Truth-Tellers vs. Grace-Givers May 6, 2018 Series: Living With Tension Scripture: John 1:14-18 (pg. 1610) Theme: Jesus was full of grace & truth. [SLIDE] This is a Vietnamese woman named Kim Phuc Phan Thi, and I ve known about her remarkable story for a number of years, but just came across an update on the back page of a recent Christianity Today magazine in which she shared her journey to faith. Kim is actually the subject of one of the most recognized pictures of the last 50 years I think almost everyone in this room has seen it dozens of times but we ll get to that in a moment. [SLIDE] The title of the article in Christianity Today caught my eye when I was flipping through it: Thank God for Those Bombs and the subtitle: A napalm attack scarred my body, but it also led me to Christ. Kim was a 9-year-old, South Vietnamese little girl when her own people, the South Vietnamese Army, were trying to disrupt the trade routes of the Viet Cong rebels and napalm was dropped too close to Kim s village Kim was not the target of this attack, but she was in the wrong place at the wrong time and she ended up with napalm burning the clothing off her back and burning large parts of her body. -2- [SLIDE] A photographer snapped this picture of Kim as she ran screaming from her village on June 8, 1972 [SLIDE] This is Kim and the photographer, Nick Ut. Nick won a Pulitzer prize for that photo And because of that photo, Kim was rescued, taken to an American hospital, and began a many-year process of dozens of operations to repair the damage from the burns covering her body. Still today, 46 years later, Kim has occasional surgeries to deal with scar tissue. [SLIDE] I ve read her story before: As you can imagine, Kim suffered greatly from the damage to both her body and to her soul She was fiercely angry and bitter and her own religion, a particular branch of Buddhism, called Cao Dai, failed to provide answers. So, in 1982, 10 years after she was burned, Kim found herself in Saigon s central library in the religion section and she pulled off a stack of books on Bahai, on Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Cao Dai, and a copy of the New Testament. She worked through all of them, but in the New Testament she read about a man named Jesus who was himself tortured, suffered, and even killed. Several months later, on Christmas Eve 1982, Kim, wanting to be free of her bitterness and rage, said yes to Jesus, and has never been the same.
-3- [SLIDE] As a result, Kim, who is married and has grandkids today, Kim says things I can hardly comprehend: Things like, I love my scars. And, The worst day of my life, was really the best day of my life. [OFF] How can this be? How can the thing that is the worst, also be the best? Well, this may be true for all of us may be. In may be that the thing we want least, is really what we most need. It may also be true for us in how we deal with others as well: What we want least to give to someone else, is what they most need from us. And this will cause us to live all our lives w/ tension. So, to figure this out, I want to read a paragraph or two from the Bible A man named John, who is consistently identified as the best friend of Jesus, wrote these paragraphs in the introduction to his book about Jesus. If we took the time to read all of the 1 st chapter, I think you would clearly hear the awe that John has for Jesus, but we ll read just a paragraph or two: John 1:14-18, pg. 1610, SLIDES ========================== -4- Now, let s cut to the chase: Here s the tension in one sentence, that s actually repeated twice He, meaning Jesus, was full of grace and truth. Grace and truth. He had both, at the same time. And when John describes Jesus as full of grace and truth He means that there was no lack of either in Jesus. You could squeeze no more grace into him And you could fit no more truth into him. His truth never overpowered his grace His grace never overshadowed his truth. Now, there is not a single one of us of whom that can be said not a single one. You may not know this about yourself, but I will guarantee that you either lean towards being a truth-teller or being a grace-giver very, very few are like him. Sometimes you might struggle with this, wondering how far to go in being gracious and you may grow weary of kindness and giving and you might just get pushed over the edge and truth comes flying out of your mouth like a swarm of angry bees. Or, you might struggle because people have told you, Couldn t you be just a little more kind? and you re aware (maybe you re not aware) you leave a trail of hurt people behind you because of your ungracious manner of truth-telling That s their problem.
-5- Truth without grace is hard, and it s cold. In church circles, it comes across as dogmatic or legalistic It s judgmental It is characterized by those of us who think it s important for people to know what is right and wrong And by a deep conviction that we are right And if someone gets offended by that, well, that s their problem, not mine we tell it like it is. And you can tell if you are a grace-giver if right now you are thinking, That s so true, and I hate when that happens in the church! And you can think of truth-tellers you know & you hope they re listening, because they need to know but you are not about to tell them the truth yourself. Grace without truth is squishy it s warm and inviting, but it s primarily sentimental and rather shallow. In church circles, it comes across as acceptance without a desire for change. Without necessarily meaning to, it condones brokenness and sinfulness. And seems to imply that everything is OK and God knows we re all messed up and He s OK w/ that. Love, after all, is the main thing, we might say. And you can tell if you re a truth-teller if right now you are thinking, Ugh, that is so true. It s so sad that anything goes today and the Gospel is being watered down, and you ve actually told people that yourself. -6- What is so remarkable about Jesus is that he told people the truth all the time But no one seemed to ever feel judged or condemned except for those who were being judged. In fact, Jesus had a well-deserved reputation for attracting people to himself who were among the mostbroken and deepest sinners Yet they knew they would hear the truth from him and they did But they knew at the same time that he was radically gracious and abundantly kind He was never squishy never sentimental Nor was he ever judgmental of legalistic. Full of grace full of truth And here s the thing: The transformation of a human being requires that Jesus be both. And even today if the people of Jesus are going to have anything worthwhile to offer our world we must rediscover how to be Jesus: full of grace, full of truth. Truth tells me plainly what I am and what I need to become. Grace gives me the freedom and the power to change. So, let s have this explained to us: Truth tells me what I am. This is called self-awareness and it would be good if we all had more of it, but we don t.
-7- Instead, what quite good at, self-deception. Now, self-deception does not mean that we always actively suppress or deny the truth It often means we re just blind to it. 2 weeks ago after our Wednesday night Bible Study, Donna said, I want to tell you something to help you: You have this nervous habit of tapping the table very rapidly when you re teaching like this I said, Really, I didn t know I did that at all. She said, Yes, it s really annoying. OK, thank you, I m grateful, I said. Sometimes you tap your Bible: Tap! Tap! Tap! OK, I got it, thank you. You were doing it constantly tonight. Tap! Tap! I almost jumped out of my skin. I understand, thank you. I ll pay attention. I m surprised no one has ever told you before. You ll be making a point and Tap! Tap! Tap! Alright, I heard you. It s annoying. I got it. I m surprised no one has ever told you before. Because I could tell several people were watching your hands the whole time all the time Tap! Tap! Tap! Well, Donna now goes to another church. No, the truth is I was totally unaware you could say I was blind to it Which is exactly how Jesus talked about this. You have eyes, Jesus said, But you do not see. -8- And that is not a good thing. In a very famous moment of truth-telling and pointing out our capacity for self-deception, Jesus once asked, How is it that you are so good at pointing out the speck in someone else s eye, but you don t see the log in your own? Hmmmm good question, isn t it? We probably don t even know we re doing that... But we sure know when someone else does, though, right? Many of you, right now, could probably identify what you think is wrong w/ most of us: - Wish the people at Horizon were more committed, never realizing I have areas of life I m withholding from Christ. - Wish the people here were more friendly to me, never realizing I m as reluctant to say hello as them. - Wish the people here were more passionate about, never realizing I m as blind to their passions as they are to mine. It s so easy to see this speck-thing in someone else, isn t it? But Jesus isn t asking about someone else, he s asking about me And he s isn t talking about tapping habits, he s talking about the sin that ruins us. So, Jesus tells habitually tells the truth.
-9- A young man called out from the crowd one time: Rabbi Jesus, would you please tell my brother to give me my share of the inheritance? (Luke 12) Rather than saying a straight Yes or No Jesus responds, Beware of greed! Watch out, for your life does not consist of an abundance of possessions! Now, why did he give that as an answer? Well, do you think this brother thought of himself as greedy? No, probably not probably would not have said greed is the problem; probably fairness is the problem. Anyone who has ever worked in an attorney s office, especially an attorney who does lots of estates, knows first-hand how quickly the knives come out when money is on the line And it s sad, really, how many families have been ruined how many sisters and brothers and sons and daughters and cousins no longer talk to each other because of disputes over wills & estates. It s heartbreaking, truly. Would any of those people call themselves greedy? No, probably not maybe the other person is greedy! They d probably say it s about fairness Probably, She wanted me to have this. Told me. -10- But what do you call it when someone wants something that doesn t belong to him in the first place and he is willing to be resentful and ruin a relationship if he doesn t get it? Jesus called it what it is: Beware of greed. Now: Important question~ Why does Jesus do this kind of truth-telling thing all the time? Is it to shame us? Is it to make us feel badly about ourselves? No, it is something else entirely: It is to cure our blindness it is to create self-awareness Because the moment when I pause from feeling greedy and identify it truthfully I am acting greedy - The moment I do that I am letting a little bit of light between my feeling of greed and myself I cease, just for a moment, being driven by greed and a little bit of light shines on my greed. Just by self-awareness just by saying, I am acting greedy, I create a little space for light to shine And the potential for a cure is in that well-lit space. Jesus as a truth-teller, gives us the gift of self-awareness: So we can pause from being driven by the broken thing, and see the truth about ourselves not to be shamed, but to be healed. So, I am acting greedy.
-11- Or, I am excessively angry. I am holding on to a grudge. I am desiring something else, or someone else who doesn t belong to me. I am especially driven by fear. I am given to lying my way out of problems. And the moment I stop being driven by the thing long enough to look at it and tell the truth about it I let light shine between it and me And the potential for healing exists right here. However, here is where we face our second big problem after our self-deception What happens to us the moment we see the truth about ourselves? What s our biggest fear at that moment? Being found out Someone else will know So, I m driven to hide to carefully manage my public image for fear someone else will see this truth about me. And that s like slamming shut the window on that light that was shining. So, what is our greatest need at this moment? Grace. Radical, powerful gracious acceptance. I must know I am accepted and I am loved, just as I am. -12- There s a wonderful story about Jesus in John 8 that so clearly reveals both the truth and grace And it also allows us to see ourselves -which 1 of these 2 usually dominate in our own lives Woman caught in the act of adultery and the religious leaders looking for a way to trap Jesus bring the woman to Jesus She was caught, they tell Jesus, And the law requires that we stone her to death. What shall we do w/ her, Jesus, you decide? Know they have him Truth says stone her. Grace says, let her go. And there s no way Jesus can do both, can he. Jesus will either be revealed as a cold truth-teller, in which case the crowds will abandon him. Or, he ll be revealed as a grace-giver, in which case anyone truly interested in obedience to Scripture will abandon him. They have him finally or so they think. You might know the story: Jesus says, OK, the law says Stone her, so let s do just that. But, whoever here is w/out any sin in himself, you get to cast the first stone. No, what s so brilliant about that who can possibly pick up a stone?
-13- If I did, for example, there is a whole host of people who would say, Wait a minute you re not without sin! I know you. Do you see that Jesus is forcing these people to see the truth about themselves Brilliantly he forces the truth on everyone, not just this woman. And for just a moment, light shines on all our sin. What will they do with it? Well, one by one, they all drop their stones and leave. Then Jesus asks this trembling woman: Where are the people who accuse you? There are none, she answers. Neither do I, Jesus says, Neither do I. Radical, transforming, gracious acceptance. Then Jesus says, Now, you are free to go, and you know you ll have to stop what you re doing, right? Radical, transforming truth. -14- If you cheer when Jesus says, Go, and stop you re sinning-- If you find yourself saying, See! See! He didn t just let her go! This isn t about ignoring sin! You re probably a truth-teller It s so hard for us so hard for us to be both. It s why we will live with tension all our lives. But what a master this man is, isn t he? Radical truth Radical grace All rolled up in one. This is so important to Jesus, he has asked us to remember him with a simple act And here s the thing You will discover that even here, Jesus is telling us the truth about ourselves And offering us grace. [COMMUNION PIC] Now: Two things you can learn a lot about yourself by asking, When do you cheer in this story? If you cheer when the men drop their stones and walk away if you find yourself saying, See! Yeah! I wish people would stop being so judgmental! You re probably a grace-giver.