The Pillars of Christian Character: Truth and Grace

00:00:00:08 – 00:00:30:21
Clint Loveall
It’s good to be with you all. Tonight we’re going to, condense last week’s session and what was to be this week’s session. Try to kind of get two for one here. But but as we continue to think about Christian character, tonight, we’re going to think together about truth and grace. And we’ll start with truth. And I think on the surface, truth seems easy, right?

00:00:30:23 – 00:01:03:15
Clint Loveall
Don’t lie. And certainly telling the truth is important. Christians have believed that the Ten Commandments do not lie. Or as as we will try to expand them. Do not bear false witness, but you might be surprised to know that the number of things that fall under this heading, even for instance, in the Old Testament, it’s pretty broad, fair trade, just weights.

00:01:03:20 – 00:01:34:08
Clint Loveall
So in the ancient world, they would make fake weights to sell you less of something for the same price transactions, interests, cheating people, especially the vulnerable people. Picking your field to clean, not leaving enough for the the poor to get through. So there is, I think in some ways, this is the biggest idea condensed to the smallest idea.

00:01:34:10 – 00:01:50:14
Clint Loveall
A lot of Christians think that truth would just be a matter of, well, don’t say things that are false, but the reality is, this is an enormous idea for people of faith.

00:01:50:16 – 00:02:12:00
Michael Gewecke
So in that vein, I think one way that we might get off track is we might consolidate the idea of truth. The self. So you might think of, when you’re thinking of truth, you might think, am I telling the truth? And then you we all do that game where we interface with the eye of the idea of truth based upon the sliding scale.

00:02:12:05 – 00:02:35:23
Michael Gewecke
Right. How far can I go until I’ve crossed the line and it’s no longer true enough that I’m going to be able to live with myself, right? So, the person at the store gives you, 20, and they were supposed to give you a ten. You say, well, I’m going to take that back, but they give you they give you $0.25 more and you think, well, that’s just $0.25.

00:02:36:00 – 00:02:59:24
Michael Gewecke
Right. It’s the line. Well, where am I personally on that scale in the Old Testament? And I think specifically the way that our reformed forbearers came to this idea of truth, they did not do so, purely from the individualist frame. In other words, it wasn’t just did I tell the truth, it was also about our neighbor is also about their life and about the way that our truth telling affects them.

00:03:00:01 – 00:03:22:24
Michael Gewecke
So this comes from the Westminster Catechism. And and there’s a lot of good things in here. We’re not going to try to tackle it. But in addressing the ninth commandment, this is one of the things that the writers of the, Westminster is a confession of the reformed tradition. So just people who, trying to give us words for the faith wrote this whatsoever.

00:03:22:26 – 00:04:09:00
Michael Gewecke
A charitable esteem of our neighbors loving, desiring, and rejoicing in their good name. Think about that for a moment, loving and rejoicing in their good name. And in fact, it goes on, and covering up their infirmities, freely acknowledging of their gifts and graces. So here you see the conversation turning from not just truth in the individual sense, but also, you know, those neighbors that were jealous of, you know, those neighbors that were happy to gossip about, you know, those neighbors that we love looking down on, that they would they would include that in this larger rubric of truth, that it’s not a truthful telling of who that person is.

00:04:09:00 – 00:04:53:21
Michael Gewecke
It’s not winsome, it’s not charitable. So it’s not just individual. It’s also about how that sort of flows over and affects other people. And then this is, I think, amazing and challenging, also discouraging tale bearers. Flatterers and Slanderers, who that’s basically like discouraging Facebook. That idea that as Christians, part of our Christian task might be to whatever power we have, slow down the distribution of slander, of flattery, of people who are going out of their way to tell tales.

00:04:53:21 – 00:05:22:11
Michael Gewecke
Right. We find ourselves often in position where we. And I’m often guilty of this. A person says something, and you know full well that’s not an accurate portrayal of the situation or the story or the truth, and then you’re presented with the situation. Do I say something or do I not? Because we all know how act and go and we all make choices about that.

00:05:22:17 – 00:05:38:00
Michael Gewecke
And I think it’s, it’s amazing here in Westminster. They are they’re pushing us to consider that the call of of Christ, to be truthful, to tell the truth, is not just did I say the wrong thing, it’s what way that that plays out with our neighbor as well.

