Question: Can we be forgiven for all if we are truly sorry for what we have done? Even regarding the 10 Commandments?
Today
I’m beginning a January sermon series called the “The 1 Question.” At Christmas Eve worship I asked each person
present to share one question about God, the church, or personal faith.
I
was personally thrilled that 24 questions were submitted.
I
was also a bit dazed that 24 questions were submitted.
When
our worship team was talking about this series, they suggested I write a blog
about each question. I said “yes.” I said “yes” before I knew that 24 questions
would be submitted. This series is going
for four weeks. That means I have 20
blogs to write.
Lord,
in your mercy!! Would you pray for me.
I
encourage you to read these blogs. You
can find links for them from the Chain of Lakes web site and the Chain of Lakes
Facebook page. You can find a listing of
all 24 questions on the blog.
This series is significant because illustrates
the point that we value questions at Chain of Lakes. We’re authentic, so we’re willing to listen
to people’s questions.
If you have questions about God, personal
faith, why things happen the way they do in a church, relationships, please ask
the question. Don’t be Minnesota Nice
about your questions. Ask hard ones.
These
are the questions we are going to look at in this series.
SLIDE
Sunday,
January 15 What
does it mean to be “full of the Spirit?”
Sunday,
January 22 Can
a child or someone who has never heard the Word go to heaven?”
Sunday,
January 29 Does
God really have a plan? Why does God allow bad things to happen to good
people?
Today the question is: “Can we be
forgiven for all if we are truly sorry for what we have done? Even regarding the 10 Commandments.”
The answer to this question has
everything to do with our view of grace.
G-R-A-C-E. To help all of us
understand G-R-A-C-E I wrote a Bible Study on G-R-A-C-E. I strongly encourage you to use it this
week. I know that many of us are reading
through the Bible. Put this devotion in
your Bible and read these readings. In
the middle is a place to take notes. I
believe God will say something today that you’ll want to remember. On the back is our congregation’s prayer
requests.
I just gave the answer to this
question. But there’s something more
important than the answer. What’s more
important is how we get to the answer. I’m
going to spend the rest of this sermon sharing how we land on G-R-A-C-E.
At Chain of Lakes we want to help
everyone who comes here in four ways. We
want to help you:
SLIDE
In your faith life
In your relationship life
To recover from past wounds
To discover your Inspirational
Intersection or your identity in Christ.
To have a rich faith life, we must
understand grace—G-R-A-C-E.
I can’t help reflect on grace
without thinking about a traditional song.
We sang a contemporary version of the song today. The traditional version
SLIDE
Amazing Grace, How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now am found
Was blind, but now I see..
SLIDE
The words to the song were
written by John Newton. Newton served
the Episcopal tradition as a priest. He
collaborated with the poet William Cowper to write these words. They were a sermon illustration at his church
New Year’s Day of 1773. The congregation
probably didn’t sing the words that day.
Most likely they chanted the words.
It
wasn’t until 1835 that the words were combined with the tune.
Amazing
Grace is a song of Extraordinary Blessing.
It has been big and bold.
It’s
performed about 10 million times every year.
During times of crisis—during the Civil War & the Vietnam War—it had
a surge of popularity. A lot of people
recorded a version of the song—Judy Collins’ Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles,
Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson—even Elvis. President Obama sang the song at a
funeral for a victim of the church shootings in Charleston, South Carolina.
The
song provides the answer to today’s question.
The answer, of course, is grace.
G-R-
A-C-E.
SLIDE
Grace
that is FREE—grace is a gift and costs us nothing.
Grace
that is unconditional—God offers it to us at any point in our life no matter
what we’ve done. There are no strings
attached to grace.
Grace
that is undeserved. The point of grace
is none of us deserves it—and grace is still given by God to us.
One
controversial lyric is “it saved a wretch like me.”
John
Newton identified himself as a wretch.
It’s worth knowing some of his story.
His mom died two weeks before his seventh birthday. His dad was a sailor, so he ended up living
with his step-mother. Unfortunately John
Newton’s step-mother was like the step-mother in Cinderella. It didn’t go well. He was
sent to boarding school. At the age of
eleven he was sent to spend time with his father at sea. JN became a tough, raunchy, and disgusting
sailor. At 18 he tried to desert from
the crew he was serving. He was caught
and punished. He was stripped to the
waist, tied to the ship and whipped 96 times.
He responded by simultaneously wanting to murder the captain and kill
himself.
Five
years later, at 23, he was part of a crew sailing off the coast of
Ireland. There was a terrible
storm. John Newton awoke in the middle
of the night. The storm caused a hole in
the ship. The ship was filling with
water. It seemed like it would
sink. John Newton cried out to God. The cargo shifted and filled the hole. The ship drifted to safety. He and the crew were saved.
This
was the beginning of his shift to the faith.
He eventually became a priest.
John
Newton always knew he was a wretched man.
I
have a question. How do you think God viewed
John Newton? God viewed John Newton in
the same way God views all of us. God
knew everything about John Newton. God
knew the worst and raunchy and filthy desires of his spirit he had. God
judged John Newton. Do you know what the
judgment was? Forgiven.
It’s
fair to ask the question—and remember we encourage questions—how do I, Paul
Moore, know that God forgave John Newton.
This question is tied into today’s question.
SLIDE Can we be forgiven for all if we are
truly sorry for what we have done? Even
regarding the 10 Commandments. I know
this because Jesus came to share and illustrate Grace-G-R-A-C-E.
When
Jesus died he died between two people.
The gospel writers, Matthew and Mark called the two people on the other
crosses, bandits.
The
Greek word was lestai. I’m not trying to
teach you Greek, but I’m trying to teach you the type of person that these two
people were. A lestai is a person who plunders and pillages – an unscrupulous marauder
(malefactor), who exploits the vulnerable and doesn’t hesitate to use violence. The gospel writer Luke called them
criminals.
“One
of the criminals who was hanged there kept deriding [Jesus] and saying, “Are
you not the Messiah? Save yourself and
us!” But the other [criminal] rebuked
him saying, ‘Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of
condemnation? And we indeed have been
condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this
man has done nothing wrong.” Then [the
criminal] said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ [Jesus] replied “Truly I tell you, today you
will be with me in Paradise.’” Luke 23:39-42
According
to Luke these were the last words that Jesus said to a human being. The last words that Jesus said to a human
being were words of forgiveness. Grace!
Another
story about Jesus.
Two
men were praying in the Temple. One was
a Pharisee.
SLIDE
“God
I thank you that I am not like the other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers or even like this
tax collector. I fast twice a week; I
give a tenth of all my income.”
Tax
collectors were hated in the days of Jesus.
We might have opinions about the IRS, but our opinions are nothing like
the opinions of Jews towards tax collectors when Jesus was alive. Tax collectors operated like independent
contractors for Rome. They gave a
certain amount of money to Rome, and then they were free to collect money. in that they would give money to Rome and
then collect money. As long as they gave
the money to Rome, they were free to collect as much as they wanted. Often tax collectors were unscrupulous. They would do whatever they could to get as
much money as they could. Not only that
a tax collector represented a foreign country that was hated by most
people. The tax collector was a wretch.
The
tax collector had something that the Pharisee didn’t have. The tax collector knew he needed grace—or
mercy. The tax collector knew he needed
forgiveness.
‘God,
be merciful to me, a sinner.”
Maybe
we’ve heard this story often. If we’ve
heard the story often we run the risk of losing the astonishment of the
story. Who was the hero of the story?
Was
the pious man or the wretch?
The
righteous man or the unrighteous man
The
follower of the law (what we might call the 10 commandments) or the breaker of
the law.
The
hero was the tax collector.
SLIDE
“I
tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for
all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be
exalted.” Luke 18:14
To
truly have a rich and robust faith we have to start with having an
understanding of our own need for grace.
If we don’t have an understanding of our own need for grace, then we
will always run the risk of being like the Pharisee.
God
gives grace freely. The answer to
today’s question is grace. To take it
to the next step we have to ask ourselves—how deep is my own understanding of
my need for grace. John Newton, and the
lestai and the tax collector knew that they needed grace. For them grace wasn’t an academic exercise
they debated in their minds. Grace was
burning in their heart because they knew they needed it. The question that I want each of us to ponder
about ourselves is how deep do each of us know that we need grace.
We
can’t talk about grace without bringing in some other words about faith that
have tripped people up. One of the words
is sin.
Unfortunately
the church has done a poor job of talking about sin. In general when preachers talk about sin
we’ve made one of two terrible errors
We’ve
made people feel so bad about their sins that they won’t approach God
We’ve
made people feel so good about themselves that we never talk about sin. Then people believe that they don’t need
God.
The
reality is that each one of us have been given wonderful gifts and are capable
of being an extraordinary blessing. We
are good. And the reality is that each
one of us is capable of doing terrible things and even doing evil. We sin.
One
of the reasons that we exist at Chain of Lakes is to be authentic. Part of being authentic is acknowledging that
we sin—that we fall short. We miss the
mark. Sometimes we sin even when we
don’t know that we sin. Acknowledge
our own sins prevents us from living as prideful people. We won’t be like the Pharisee.
The
key is recognizing we fall short—we sin—without beating ourselves up.
I
pray in the morning and use a prayer sheet.
On my prayer sheet is a place
where I list the ways that I messed up the previous day—the ways that I
sin. I’ll either write these sins down
or reflect on them. Sometimes it’s
hard. I’m putting a mirror in front of
my own spirit and take a hard look at what is happening.
I
do this not with a sense of dread, but with a spirit of anticipation. I’m not happy that I sin or fall short, but I
don’t bludgeon myself. I’m very sorry
that I mess up. But I look at confession
as opportunity to grow. Through my own
acknowledgment I anticipate becoming more like Christ, that’s one goal of faith
to become more like Christ.
There’s
no secret formula to confession. It’s
very simple. I find three words to
work. “I have sinned.” The Apostle Paul put it this way:
“For
there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of
God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that
is in Christ Jesus.
Jesus
gave us access to grace.
If
we go back to the question. And here it
is:
SLIDE QUESTION
We
can go down all sorts of rabbit holes when we think about confession that don’t
ultimately help us. What happens if we
confess and aren’t truly sorry; or how do we know if we are truly sorry. Do we need to confess something more than once. Or is there a magic number in
confessing. Am I truly sorry if I confess
something twenty times instead of once; or do I need to confess something a
thousand times. Do I need to prove
myself to God.
Here’s
the thing. God is on our side. God is not against us; God is not waiting to
pounce on us for and make us prove that we are truly sorry; God never created a
litmus test for sorrow. God is on our
side. Grace. G-R-A-C-E.
Grace
leads us to think about our own image of God.
This is an important question for our faith life.
SLIDE What is your image of God.
Is
God like our worst critic waiting to jump on us when we mess up?
Is
God like a bad teacher waiting to go through the lessons of our life and say,
“uh, uh, uh” you didn’t confess this sin?
Or
instead is God like Jesus on the cross.
Looking at the bandit who waited until the end of his life. Jesus responded to the bandit by saying, “today
you will join me in paradise.”
Essentially saying, “I forgive you.”
I
hope that our image of God is Jesus giving grace on the cross.
In
the Scripture that ___ read, the Apostle Paul said that at the right time Jesus
died for us. What this means to me is
not matter what we’ve done in our life, Jesus wants to forgive us. That’s the image that we carry with us.
In
my work on this sermon I reaquainted myself with the story of Jeffrey
Dahmer. Jeffrey Dahmer was one of the
worst serial killers in the history of the United States. I went to his Wikipedia page and had to stop
reading it. It was horrible.
One
part of his story that is worth lifting up is at the end of his life, while he
was in jail Jeffrey Dahmer started a conversation with Roy Ratcliff. Roy Ratcliff is a pastor. He started having a weekly conversation with
Jeffrey Dahmer in jail. Jeffrey Dahmer
confessed his sins. He was baptized at
the end of his life. Ultimately Dahmer
was killed by another inmate. At the
funeral service Roy Ratcliff said this about Jeffrey Dahmer.
SLIDE
“Jeff
confessed to me his great remorse for his crimes. He wished he could do something for the
families of his victims to make it right, but there was nothing he could
do. He turned to God because there was
no one else to turn to, but he showed great courage in his daring to ask the
question, ‘Is heaven for me too?’ I
think many people are resentful of him for asking that question. But he dared to ask, and he dared to believe
the answer.”
Did
God forgive Jeffrey Dahmer. I think he
did. I don’t say that easily. JD was the worst of the wretches. I can understand if people could never
forgive JD for what he did. If I was a
family member of one of JD’s victims, it probably would take me a lot of
therapy to forgive him. I’m not
God. Jesus looked at the bandit shortly
before his death and said, you will join me in paradise. You are forgiven.
The
task is how do we let this forgiveness/grace/G-R-A-C-E infuse our life.
Let
me close with this story. How many of
you have seen the movie, “Rogue 1.” Amy
and I saw it a week ago. There is a
scene in the movie where a character named “Chirut” has to make an
extraordinary action. He risked his life
in order to advance the cause of the rebels.
And as he took this action he said to himself, “I am one with the Force;
the force is with me.” He said this over
and over and over. It was his mantra.
I’d
like to leave you with a mantra. I’d
like to encourage you to say this mantra this week. I want to encourage you to say it over and
over and over again during your week.
The mantra is this:
SLIDE I am forgiven; I am forgive; I am
forgiven; I am forgiven.
Take
this mantra; say it many times this week; experience the power of grace. I am forgiven.
