And we've been looking at the Lord's Prayer
the last few weeks and really trying to dissect it
and really understand what Jesus was trying
to teach his disciples when he said, pray this way.
And what we found is that it's a pattern
that he's laying out for us, a model for prayer,
not just a performance, not just words to say,
but attitudes of the heart that he wants shaped in us
when we approach God, when we come to God.
And so as part of our message series each week,
we've recited the Lord's Prayer together,
so we're gonna go ahead and put that up on the board.
And let's say this together as we learn from God's word,
what it means to pray.
Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy.
Your kingdom come, your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debts
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not lead us into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one.
This is God's word.
Well today at Village we have the privilege and honor
and joy of welcoming a guest speaker today.
Pastor Greg Kaiser has been most recently pastor
over at Foundation Christian Church
for six, seven years, something like that.
And we go ahead and welcome him.
He's gonna come and bring the word this morning.
Welcome Pastor Greg.
Hey everybody.
So I'll have you know, I'm very excited,
just in case you think I am young, hip,
starting a skater ministry or am still a youth pastor.
I have never preached in my entire life before
with a hat on, let alone backwards.
That has never happened.
My Southern Baptist mother is in Oklahoma right now
and I am afraid that her fingers at some point
will find my ear during this sermon.
Okay, but let me tell you what happened.
I just learned in the first service
how denominations get started.
It's not always evil, it's not always
that we fought each other.
It's that sometimes we solve the exact same problem
two different ways.
Anybody, you ever had a spousal fight?
You both had a very good idea on how to solve the problem.
Okay, Pastor John and I were both wearing hats
in the first service.
Somebody let us know that the angle of these lights
puts a shadow all over our,
I've been speaking professionally for 20 years,
don't know why I did not think of that, but whatever.
And having eye contact with the people listening to you
is hugely important.
I could be selling Amway or starting a cult or something.
I mean, who knows?
Who knows what might happen?
I always told Foundation, you know for sure
that I had started a cult when the first tenant
of the cult is we're all gonna enjoy chocolate on Tuesdays.
In less amounts of chocolate and we're gonna preach
that it doesn't make you fatter.
When you hear Greg saying that, you know he started a cult.
Anyway, John, we both heard the same feedback
and both agreed with the feedback
and he decided to run a comb through his hair.
My haircut is so short that it just is abysmal
and my wife's here and she's gonna be ashamed
and hide under a rock and die.
So I'm like the best I can do is to turn this around
like the cool kids did when I was in high school.
That is the best I have to offer you.
Hopefully, that when I bring the beautiful words
of Christ to you and hopefully just allow them to shine
as beautiful as they are, we'll be able to move past.
Greg, did you go to Bodega Bay recently?
Like hopefully none of this matters.
Hopefully none of this matters very soon.
So like a good millennial, my sermon is on my phone.
Let's open up Google Docs.
We're talking about forgiveness today,
which I know can sound like a root canal,
but let me tell you something in advance.
A root canal, let me tell you what we already know.
If you need a root canal in the 20th or 21st century,
that same problem 200 years ago would kill you.
Does that make sense?
Okay, I forget who said it first,
but somebody very wise said that unforgiveness
is drinking poison expecting the other person to die.
Okay, so we got a two point sermon today.
First, we're gonna do some deconstruction.
We're gonna talk a little bit about unforgiveness
and the weight of it, and then we're gonna talk
about forgiveness, the beauty of it,
and all of this cannot be separated, of course,
from the cross of Christ.
Can I start preaching now?
If I don't need forgiveness, because I'm pretty awesome,
what is the cross?
What is the cross?
I heard a preacher, even almost 20 years ago,
I heard a preacher say, we Christians keep saying
to the world, are you saved?
And the world increasingly is going, saved from what?
If there's no absolute moral right and wrong outside of me,
how could I be guilty?
If I'm not guilty, what do I need to be saved from, right?
Are you with me so far?
Okay, let's start with, turn with me,
this is the first text we're gonna be in, John chapter eight.
John chapter eight is where we're gonna start.
Anybody grow up with a wanna?
I can't turn from one gospel to the next
without the song in my head.
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, okay.
John eight, and we're gonna start at verse two.
Actually, I'll give you the principle first,
those of you guys who have the slides,
you can throw it up there.
Unforgiveness, this is what it is,
is us pretending to have God's right to judge.
Pretending.
The rapper Lecrae put out an album in 2011
called Who's the King?
And he says, human beings going around
calling themselves the king, it's kinda like this.
Little kids playing in their daddy's clothes.
The clothes don't fit and daddy's coming back home.
We wage war inside ourselves against God and in culture,
constantly trying to grab hold of God's rights.
We don't want him to exist.
His existence is inconvenient to us
because he holds all of the biggest rights.
All of them.
Sin, one way you could define it,
is all the stuff that I do say, think, and feel
when I've put my fingerprints all over one of God's rights
pretending that it was mine, that's sin.
Hey, you were sitting on your throne,
but it's really shiny and pretty and it looks pretty awesome.
Jesus, could you scoot?
I think I would look pretty good up there.
Okay?
Unforgiveness is just one of the ways
that we push Jesus off his throne.
Try to, we're pretending, right?
It's fake.
Anybody here think you can push the King of Kings around?
We're about to read a text here
where people did think they could push him around.
But we're not gonna do that.
People did think they could push him around.
Unforgiveness is us pretending
to have God's right to judge.
So let's go into this beautiful, powerful story
and see, ask yourself this question before you go in.
We usually go into the story of the woman caught in adultery
and we usually just come out talking about the mercy of God
and that is an incredible way to approach the text.
But how many of you guys know,
you don't know how God's big, God's mercy is
until you know how hosed you were.
Isaiah says, any young ears here?
Okay, some of you guys know this from Isaiah.
Isaiah says that Israel has taken
what amounts to a dirty tampon, filthy menstrual rags,
and that is our greatest righteousness.
The very best of our behavior is ceremonially unclean
and we didn't just have it, we took it
and put it up on the altar like it was a beautiful offering.
The greater the gap that we can embrace
between the holiness, worthiness, and beauty of Christ
and my own personal filth, all of a sudden,
what is this huge gap?
That's what Jesus did for me when he went to the cross.
But if I have a high view of self and a low view of God,
the cross gets smaller and smaller.
Smaller and smaller.
Let's read together starting at verse two.
At dawn, he, meaning Jesus, went to the temple area
and all the people gathered around him
and all the people were coming to him.
He sat down and began to teach them.
Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman
caught in adultery, making her stand in the center.
That's gotta be fun.
So my kids who grew up in Sunday school, help me out.
Do we have any problems yet?
We're only a couple verses in.
Any problems here with the way justice is being executed
inside what God has ordained?
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.
Are we following the Bible yet on how we deal with sin?
Is it going well, is it going poorly, mixed bag?
She's totally cheating.
You double dipper.
Levitical law is very, you know,
when a Christian gets really excited
and pastor preaches a rousing sermon right after Christmas
of you're gonna do your Bible reading in a peer plan,
we're all gonna do it, it's gonna be awesome,
and everybody's gung ho on January 1st.
It's around the second or third week of January,
you end up in Leviticus and you're just,
I don't know if I can make it.
But let me ask you something.
What if I told you that it's these sections
of endless rules where we can kinda get bogged down,
where it tells us, hey, don't harvest the corners
of your field, leave that for the poor together.
That's in the middle of the boring part.
How does horizontal justice work?
God was telling us, but we were like,
needed a second cup of coffee or something.
It is the same passages, the same areas of scripture
that said, someone's caught in adultery,
bring them, the man and the woman,
are brought before the leaders of Israel.
I grew up the way they said it, it takes two to tango.
We're in such a perverse situation.
We're in such a perverse culture,
now it takes three or four to tango.
But the man and the woman are supposed
to be held accountable.
Hey, you guys took sex outside of its marital context,
the beautiful context that God created
so that you guys would be a community like I am,
that you'd be creative, literally creating life
out of your bodies.
Like, you took sex out of its context.
This is wrong.
Today's culture, we would look at it and go,
you need to leave this girl alone
because she's allowed to do whatever she wants
with her body and God is like, I made you
and I love you more than you love you
and I'm wiser than you.
Disobedience is just, I don't trust God,
I don't trust God, I don't trust God.
I could do this better than him, right?
So today, we would look at this story and go,
how horrible that they brought a woman in front of Jesus
and they're telling her that she was sinful.
No, the Bible's very clear that she had sinned.
Very clear.
And that's really important later when he says,
neither do I condemn you, that's the weight of that.
He's not saying you do you, boo.
You know, what's right for your sexual ethic
is right for yours and what's right for me is what's right.
No, no, no, no, that's not how Jesus sounds.
He never, ever says anything of the sort, right?
But I get ahead of myself.
The Pharisees, the religious elites
are already doing the wrong thing.
Verse four, teacher they said to him,
this woman was caught in the act of committing adultery
and the law of Moses commanded us,
in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women.
So what do you say?
Hey Californians, they're not handing her a joint, okay?
They're talking about throwing rocks at her.
So what do you say?
They asked this to trap him in order
that they might have evidence to accuse him, okay?
And just to be clear, this is not a,
just in case he gives the wrong answer,
they have purposefully set up this situation
so that there is no correct answer.
Rome did not allow other groups that they had subjugated
to do the death penalty under any circumstances.
So if he agrees with the law of Moses and says,
yes, stoner to death, he's in trouble with Caesar, right?
If he says, to avoid Caesar's punishment,
he says, oh, you know what, I've made some mistakes.
Like, who am I to judge?
We can't take it, and this is by the way,
this is what the Sadducees would have said.
They were the theological liberals of their day.
And when I say theological liberal,
I'm not talking politics, I'm saying,
a theological liberal is somebody you ask him,
hey, is the Bible true?
And they go, well, you know, there are a lot of opinions
and a lot of feelings, oh God.
The theological conservative is not a Republican,
they're just a person who says,
yeah, the Bible's true, period, full stop.
No excuses, no, I don't apologize for my Savior,
because when he tells you something that offends you,
you're not realizing he loves you more than you love you.
So I don't apologize for any of the words
of teachings of Scripture.
You ready for a big one?
This is an aside.
I'm not ashamed of the conquest of Canaan.
Joshua goes, everybody loves to go,
oh, he wholesale slaughtered a bunch of people.
And I'm like, a holy, righteous God judged him,
judged these people groups,
and gave them 400 years to repent.
Have you read Genesis 15?
The sins of the Amalekites are not yet full.
God not only had the rights to kill a bunch of people
and throw them into hell,
he gave them 400 more years than they deserved,
but he gave them 400 more years than they deserved.
He gave them 400 more years than they deserved to repent.
Please do not come at me anymore, like nonsense.
All 66 books, this God loves you more than you love you.
He's more patient than you would be
if you were on his seat judging.
Gonna tell God he doesn't have the right
to throw somebody into hell, are you kidding me?
Wait until your daughter is raped,
and then you can go to hell, and then you can go to hell.
So he's supposed to be in a lose-lose situation here.
Get in trouble with Rome, get in trouble with the Sanhedrin.
But how many of you guys know
you can't trap the Almighty God?
Try to corner him, silly Pharisees.
Jesus stooped down and started riding
on the ground with his finger.
I heard a preacher years ago,
I heard a preacher years ago say,
I wonder which finger he was using.
Verse seven, when they persisted in questioning him,
he stood up and said to them,
the one without sin among you
should be the first to throw a stone at her,
one of the most misquoted pieces of scripture
in the entire book.
And I'll tell you why in a second.
Then he stooped down again
and continued riding on the ground.
When they heard this, they left,
one by one, starting with the older men.
Only he was left with the woman in the center.
Huh.
It sounds like there's some,
is it the Proverbs or the Psalms?
One of those two talks about gray hair
being this sign of wisdom, this crown of wisdom.
It sounds like there's some built-in blessing
to being older,
because these guys,
the minute the Almighty God holds up the mirror,
whoever, you know what?
I agree with Moses, great idea.
It's just that the right to judge
belongs to the Holy One of Israel.
He didn't say it like that, but he did say it.
Let me ask you a physical question.
Is Jesus still standing there
for the second half of the conversation,
or did Jesus walk away?
Ha ha ha, oh my goodness.
And your philosophy professor in college
really wanted to say,
well, Jesus never claimed deity.
He just said, sinless ones out, and he stayed.
That's why he has the right to say,
neither do I condemn you.
He has the right to condemn or not to condemn.
That's my point.
And he chooses not to.
Something that we did not know,
with all our Bible knowledge, 2,000 years ago,
we studied and we looked and we studied and we looked,
and we were waiting for Messiah,
and then something happened, are you ready?
That nobody saw coming.
The suffering servant of Isaiah
and the conquering king of Isaiah,
we always thought those were two separate people.
There was no room in our theology
for the Messiah to suffer.
A worm of a man scorned.
Like Psalm 22, my God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
I can see all of my bones.
They've pierced my hands and my feet.
There's no room in our theology 2,000 years ago
that Messiah would suffer.
He was going to come, grab Caesar,
kick him in his man parts, and end it.
Messiah was supposed to be a military leader,
and when you read the Messianic literature
of the Old Testament, it's very clear why we thought that.
How are you gonna tell me that Jerusalem
is at the center of everything,
and that God himself is on his throne
and life just flows out and all the nations come
and worship him, how could that possibly happen
under Caesar, right?
So we were all mistaken in our theology.
We didn't think, we had no idea really
who the suffering servant was gonna be.
We had no clue that the same Messiah was gonna come
once to suffer and then later to judge.
It's the same person, our Lord Jesus Christ.
And if he had come 2,000 years ago to destroy Rome,
we wouldn't be here.
He would have sorted everybody to his right
and to his left, the sheep from the goats.
I promise you, you and I don't want justice
as much as we think we do.
What we want is mercy.
Unforgiveness comes when we need to forgive somebody else
and God is the one dealing with that sin
and we just don't think he's dealing with it the right way.
God, you're doing it wrong.
That's where all sin comes from, God,
you're doing it wrong.
I'm smart enough though, so I'm gonna share some opinions.
I'm wise enough.
I'm loving enough.
My notes disappeared.
I have to refresh my screen.
Okay.
Finger on the ground.
Verse 10.
When Jesus stood up, he said to her,
now I didn't say this in the first service,
but this is important.
The disciples are right there hearing all of this.
They're the ones that wrote the gospels, right?
So they're right there for all of this.
Jesus is never just honoring God, but he is.
He's never just serving the person
who's gonna be serving him.
He's never just serving the person in front of him,
which he is.
He's discipling the folks.
Like you're gonna take the kingdom
by the Holy Spirit's power.
I'm gonna, I'm gonna, Jetsons.
Do, do, do, do, do, do.
I'm gonna go up to the right hand of the Father.
That would scare the bejesus out of them
had he told them earlier,
but I'm gonna fill you with my Holy Spirit.
You're gonna do greater things than this, right?
He is discipling.
This is a word to all of us.
When we're ministering, we're never just ministering.
Somebody's watching.
He stood up, he said to her,
woman, where are they?
Has no one condemned you?
No one, Lord, she answered.
Neither do I condemn you, said Jesus.
Go, and from now on, do not sin anymore.
He has the right, it seems,
to tell a human being to not sin.
Can I think of anything more offensive in 2024?
I'll pull this away from my face a little bit.
Not just to say there's right and wrong,
not just to say it's a really big deal,
like friend of God, enemy of God.
He says, I have the right to judge.
I do not condemn you.
I have the right to judge.
I do not condemn you, go and sin no more.
And because we love the worship of self,
and for those of us who are Christians,
we sometimes operate out of the flesh,
we're operating out of the old self.
We think that last part is the bad news.
We think go and sin no more is like,
oh, I knew this whole Christianity thing
was gonna cost me at some point.
I can't sleep with my girlfriend like I wanted to.
I can't smoke whatever, I can't do whatever,
I can't rebel against authority, I can't cheat on my tags,
I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't, I can't,
because I still don't trust God to run his universe.
Psalm 119 is the longest Psalm in the Bible,
and do you know it's only really about one thing?
God's commands to me are sweeter
than honey from the honeycomb.
That's what Psalm 119 is about.
There is no blessing like the mouth of my creator
telling me what's true.
The flesh hates that.
The spirit loves it.
If you love Jesus, your spirit-born self loves it
when your creator speaks to you.
That's why you're here instead of playing golf.
The community of saints, not just the sermon, by the way,
the music and the community of saints,
where we teach each other what is true from the scriptures.
You love it because the Holy Spirit gave you a new heart.
That's the only reason for you to love what God says.
There's no logical reason for the flesh to love it.
No, the flesh is nailed to the cross of Christ,
kicking and screaming and fighting.
And what does Paul say about that?
Oh, what a wretch of a man that I am.
I do that which I don't wanna do,
and I don't do that which I do want to do.
I'm so tired of being at war inside myself
of a spirit-born self and the old dead self,
fighting and fighting and fighting and fighting and fighting
and fighting and fighting and fighting and fighting
and fighting and fighting.
So you see this last part, go and sin no more.
That's a little piece of your kingdom come,
your will be done on earth.
That we would finally agree with you
and do life the way you have told us to do life.
That's the good news.
He just told her, and I know this is weird
because he hasn't died on the cross yet,
he just told her she's no longer a slave to sin.
He criticized the religious elite saying,
you heap all these burdens onto people,
you won't lift a pinky to ease the burden.
So there's no way Jesus is gonna say to us,
go and sin no more and then not equip us.
Philippians says the Holy Spirit gives the desire
and the power to do what pleases God.
Helps me to want holiness and then the power to pursue it.
So Jesus is speaking prophetically,
which he does his entire ministry.
He knows the Holy Spirit is coming to fill his church.
He would never tell her, don't sin anymore.
Unless he was gonna empower her against sin,
unless sin was going to have its victory lost
on a bloodied cross.
Second, let's talk about the compulsion to forgive now
if we are in Christ.
Since God has forgiven the Christian,
who are we to fail to forgive?
Who do we think we are?
Since God has forgiven the Christian,
who are we to fail to forgive?
Turn with me to Matthew chapter 18.
Matthew chapter 18, unless you guys have one.
Starting in verse 21.
And Peter approached him, meaning Jesus, and asked,
Lord, how many times must I forgive my brother or sister
who sins against me?
As many as seven times?
I tell you, not as many as seven, Jesus replied,
but 70 times seven.
For this reason, the kingdom of heaven
can be compared to a king
who wanted to settle accounts with his servants.
When he began to settle accounts, one who owed him
10,000 talents was brought before him.
A talent was about one year's wage.
Anybody here ever been in enough debt
that you owed somebody 10,000 years of your wages?
No, anybody, 10,000 years?
No, anybody, 10,000 years of your wages?
The point is that it's astronomical
and you couldn't possibly pay it back, that's the point.
Okay?
Could not possibly.
And then, verse 25.
Since he did not have the money to pay it back,
his master commanded that he, his wife, his children,
and everything he had be sold to pay the debt.
And as horrifying as this is to us,
this is normal in first century Rome.
If I'm hugely in debt and I have nothing to give,
all I can give you is my future labor.
So my family, we will move on to your property,
and I will serve you the rest of my life.
That's the best I can do, right?
And Roman law, that's Roman law, signed off on that.
That is the law.
At this, the servant fell face down before him and said,
be patient with me and I will pay you everything.
Is that logical, illogical, 50-50?
I have one vote for illogical.
Can you pay back 10,000 years of your wages?
So you asserting to God, I can make it up to you, God.
All that is, is being afraid of hell.
You don't actually love God. Heaven is not for people
who are afraid of hell.
Heaven is for those who love God.
The master of the servant had compassion,
released him and forgave him the loan.
What?
Could we agree it would have been really merciful
if everyone would just say,
hey, I'm gonna put you on a little payment plan.
Give me 10% of your wages for the rest of your life.
I know we'll never come anywhere near actually paying it off,
but that would have been really merciful, right?
God is not a little bit merciful.
God is not a lot a bit merciful.
He is breathtaking merciful.
That huge gap between his holiness and my filth,
that is my sin debt,
to an almighty God.
He forgave something unbelievable.
Verse 28, that servant went out
and found one of his fellow servants
who owed him 100 denarii.
Does it matter how much a denarii is?
No, it's a lot, lot less than how much he just got forgiven.
That's the only thing we need to know.
He grabbed him, started choking him and said,
pay what you owe.
At this, his fellow servant fell down
and began begging him,
be patient with me and I will pay you back.
Have we heard this before?
I think I just heard a story
about somebody who used those exact same words.
Oh wait, that's right, it was me.
God forgave me a whole bunch
and now I don't wanna forgive my brother.
Yikes.
Verse 30, but he wasn't willing.
Instead, he went and threw him into prison
until he could pay what he owed.
When the other servants saw what had taken place,
they were deeply distressed
and went and reported to their master
everything that had happened.
Then after he had summoned him, his master said to him,
you wicked servant, is God mincing his words?
Not like you 70% wicked,
you, you know, your dad didn't hug you enough
when you were a kid,
culture had some bad ideas swirling around,
you fell in with the wrong crowd in high school.
No.
Context or not, by the way, every context is wicked.
Context or not, what you have done is unbelievably evil.
And listen to his rhetorical question.
I forgave you all that debt because you begged me,
shouldn't you also have had mercy on your fellow servant
as I had mercy on you?
It's rhetorical, there's no question.
There's no response he gives, you know, notice?
Because he can't.
There's no answer.
And because he was angry, his master handed him over
to the jailers to be tortured
until he could pay everything that was owed.
Question, while you're being tortured,
how much money are you earning per hour?
So if you're not earning anything,
how are you gonna be paying back something?
C.S. Lewis surmised related to the eternality of hell,
if God will not manifestly be present, and he is not,
he's present as judge, Christ as judge over hell,
you guys need to know that Satan's not in charge of hell,
he was created for him.
If Jesus Christ is pouring out his wrath on Satan
and fallen angels, and we by our rebellion
decide to join that rebellion,
God is not choosing to reign in hell with his love
and his mercy and his patience,
he's reigning with his justice.
And I lost my train of thought.
Oh, C.S. Lewis said this.
If God is no longer, as the Holy Spirit is holding back
wickedness to some degree right now,
if God is no longer holding back wickedness
and hell is allowed to go on forever,
what goes on in the heart and mind of somebody in hell?
They are only ever continually blaspheming God
more and more and more, so you can't pay off the debt,
you're racking up the debt
farther and farther into eternity.
You think somebody in hell is gonna hold their tongue
and speak respectfully about the Lord?
You think they're gonna think respectful,
submissive thoughts about the Lord?
Are they gonna serve one another,
love one another, bear one another's burdens?
You think the one another's burdens are gonna be
the one another's burdens, you think the one another's
of scripture are happening in hell?
No, and there is no neutral ground.
We are honoring God or we are dishonoring him.
Crazy.
Verse 35, so also my heavenly Father will do to you
unless every one of you forgives his brother or sister
from your heart.
Does this sound like Jesus was trying to win friends
and influence people?
Did Jesus stutter?
Did Jesus ever apologize for these words?
No, because warning hellbound people about hell
is the most loving thing he can do
and doing it in sternest of tone.
There was a man at the Loma Prieta Quake in 1989
who was able to slow down because he saw
that the bridge had fallen out in front of him
and over and over again he's standing waving his arms
and car after car after car people presumably
were afraid of looters or whatever sped right past him
and dropped 80 feet to their death.
It happened over and over and over and he looks up
and he finally sees a school bus and he's like,
I can't do this.
And so this bus full of kids, drivers honking his horn
thinking he's dealing with some crazy guy,
maybe that guy's got a gun, who knows what.
He stood in front of the bus at tremendous risk
to his own life, he would not get out of the way
and once the bus had stopped he's able to say,
the bridge is out ahead.
Jesus loves us when he tells us there's danger ahead.
We are so drunk on individualism in our culture
that we think that it's bad parenting to not allow
a tiny human to just sovereignly reign over their universe.
We would think how evil, how rude if mom reaches out
and grabs my arm and yanks me, we would go,
oh she violated my sovereignty.
She violated my free will, she took away my rights.
Well what if mama saw a car barreling down the street
and you're three so you're oblivious
and she just saved your life.
God is the only one, when he comes incarnate,
2,000 years ago, the first two thirds of redemptive history,
he's the only one who really understands,
David understands it by the Holy Spirit,
the blood of rams and goats don't satisfy this God.
The entire sacrificial system is not good enough on its own,
it's just pointing forward to a Messiah
who's gonna go to his cross, behold the lamb of God
who takes away the sins of the world.
He knows that nothing in the sacrificial system was enough.
He knows that we could not possibly be good enough.
Romans 3, 19 and 20 says the more we know God's law,
the clearer it becomes we're not obeying it.
Your Bible knowledge damns you.
Now I know what God expects of me
and I don't live up to any of it.
And by God's grace, the flow of Romans 3
tells that the whole apex is praise God what a savior,
I don't have to live by the law, I couldn't do it,
Jesus fulfilled the law for me.
He was morally perfect for me
and when he goes to his cross,
he doesn't just do something amazing
and take Greg Kaiser's guilt and stamping it onto himself,
that would be amazing enough.
He took his morally perfect life and he stamped it onto me.
Maybe some confused angels at heaven,
Greg's walking up like he's sinless,
do do do do, everything's great.
This schmuck, he sinned a thousand times a day,
what's he doing with a skip in his step on the way into heaven?
Jesus paid for my sins, oh, come on in.
And that's the only answer that works at those gates.
There's nothing more loving than your God
who can see so clearly that the bridge is out ahead.
Scripture says it this way, for the wages of sin is death,
what naturally occurs at the end of two hard weeks
of working on sin, what is the wage that you are rightly owed?
The wages of sin is death.
And if God was an angry jerk in the sky,
he would have told us that we were toast
and then that would have been the end of the Bible.
God makes it, in Genesis three we rebel,
and then chapter four, ooh, you guys blew it, the end.
Do you guys know all the scary stuff
of God's wrath and revelation?
That could have come at Genesis four.
God had every right.
And the Bible is not four chapters long
because he loves the Bible.
The Bible is not four chapters long because he loves us,
not because of us, but in spite of our rebellion.
He loves us because of who he is.
Anybody ever hear, you had a baby or a grandbaby,
or you're just like, I kinda wanna kill him,
but I would take a bullet for him.
You love your child because of what's in your heart,
because of the behavior of the child in the moment.
That's insanity.
And yet Satan whispers in your ear every single day,
you blew it, you screwed up,
God couldn't possibly love you now.
You're not a real Christian.
If you were a real Christian, you wouldn't have thought that.
If you were a real Christian,
that wouldn't have been your reaction.
And what is Satan doing?
He's trying to take your eyes off of your Savior
and down into the waters on which you walk.
The entire Christian life is a miracle, guys.
You're walking on water with Jesus.
And what happens when we take our eyes off of Jesus?
We start to sink.
Yeah.
Jesus is sustaining this whole thing,
not just history, not just the church,
he's sustaining your walk with him.
It was Spurgeon who said, I'm quite confident
that when I woke up this morning,
I only love Jesus because Jesus afresh
decided this morning that I should love him.
The Holy Spirit is deciding every day
to hold and sustain Christ.
Christ said, I have not lost one that you've given to me.
I still love him because he set his heart on me,
not because I set my heart on him.
It's because of who he is.
I'm gonna start patting myself on the back.
Greg's really awesome, Greg's faith is strong,
Greg loves God, you know.
How perverse when we could take the love of God
and turn that into a work.
I loved God, therefore I deserve something.
Pfft.
I put money in the plate, therefore I,
pfft, I went on a mission trip, therefore I deserve,
pfft.
Oh.
No, no, no, no.
I'm gonna tell you one story and then
we're gonna transition to our communion time.
Some of you guys might remember that in 2006,
a 31-year-old man who was very wounded indeed.
Came into a Pennsylvania schoolhouse
in an Amish community.
Kicked out the teacher and the little boys,
locked the door, barricaded himself in,
tied up 10 girls, and then began lecturing them.
He said, my little girl was sick,
and I asked God to save her, and he didn't.
And so now some other Christian girls are gonna suffer
because of this.
Because of this.
And he shot all 10 of them
before turning the gun on himself.
Five of them lived, five of them didn't.
And what do we see in this?
This man had his own definition of what was just
and what was right about how God was supposed
to run his universe.
And he took things into his own hands.
Anybody remember what the Amish community did in response?
Five hours after the shooting,
a communal response had been written,
and an Amish man was reading into news cameras,
something he'd probably never done before.
Saying, we forgive this man for what he did.
We do not hold onto the right to judge,
that is God's alone.
We are going to work for the blessing and care
of his widow, who is here,
and who's in desperate need of love and care.
Who shows up to the funeral of a murderer, I wonder?
All the news reporters said the same thing.
They said, God, we're gonna do this.
All the news reporters said the same thing.
They said there are more Amish people at this funeral,
paying their respects and caring for the widow
than there are non-Amish.
Five days after your daughter is murdered,
you go to the funeral of the murderer,
and pray for God to bless his widow,
and they take a collection and care for her?
Are you kidding me?
Holy Spirit, we need you to fill.