00:05:38:03 – 00:06:14:13
Clint Loveall
I think conceptually we live in an interesting time. I think philosophically, truth is a less defined concept than perhaps it has been at most points of human history. Many of you have. Maybe you’ve heard me say this, I, I read a while ago and but it has continued to work on me when those who pioneered the idea of an internet, a network, when they began working on that, they literally they were thrilled.

00:06:14:13 – 00:06:44:06
Clint Loveall
And one of the things they were excited about is that they believe they were about to eradicate disinformation. They believed that. Think about that for a moment. The people who invented the internet believed that if they could provide everyone to the facts, if they could get to libraries and research articles and science and whatnot, that this information would go away.

00:06:44:09 – 00:07:24:19
Clint Loveall
They believed that which now seems insane, right? Because what they didn’t realize is that they had also invented the perfect way to distribute disinformation. I think we would have a harder time answering the question societally, what is truth than we probably ever have? Because what you think is true, you can find sources to validate. And if that’s different than what I think is true, well, we just have different sources.

00:07:24:21 – 00:07:51:18
Clint Loveall
I, I’m going to pick on Michael’s daughter a little bit. Last week, last week in the sermon, I mentioned something about Harry Potter. And and Olivia came and disagreed with me about a Harry Potter thing. Well, we looked it up, and, this wouldn’t happen very often, but I was right. Well. And. No, no. Okay.

00:07:51:23 – 00:08:20:08
Clint Loveall
The reason I was right is because it came out in 1997 and she can’t conceive of how long ago that. Oh, you know, that’s a million years to her. I remember what I was doing that day. So, you see, I show her the thing and I say, Olivia, I, I’m right on this one. And she says, now we’ll just have to agree to disagree.

00:08:20:11 – 00:08:49:01
Clint Loveall
Which is which is the best post-modern answer you can get. And for those who study those things, the idea of post-modern is that we are moving into a different era where the idea of propositional truth, you know, in other words, the idea of things that are factually true gets minimized and the idea of personally true or emotionally true gets maximized.

00:08:49:04 – 00:09:18:24
Clint Loveall
So if something feels true, I can speak about it being true. Now, that’s not where we come from. As as older people, as Western civilization. And so I think the very concept of what is true and what does it mean to be people who value and pursue truth is a difficult question right now. And Michael mentioned the Book of Confessions, the Westminster Confession.

00:09:19:00 – 00:09:51:13
Clint Loveall
We also have in the Presbyterian Church a Book of Order. And it’s kind of our guidebook. And in a section on truth and goodness, it says this nothing could be more absurd than to put truth and falsehood upon an equal level, and represent it as if it is no consequence. What our opinions are. On the contrary, there is an inseparable connection between faith and practice, truth and duty.

00:09:51:16 – 00:10:28:00
Clint Loveall
Otherwise it would be no consequence either to discover truth or embrace it. One of the challenges of being a Christian in this day and age is to stand for something that is true, while being open to learn new truths. And one of the difficulties of proclaiming our faith as true is that that no longer means what we think it means to the world around us.

00:10:28:02 – 00:10:37:27
Clint Loveall
The world, much of the world around us is to some extent disinterested in the classical idea of truth.

00:10:37:29 – 00:11:06:21
Michael Gewecke
There’s a large sentiment of cynicism about what is true, what isn’t true. And I think one of the linchpins of tonight’s conversation actually reaches all the way back to our first session. Which of you’ll remember was I? That was just me that night, and I harangued. So we’re back to the haranguing. That Christian character is rooted fundamentally in the character of Jesus Christ.

00:11:06:23 – 00:11:35:15
Michael Gewecke
We remember that whole spiel. Don’t make me do it again. And truth is, I think maybe an essential component that it’s a linchpin part. Because in a world in which we are all very cynical about information, Jesus Christ as he is the truth, to not be dissolved down to propositional statements. In other words, you can’t contain Jesus Christ on a website.

00:11:35:18 – 00:12:10:09
Michael Gewecke
You can’t contain him in a book. You can’t contain him in these bite sized, Twitter sized chunks. You can’t contain him inside a little gift picture on your Facebook. Jesus Christ is a person, God in flesh, and he lives by the power of the Holy Spirit in and among and through us. And so all of this theological speak, I just want to make the case that if you want to know what truth is and you want to know what standing in the truth is, you know, it will start with the relational reality of who Jesus Christ is.

