I think every Sunday that we're together is like a big blessing and a joy, but some Sundays are just special, and this one feels special. It's been a good day so far. We are in a series right now called Bumping into God. And it's a really simple idea. There's all these stories in the Bible, specifically stories in the life of Jesus, where someone woke up one day, thought they were going to have a normal day, they were going to do their normal thing, and they just so happened to bump into Jesus. They just so happened to bump into God, and everything changed for them. And these stories, they tell us a lot about Jesus. They really help us see Jesus clearly. They help us see not just his power, but his personality. And it's very important for us to understand who Jesus is. Not just what Jesus does, but who he is. Hebrews 1.3 says that the sun, talking about Jesus, radiates God's glory and expresses the very character of God. In other words, Jesus gives us a clear picture of God. And so if we want to know what God is like, we want to know what God values, what God cares about, we look at Jesus. And the clearer our understanding of Jesus, the clearer our understanding of God. So we want to see the personality of Jesus. We want to learn about him. We want to know him. We want to know what he values, what he cares about. And these stories reveal so much of that to us. We have this tendency as people to try to make other people into the people we would like them to be. I've been married for 13 years, and when I think about some of the biggest fights that my wife and I have had, a lot of them really boil down to me trying to make her who I think she should be, or her trying to make me who she thinks I should be. And often we have very different ideas of who the other person should be. We value different things. And sometimes rather than taking the time to learn what that person values, we just try to put our own values onto them. I remember about a year in our marriage, we got in a big fight over a TV. Um, my TV, actually. I'm just gonna say that. No, it was actually a big thing for us because we had just gotten a new apartment, and our first apartment was an apartment that cost $385 a month. And it's not like we we had this apartment 50 years ago, okay? It was 13 years ago, and 385 was a good deal, but I just want you to understand it wasn't like a nice apartment. It was an apartment that cost $385 for a reason. And that's all we could afford, but then we we got a new apartment, and it was so exciting because this apartment had a fancy thing like called a bedroom, and our first apartment didn't have that, it was just an all-purpose room. And so, because it had a bedroom, it also had a living room. And when we we had this apartment, we're like, hey, we can actually have a living room with furniture and a TV where we can sit and we can watch and talk. And so I went and got a TV. It was the first time I ever bought an HD TV. And HD TVs in 2006 were not quite as HD as they are now, but it was still HD, and I was really excited about that. And she went and she got some furniture, and we set up our living room, and I remember coming home one day, and I saw the way that Megan had arranged it, and I was like, oh, well, that's kind of interesting. Because there was not one seat directly in front of the television. Which is a guy, and men, if you don't mind backing me up, that's ridiculous, right? Like, it was insanity. I'm sitting there going, like, hey, we just got this TV, which, you know, by the way, honey, is the reason for this room. Because we can we can talk anywhere, like we can have a conversation anywhere. But this is the room with the TV, and there's not one seat that's directly facing the television. The the chairs were kind of over to the side, and the couch was angled so that if I wanted to sit down and watch a game, I would have to sit on the couch and like kind of tilt a little bit, and that's just not going to happen. Like, that's not the way it is, that's not the way it works. And so I'm trying to tell her about how it should be, and she's trying to explain to me about like the flow of the room. The flow of the room. I'm like, I don't care about flow, I care about myself and what I want. And we we actually got in a huge fight about a TV, and that's a humorous example, but there have been many other examples not humorous at all, where we're upset with one another, we're in a bad place, and it's because rather than caring about who the other person is, we're just trying to make them the person we'd like them to be. And we do that with God sometimes. And we really do. It's interesting when when Moses gave the Ten Commandments to the people of Israel, you know, two of the first few commandments have to do with not worshiping false gods and then not making new false gods. And that seems kind of odd to us. Like, I don't I don't think I've ever woken up one day and been like, you know what I'm gonna do today? I'm gonna make my own God. I'm gonna, I'm gonna craft my own my own God today. In those days it was a literal thing. You would build a statue and say, we worship this statue, but we still have that same tendency. Human nature has not changed, and it's very easy for us to take God and just sort of make him who we'd like him to be. To create our own version of Jesus, our own version of God, and say, I'm gonna worship this because this God gets me. This God just so happens to see things the way I see things. And relationships don't work like that. You can't make other people who you'd like them to be. We can't make God who we would prefer him to be. And I'm just gonna be honest Jesus is not always who I would prefer him to be. But it's taken me a long time to learn this. The Jesus I prefer is not the Jesus I need. I need the real Jesus. Not some counterfeit version of Jesus that I've invented. I need the real Jesus. I need to see him for who he actually is, and then I need to respond accordingly. I want the real Jesus. And in these stories of Jesus bumping into people, we see the real Jesus, we see what he values, we see what he cares about. And if we'll approach these stories with the right mindset, we'll have a clearer picture of who he is, which gives us a clearer picture of who we can be when we're with him. And so let's just go ahead and jump into these stories. Today we're gonna look at two stories that are very different in terms of the situations that the people are dealing with, but very similar in the way that Jesus handles them. And in these stories, we see two things that Jesus values and prioritizes greatly. Two things that are almost always present in his conversations with people. These are two things that we're meant to understand, that we're meant to live with, and when combined, these two things give us a wonder and an awe of our relationship with God. If you have one without the other, you know, okay, but if you have both, you live with a wonder and an awe of the fact that God loves you. The first story is in John chapter 4. It's a story often referred to as the story of the woman at the well. We're not gonna read the whole story because it's kind of long, but we're gonna we're gonna focus on the parts relevant to our conversation. So it begins by saying this: verse one Jesus knew the Pharisees had heard that he was baptizing and making more disciples than John. Pharisees are the religious leaders of the day, they're jerks. Um says, so he left Judea and returned to Galilee. He had to go through Samaria on the way. Eventually he came to the Samaritan village of Sikr, near the field that Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there, and Jesus, tired from the long walk, sat wearily beside the well about noontime. Soon a Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, Please give me a drink. He was alone at the time because his disciples had gone into the village to buy some food. And so then they begin a conversation. And Jesus does something that he does very often. He uses what's around him as a metaphor for who he is. We see Jesus do this very often. In this situation, he he looks at this well and he says, Hey, I can offer you living water, and if you drink the water I offer, you'll never thirst again. And he's not talking about actual, you know, water, physical water, he's talking about our spirits, our souls. And she's confused by this, as you would be, you know. And this conversation keeps going. And eventually Jesus says in verse 16, Hey, why don't you go get your husband? They've been talking for a long time. He says, Hey, I'd like to continue this conversation, but let's not have it alone. Go get your husband. And she responds by saying, I don't have a husband. And Jesus says, You're right. You don't have a husband, for you've had five husbands and you're not married to the man you're living with now. You certainly spoke the truth. Sir, the woman replied, You must be a prophet. There's only one way Jesus could know that. Well, really, two. A, he's a creepy stalker. B, he's God. And it turns out he's not the first one. So she says, You must be a prophet. Then they talk more. She starts asking him questions about God. Eventually in verse 25, the woman says, I know the Messiah is coming, the one who is called Christ. When he comes, he will explain everything to us. And then Jesus told her, I am the Messiah. By the way, this is the first person that Jesus ever said those words to. Up to this point, he's kind of hinted. There's a lot of big clues that maybe he is more than a man, but this is the first person that has the honor of hearing Jesus say to them, like looking directly at them and clearly stating, I am exactly who you've been waiting for. He says, I'm the Messiah. And just then his disciples came back. They were shocked to find him talking to a woman that was a big cultural no-no at the time, but none of them had the nerve to ask, What do you want with her? Why are you talking to her? The woman left her water jar beside the well and ran back to the village, telling everyone, Come and see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could he possibly be the Messiah? And so the people came streaming from the village to see him. That's story number one. The woman at the well. Story number two is a story in John chapter 8, story of a different woman in a different situation. We're going to read this one in its entirety because it's much shorter. Jesus returned to the Mount of Olives, but early the next morning he was back again at the temple. A crowd soon gathered, and he sat down and he taught them. As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. They put her in front of the crowd. Teacher, they said to Jesus, This woman was caught in the act of adultery. The law of Moses says to stone her, what do you say? They were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him, but Jesus stooped down and he wrote in the dust with his finger. They kept demanding an answer, so he stood up again and he said, All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone. Then he stooped down again and he wrote in the dust. We don't know what he wrote. He could have been writing scripture, he may have been writing a list of things that these men struggled with themselves. Then Jesus stood up again and he said to the woman, Where are your accusers? Didn't even one of them condemn you? No, Lord, she said. And Jesus said, Neither do I. Now go and sin no more. These are two really powerful stories, and we could literally spend months unpacking them. But there's two things that come to the forefront in both of these exchanges. Two things that Jesus seems to prioritize very, very much. And it's grace and truth. So I want to talk for a little bit about grace and truth and what happens when grace and truth go hand in hand. Now let's just make sure we understand our terms. By grace, what I mean is undeserved favor, unearned love. That's grace. Mercy is not getting what you do deserve, grace is getting what you don't deserve. And because of Jesus and his love for us and what he's done for us, we have grace. We have a relationship with God that we could never have earned. Romans chapter 5 puts it so beautifully. God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God's sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God's condemnation. For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his son. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God. We are friends with God, not because of anything we've done or could do, but because of what Jesus did for us. That's grace. And in both stories, we see Jesus show these women grace. Number one, in the story of the woman at the well, just by talking to her, Jesus showed her grace. Because Jesus gave her a dignity that no one else gave her. It's very telling to us that she went to the well at noon. Because in that in that time, in that culture, you did not go to wells at noon to get water. This is the Middle East, and at noon it's the hottest it's going to be during the entire day, and that is a blistering heat. People would go to the well in the morning or in the evening when it was cool. And if you would have gone to the well in this village in the morning or evening, it would have been like a cultural hub. People are talking, people are bumping into each other, everyone's catching up, everyone's talking about everything that's going on. The people who went at noon were the outcasts, the pariahs, the ones that everyone else ostracized, the ones that everyone else looked down on. That's who this woman is. She goes at noon because it's the only time she's welcome. She's a person that no one would be caught dead speaking to. And Jesus speaks to her. And he's not just some person. She recognizes this. He's a man, and he's not just any man, he's a Jewish man. And that culture at that time, that's a big deal because the Jewish people did not have a high opinion of Samaritans. Jesus is always breaking down barriers. We're the ones who put barriers up. Jesus breaks them down. It's funny, Jesus tells a story, a parable, about a good Samaritan. And he tells that parable to the Jewish people. And it's crazy to them that a Samaritan becomes the hero of the story that Jesus is telling, because in their minds, good Samaritan, that doesn't work. That's an oxymoron. There's no such thing as a good Samaritan, but Jesus broke down that barrier. Just by speaking to this woman, he's giving her dignity, he is showing her grace. The second woman, the grace that Jesus shows, is a little more obvious. He saves her life. Right? I mean, she is she's going to die. That was the law at that time. And Jesus stands up for her and he literally saves her life. In both situations, we see grace. Jesus always leads with grace. Understand that. He leads with love. But in both stories, we also see truth. And what do I mean by truth? Well, truth, I'm talking about a reality check. I'm talking about conviction. Jesus said in John 14, 6, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father. No one can know the Father except through me. Jesus refers to himself as the truth. Jesus was someone who led with love, he led with grace, but he did not hold back from speaking the truth. In the Bible, there's over 70 times where Jesus uses the phrase, I tell you the truth. Here's kind of a list of all the references to the times Jesus says, I tell you the truth. And sometimes the truth that Jesus shared was convicting, challenging. That's part of the purpose of truth. That's part of the purpose of Scripture, by the way. In 2 Timothy 3.16, we're told that all scripture is inspired by God and it's useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we're wrong, it teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work. I love that word equip. We talked about that word a few weeks ago. Maybe you're here for the first time or you're relatively new. We're in a season as a church because we should always be stepping into new seasons. We should be growing like people grow. We should be growing in maturity. And we're in a season as a church where we're saying, hey, it's time that we add some equipment to our excitement. It's not good enough for us just to be excited about God. We need to be equipped so that we can do something with that excitement. We need to grow up and mature so that we can be useful. And the truth, it equips us. Jesus always led with love, but he always spoke the truth. And when you have truth and grace existing together, it's powerful. It's powerful. Truth and grace hand in hand are incredibly powerful forces, but when you separate them, they they lose their power. We don't often see truth and grace coexisting. Now we see a lot of truth without grace, and many of us may have grown up in church or had maybe experiences in church where we got a lot of truth but no grace. There were people telling us all the things that we do wrong, without any love, without any willingness to help us. And if that was your experience, I'm really sorry. I experienced that too. That was not Jesus. That may have been people acting on behalf of Jesus, but they were not acting on behalf of the real Jesus. That was a Jesus that they made up. Because that's not how Jesus behaves. Truth without grace is religion, and we're not a religious church. We don't believe in religion. Religion is rules, religion is the opposite of what Jesus came to establish. Jesus did not come to create a new religion, he came to abolish religion and replace it with relationship. We're the ones who make religions. When you have truth without grace, that's all you have is religion, and it's harsh and it's cold and it's unfeeling and it's unhelpful. Jesus spoke the truth to a group of Pharisees in Matthew chapter 23. If you want to see a great example of Jesus' willingness to speak truth, even if it convicts, read Matthew 23, because he is going after the Pharisees. He calls them snakes, he calls them hypocrites, like it's pretty intense. In verse 23, he talks about them and he says, They crush people with unbearable religious demands and never lift a finger to ease the burden. That is truth without grace. And we could talk about that for a while. As a church, we've talked about that quite a bit. I'll say this: we always have to be careful about slipping into that sort of judgmental mindset. It's very easy for that to happen, but I think as a church, we're we're pretty good when it comes to being graceful. This is a church that has a reputation for being a very loving, very accepting place. And that's because of you guys. So I'm grateful for that. I don't want us to spend a lot of time talking about truth without grace because I don't think that's something that we really struggle with as a whole. But I do want us to talk about the concept of grace without truth. Because that is something that's really common. Especially in churches like ours. Like we're we we would be considered a modern church, you know. I guess because we have chairs and not pews. I don't really know what classifies modern. Um, but we're a church that that tends to do a pretty good job reaching people who haven't grown up in church, or maybe you had a lot of the wrong kind of church and you walked away for a reason. This is a church that's always been accepting and welcoming of that. And there's a lot of churches like that. In fact, I think the church in America has come a long way in the last 20 years when it comes to grace, and I'm excited for that. I'm so grateful for that. But sometimes on the other side of that, and our tendency as people to sort of over-correct when we feel like we're off track, is you also see a lot of grace with no truth. And so there's a lot of inspiring messages about love, and they're really great, but we avoid any conversation or topic that might be controversial, that might step on people's toes, that might possibly convict. And so teaching becomes this solemn course through the Bible, avoiding all the hard stuff. And the reality is I would prefer grace without truth. Like I really would, just like my children would prefer dinner without vegetables. My children would love that, right? And every night they beg us for that. We have the same experience every night with our kids. We put a plate in front of our children and they ask us the same question every night. Does it like they're never gonna learn? Our eight-year-old asks us these questions, our four-year-old, our two-year-old, and the new one is going to learn from them. They say the same thing. Do we have to eat this? You know? And we have the same response. We we answer questions with questions in our home, which is very frustrating but effective. Is it on your plate? Like, because we put it there on purpose. You might think we just wanted to put it in the trash, but if we wanted to put it in the trash, we would have done that, then we wouldn't have to do the dishes. So, yes, we put it on your plate for a purpose. Now we work hard to make sure that the food we create for you is as appetizing as possible, but just so you understand, not everything on the plate is there to satisfy your appetite. Some of it's actually there to help you grow and be healthy. So shut up and eat it, right? That's the that's the conversation. And they don't. Then the negotiation begins, and it's just craziness every single night. But but my kids would prefer dinner without vegetables, and I'm just being honest, I would prefer grace without truth. I would prefer that God just tell me all the good things he sees and never talk to me about the issues. That he would never address those things. But like I said earlier, the Jesus that I might prefer is not the Jesus I need. And in both of these stories, you you see Jesus share truth, like the woman at the well. They're just having a conversation about God, about life. And then he goes, Hey, why don't you go get your husband? And she says, I'm not married. He says, I know, right? But you've been married before. And I'm sure that's not something that's baggage for her. I'm sure that's a topic she loves to talk about. Because any of us who are in the room and we've been married and divorced, we love talking about our ex-spouses. It's the best, right? Let's talk about that for a while. Like that's like opening up a wound for this woman, and then Jesus says to her, Oh, yeah, by the way, the man you're living with, he's not your husband either. And that's like putting a knife in someone and then twisting. And wouldn't you prefer Jesus didn't bring that up? Like, no, seriously. Wouldn't you prefer that Jesus not go there and that he just has this amazing conversation with this woman who's an outcast and a social pariah, and he shows her love and he shows her grace, and he just tells her that she's worthy, and then he never even bothers to go there with the way. She's living her life. That would be a much more palatable Jesus. But he shares truth. The woman caught in adultery, that's a story that everyone loves to tell. You will hear that story taught about often. Even if you haven't grown up in church, you've probably heard the whole he who is without sin throw the first stone thing. It's popular. And everybody loves to tell that story, but everyone likes to leave off the last thing Jesus says. And that last statement, it changes the story a little bit. If Jesus had finished by saying, I don't condemn you either, and then that's it, you're like, Jesus, you're such a cool guy. Man, like, you just love people and you rescue people, and you're like, we're good. But then he has to go throw in that little go and sin no more. He has to end on a downer. Like, don't do that, Jesus. But seriously, he basically says, I don't condemn you. Stop it. And that changes the story a little bit. I might prefer that it's not in there, but it changes the story. Because here's the reality. If you take the truth away, you diminish the power of grace. If you take the truth away, if we deny the truth of our situation, we might think that that's just enhancing grace, that's just allowing grace to flow. But in reality, if you take truth away, you diminish the power of grace, and you do not experience the awe and the wonder of the fact that we have God's grace. We need the truth to remind us just how powerful and amazing God's grace is. Let me kind of explain it this way. Let's say you're walking down a street, it's a busy street, you're in like an urban environment, you're walking down the street, you're looking at your phone, so you're not paying much attention to what's around you, and someone out of nowhere just comes and shoves you to the side. And as people, as Americans, we have something called a personal bubble. And we don't like it when people break the bubble. We learn at a very young age, don't push people. It's basic human behavior. And so you might get upset. This person's just shoved you, they've just pushed you. What are they thinking? What are they doing? But let's say that you get some truth. You realize that there was a situation, and this person did what they did for a reason. Maybe the truth is that there was a big puddle in your way. And you were walking, and there's the puddle, and you would have stepped in the puddle because you didn't see it, and it's a deep puddle, and so you would have had one of the worst things in the world, which is squishy socks. There's very few things worse than squishy socks, right? And this amazing person rescued you from the agony of squishy socks, and you're like, you know, I don't think you needed to shove me, maybe, maybe just to, hey, stop, watch out, that may have sufficed, but I'm glad I don't have squishy socks. So the truth of your situation changes the way you perceive what was done to you. Now let's say instead of it being a puddle, it's a manhole and it's open, and you're gonna walk in an open manhole. That's something that happens a lot in cartoons. Don't really see it happen in the real world, but I'm sure it has. And you're walking, and there's the manhole. The person shoves you out of the way, and if not for that person, you would have fallen in the manhole, you would have broken your leg. Now you're gonna see their action as even more graceful, right? Wow, you just kept me from experiencing something really horrific. Like I could have fallen, I could have broken my leg, I would have needed surgery. Thank you. I'm really okay that you shoved me. The truth of your situation changes the way that you perceive what's been done to you. Let's say it's not a manhole, let's say it's a semi coming at you, and the person who shoves you out of the way rescues you, but sacrifices their life in the process. Very much like Jesus did. Well, now you would see that shove, you would see that push as the most generous, kind, and loving act ever done to you. You would see it as so filled with grace that it would probably change the way you saw the rest of your life. It would probably change the way you lived your life. But it's because you saw the truth of your situation. The Bible speaks to us about a concept called sin. And sin as a word just means missing the mark, it just means falling short. And we all do. But the Bible speaks about sin as something very severe. We kind of have to ask ourselves when it comes to sin in our sin, do we see our sin as a puddle in front of us or a semi coming at us? How do we actually view sin? Maybe more importantly, how does God view it? The Bible's pretty clear about it. Romans 6 23, the wages of sin is death. Death. But the free gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. I mean, honestly, death is pretty severe. I think about my sin. And there's a lot of it. It's amazing how often I'm reminded of it. Even at church. Like all the time. This morning, talking to the scouts before we get started. There's a gentleman who's one of the scout leaders. He used to work at the sprint store across the street. He remembered me because about 10 years ago I went to sprint, got a phone, and I was a real jerk. Like a real jerk. Something my phone didn't work, and I took it out on him. I was actually probably taking out a lot of frustrations that day. Maybe Megan was trying to move the TV or the couch or something like that, and he was just the guy that was there, and I took it out on him, and he remembered me. He's like, I know you. I know you. Hey, how you doing? You know, because sin. But but if I'm really honest with myself, do I think my sin is so serious that death is the right wage for it? Like, honestly. Because if I'm being honest, sometimes I judge God, sometimes I read things that God has done in Scripture, and I'm like, God, I don't think you handled that situation the right way. I think we all have a tendency to do that if we're really honest. Like, I'll read the Bible and I'm like, God, I think you were a little harsh. You seemed to, you kind of overstepped. I don't think what they did was that big of a deal. And I have to ask myself as I get older and hopefully more wise, at least more humble, could it be that perhaps instead of God overreacting, is it that I severely underestimate the severity of sin?

Because maybe I'm the one who's off and not God.

It says the wages of sin is death. Let's look at the scripture we looked at just a little bit ago when we talked about grace, but let's really look at this. Romans 5.8. God showed us his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we've been made right in God's sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God's condemnation. Now, I don't like that word. Condemnation. I like the word compassion. And Jesus displays great compassion. But condemnation is a thing. It says, For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his son, while we were still his enemies, oh my goodness, his enemies? Really? We will certainly be saved through the life of his son. Now, just in this one verse that again is all about God's grace, that he's done this for us. We didn't earn this, we couldn't earn this. I cannot earn friendship with God. What could I possibly do that would make God go, I need that guy around? You know, I mean in the video, the lady said I'm funny, but I don't think God needs me to tell jokes. I'm not that funny. Church funny is a different kind of funny. You don't really expect to laugh in church, it's an easy sell. You know? So like I can't, I can't earn anything with God. He's God, he's perfect, he's holy. It's a gift. But if I really take that scripture seriously, it says that because of my sin before Jesus did what he did on the cross, I was an enemy of God. An enemy of God. Like you don't want to be an enemy of God. He does not lose. But sin makes us enemies of God. And sometimes I read that and I'm like, man, I don't know, but it's because I see my sin as a puddle in front of me, not a semi coming at me, but God says differently.

Here's the reality.

When we acknowledge the truth, when we acknowledge the severity of our situation without God, it fills us with a sense of wonder at just how much he's actually done for us. If we take the truth out of the equation, if we avoid all the challenging stuff, all the hard stuff, all the stuff that convicts us, then we will begin to believe that God's grace is a nice thing. It's nice. It's good. It's good that he's forgiven me. It's great. But how much has he actually forgiven me for? Like, what do I really believe? Paul, who wrote most of the verses that we've read today, said this in 1 Timothy 1.15. This is a trustworthy saying, and everyone should accept it. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, and I am the worst of them all. Really? Like if you know the story of the Apostle Paul, he did some pretty bad stuff before he became a Jesus follower. But after that, like if you can make up for stuff, he did it. Okay? If not for Paul, the the message of Jesus wouldn't have spread to thousands of people, to cultures that never would have known who Jesus is. Like Paul, he's he's kind of like an all-star when it comes to our faith. If you're gonna make a list of the five best followers of Jesus ever, and Paul is not on your list, you're wrong. Like Paul is he's Paul, and he's saying, I am the worst of all.

Not I was, but I am. Really?

A man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who, if you've never heard of, lived an incredible life. He was executed by the Nazis in World War II. I would highly recommend that you read his story. While in a Nazi prison, he wrote this, talking about what Paul said being the worst of all sinners. He said, There can be no genuine knowledge of sin that does not lead me down to this depth. And keep in mind, he's in a Nazi prison. If my sin appears to me to be in any way smaller or less reprehensible in comparison with the sins of others, then I am not yet recognizing my sin at all. Like the flesh in me would look at Dietrich and say, You're better than the Nazis. Because they're Nazis. But Dietrich is saying, My sin is just like Paul's. That's because Bonhoeffer didn't compare himself to people. He compared himself to Jesus. And when we compare ourselves to Jesus, we all find ourselves on even ground. Now, I want to make sure I'm clear with the point of all this. It's not to make you feel bad. It's not to remind you that sin is a thing. Okay? If that's what we walk out with today, we're like, all right, I went to church and I walked out being reminded of my sin. Great. Then either I've communicated poorly or you've heard poorly, and let's just admit that both are possible. Okay? I'll admit that my fault is possible if you'll admit yours. The point of today is not for us to walk out of here being like, oh, sin. The point of us is to walk out of here and be like, wow, grace. But we've got to acknowledge the severity of sin so that we can acknowledge the power of grace. Like, how amazing is it what he's done for us? If I minimize my sin and I act like it's nothing special, then I view Jesus as just being someone who did a nice thing for me. Like you ever find yourself holding a piece of trash, maybe it's an empty water bottle or something, and someone walks up to you and says, Hey, I'll take that for you. You kind of go, Thank you. That's really nice. I appreciate it. I would have had to walk all the way to that trash can. You're a great person. Sometimes we can think that of Jesus. We see our sin as some minor thing and it's in our hands, and it's like Jesus said, I got it. And you're like, Jesus, you are so nice. You know? But that is not what God says about sin. What God says about sin is that it's a boulder and it is crushing us, and we have no hope, no ability to lift it off of ourselves. We have no ability to carry the weight and it will kill us and it will crush us. And Jesus came and he took it off of us and he died in the process. That's grace. That's awesome. That's powerful because of what Jesus did for us. Scripture, like Psalm 103, 12, has come true. It says that God has taken our sins and removed them as far as the east is from the west. The east and the west don't touch. He's taken our sin, he's done that to it. Micah was a prophet that lived centuries before Jesus, and in Micah chapter 7, he was looking forward to a day when something would change, when the Messiah would come. And he said, Once again, you will have compassion on us. You will trample our sins under your feet and throw them into the depths of the ocean. Like, come on. Seriously. I am I am so glad that he trampled my sin before he threw it in the ocean because I don't know my sin might be able to swim. You know? Maybe sin floats. I'm not sure, but I know it has a tendency of creeping back into my life if I'm not careful. But he didn't just throw our sin in the ocean. First, he killed it. He trampled it, he crushed it, then he threw it in the ocean. That means our sin is not just buried, it is dead and buried because of Jesus, because of grace. If we live our lives avoiding the truth, all we do is diminish the wonder and the awe of just how much he's done for us. So practically, in worship team, you guys can make your way out. Because we are gonna finish on time. It's a miracle. The reality is, and this is a scientific fact, truth is not relative, but time is. Okay? So you can look that up. But uh, no, no, we're gonna finish on time today. But I I hope that we leave here today with wonderful that we actually recognize personally what he's done for us. How much he's he's taken from us. That his grace and his forgiveness is not some little act that he did, and it's like, oh yeah, I guess I needed that. No, no, no. He's rescued us because your sin and my sin, it is not a puddle in front of you, it is a semi coming at you. And he saved you. Now, whether you accept that salvation or not, that's up to you. But he saved you. He saved you. If you haven't accepted him yet, you can, by the way. It's a simple thing. It's not some ritual you have to follow. It's just a moment where you cross a line in your heart where you say, Jesus, I believe in you, I put my faith in you, I recognize the seriousness of my situation, and I need you to rescue me. I need you to do what I can't do. And he will do that because he already has. We would love, by the way, to talk with you if that's a decision that you're ready to make. We started this last week, but there's a way that you can let us know that you've made that decision. You can just text us that you're ready. And when you do that, here's what we're gonna do. It's really simple. We'll just give you a call. Myself or someone else on our team in the next few days, we'll call you and we'll have a conversation with you. And we would love to hear your story, we'd love to hear where you're at, what you're wrestling with. We'd love to hear your mindset and just be able to pray with you and celebrate with you and answer questions and help you get started in this chapter of your journey, maybe in the right trajectory. That's our goal. So please let us know. Shoot us a text if you're ready to take that step with Jesus. Even if you can't categorize it, even if you're like, I don't even know what to call this step. I just know I'm ready for something to change. Let us know. And for those of us who have, we've we've accepted Jesus, we've experienced grace. Man, I'm just I'm telling you, be mindful of how big it is. Like, be mindful of how powerful the grace of God actually is. Don't forget, don't lose sight. Think about it, dwell on it. What he's done for you, it's so amazing. Like, if you want to have a really awesome week, do this. And at first it's gonna seem horrible, okay? Sit for a little bit and reflect on the seriousness of sin in your life. Like, really sit and think about how much there is and how heavy it is. And every single time you think about more and things you've done, maybe things you've thought about doing, things you wished you could do, but you didn't do, but all these other things, and it's just kind of growing and growing and growing. You're like, this is horrible. Why did Justin ask us to do this? I hate this church. The moment that happens, just realize that that weight that you're starting to feel has been lifted. And it's gone. And it has no right over you. When you hear those voices of condemnation, when you hear shame speaking into your life, when you hear Satan saying that you're worthless, when he tries to get you to believe that your value is the sum total of your sin, you can be reminded that God's grace destroyed your sin. And it's gone. And that is a that's a beautiful thing to think about. So don't be afraid of the truth, because Jesus said the truth will set you free. As a church, I want you to know that our commitment is that we won't be afraid of the truth. We talk about God's love all the time, that's never gonna change, but we're not gonna be a church that skips the hard stuff. My commitment to you is that I will not skip the challenging things when we teach. That if there's something that comes up in the stories that we're reading and it's kind of hard and it's kind of convicting, I'm not gonna skip it because I believe. I just about tripped and fell and almost died. Because I believe. That wasn't like a stutter, that wasn't like the Holy Spirit made me like get into this. That was like my life flashed before my eyes. But I know that if I died, I would have gone to heaven. Can you say the same? I'm just joking. I'm just joking. Sort of. Alright. It's a good time to finish. No, no, we're gonna be a church that that keeps our eyes fixated on grace, but but we're not gonna be afraid of the truth. We're gonna pray right now and worship. And uh, and I I do I do just wanna ask that as we sing this last song, that you would ask, along with me, that God would fill us with wonder. Because if you really believe that your sin is as serious as Paul believed his was, that means that you understand just how good God's grace is. So be filled with thankfulness for his grace. Be filled with wonder and awe for what he's done for you because it's powerful. Pray with me. Jesus, thank you so much for this place. I love this church, I love these people. This is a special place, and this is a special day to be here. I really believe that. I can feel the work that you're doing. Your presence is so tangible right now, and Lord, I just ask that there's one person here right now that has not accepted your grace, that they would, that they would realize the futility of trying to lift a weight they can't carry, that they would throw it aside, that they would accept your love, that they would accept what it's like when shame goes out the window, when guilt goes out the window because we know that we've been forgiven. We don't have to earn your love anymore. You've given it to us. So give us the courage to accept it, Jesus. We love you. And I'm grateful, Lord, that you are who you are, not who I'd prefer you to be. Thank you for your grace and thank you for your truth. We love you, Jesus, and we ask all this in your name. Amen.