Hey, my name is Keith Weiser. I'm excited to be with you here today, lead pastor here
at Resonate Church, and we are in the middle of a series called Breaking History. So this
is the middle of three, and I want to give you a little bit of a heads up about where
we're going. Our next sermon series is going to be something you are not going to want
to miss. When we began this process of starting a church, we knew we had to have the right
staff together. We knew we needed to have the right people, so we wanted to have a lead
pastor, we wanted to have a worship leader, and we wanted to have a magician. So we put
all those things together and say, that's how you started church. And this next sermon
series, it is going to be mind blowing in a whole lot of ways. It's called misdirected,
and really it's talking about how there's some things that we think that we're going
after that are the things that will save us, the things that will bring us happiness,
and really we have been misdirected. We have been confused. There are illusions, and so
we are asking our resident magician to come and help us to understand these deep truths
of scripture by fooling us. And so you're going to see Drew come, and every week there's
going to be a trick that's happening. There's going to be something that is going to be
mind blowing that you're going to walk away going, oh my gosh, how did that happen? And
so you're going to want to invite friends. This is going to be a fun time. I think this
is going to be four weeks that you will remember for a long, long time, and four weeks that
you have never experienced in any kind of a church before, so you're not going to want
to miss that. So that's what's in store for you guys. Last week we started with this idea
that we live by these scripts, and these scripts are basically this, that we have a way of
thinking about making decisions about our life that happens in terms of the things that
have happened in our past affect the way that we have and experience our life right now,
and really the trajectory of our life and the future. And when we begin to understand
these things, what we are doing now, it's not irrational. The things that are messed
up are issues that we have in our life. We're not crazy. We're just dealing with these in
light of how our past has kind of shaped our present and will shape our future. And really
as we kind of understand what is happening here, what we need to really get a clear
picture on is that the way our past has shaped us doesn't have to be what defines us in the
future. And we talked about that last week in terms of identifying shame, and ultimately
as we begin to see a picture of Jesus interacting with this woman at the well, drawing out that
shame and being able to say, if you can't reveal it, you cannot heal it. If it's not
revealed, it can never be healed. And so we've talked about not stuffing that out, but pulling
that out and dealing head on with that. And at the end of that, really what we got down
to is the idea that Jesus is the ultimate solution to that. But when we begin to think
about what does that mean, I think for many of you, that that might be a little bit difficult
to figure out. Okay, so at the end, the solution is Jesus. But what does Jesus really mean?
What does this really look like? And I want to get into this today and I wanted to introduce
a concept that is the very core of Christianity. A few decades ago, there was a British conference
on comparative religions and experts around the world basically gathered together and
debated what, if any, was the unique Christian thing or was unique to the Christian faith.
They began to eliminate possibilities like incarnation. That was something that other
religions had different versions of God appearing in human form, the resurrection. Again, other
religions had accounts of people who had returned from death. The debate went on and on until
a guy named C.S. Lewis wandered into the room. C.S. Lewis, the guy who wrote the story about
the lion, Chronicles of Narnia, maybe you've heard of him, is made into movies, maybe not.
You need to go see some movies. Okay, so he wrote them. He said this. He says, what's
the rumpus about? Because, of course, he's English. And so he said, he asked and he heard
the reply that his colleagues were discussing Christianity's unique aspects among world
religions. And Lewis, when kind of posed with that question, Lewis said, that's easy. Here's
the thing. It's grace. And that brought the room into agreement. You see, God's loving
us, coming to us free of charge, no strings attached, seems to go against every instinct
of humanity, the Buddhist eightfold path, the Hindu doctrine of karma, the Jewish covenant,
the Muslim code of law. Each of these has one thing that's in common. It's the way to
earn God's approval of us, the way that we earn approval. Only Christianity dares to
make God's love unconditional. So here's one I want to know. When we say, apply Jesus to
this, when we say, when we say Jesus is at the center of this, what we're really talking
about is this idea of grace and how Jesus brings to us grace and how we operate in our
lives, this idea of grace. And I want you to understand the core truth of Christianity
and the most compelling, I think, idea in all of humanity, that things don't have to
be fair because grace covers all. And, but the issue is in this, is that oftentimes when
we begin to say this is the distinctive of Christianity, this is, this is what this is
all about. Actually, there's a distance between what Christianity says it's about and how
many people who say they follow Jesus, how they actually live. The second semester of
Resonate Church a few years ago, I was, I'd finished my sermon, the service had kind of
come to a close and I was backed by the sound booth and this was in a different location
for us. And I was sitting there and this girl comes up to me and her name was Ruby and
she got to that later on. But the first thing she said to me was this, she says, she says,
I hate church. I don't really know about God. And I really don't like Christian A-holes.
And I was like, hi, my name's Keith. Great to meet you. I was like, yeah, me too, except
for the church and the God thing. So there's a commonality that you and I share, Ruby.
And that's on one of those things. And really, there's this really interesting thing is she
began to come to this and I asked her, I was like, why are you here? And she said, I heard
you talked about Jesus and I think Jesus is different. So I'll be back. And it's just
this fundamental thing of this difference between here is a distinctive of Christianity
that nothing else shares. This is a distinctive, but the issue is that this is not distinctive
of many people who follow Jesus. This is a distinctive of Christianity, but not a distinctive
of Christians. See, what I think has happened is a little bit like what happens when I grill
food. There's two ways, right, to grill food. There's one, there's a rub, or you brush
on the sauce or anything like that. But the other way is you get a piece of meat and you
marinate it, right? And marinating takes time. You don't just say, hey, I want to eat in
30 minutes. I'm going to marinate stuff because it doesn't work. I've had your marinade like
that and it doesn't taste like the marinade. Like it just, it's on the very surface, right?
It's not into the meat. It doesn't, the whole point of a marinade is that somehow it finds
its way from the surface to the inside of the meat. And so you stab it with your fork
and you inject it with the syringe and stuff like all this stuff to get in. Maybe I'm just
weird. So, uh, doctoring up my meat. Uh, so this is this idea of getting inside this idea
that it has to get to the very core of us. And I think that much of Christianity has
had a veneer of grace without the core understanding of what that really means has had a veneer
of understanding what it means to live in this idea that Jesus is unique among all other
people that Christianity is unique, but living a life that is not unique to anything else
that we see. And so it's not very compelling to us. But what I want to do is, is I want
us to get into this and I want us to be people who Ruby loves. And I want us to understand
that, that, that we have to be like just completely soaked, saturated. It has to come out of every
pore, this idea of grace. So what does that mean? What does it look like? There's two
types of you. There's actually three types of you in this room, uh, in, in terms of your
understanding of grace. Maybe you say, man, I've never really been raised up in the church.
Maybe I've, I've not really had this idea planted. I have this idea of cultural grace.
And so there's this idea of cultural grace and cultural grace is something that like,
you know, when you don't necessarily pay your, your rent on time, that, uh, there's a couple
of days, you know, where, where if you bring it in, it's kind of like a grace period, you
know, or, uh, or maybe that happens in terms of paying off a bill or something like that.
And you're like, oh, I was so close to the deadline. We'd agreed that the fair thing
to do is have a deadline and I would pay on that deadline, but I didn't quite do it.
And so could you just give me a little grace, right? And we have this idea and it's always
bound by time. Uh, so you just can't go on and on, right? Uh, or, or you'll default on
your bills and get sent to a collector. Oh, it's not, you know, it's not a huge amount
of things. So it's just, it's just a bill. It's not like you did something a heinous
to society. It's kind of bound by this, like the depth of the issue and the timing of the
issue. And so that's this idea of cultural grace, but there's this other idea of religious
grace and maybe you're here and you've been to church and you've heard about grace and
you theoretically understand grace, but the unique doctrine of Christianity is not a distinguishable
quality of your life. You believe grace in theory, but you don't live out grace in practice.
And then there's a third type. We're going to get to that a little bit later, but I think
that there's this deep need for us to understand this, for it to be pervading our lives. And
I think many of us have this veneer of grace, but the core of who we are is more informed
by our culture is more informed by other things. And we'll get into this. What I want us to
do is to see Jesus. Jesus tells stories. So he says this, if I tell you what grace is,
just objectively, you're not going to get it because you'll take that definition and
here's what you'll do. You'll just apply this to the same kind of idea that your culture.
Oh, this is, this is what helps me to understand the way my culture perceives this. What I need
to do is to tell you stories or I need to show you and model grace to you. And so that
you can understand what extravagant grace looks like. And I want us to look at a story
today in John eight about Jesus modeling extravagant grace and how it kind of makes us uncomfortable
and it kind of goes against everything that we believe is true and truthful in our world.
Obviously Jesus pushes up against this. And so I want to get into this. I'm going to look
in John eight, if you have your copy of scripture, you can turn that if you have your app. Here's
what I like to do. I'd like to tell the story of John eight in a way that doesn't necessarily
follow the scripture. I'd love for you to follow this because I'm not trying to get
outside of the scripture. Believe me, that's a core truth of myself as a core truth of
the doctrine of resonate church. But I do want to tell you this in more of a story form.
You can look at it in John eight as I go along. You see, that's her, that woman in the center
of the circle. See those men around her, those are all religious leaders, Pharisees, the
self appointed custodians of conduct. And the other man, the one in simple clothes, the
one sitting on the ground, the one looking at the face of the woman. See, that's Jesus.
Jesus has been teaching in this area, this courtyard and telling people what the kingdom
of God looks like. The very same moment in place in that city, she's been cheating.
And here's the thing, the Pharisees are out to stop both of them. Teacher, this woman
was caught in the act of adultery. These accusations ring off the courtroom courtyard walls, caught
in the act of adultery. Doors slammed open, sheets yanked back. You see in that time and
that place for them to be able to legally bring her into this place to be judged. It
wasn't just one person that had to see that, but multiple people. So it might have been
that one person caught wind of this, invited someone else to see this and watched. Seeing
an instance, she's yanked from private passion to public spectacle, caught. This man is not
your husband put on something. We know what we do with women like you. Heads poke out of
windows as a group push through the street, dogs bark neighbors turn. The city sees her
as she tries to hide her nakedness with a thin sheet. Yet nothing can hide her shame.
She knows what she's known all along that there's going to be pit whispers and whispers
and whispers. The woman stares at the ground. Her sweaty hair dangles. Her tears drip hot
with hurt. Her lips are tight. Her jaw is clenched. She knows she's been framed. No need
to look up. She'll find no con kindness. She looks at the stones in their hands squeeze
so tightly that their fingertips are wiped. She thinks of running, but where would she
go? She could claim mistreatment, but to whom? She could deny the act, but she was seen.
She could beg for mercy, but these men offer none. This woman has nowhere to turn. And
there's Jesus. You'd expect Jesus to stand and begin the sermon to proclaim judgment
upon the hypocrites, but he doesn't. You'd hope that he would just snatch that woman
up and just say, let's get out of here. Let's head out of town. But that's not what happens
either. Jesus is move is subtle, but his message is unmistakable. What did Jesus do? Jesus
writes in the sand and then he says something. He says this, if anyone here is without sin,
you throw the first stone at her. So the young look to the old, the old look into their hearts
and they're the first to drop their stones. And as they turn to leave, the young who were
cocky with their borrowed convictions do the same. And the only sound that is heard is
the third of rocks and the shuffle of feet. Then Jesus and the woman are left alone. With
the jury gone, the courtroom becomes the judge's chambers and the woman awaits the verdict.
Surely a sermon is brewing. No doubt that he will demand an apology, a confession, some
sort of repentance, but the judge doesn't speak his head down. Perhaps he's still writing
in the sand. He almost seems surprised when he realizes that she's still there. Woman,
where are they? Has no one condemned you? She answers, no one, sir. Then Jesus says,
I also don't condemn you. Now go and leave your life of sin. So what Jesus modeled is
something radically outside of what was normative. What Jesus did is almost disturbing. What
Jesus displayed in that is extravagant grace. What Jesus is communicating is how he interacts
with everyone that he comes in contact with. See, the first thing that I need you to understand
about this is that grace isn't fair. Grace isn't fair. See, it's kind of disturbing
to me that Jesus doesn't demand more out of her. Like when I began to process this outside
of the viewpoint of grace, I just say that's not fair. See all of these rules, all of these
laws, they were God saying this is how society is supposed to be together, that that woman
was fracturing some sort of a relationship, that there's someone on the other side of
that whose world fell apart when she made the decision to engage in the act of adultery.
And that's not how we should live. That's not how things should go. That is how things
mess up in our society. And what we do is we have these rules and these laws so that we
might live together in peace, that we might live together in love together. But what we
begin to see is that when grace covers something, it is never the fair thing to do. You see,
we love these stories. When someone receives something from someone else that was free,
we love these stories and they make sense when that person has, doesn't really need it
or won't really miss it. But when it costs that person something, it is a profound moment.
And it gets even more interesting when not only if they cost the person who's giving
it something, but what if that person that they're giving it to is actually an enemy
of theirs? And this is when our thoughts go, this is outside of norm. This is not how I
see the world. This is not right. And yet it's very compelling to our hearts. And we're
drawn to these things, but it always ends up with this idea that is not free. And this
goes against, it blows our mind because we have grown up with the mottos dog eat dog.
You get what you pay for. There's no such thing as a free lunch over and over. Fair
is a part of the way that we view life. And so we have an inbuilt resistance to grace.
You resist grace because it is not fair. In fact, there's many people here that say, I'm
not so sure that you're saying the right thing, Keith. I'm not so sure you're distorting
scripture because this just can't be right. This woman doesn't even repent and Jesus says,
I don't condemn you. How does that work? That's not like anything else that I've ever seen
in my world. I've never even really understand religion in that way. That just doesn't seem
to make sense. But here's the thing. We have to go back to this idea that we will always
drift towards policies, towards clarity in that idea of where do I stand with God? Where
do I stand with other people? And we will always drift towards an idea of fairness, not an
idea of grace because it's inbuilt into our society. It's inbuilt into our persona. It's
always wired for us to be the decider of our destiny. And the only way that you can decide
your destiny and much of our minds is if the playing field is level and everybody does
as they should, right? So then you can work harder and get ahead or you can do all of
these things and you're protected because there's laws.
But you sin and I sin and the world is jacked up and there's things that are messed up.
And so this causes us a place where we don't know how to work in our life. We don't know
what this looks like. And when we go back to life is fair as being the mantra of our
life. What it does is it brings us cynicism. It brings us worry. It brings us doubt. Grace
isn't free or isn't fair.
The second thing you need to understand is grace isn't cheap. You see, Jesus, what he
does in that moment is something he stoopes. He stands in front of her judgment. He takes
that almost on himself and she goes in freedom.
And again, it's kind of this crazy thing, but this is the MO of Jesus. This is what Jesus
does to the guy on the cross. He says, you're going to be with me today in paradise to the
guy who's lowered through the roof that one time in Mark. He says, your sins are forgiven
over and over.
These people are doing nothing to be forgivable for their sins. And yet Jesus is going through
life saying, I forgive you. You're free from this bondage. All of this stuff. Why?
Because Jesus isn't just here to write junk in the sand, right? Jesus isn't here to just
tell good stories. Jesus isn't just here to be the good teacher. Jesus is here to change
the world. Jesus is inserted into this in humanity as God with flesh on living out this
perfect life in view of going to the cross, sacrificing his life, setting up a dynamic
that leads to his murder so that he would be the ultimate sacrifice that covers all of
our sin and renders all of our verdicts before God as not guilty.
So he can say to all of these people, here's the thing. I know the score. I know what I'm
doing. This is the whole plan. I'm not just here to be the good teacher. I'm here to be
the savior of the world and the savior of the world can say to anyone, you are not condemned.
Your sins are forgiven. And I want you to know that grace is never cheap. Grace is never
cheap. It's never like I didn't really need that anyway, or it's not really a big deal.
No, her adultery was a huge deal. But what happens is she serves an even bigger God,
that she serves the author of salvation, Jesus himself, that she is underneath that authority.
And so he can say to her, this will cost me your life so that I can say to you, you are
not condemned. But we need to know the whole story or grace is just a shoulder shrug. Not
a big deal. It's like people that give away stuff to good will thinking like, oh, you're
so generous. No, it was just your crap. You didn't want anymore, right? It's not grace.
It's costly. This is the heirloom that I most want to have. But if it can help you in your
life, I will freely give it away. This is the grace that is offered to you. And so what
this says is it begins to help us to understand what is this idea of grace? What is this thing
that has been sacrificed? So when grace is understood and accepted as unfair, costly,
and about someone else, it changes those who receive it. See, here's the definition of
grace. See, it is God's action in light of his character that gives the gift of salvation
to people who have done nothing to deserve it through the costly sacrifice of his son,
Jesus Christ. And this always stands in juxtaposition from the idea of religion. See, we have not
marinated in this idea of grace. Our hearts have not been changed. We've had this veneer.
We've had this rub of this idea of religious grace, which is nothing like gospel grace.
Religion says that you should do this thing. Grace says, don't you want to? See, every
other religion says you need to be a good person because God loves good people. Christianity
says you are not a good person. And God loves you. And by his grace, he will change you
so that you can be good through his son, Jesus Christ. You see, oftentimes when we think about
are we good or bad, we measure up to the people that we're next to. We measure up to the people
in our lives. We look at those who go to death row and say, I'm better than them, so I must
be able to get out of hell. But that's not the comparison. The comparison is Jesus.
And with the comparison of perfection of Jesus Christ, we are all sinners. And if you don't
understand that you are a wretch, so when they sing the song Amazing Grace, the line
in this that saved a wretch like me, not that saved a reasonable fellow that seemed to do
more good than bad, and yet sometimes had a bad day. That's not amazing grace. Grace
is like mediocre grace to that person. It's not amazing. And there's not much to worship.
See what I want you to understand is religion and grace are radically different. See, grace
rightly understood radically changes those who receive it. Grace rightly understood radically
changes those who receive it because you can never be good enough. See, Paul tells us how
do you live then? If grace covers you, how does that change your life? And I'm going to
go through a block of scripture and so hold on. It says this in Romans 8. It says, therefore,
there is now no condemnation for those who are pretty good people. No, it doesn't. Therefore,
there's no condemnation in those who try really hard. There's no condemnation for those who
have been to church a lot. There's no condemnation for people who mostly do right things. For
people who are moral. No, it says this. Therefore, there is no condemnation for those who are
in Christ Jesus. There is condemnation for those who are not in Christ Jesus. Again,
we're getting, what is that? Have you been marinated with the gospel? Because through
Christ Jesus, the law of the spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin
and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh,
God did by sending his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And
so he condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law
may be fully met in us who do not live according to the flesh, but according to the spirit.
There's like 10 sermons in this. But those who live in the flesh have their mind set
on what the flesh desires. But those who live in accordance with the spirit have mindset
on what the spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed
by the spirit is life and peace. I need you to get this because this is how grace takes
over your life. That it because something that's not just a veneer of your life that
you have this religious grace that is just kind of this idea that sometimes there's this,
you know, give and take and bound by the time and how deeply the hurt was. But there is
this idea that Jesus understands that when we experience grace, we are magnetically drawn
to it. It draws us in. And I think that every time Jesus revealed grace, it softened hearts.
It drew people in. So what he's saying is, here's what I want from this woman. I want
her to understand grace so that her heart might be brought into this because she has
this moment. He says, now go and do not sin anymore. How does he say that? How is that
not just another law? Grace has been covered over everything. And when she begins to understand
that as you operate out of grace, it draws you in. You no longer live with, this is what
I ought to do, but this is what I want to do. And that is true freedom in your life that
you begin to say, this is what I desire that grace has drawn me to Jesus, not some sort
of a promise of heaven or hell. And really, when we live that out, when that becomes the
distinguishing quality of what this means, this room should be packed day after day. We
should have all these people that have come into that because this is the distinguishing
idea of Christianity and it is the best, most compelling idea in the world.
See when you rely upon yourself to be acceptable, it's all up to you. But when you rely upon
Jesus, it's all about grace. You see what Jesus did was say, I'll take care of your
sin. You take care of your shame. I'll take care, I'll deal with your sin. It is up to
me. And so the problem is too many of us, we're trying to deal with our sin. We're trying
to make ourselves right. You will never be right enough and you can never try hard enough
to do that. You must submit to the grace given by you and allow Jesus to deal with your shame,
to deal with all the stuff in your body. You will never break history until you do that.
Jesus says, I'll deal with your sin. You have to deal with your shame. And you do that by
understanding that I've given you grace. See, grace breaks your history by breaking religious
rules. Two things that rob us of experiencing grace. One, we don't really think that we're
that bad. And two, we don't think that grace really covers everything, everything, everything.
The third thing I want to tell you is that not only is grace not fair and costly, but
grace is about the person that gives it.
Philippians communicates this story that says this, a young girl grows up on a cherry orchard
just out just above Traverse City, Michigan. Her parents are a bit old fashioned and they
tend to overreact to her nose ring, the music she listens to into the length of her skirts.
They ground her a few times and she sees inside. I hate you. She screams as her father when
he knocks on the door of her room after an argument. And that night she acts on a plan
that she has mentally rehearsed scores of times. She runs away. She's visited Detroit
only once before on a bus trip with her church youth group to watch the Tigers play because
newspapers in Traverse City report the lurid details of the gangs, the drugs and the violence
in downtown Detroit. She concludes it's probably the last place that her parents will look
for her. California maybe, Florida perhaps, but not Detroit. Her second day there she
meets a man who drives the biggest car she's ever seen. He offers her a ride, buys her
lunch and arranges for her a place to stay. He gives her some pills that make her feel
better than she's felt ever before. She was right all along. She decides her parents were
just keeping her from all the fun. The good life continues for a month, two months, a year.
The man with the big car, she calls him boss, teaches her a few things that men like. Since
she's underage, men pay a premium for her. She lives in a penthouse and she orders room
service whenever she wants. Occasionally she thinks about the folks back home and how their
lives seem so boring. And she can hardly believe that she grew up back there. She had a brief
scare when she sees her picture printed on the back of a milk carton with the headline,
have you seen this child? But by now she has blonde hair and a haul of makeup and body
piercing she wears. Nobody would mistake her for a child. Besides, most of her friends
are runways and no one squeals in Detroit. After a year, the first sallow signs of illness
appear and it amazes her how fast the boss turns mean. These days we can't mess around,
he growls, and before she knows it, she's out on the street without a penny to her name.
She still turns it a couple of tricks a night, but they don't pay much and all the money
goes to the support her habit. When winter blows, she finds herself sleeping
on metal gates outside of the big department stores. Sleeping is actually the wrong word.
A teenage girl at night in downtown Detroit can never relax her guard. Dark bands circle
her eyes and her cough worsens. One night, as she lies awake listening for the footsteps,
all of a sudden everything about her life looks different. She no longer feels like
a woman of the world. She feels like a little girl lost in a cold and frightening city.
She begins to whimper. Her pockets are empty and she's hungry. She needs a fix. She pulls
her legs tight and underneath her and shivers under the newspaper she's piled atop her coat.
Something jolts the synapse of memory and a mental image fills her mind. An image of
May in Traverse City where a million cherry blossoms bloom at once with her golden retriever
dashing through the rows of blossoming trees and chase of a tennis ball. God, why did I
leave? She says to herself in the pain stabs at her heart. My dog back home eats better
than I do now. She sobs and she knows in a flash more than anything else in the world
she just wants to go home. And if three straight phone calls, three state connections with
the answering machine, she hangs up without leaving a message the first two times. But
the third time she says, dad, mom, it's me. I was, I was wondering about maybe, maybe
coming home. I'm catching a bus up your way and I'm going to get there about midnight
tomorrow. And if you're not there, I understand I'll just stay on the bus. Well, it takes
about seven hours for the bus to make it, make all the stops between Detroit and Traverse
City. During that time she realizes the flaws in her plan. What if her parents are out of
town and missed the message? Shouldn't she have waited another day so that she could
talk to them? And even if they're home, they probably wrote her off as dead long time ago.
She should have given them some time to overcome the shock. Her thoughts bounce back and forth
between those worried, those worries and the speech she's preparing for her father.
Dad, I'm sorry. I know I was wrong and it's not your fault. It's all mine. Dad, can you
forgive me? She says the words over and over and her throat tightens even as she rehearses
them. She hasn't apologized to anyone in years. The bus has been driving with lights on since
base city. Tiny snowflakes hit the pavement, rubbed worn by thousands of tires in this
asphalt steams. She's forgotten how dark it gets at night out here. A deer darts across
the road and the bus swerves. Every so often a billboard. A sign posting the mileage to
Traverse City. Oh, God. The bus finally rolls into the station. It's airbrakes hissing
in protest. The driver announces in the crackly voice over the microphone, 15 folks, 15 minutes
we have. That's all we have here. 15 minutes to decide her life. She checks herself in
the compact mirror, smooths her hair, licks the lipstick off her teeth. She looks at the
debaco stains on her fingertips and wonders if her parents will notice if they're there.
She walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect. Not one of the thousands scenes
that has played out in her mind prepares her for what she sees. There in the concrete walls
and plastic chairs bus terminal in Traverse City, Michigan stands a group of 40 brothers
and sisters and great aunts and uncles and cousins and a grandmother and a grandmother,
great grandmother to boot. And they're all wearing goofy party hats and blowing noise
makers and taped across the entire wall of the terminal is this banner that reads, Welcome
Home. Out of the crowd of well-wishers breaks her dad. She stares out through the tears
quivering in her eyes like hot mercury and begins the memorized speech. Dad, I know.
I'm sorry. Hush, child. He interrupts. We've got no time for that. No time for apologies.
You'll be late for the party. A banquet's waiting for you at home. You see, these are
the stories that Jesus told. We're so accustomed to finding a catch in every promise, but Jesus'
stories of extravagant grace include no catch, no loophole disqualifying us from God's love.
You see, this is Jesus offering extravagant grace that covers everything that is not fair,
but it is about Jesus. Sociologists say that they have a theory of the looking glass self
that you become what the most important person in your life thinks you are. And my desire
is that in a culture that has the, you'll measure up. Let's figure out what's fair.
Just line yourself and compare yourself to other people that you will make Jesus the
most important person in your life. And so that you would become like him full of grace
for yourself and grace that is extravagantly spread to the people around you.
See, here's who I want us to become. Here's the third type of person. There are those
of you who have long since left the notion that life is fair. You live towards others
as Christ has lived towards you. You can't bear to hold a grudge. You can't even think
about bitterness. Forgiveness is a foregone conclusion in your life and gracious graciousness
exudes from you. All of this stems from a deep understanding of an inexhaustible well
of grace that has been given to you by Jesus. So what if you were that kind of person? What
are fewer the person that drew from an inexhaustible well of grace that it was woven into every
relationship, it was infused into every conversation, it was painted over all of your past and completely
created a trajectory to your future. You exuded a divine hope in others and they were around
you and when they were around you, their flaws seemed to go away. The rough edges were unseen.
Their peculiarities were accepted and their humanity was celebrated. Think about the way
that you would relate to yourself as someone who understands that grace is the very heart
of the gospel, the very currency that Jesus dealt in and it would be silly to come here
week after week and still operate under a different economy. You see, grace must rule
over everything and my heart is for people who have the veneer of grace, but the core
of them still operates on some sort of an economy based upon proving themselves to be
acceptable before God, before the other people where their paths are not forget or their
past are not forgivable and their future is tainted. I want you to be people whose distinguishing
marks of your life is the distinguishing mark of Christianity that is a grace that is an
extravagant, unfair, costly, focused on Jesus kind of grace that just pours out of every
pore in your body that you see yourself like this, that other people see you this, that
the stories of your life, this becomes normal. The ways that you deal with people, the ways
that you understand the world becomes not by a contract, but through the lens of grace.
You see, we have these, these baggage, we have these, these, these baggage in our life
and we have these things that we feel like we have to carry around and we have these
things that we think this is just who I am. This is just a part of me and I just have
to figure out how to deal with them and we all have that stuff. That's just not for one
or two people here. We have all of the stuff and what I want you to see is that you must
drop those bags. If they have been covered by grace, since you have been covered by grace,
a costly grace that Jesus won on your behalf so that you do not have to carry your past
with you, so that you do not have to have something that you continue to carry around
burdens in your life that you would understand that that has to be put down because your
future depends on it. And here's the thing, I wish that my words just, just telling you
in this moment, maybe you say, that's who I want to be. That's who, how I want to live.
But the problem is you're going to go out these doors and you're going to get bombarded
with a world that looks nothing like the grace of Jesus Christ in the gospel. So I want to
ask you to do this. When you, when you came in, you had a little baggage tag that was
on your program. Could you pull that out? I can't get into your head and say this over
and over when you have those moments of doubt, when you have that moment where you're tempted
to be ungraceful towards something, when you have that moment when you're tempted to bring
your past back into your present and let it affect your future. What I want to do for
you today is to remind you that baggage symbolizes that by that little tag doesn't have to be
the way that you operate. The distinctive reality of the gospel is a grace that covers
everything and Jesus has bought that for you. So here's what I want to do. There should
be a pen that's attached to that. And I'd like for you to write on that just simply
the word grace. Just write the word grace. And here's what I want you to do. I want
you to be able to put that somewhere because you are going to fall into the trap of thinking
fairness. You're going to fall into the trap of thinking I have to prove it. You're going
to fall into the trap and thinking I'm not good enough. And what I want you to say is
it doesn't have to be that way. I want you to look at that little tag and say it doesn't
have to be that way. That is not the distinguishing factor of Jesus and should not be the distinguishing
factor in my life. And maybe today on the other side you write it under the things that you
want that grace to cover. Maybe things in your past. Maybe relationships in your past. Maybe
things that you just think, ah, yeah, but that's just my issue. Now if you feel uncomfortable
putting that in a public place and having that flipped over side, having stuff that's
that personal, you don't have to write it. But I'd encourage you. Allow that thing when
you see that to remember if Jesus told the woman you're not condemned that had been caught
in adultery, standing there with barely any clothes on just reeking of that moment, Jesus
can deal with all your junk, all your baggage. Let us be people that are marinated in the
grace of the gospel. Let me pray for us. God, help us to understand grace. Help us to understand
this crucial aspect of what it means to live and follow in you. God, let us not be people
that just have this veneer of the gospel, but not the truth of it echoing in our hearts.
God today, for those who have not dealt gracefully with themselves, I pray that you would help
them to see themselves through the lens of your grace. Lord, that you would bring places
that we have not let grace completely gotten into the core, the nooks and craggies of our
heart. I pray that you would just place that grace in there. Lord, that you would help
us to understand that in a way that just blows our mind. Lord, help us to walk in a relentless
understanding of how gracefully you've treated us in your holy name. Amen.