00:12:10:12 – 00:12:33:26
Michael Gewecke
Truth will look like Jesus. It will sound like Jesus. It will act like Jesus. It will be Jesus in the world. And then you say, yeah, but that doesn’t really nicely sync up with all the stuff that people talk about being true or not true in the world. And I would argue that’s the point. Great Christians, we are, in some ways called to a different truth making task.

00:12:33:26 – 00:12:59:23
Michael Gewecke
It’s not just filtering between, well, does this make sense to me or not? It’s does this speak to who Jesus Christ is and and the truth of what he calls us to be? And, you know, today’s sermons, I think a great entry point to that, because fundamentally, Scripture serves as our window to who Jesus Christ is. And as Christians, that becomes the central vocabulary of our imaginations to know what truth is, what is true.

00:12:59:25 – 00:13:04:00
Michael Gewecke
We know Jesus Christ through the words that have been given to us by the church.

00:13:04:02 – 00:13:39:10
Clint Loveall
So in the church, when we say that Jesus Christ is true, we don’t mean fundamentally that Jesus and what we believe about Jesus is fact. We do believe that. We do think there’s a factuality. We do think those things happened. But fundamentally, that’s not our point, nor is our point that the things Jesus said are true. We also believe that.

00:13:39:12 – 00:14:09:15
Clint Loveall
But fundamentally, when we say that Jesus is the truth, what Christians mean is that in Jesus Christ, in the example of Jesus Christ, we find the truest way to live. We find the the most clarified version of who God is. We find the truth about ourselves, that we are sinners met by the grace of the living Christ. So.

00:14:09:18 – 00:14:37:17
Clint Loveall
So we don’t mean the things that you could write on a list. And this is the fundamental challenge when faith dialogs with non fake, because the non faith person says prove the resurrection to me. And I say, let me take you to my church where hundreds of people try to live their life guided by Christ. Well, that’s not proof.

00:14:37:19 – 00:15:07:09
Clint Loveall
It is to me because you and I are not having the same conversation. You want to talk about facts and I want to talk about truth. And when Christians use the word truth, we have to be very clear that we mean something different than verifiably accurate. Now, we do mean that, but that’s secondary to what we mean in the person of Christ.

00:15:07:09 – 00:15:49:11
Clint Loveall
I, John Calvin, is helpful with this. John Calvin in the institutes is his major theological work. Chapter one without knowledge of self, there is no knowledge of God. Our wisdom, insofar as it ought be deemed true and solid wisdom consists almost entirely of two parts the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves. Now you have to be careful with that, because that sounds like what Calvin is saying is if I just get in touch with my inner self, I discover God.

00:15:49:12 – 00:16:18:20
Clint Loveall
I assure you that is not what Calvin to say, Calvin is saying is, until I know the truth of myself, I’m not ready to experience the truth of God. And what is the truth of myself? For Calvin, that I am a fallen sinner in need of redeeming? Until I come to that truth, I cannot be pointed to the truth, the one who is true, the Warren who is an antidote for the human condition.

00:16:18:22 – 00:16:51:24
Clint Loveall
So this isn’t self-discovery and this isn’t self definition. Our identity, who we are is literally unknowable. Without the knowledge of God, we can only be who we are, who we are meant to be, who we are designed to be. To the extent that we understand ourselves to be the people of Jesus Christ. So till we know that we are not in the truth, we we don’t.

00:16:51:27 – 00:16:58:09
Clint Loveall
It’s not that we lie all the time. It’s just so we don’t get the true picture.

00:16:58:11 – 00:17:21:14
Michael Gewecke
So the practice that the church uses to accustom ourselves to telling the truth about ourselves and thereby learning who we are so that we can be ready to receive God’s Word of who we are. The word that we use to describe that is confession. Confession means that we tell the truth about ourselves. And that’s not I. Sometimes I think Christians, we get this wrong.

00:17:21:17 – 00:17:41:08
Michael Gewecke
That’s not about a form of self-flagellation. It’s not that if we say mean things about ourselves, it will make us more humble. That’s generally not the kind of humility that helps us grow in the faith. What we mean by confession is that we come to a greater awareness of the way in which we are in desperate need of God’s forgiveness and grace for us.

00:17:41:08 – 00:18:15:06
Michael Gewecke
In other words, it’s not about trying to make ourselves as small as possible, because that somehow makes us a better it’s it’s rather we become more aware of the grandeur and greatness of God’s grace and mercy. That’s already been supplied for us. You see the difference there, because that’s absolutely essential. Confession opens us to restoration and possibility. Confession isn’t just that image that maybe you have a view like that Catholic idea that you go into a small, dark room and there’s this bright light above your head, and then you say these things and then you leave.

00:18:15:12 – 00:18:39:15
Michael Gewecke
Right. That confession, in its broadest sense, is you sweep away the trash that is there, that we’re afraid to name. And in doing so, God is able to fill that space with generosity and love and light and goodness. Confession becomes the way in which we realize that the truth of Jesus Christ is something that transforms or renews us, and so we might discover that we’re broken.

00:18:39:15 – 00:19:03:01
Michael Gewecke
Yes, that’s that’s the honest confession. We might discover the ways in which our failings and sins are part of who we are and our stories. Those are hard truths, to be sure, but the reality is, is encountering that truth is for the purpose of helping to transform our lives in such a way that we are now ready for the restorative work of God to happen.

00:19:03:01 – 00:19:16:18
Michael Gewecke
Which is why Calvin frames in that way, when you know yourself and your need now, suddenly you are prepared for the one who is already provided for that need. Who is that? The author of truth, Jesus Christ.

00:19:16:21 – 00:19:46:01
Clint Loveall
Which then sets us on our path. Because now, having encountered the one who is true, our calling is then to live lives that are true, to participate, to reflect that truth into the world and here and and this matters. I don’t know if it sounds like it matters, but this matters because this is where we get to our morality and our ethics.

00:19:46:04 – 00:20:21:07
Clint Loveall
But we don’t start there. We start with Jesus. And in responding to Jesus, then we are called to be people of truth. Then we are called to let the way that we live reflect the truth we find in Christ. So this is where and and I think only this is where we could have conversations about are I’m are my ideas accurate is the way that I represent myself to others genuine?

00:20:21:09 – 00:21:09:24
Clint Loveall
Am I bearing false witness to my neighbor? Am I gossipy? Am I judging the. Am I cutting corners that have to do with truth? Do I take as much as I can when nobody’s going to notice? Do I not let the IRS know about some of the things I have? Do whatever that is? Do we play those games about what is true and and again, it’s not that those things are tallies in a column, it’s that those are the places where our desire for the truth of Christ comes up against our brokenness as human beings.

00:21:09:27 – 00:22:00:06
Clint Loveall
And how are we letting and to what extent are we letting the truth of Christ transform us? What is our standard? How do we handle that gift of truth? Far too often Christians treat truth as if it is a weapon to wield against others rather than a gift to offer. Do. And far too often, Christians wield truth as if somehow it is then okay to do damage with it and and thereby break the very idea of false witness.

00:22:00:09 – 00:22:26:08
Clint Loveall
We fail to live up to the command that for the very reason that somehow we think we have the truth. So it’s okay if we hurt others with it. So I not to dig in too far there, but are my words and actions true integrity versus hypocrisy? Do I speak the truth in love? Can I be trusted in how I speak those gossip?

00:22:26:08 – 00:22:54:06
Clint Loveall
Stop with me. The slander stop with me. Does my life reflect the truth of Christ? Is my yes, yes and my no no. Am I consistent? Does the truth of Jesus show through the way that I act and the way that I treat others? If I’ve made that confession, have I then acted on it accordingly? And, some of you have heard this before.

00:22:54:09 – 00:23:04:09
Clint Loveall
When the Presbyterians and others left the Catholic Church, we left a lot of the stuff that we didn’t like behind.

00:23:04:11 – 00:23:30:17
Clint Loveall
I wish we could revisit confession. Has anybody here been Catholic? Okay, so we’ve been through confession, and now we don’t agree with the Catholics on what confession, how they do confession. But I have always admired that the Catholics have a place to go. And they the idea is they enter that place and tell the truth about themselves.

00:23:30:19 – 00:23:58:21
Clint Loveall
Because you and I get to come to church and we get to say, oh, we’re sinners, and we all are under the same umbrella. But I never have to go and say, I, I’m a sinner. And this was my sin and this and this and this and and there’s something there’s something powerful in that invitation to make the confession out loud or personal and then be met with grace.

00:23:58:21 – 00:24:23:19
Clint Loveall
There’s something there’s something in that that I wish we hadn’t given up quite so quickly. I know, again, we’d have lots of problems with the Catholic idea of the practice of confession. But at its heart, I think there was something there that might have been helpful if we could have figured out a way to keep it.

00:24:23:21 – 00:24:49:13
Michael Gewecke
So telling the truth has been a conversation that has been, I think, fruitful since the very beginning of the church. And I think there’s a particular story in acts that illustrates it. Acts chapter five. We’re talking just after Pentecost, right? The Spirit of God comes, and then Peter gives this amazing sermon, and the church is just like, you see the wheels start turning.

00:24:49:15 – 00:25:15:13
Michael Gewecke
Have you ever heard read the story of Ananias and Sapphira yet? Yes. So, if you haven’t, you need to go home and read acts chapter five, because, it’s a fascinating and a deep story, but basically the short version is, and then I sense a fire, a sell, a plot of land. Ananias comes in and says, I’m giving you all the proceeds of the land so that we could distribute that to the church.

00:25:15:16 – 00:25:33:15
Michael Gewecke
He doesn’t give an accurate account of how much, the land was sold for. And it turns out when he lies to Peter, he falls dead in his lie. And so then his wife comes in and Peter asks, you know, what what is it that you sold the land for? And she, she said, you know what?

00:25:33:15 – 00:26:00:03
Michael Gewecke
We gave everything. And he said, that’s not the truth. And she falls dead. At Peter’s feet, both of them are taken out. And the quote I want to leave you with is verse 11 of chapter five. Great fear seized the whole church. And all who heard about these events, because what happens when we show up in the presence of God and in the midst of Christian community, and we lie to one another?

00:26:00:06 – 00:26:29:21
Michael Gewecke
What when we when we forsake the truth, when we so depart from the norms that that becomes a thing that we are confident to do in one another’s midst. Luke wants us to know the writer of acts you want us to know. This is not for messing around. Great fear sees the entire church. And I think sometimes when when I find myself, when we find ourselves walking those gray boundaries well, is this okay and is this okay?

00:26:29:24 – 00:27:09:17
Michael Gewecke
And one thing I know about myself is, I don’t know if I’m a great debater, but I’m great at justifying my actions to myself. I can get the green check mark if you just give me enough time. And the reality is, in acts, I think we’re invited to consider that if Jesus Christ is the truth, that that we have to be humble enough and open enough through practices of confession and community, we have to be willing to recognize that, no, we actually truly stand in need of forgiveness because we actually live as those outside of the circle of of God’s, work.

00:27:09:19 – 00:27:27:19
Michael Gewecke
That’s our heart. And so God is at work in us by the power of his Spirit. I think there’s no way for Christians to practice the kind of truth that we’re called to be, which is living in the image of Jesus Christ. There’s no way for us to do that. That doesn’t take a road. True confession and then forgiveness.

00:27:27:21 – 00:27:50:13
Michael Gewecke
And I think if you’re looking for the word, if you’re looking for the next step beyond this, it goes from confession, forgiveness, and it’s grace. Because at the end of the day, when we fail to live into the truth, the next thing that we need is the grace of Jesus Christ, that these two things go together.

00:27:50:15 – 00:28:12:13
Clint Loveall
Before we move on to the idea of grace, let’s stop for a moment. Are there thoughts, comments, questions? Or was there anything that. You’d like to hear more about? Didn’t understand, didn’t make sense?

00:28:12:16 – 00:28:42:21
Clint Loveall
Okay, so by way of summary of the first part, certainly Christians are called to tell the truth, but telling the truth is only to be part of the practice of seeking to live truthfully, to to live honestly, to live according to what we see in Jesus Christ. So yes, we should be people who fact check our story.

00:28:42:27 – 00:29:17:07
Clint Loveall
We should be people who don’t pass on gossip. We should be people who try to say things that are true, but who try to say them in the right way. The idea again, one of the, one of the movements of culture has been the idea that truth is subjective and Christians stand on the idea that truth is not only objective, solid, real, what it is a person.

00:29:17:10 – 00:29:50:06
Clint Loveall
Now, the second thing we say about that matters, that that person who is true is also gracious. The same one who convicts us of our brokenness offers us his grace, offers us his forgiveness. It is incomplete to talk about the bad news without then including the good news. Equally. It is incomplete to talk about the good news without recognizing the bad news.

00:29:50:08 – 00:30:21:01
Clint Loveall
We have to keep them in conversation. The word grace in Greek is, Chorus. It means gift or favor. Charismatic. Those kind of things, those words. Charisma. Those are rooted in that word in the Old Testament. It’s a it’s a much bigger word. It’s a word has said, has it is hard to translate in English. We generally call it steadfast love, but it also means graciousness and mercy and gentleness and about ten other things.

00:30:21:03 – 00:30:50:01
Clint Loveall
And so essentially when we talk about grace, we talk about God’s fundamental disposition towards his people. It is desire for what is good for them. Grace is fundamentally the thing that makes grace. Grace is that it’s undeserved. If if you work for me and I owe you, it is not gracious for me to pay you. You deserve that.

00:30:50:03 – 00:31:14:16
Clint Loveall
Grace is undeserved. You can’t talk about grace with the idea that it’s somehow owed to us. Fundamentally, by definition, grace is more than we should get, and that is the defining characteristic of this conversation that we have about grace and truth.

00:31:14:19 – 00:31:44:14
Michael Gewecke
So if the honest confession is that we’re broken and therefore we realize this need for restoration with God, and we realize this need for grace that we’re given, then we have to reckon with the fact that our lives are dependent upon a gift. I mean, think of that. All of the hard work you’ve done in your life, all of it, all the times you woke up early and the effort and the toil.

00:31:44:16 – 00:32:17:08
Michael Gewecke
We work hard so that we can have some stability in our lives. When the sink and the faucet breaks, you either have to go fix it, or you have to get somebody else to fix it. Right? And and we work hard to make our lives the way that we want them. And then when we reckon with the truth at the bottom of it, that if you if you peel away all of the effort and you peel away all of the the human toil and the striving and the thoughts and the opinions, and you get to the bottom and you realize, oh, man, all I have is the grace of God and Jesus Christ given to

00:32:17:08 – 00:32:42:17
Michael Gewecke
me before I was even aware of it. And now suddenly, all of us stand before a choice. And that is either to fall into that grace and let it redefine our lives to become people of the gift, or to become the people who are repelled away from that, that we might show others, a part of ourselves or an image of ourselves.

00:32:42:19 – 00:33:27:09
Michael Gewecke
That isn’t true. But make no mistake about it, when when Christians talk about grace, when we talk about forgiveness, which flows out of that grace, the person who we point to is Jesus Christ, who represents God’s determination to save us. What God says I am going to save them. God comes himself. God sends His Son, a person in real flesh and part of our Christian discipleship is to learn that story, is to rehearse that story with one another, and it’s to remember ourselves that forgiveness we’ve been given, because that is the soil bed in which our lives grow, that is the grace in which we find our deepest meaning.

00:33:27:09 – 00:33:38:07
Michael Gewecke
And by the way, that’s where we learn the truth. And by that, not just propositional Sunday school truth. That’s where we learn how to live truth each and every day.

00:33:38:10 – 00:33:59:23
Clint Loveall
So if we’re if we talk about the connection, you have grace, which is the reality behind forgiveness, which is the action. Two sides of a coin, probably on the idea of forgiveness. They they are connected. I think pastorally speaking.

00:33:59:25 – 00:34:30:16
Clint Loveall
My experience is we will probably struggle with one more than the other. Some of us will will struggle with both. But I think by and large, there will be people who are pretty good at one, but not great at the other. The first is forgiveness of self, which is for many a very difficult spiritual task. We have embraced that reality that we are sinful.

00:34:30:18 – 00:35:02:00
Clint Loveall
We have confessed that we are broken, but that has produced in some a an idea that they are less, that they are less worthy, that they are less desirable, that they are less good. That and that gets equated. I think this is particularly true for people who were, emotionally harmed in childhood, who grow up under the umbrella of not good enough.

00:35:02:03 – 00:35:42:03
Clint Loveall
And it becomes easy for these people. Let me say it the other way. It becomes very difficult for some people to accept the grace of Christ for their own sins. I have I have visited with 90 year olds near death who tell me they’re not sure God has forgiven them for that thing that happened when they were whatever age there are some people who fully believe that God’s grace covers others.

00:35:42:05 – 00:36:15:17
Clint Loveall
What? The truth is, they’re a little skeptical about whether there’s enough left for them. So for some of us, trusting that grace, experiencing that forgiveness, truly understanding that you are not the one exception to the rule of the cross of Jesus Christ. It didn’t work for everybody else, but not quite for you. Okay, so forgiveness of self. Some of us have messed up in very real ways.

00:36:15:19 – 00:36:51:05
Clint Loveall
We hurt people we meant to or we didn’t mean to, but we know we did it. That’s the reality of guilty. But you can’t be forgiven unless you are guilty. That’s good news. Just hard news. So part of that, part of that first movement, that first task. The prodigal son, right. Literally says when he came to himself, when he remembered who he was, he turned for holes.

00:36:51:08 – 00:37:06:16
Clint Loveall
Some of us had to go out there and dink around in the far country before we could turn for home. We just have to know that there is a grace that covers that. So forgiveness of self is one side of the coin.

00:37:06:18 – 00:37:38:15
Michael Gewecke
And we’ll get to the sentence. I just want to add one thing. I think one of the things I’ve realized in my time, I’ve had conversations with folks and I realized how differently. Sometimes we think about our sinfulness. And I think our faith traditions that that we grew up in have a way of impacting that. And one time in particular, I remember talking to someone and they said in, in clear, very certain terms, no, you don’t understand, pastor.

00:37:38:20 – 00:38:06:00
Michael Gewecke
I’m like dirt. I’m worse than dirt that God can’t possibly love me because my sinfulness is so deep and so and I’m so broken. And I thought to myself, if there was a good heart in the teacher of that Sunday school teacher, pastor, you’ve got this idea, right? Like the smaller a person becomes, maybe they’re more open to grace and and or open to salvation, right?

00:38:06:02 – 00:38:31:26
Michael Gewecke
But what you miss is if you don’t have a God that fills up the rest of the chart, if you get down to 1%, right, you’re really small and you don’t have a God who’s 99% when all you’ve done is beat a person to a pulp, all you’ve done is beat yourself up, you see. Well, I’m trying to, but that what we have to recognize is the end goal isn’t for you to get yourself to a point of adequate humility.

00:38:31:28 – 00:38:56:18
Michael Gewecke
The end goal is for you to turn to Christ, to let him be great in you. And you’ll find that whatever deflation you need will happen in his presence. And I think sometimes our faith traditions set us up in a way that’s not helpful there. And if that was your sort of path, I’d encourage you to maybe step over and look at it from a different perspective.

00:38:56:21 – 00:39:23:15
Clint Loveall
Yeah. Before we go on to the other one, that there’s a joke maybe, I don’t know if you’ve heard it because you probably aren’t subjected to a lot of pastor jokes, but the the Presbyterian Medical Alert bracelet says, leave me alone. I deserve to suffer for it. So there. That is a struggle for some I we should also mention that for some it’s not a struggle because they don’t admit they do anything wrong.

00:39:23:18 – 00:39:52:19
Clint Loveall
Right? So some people they don’t. They don’t struggle with self forgiveness because they haven’t yet had that moment of confession. They don’t see themselves as broken. They could see the faults of others. Perhaps, but they would tell you, oh no, I’m I’m fine. So you don’t really get to the struggle of forgiveness until you’ve moved to confession. So side one of the coin, forgiveness of self.

00:39:52:22 – 00:40:21:24
Michael Gewecke
So then we move on to forgiveness of others. And I think forgiveness of self is is incredibly difficult. I think that forgiveness of others, maybe the right word is excruciating, especially if it’s the the right. Or by that do I mean the wrong person that we’re talking about forgiving, that this gets into very sensitive ground. And I want to be clear that as we walk through this, Jesus Christ is always calling us further down the road.

00:40:21:24 – 00:40:47:21
Michael Gewecke
And that, by definition, always calls us to go to a place that we were off the map and we don’t know. He calls us forward and and forgive our neighbors is absolutely as he forgave from the cross. You remember that he looks at Lord God, forgive them, for they know not what they do, that person, but the bearer of truth, as he showed the truth of forgiveness and the call to forgiveness in that place, he so says the same to us.

00:40:47:21 – 00:41:10:26
Michael Gewecke
And I was just doing a Bible study over it. Well, life and I, I we just said the Lord’s Prayer earlier today. I’m sure you probably know the, the two verses that follow the Lord’s Prayer, 50 14 and 15 of Matthew chapter six. Jesus says, it says red letters for if you forgive other people when they sinned against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you.

00:41:10:28 – 00:41:33:06
Michael Gewecke
But if you do not forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive your sins. Whoa! Oh hard words. Now we got contextualize that with the rest of scripture. There’s a lot of work that we need to do there. Okay, before you just read that literally and put that on your bumper. But I want to make it very, very clear.

00:41:33:09 – 00:42:12:08
Michael Gewecke
Forgiveness is serious business. God’s in the business of forgiving God, serious about forgiveness. And so therefore, as Christians with Christlike character, that’s what business we’re in. Dragging, screaming, upset as it makes us. We’re in the forgiveness business. That’s what we’re called to be more and more. And you say, yeah, pastor, but if you knew how many times they’ve hurt me, Jesus goes on for that really unfortunate teaching where he says, 70 times seven is the number of times you’re forced to forgive.

00:42:12:08 – 00:42:34:17
Michael Gewecke
And I’m not good with numbers, and that’s a lot. We are always at the edge, especially when we’re talking about the truth and we’re talking about grace. Then we’re talking about extending that grace to other people. We’re always going to be finding ways to him in and to hedge. And at the start of that conversation of forgiving others, obviously we’re going to have conversation about there’s appropriate ways to do that.

00:42:34:17 – 00:42:59:05
Michael Gewecke
There are seasons of life that we need to do that with wisdom. Right. That being said, we do need pushed as people who are quick to hold grudges, people who are quick to hold memory of the ways we’ve been wrong, people who are quick to just pass by those couple verses on to better things. To realize that if God is in the forgiveness business, we are called to be so as well.

00:42:59:07 – 00:43:34:23
Clint Loveall
I think it. It’s a helpful challenge. I don’t think it makes the past easier, but I think it is helpful to remember that forgiveness can only be an answer to guilt. So when somebody says, my family member said or did this and they did it on purpose, that is often offered as I’m supposed to say, oh, well, if it was on purpose.

00:43:34:25 – 00:44:07:26
Clint Loveall
Write them off. Don’t forgive them. Well you have to be guilty. Yeah. Can you believe they did that pastor. Yeah. Yeah I can’t. Yeah. Because people are like the. Yeah I can believe it. And and Jesus. Said forgive them. And based on everything we can figure out. Dang it. He meant it. He actually truly meant it. Forgiving others.

00:44:07:26 – 00:44:38:25
Clint Loveall
Now, that doesn’t mean you put someone in a position to hurt you repeatedly, that there would be lots of nuances we could tease out, but the reality is that if we are people who rely on grace, then we are to extend grace to others. We are to pray for them. We are to bless them. We are to do what is in our power.

00:44:38:29 – 00:45:12:05
Clint Loveall
Asking God for help to release the things that we want to hold on to and carry the story we tell, the wound we bear. Yes, in some cases they are not sorry. So I think is the hardest thing to forgive the person who doesn’t admit they did anything wrong. But it’s not. Ultimately about them, they have their own journey and struggle with grace.

00:45:12:08 – 00:45:49:15
Clint Loveall
Forgiving frees us. It allows us a release. Part of the meaning of the word forgive is is let go to be free of. And that’s what forgiveness offers us, both for our self and as we practice it with others. It is. Quite. It is possibly. Maybe. Undoubtedly. I don’t. Maybe some think people find other things difficult. I think it is one of the most difficult things that Christians are asked to do.

00:45:49:16 – 00:46:17:02
Clint Loveall
Called to do. We? It’s one of the hardest things that Jesus instructed us. Forgive others, even those who curse you, even those who did what they did on purpose, even those who don’t care what they did. And and Christians are called to meet the the sin of the world with grace, because God has met the sin of the individual of our sin with grace.

00:46:17:04 – 00:46:29:07
Clint Loveall
So, I wish I had a wish. I had an a loophole there for you, but I’ve been looking for one too, that I haven’t found it and found it yet.

00:46:29:10 – 00:46:49:27
Michael Gewecke
So we we have this journey we’ve been on, right? The brokenness that comes when we recognize the truth of ourselves. We are reminded of the grace of Jesus Christ, which makes up for all of the true that is true of who we are, and that comes to us by the gift of forgiveness, which lays claim on our lives and and gives us a task.

00:46:49:27 – 00:47:13:13
Michael Gewecke
We’re called to give forgiveness. Just one little aside today. Like a small little. If you all go further down the road of forgiveness, if that’s not challenging enough for you and for me, then, Romans chapter 12, verse 14. Bless those who persecute you. Bless and do not curse the journey that takes you from not only just forgiving.

00:47:13:15 – 00:47:49:19
Michael Gewecke
Right? The journey that leads you to the place where you can bless the people doing active harm to you. