Page 1 of 9 Noted pastor Gordon MacDonald wrote: The world can do almost anything as well as or better than the church. You need not be a Christian to build houses, feed the hungry, or heal the sick. There is only one thing the world cannot do. It cannot offer grace. I became a pastor because I wanted to see the church involved in social change. Though I still believe in social change, I remain a pastor because I deeply believe in grace and the need for the world to experience it and share it. Almost every week I come into contact with a person who has been hurting and questions God s love that person needs to experience grace; almost every week I come into contact with someone who is angry with another person that person needs to share grace to forgive. Grace and forgiveness are at the core of the Christian life. As disciples followers of Jesus Christ we are called to learn how to receive grace and then share that grace or forgiveness with others. mean that One of the Core Values of our congregation is Joyful Love. We understand this Value to we are released to love each other with joy because of what God has done for us. We are a community who enjoys spending time together and supporting each others journey. There is a key word in this explanation. The word is released. Look at this first sentence. Who is the active part of this sentence God Who is the object in this sentence we are What is the cause of our release God has done something for us. God has given us grace through the death and resurrection of Jesus This isn t something we do for ourselves this is a gift that we receive from God. Unless we learn how to open up that gift the treasure inside the gift won t fully be ours.
Page 2 of 9 There is a lot at stake in receiving grace and then sharing it. Even us stoic Minnesotans can live with joy when we orient our lives around grace and forgiveness. So with these desires I m staring a two week sermon series on grace and forgiveness. Today I m going to talk about our own need for grace. I m going to do three things in this sermon. First I m going to look at why the church is often not full of grace; two I m going to encourage us to orient our lives around grace and not righteousness; three I m going to share how we can receive grace. Next week I m going to get practical and share some basics on how we can forgive others. Let me ask you this, Do any of us carry around pain that another person has caused us? Next Sunday I m going to share how to release that pain through forgiveness. The Bible is full of stories about grace. I ve shared six Bible readings in the devotion in this brochure that I encourage you to get out. Use this brochure this week. I believe that these stories of grace will touch your heart. After you use them send me an E-mail and share some of your reflections about these stories. In this brochure you also find a place for prayer requests and sermon notes. This sermon has been informed by the book What s so Amazing about grace written by the author, Philip Yancey. This is one of the best books about grace that I ve read. I encourage all of us to purchase it. You can find it at a book store or get it on Amazon.com.. Philip Yancey grew up in the evangelical church. He understands and has experienced judgment. We have a leader Jesus Christ who lavishly shared grace in his life. But the church is not known as a place of grace. Philip Yancey wanted to know, How can this be? In the book he told a story of a divorced woman who stood in the sanctuary of her church with her 15-year old daughter. A leader in the church approached the woman. I hear you are divorcing, the leader said. What I can t understand, the leader went on is that if you love
Page 3 of 9 Jesus and your husband loves Jesus, why would you get a divorce? This woman shared that one of her greatest pains was that both she and her husband did love Jesus. But despite their love for Jesus their marriage was beyond repair. What I needed from that leader, the woman wrote, was for her to put her arms around me and say, I m sorry. She needed grace, not judgment. David Seamonds put this issue of judgmental churches another way, Many years ago I was driven to the conclusion that the two major causes of most emotional problems among evangelical Christians are these: the failure to understand, receive, and live out God s unconditional grace and forgiveness; and the failure to give out that unconditional love, forgiveness, and grace to other people. We read, we hear, we believe a good theology of grace. But that s not the way we live. The good news of the Gospel of grace has not penetrated the level of emotions. Many of us at Chain of Lakes left the church and then came back. I ve gotten to know your stories. You told me that you left because you experienced this judgment. Can we commit ourselves at Chain of lakes to live by grace? We re going to let the good news of the gospel penetrate our spirits and then we will freely share that grace with others. Can I get an Amen to that? I know we re making progress in our faith community with this. When we have visitors come to Chain of Lakes they frequently tell me that they experience genuine hospitality from you, the people of Chain of Lakes. We are having people from Valley Presbyterian worship with us each Sunday. Last Sunday a woman shared with me that she joined Valley because of the hospitality she experienced there. She said she experienced the same hospitality here. We re doing a good job of sharing hospitality. We have to take the next step and share grace. It s easy to slip into being a group of judgmental people. Think about this with me. Let me ask you this:
Page 4 of 9 If a man came to worship reeking of liquor and then sat down next to us would we be annoyed that the person upset our worship experience or would we be excited that we could share grace with someone who needed it. If a woman came to worship with her head half-shaved and a huge ear ring hanging from her nose would we look more at the her outer appearance or would we spend time learning about her inner spirit. If a person stood up during the joys and concerns and shared a statement about our government that we fundamentally disagreed with would we silently fume and be angry or would we go up to the person and say, I m really interested in how you came to your position. Could we go out for a cup of coffee? I believe that all of us want to be grace-filled people, but I also realize that it s easy to become judgmental and legalistic. Inside each of us is a place of judgment. The world feeds and encourages this judgment inside of us. We re encouraged by the world to evaluate people based on what they can do for us or how they live their life. We re encouraged by the world to respond to people who hurt us with scorn revenge and not forgiveness. Without a relentless focus on grace all of us can fall into judgment. That s why Jesus is so important to us. Today we heard two beautiful stories about grace. I m going to focus on the one that Norah read. Two men went up to a temple to pray a Pharisee and a tax collector. Pharisees had status. They were well-educated; a Pharisee could read and write; a Pharisee knew the religious laws of Moses and taught people how to follow them. Then there was the tax collectors. Tax collectors were hated in Jesus day. When Jesus was alive Rome controlled Jerusalem. They were the occupying country. Rome needed to
Page 5 of 9 collect taxes. They would hire people to be the tax collectors. The tax collectors would pay money up front to Rome. Then the tax collector was free to collect the taxes. Let s say that a tax collector gave Rome a hundred dollars up front. That person then would have the freedom to collect that $100 from the people. Think about that. If a tax collector had the freedom to collect as much as they wanted, do you think they would stop at collecting the $100. Many didn t. Tax collectors were known for being dishonest. Not only that but tax collectors worked for a foreign, occupying country. To try to put that into our context imagine if Russia had occupied the United States and a tax collector collected money from us to pay the occupying power. Not only that, but the tax collector filled his own pockets when he collected taxes. Immediately we know who is the good guy and who is the bad guy of the story. As the Pharisee was praying in the Temple he recognized the tax collector and was filled with judgment, God, I thank you, he said that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income. The Pharisee had a clear world view. He followed the rules; he practiced the faith; he looked with judgment on people who didn t follow the rules or didn t practice the faith. Jesus went on with the story. The tax collector stood far off and would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, God, be merciful to me, a sinner. If you were listening to this story you could have easily agreed with the tax collector. You would have thought that it was right for the tax collector to beat his breast and declare that he was a sinner. He had sinned. He deserved to be punished.
Page 6 of 9 Then as he often did Jesus turned the tables. The tax collector this dishonest person who collected money was the enermy was the model person of the story. And the Pharisee the person who followed the rules and practiced the faith wasn t. Jesus said, [the tax collector] went down to his home justified rather than the [Pharisee;] for all who exalt themselves will be humbled and all who humble themselves will be exalted. Why would Jesus say that? Jesus gave a clue to his thinking when he opened up the parable. He shared the parable with people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt. The Pharisee trusted in his own righteousness. In fact the Pharisee oriented his life by doing what was right. You might ask, what is wrong with wanting to do what is right? Nothing wrong except when righteousness becomes our orientation for doing what was right. When we look at the world through the lens of doing what is right we re going to realize that a lot of people mess up. It s going to be very easy to judge them. The tax collector was different. He knew that he had messed up. He knew that he needed grace. In the story he was orienting his life around grace. Let me ask you a question? You don t have to answer the question out loud. Think about your response to this question. Is it more important to you to orient your life by grace or to orient your life by doing the right thing. Both grace and righteousness are important. I would never say that doing the right thing is not important. What s comes first grace or righteousness? Do we do the right thing and then are rewarded by with grace? Or do we receive grace from God first and then go out and do the right thing.
Page 7 of 9 The way we answer the question will go a long ways towards defining how we view God. If we believe that God gives grace based on our righteousness then grace is conditional. God becomes like Santa Claus who rewards us when we are good and punishes us when we are bad. Not only that if grace is a reward for doing the right thing then who really is in charge? We are. Our actions determine whether God will give us grace. On the other hand if we start with grace then God becomes approachable. Then we will understand that God always loves us and will never stop loving us we ll want to be in relationship with God. By beginning with grace we can live freely to approach God. Philip Yancey put the issue this way: I grew up with the image of a mathematical God who weighted my good and bad deeds on a set of scales and always found me wanting. Somehow I missed the God of the Gospels, a God of mercy and generosity who keeps finding ways to shatter the relentless laws of ungrace. God tears up the mathematical tables and introduces the new math of grace, the most surprising, twisiting, unexpected-ending word in the English language. Grace makes its appearance in so many forms that I have trouble defining it. I am ready, though, to attempt something like a definition of grace in relation to God. Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more no amount of spiritual calisthenics and reununciations, no amount of knowledge gained from seminaries and divinity schools, no amount of crusading on behalf of righteous causes. And grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less no amount of racism or pride or pornography or adultery or even murder. Grace means that God already loves us as much as an infinite God can possibly love. What s so Amazing About Grace Page 70 Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more. Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less This two week sermon series is ultimately about forgiveness. You might be wondering what does this have to do with forgiveness. It s almost impossible for us to forgive others unless we have experienced forgiveness ourselves. If we live by the orientation of righteousness, then
Page 8 of 9 it s going to be hard to forgive others. We re going to think that people deserve the problems in which they find themselves. When we live by the orientation of righteousness we ll often look for the cause of problems. People who are divorced never should have gotten married; people who go through foreclosures should have never taken on so much debt; people whose kids act out should have learned how to be better parents. However when we orient ourselves to grace we put our arms around someone and say, I am deeply sorry for your pain. I will be here for you every step of the way as you work to recover. When we orient ourselves around righteousness when someone harms us we will immediately point our finger at the other and blame the peson for what they have done. When we orient ourselves around grace, we ll take a step back when we are hurt, and then be open to forgiving. Ultimately to forgive others you and I have to recognize that we don t deserve grace. Forgiveness begins not with the other. It begins when we are willing to beat our own breast and say, God be merciful to me, a sinner. Forgiveness of others starts with ourselves. It starts when we confess our own sins I have to admit that I m real careful when I talk about sin in church. Usually in talking about sins the church makes one of two mistakes. We either talk about sin so much and make people feel so bad about themselves that they are afraid of God; or on the other extreme we talk about sin so little that what results is people don t feel they need God. They can rely on themselves. I think it s important to acknowledge our own sins because when we confess we admit that we need God. When we confess our sins we are not saying we are horrible people. Instead
Page 9 of 9 we are saying that we need something from God that we can t provide to ourselves. When we stop confessing we become very susceptible to living by righteousness. Grace and righteousness together in the right order are a powerful combination. Bill Thrall wrote this When grace introduces us to repentance, the two of us become best friends. When anything else introduces us to repentance, it feels like the warden has come to lock us up. But when grace gets involved, the truths of repentance reveal a fabulous world of life-freeing beauty. When the sermon is done I m going to ask all of us to come up to these two prayer stations. Kellie is going to share her beautiful voice. I m going to encourage us to share with God our own need for grace. I m going to encourage us to confess our own sins. Let s recognize how we are like the tax collector. Friends, we re the ones that Jesus loved. Let s recognize our own need for that love.