Thursday, September 11, 2014

Extravagant Grace

Focus: Forgiveness
Function: To help people see the weight of our own forgiveness so that they give it to others.
Form: GOK

Intro: From last week's message about dealing with conflict. The same context of these verses proves again that the passage was about sinning against you. That is why the teaching goes on to a question and answer about forgiveness.
The first verse, “how often, up until 7 times?” is interesting. The Pharisees taught three times. Peter thought he was expanding their idea in an effort of further piety. But Jesus contradicts that and says 70 times 7, or 490 times.
Jesus is using hyperbole in His statement. In effect, He is saying “Don't even count.”
And He goes on to explain the concept in the parable of the man who owed 10,000 talents of gold, to the king.
A talent is 76 pounds. 10,000 talents is 76,000 pounds. Wednesday at 11:00 AM, it was $1248.8 per ounce, or $19,980.80 per pound. That equals $15,185,408,000.00!
That is a lot of money.
Jesus is the king of the universe. And symbolically, the amount owed is a king's ransom.
The 100 pieces of silver is a lot of money also.
The 100 pieces of silver were worth about $2,000 in Jesus day. The common laborer earned about $.17 (17 cents) a day. So, that would be about 32 years worth of income.
In 2010, the average US worker earned $31,600 in real dollars. So, the debt owed was $1,018,533 in US dollars.
Is anybody here prepared to pay back a debt in excess of 15 billion dollars?
Is anybody here prepared to pay back a debt in excess of 1 million dollars? Maybe, some could if it were to deliver them from jail.
The first debt that Jesus mentions is an obscene amount of money to be owed by one individual to one person.
I am convinced that this amount relates to the precious price of His salvation.
My dad pastored a small church near Albion.
There was a lady who sang like a cat screaming.
She screeched this hymn based on 1 Peter 1:18-19: “Nor silver or gold hath bought our redemption...”
That song, and the meaning of the price Jesus paid to save us is forever implanted in my brain.
15+ Billion dollars, what I call the King's ransom, is unimaginable for any of us.
But let us focus on the second amount.
Compared to the 15+ billion, a little over a million is nothing.
But a million dollars is a lot of money by anyone's standards.
And the point is this.
Jesus didn't compare 15+ billion with one or two hundred dollars, or 10 or 20 dollars.
The second amount owed is still a lot.
And isn't that just what happens when we consider some of the offenses against us?
This isn't a petty offense.
This is like a life changing, life changing for the bad, for evil, debt owed toward us.
We deal with this in prison.
I see the consequences of unforgiveness.
Tell the story of A***
This prisoner was small and had tried to commit suicide 6 different times.
He hated himself and his life.
He was in the group that they called the lowest of the low.
He was a sex offender, and in the other prisoners eyes he was a sex offender “of the worse sort.”
In the eyes of his fellow inmates and in the guards, he was less than human, lower than dirt and no one seemed appalled at the way he was treated by the other inmates.
His crime? His sin? Child molestation.
He came to me to confess and ask if God would forgive him.
Now remember, the whole concept of the Kairos weekend is “extravagant grace.”
The 60,000 cookies that each team uses each weekend are a metaphor for the feeding of the 5,000 in Matthew 14, and the feeding of the 4,000 in Matthew 15.
The grace of God is an unlimited supply that can never be exhausted.
There is no sin that is beyond the grace of God's forgiveness.
None.
Jesus' resurrection from the dead proves His absolute authority over our common enemy which is sin and death.
Every one of us faces that enemy and all of its power has been taken away by the cross. And the proof of it is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
That is why we are going to celebrate communion one last time together. Because Jesus is waiting to celebrate it with us in heaven.
We practice together as a reminder that in heaven, we will never be separated by who goes to which or what or who pastors which or what church. We will be together forever.
So this prisoner, A**** wants to know if God can ever forgive him.
Now think about it for a moment.
There were 4 10-12 year old girls who will never ever have a normal sense of female wholeness in the wonderful creation of intimacy between an husband and a wife because of what this man did to them.
His offense was a life-changing event in the lives of those 4 girls.
He agonizes over that very thought.
He takes the abuse given to him by other prisoners because he knows, in his mind, that he deserves it.
He believes that he is worse than scum.
And most of us do not care, culture even jokes about the way he is treated.
But let me tell you, what A**** deserves is grace.
Remember, the debt owed to the man who was forgiven a kings ransom is a life changing debt for every one of us.
The pain and misery that this man A**** caused was a life changing event for those 4 girls.
A part of us wants him to suffer forever for what he did.
And he didn't even do it to our daughters. His victims are strangers to all of us.
But we are offended at what he did.
And, he is getting his punishment.
As A**** and I were praying through his forgiveness, he did not offer an excuse for his behavior. He didn't offer blame for anyone for his behavior. He owned it as his own failure.
His confession was sincere.
But during that time I discovered that at the age of 12 himself, he too was the victim of a sexual predator.
He was acting out what happened to him.
He had a man who abused him who also owed him a life-changing debt.
And A**** forgives his oppressor.
And here he is, in front of me, wondering if God can ever forgive him.
Now, for a moment, I am going to get real personal here.
Because I, at the age of 11, was abducted by a stranger and terrible things happened to me.
And I am talking to this young man and I am feeling torn.
I am very torn.
Because it happened to me, I can identify with his victims.
Because it happened to me, I cannot understand how he could react to it by continuing the pattern of abuse himself.
I didn't.
I was tempted to hate him.
But I got to thinking how that event, as it happened to me was a life changing event.
It is and was the singularly worse event of my life and it changed me forever.
But I wasn't driven to continue the abuse.
But here is the thing.
I have been forgiven a kings ransom.
15+ billion dollars could never purchase a persons salvation. It cannot be done.
The price of our salvation is more precious than any amount of money.
The price of our salvation was the life of the Son of God.
On the cross, God showed extravagant grace to us.
A**** needed forgiveness.
And in that moment, I loved him.
I have met hundreds of prisoners in my several years of prison ministry. But only 3 are regularly brought back to my mind to pray for them.
And A**** is on the top of the list.
It has been almost 3 years since that weekend.
And I still find myself weeping in agony for his ability to accept God's forgiveness of him.
God looks down at A**** and loves him just as much as He loves you and me.
A received a king's ransom in exchange for forgiving a life-changing debt.
So why do we forgive? Because we have been forgiven. And the metaphor in this parable is that we have been forgiven a king's ransom, so we should forgive always, even for life-changing tragedies.
Are we going to do as well at this as Jesus did?
Probably not.
Most likely, no.
Only Jesus is Jesus.
Only Jesus could offer perfect forgiveness from the cross when He asked the Father to forgive the men who had just murdered Him.
But forgiveness is a process.
It has been a process for me.
But the beauty of forgiveness is the freedom that it brings us.
I still remember the phrase, “unforgiveness, or bitterness, is like swallowing poison and hoping the other person will die.”
The phrase “I will never forgive” is an invitation to personal bondage.
I am surprised no one called me out last week on me leaving out the rest of the passage, the passage right before the one we have today.
In it we read, “whatever you loose, will be loosed, whatever you bind will be bound, whatever two or three of you agree on shall be done.” Matthew 18:18-20
I believe it fits better with this section of the same teaching on conflict and forgiveness.
When we loose forgiveness on others, we set ourselves free. We also set them free. When refuse to forgive, we bind ourselves up.
In Matthew 16:19, the same exact words, “what you bind... ...what you loose will be done for you.” And the rest of the verse is “you have the keys to the kingdom of heaven.”
This is genuine spiritual authority and power. And you possess it.

Use it well and be like Christ. Offer the same extravagant grace to others. Use this power well to extend the size and scope of God's family.

Saturday, September 6, 2014

Two To Tangle


Focus: Conflict
Function: To help people learn biblical ways to solve conflict.
Form: Bible Study

Intro: I love old Jazz music. Kathy doesn't. So, the 2 ½ hour trip from Dayton to FW has been a blessing for me with music.
Louis Armstrong does this song: “Two to Tango.” It's a song about how falling in love, metaphorically demonstrated in the Tango dance. It takes two willing participants to work successfully.
And unfortunately, that beautiful metaphor has been changed to speak about conflict. The metaphor is “It takes 2 (people) to tangle.”
The idea being that if one person walks away from a fight, the fight is over.
This passage is about conflict between two peoples.
And I suppose I need a little bit of introduction to help us see that.
One of the things that I share with my good friend Jerry Brenneman is a high view of scripture.
It is a theological distinction about how we address the Bible, how we believe it and what kind of authority, or weight, we place on it.
I don't believe that it is merely a collection of stories that may or may not be true.
I believe that God had His hand in its creation so that when the authors wrote words, although they were writing with their own style and from their own experiences and perspectives, that somehow behind all of that, God had a supernatural hand in it, directing it to be true, trustworthy and reliable.
You don't have to believe like me in order to be truly saved.
And no, it is not to be taken literal all the time. There are many, many times when it is speaking metaphorically or symbolically.
If one took it literally all the time then God would look like a Chicken, to point out the absurd.
I mention that because this passage can, and has, been translated two completely different ways.
Verse 15 is either translated as “if your brother or sisters commits a sin” (referring to any sin), or “sins against you.”
And the difference has to do with ancient texts. Some of the oldest texts do not have the words “against you” in it.
It completely changes the meaning.
On one hand, we are called to hold each other accountable and if we can, or happen to, catch a fellow believer sinning, it is our job to point it out and expose their sins to the entire church if they do not repent.
On the other hand, if someone sins against us, then we are to go to them. If the issue cannot be resolved, then bring someone with us. And if that doesn't work, then exercise Church discipline.
Has anyone seen this process actually happen?
Has anyone seen this process get abused?
Has anyone seen this process used to vindicate one person over the other?
I have seen it abused in some of the worse fashions that I can imagine.
I believe in the power of grace. I don't believe that it is my job, our job, to hold each other accountable. It is our job to provoke each other to do good works. We aren't here exhort each other, we are here to encourage each other.
If exhorting each other is the ethos of the Church, then the church sort of becomes a kind of competition to see who can be the most pure, or faithful, or whatever.
A lot of abuse happens when we set ourselves up as the judge of other peoples sins instead of our own.
We don't want a museum for saints, we want a hospital for sinners, for sinners just like me.
For me, because of the way this passage,without the “against you” has been abused, I am not willing to translate it that way.
But, thankfully, it isn't up to me and my opinion. Jesus weighed in on the same point: The parable of the mote and log in the respective eyes. Jesus tells us to worry only about our own sins instead of the sin of others.
As a matter of fact, let me read the specific passage about judging from THE MESSAGE:
A Simple Guide for Behavior Matthew 7:1-5
7:1-5“Don’t pick on people, jump on their failures, criticize their faults— unless, of course, you want the same treatment. That critical spirit has a way of boomeranging. It’s easy to see a smudge on your neighbor’s face and be oblivious to the ugly sneer on your own. Do you have the nerve to say, ‘Let me wash your face for you,’ when your own face is distorted by contempt? It’s this whole traveling road-show mentality all over again, playing a holier-than-thou part instead of just living your part. Wipe that ugly sneer off your own face, and you might be fit to offer a washcloth to your neighbor.
Jesus commands us not to judge, so we are going to look at it from the perspective of solving interpersonal conflict.
And in this -solving personal conflicts- I have seen the principles of this passage of scripture work well.
So, let me give you a sort of humorous, but real life example of this passage:
I received a phone call one day: “Pastor, I am a member of such and such a church and one of your parishioners lives next door to me. I am following Matthew 18, and I need your help with him.”
Before I asked her who the member was, I asked her what the offense against her was.
Well” she said “he has a terribly foul mouth and he keeps cussing really loud in his backyard. My kids hear it and I don't like him cussing in front of my kids. I tell them he is a Christian and they don't understand that if he is a Christian, why he gets to use language like that. Pastor, you need to make him stop.”
What is he cussing at?” I asked.
She told me: “we have a dog that we leave outside in a cage and the dog likes to bark. The barking is annoying. It is so annoying that we moved the dog kennel to the back side of our garage, so that we don't hear the dog barking. The dog barks all the time. And he gets upset with the dog and comes outside and yells at it and sometimes he even cusses at the dog.
I have asked him to stop cussing as our kids are small and I don't want them to hear this kind of language. He is a Christian and he should not be talking like this.
Do you think a Christian should cuss, pastor?” she asked.
I asked her if the new location of the kennel, behind the garage, was nearer to her neighbor’s yard and it was. It was placed so the barking bounced off the garage right into her neighbor's back yard.
Ummm” I said “Have you considered moving the dog kennel back so that it bothers you instead of him?”
When she rebelled against that idea, I reminded her of the scripture from Romans 12:18, “As much as is possible WITH YOU, live at peace with all men.
Now, let me go over the three steps relating to escalated conflict that Jesus teaches in this passage.
1). When someone sins against you, talk to them!
  • The emphasis is on “to them.
  • Before we talk to anyone else, except maybe God, talk to them.
  • Way to many conflicts can or could have been solved with just a simple conversation whereby we learn that we have a simple misunderstanding.
  • I try to put myself in someone else's shoes.
  • When Kathy wants to talk to me about someone else, I try to help her see it from their perspective.
  • Men, most often, this does not work.
  • She is my wife. We are “one flesh.”
  • She wants to know that I have eyes for her before anyone else.
  • But it helps for us to seek understanding of the other person's perspective and to give them the benefit of the doubt.
  • If our goal with the person is reconciliation, then almost always, a conversation with them will clear up the issue.
  • The sad thing, is we talk it up so much, we obsess so much over the issue, that by the time we get to a confrontation, our goal may not be reconciliation.
Before I get to the second principle in this passage, let me make something abundantly clear. And if this is understood by the offended party, resolution will almost always happen.
This is the most important principle of them all:
RECONCILIATION MUST BE THE GOAL.
Say it with me:
RECONCILIATION MUST BE THE GOAL
It is right here in this passage: “You have won your brother...”
The goal is reconciliation.
To often we let small conflict build up so much that our goal is not reconciliation, but vindication. Don't let it fester.
99% of the time, going to that person privately will solve the issue.
To often, the goal is not reconciliation, but vindication.
And that leads us to the second step:
2). If the problem cannot be resolved, bring someone with you.
  • This needs to be a neutral party.
  • This needs to be someone that both sides can trust to listen to both sides objectively and fairly.
  • This needs to be a person who can discern the issue, the offense and recommend a solution.
  • This person, after hearing both sides gets to decide if the offense merits this level of interdiction.
  • That is what the lady who called me about her neighbor was trying to do, except...
  • She forgot the guiding principle. Say it with me: THE GOAL IS RECONCILIATION.
  • If our goal is vindication, then we have already lost. The Church has already lost.
  • If our goal is reconciliation, and private conversation does not work, then a third party may be able to help.
3). Third step:
  • If the second, neutral party, agrees that an offense has taken place and it is significant enough that you have been damaged by the sin and the person will not change their mind, then bring it before the church.
  • Okay, this where it may seem to get tricky.
  • What is the goal? Say it with me: THE GOAL IS RECONCILIATION.
  • The offense must be big enough that worship and Christian community cannot be maintained unless a reconciliation between these two parties takes place.
  • At this point, well actually, hopefully at the beginning of this process, the person who has been harmed asks themselves if this even worth all the bother?
  • And, I suppose that I might talk to my wife about something like this to see if I am over reacting.
  • But if I am asking in order to make myself appear better than the other person, then reconciliation is not what I have in mind.
  • When reconciliation is the goal, both parties perceive it to be true and genuine.
  • Let me give a caution here.
  • Real life is not TV.
  • TV shows create a conflict to resolve them. Most often, that is good drama.
  • But we are living in the real world, and nothing is ever that black and white.
  • So, be careful that we ourselves are not over-reacting.
  • But at the same time, sometimes the conflict and resolution is very good and very healthy for community and personal growth.
  • This third step happens when the trusted person happens to agree with us that we have been wronged and that the wrong is significant enough to warrant correction.
  • I hope people love me enough to correct me.
  • I hope people love me enough to tell me when I have offended them.
  • Otherwise, I may never know that I have bad breath, or whatever.
CONCL: