8 says: “All flesh is grass, and all its loveliness is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God stands forever.”
11. In the New Testament, the Epistle of James says: “You do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.” Think briefly about the passing of time, especially experienced by different ages.
12. I am 55, and I feel like, in many ways, I am just getting started in living my life. I like what A.W. Tozer wrote: “Life is a short and fevered rehearsal for a concert we cannot stay to give. Just when we appear to have attained some proficiency we are force to lay our instruments down. There is simply not enough time to think, to become, to perform what the {make-up} of our natures indicates we are capable of.” At least in this world….
13. Human beings are not made of very sturdy stock; we are not made to last very long. This Biblical view of things is very realistic when you consider sickness, aging, suffering, and tragedies that human beings have to deal with, and that cut life short.
14. Second, not only is life brief, but it can also be difficult. In our scripture this morning, Paul is saying in 2 Corinthians 4:8 that Christians are at times “hard pressed on every side.” We live in the best country on the face of the earth, maybe at one of the most comfortable and exciting times in all of history.
Yet life is not easy, at least I don’t think so. Maybe we are just soft as the rest of the world thinks that Americans are, but still I think that at times life it can be very difficult.
15. But with this realistic view of life that the Bible keeps reminding us of, there is also hope. Look at the hope that Paul expresses to his readers: “hard-pressed, but not crushed,” “perplexed, but not in despair,” “persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”
16. Look, Christians are not meant to be super persons; at least I don’t know any super human Christians. We suffer like just anyone else, we die just like other people, and we still sin, and we act pretty stupid from time to time, but there is supposed to be a difference in us—our hope. A hope that comes from knowing God and experiencing the leadership of the Holy Spirit. It comes from understanding our place in God’s scheme of things and understanding that no matter what we have to go through, it is only going to be light and momentary affliction compared to glory in the eternal life.
17. But yet, the world we live in does have its moments. There are moments that have its appeal and we get all wrapped up in what Paul calls the “lusts of the flesh,” and what John calls the “love of the world,” and we forget just how temporal and temporary this world is supposed to be to us. We forget that we are children of God, not children of the world.
18. The Biblical paradigm, the Biblical way of seeing things, is to understanding that it is this life which is short, with good and bad, health and suffering, life and death, Godliness and ungodliness, but the eternal life is desirably better. It is eternal and all good, with no suffering, and only the abundant life filled with presence of God.
19. Now I am not saying that we should be so heavenly-minded that we should be of no earthly good. I truly believe that when we become more heavenly-minded, we treasure the blessing of this life and become more alive to the present moment.
20. In other words, I believe that instead of wasting time as though we have a million years to live on earth, we would do well to remember Paul’s words: “Be most careful then how you conduct yourselves: live like sensible men, not like simpletons. Use the present opportunity to the full, for these are evil days. So do not be fools, but try to understand what the will of the Lord is (Ephesians 5: 15-17).” What could this scripture mean to us?
21. Suppose you were told by your doctors that you had a terminal illness and you had, at the most, one year to live. The second and third opinions all agree with your first doctor. Depending on the quality of life for the next year how differently would you live it? How would you change it? The degree that you would change your life and live it differently is the distance between what it means to live the modern day paradigm and the biblical paradigm. The Biblical view of life emphasizes the brevity of our earthly life and stresses the urgency of investing our most precious asset, time, in a way that will have lasting consequences. The worldly view denies the shortness of life and treats the temporal as through it was eternal, and the eternal as if it was meaningless.
22. People live today like they have all of eternity on this earth. They live today like there is no real eternity that they will have to face. They live denying the reality of what the Bible says is facing them.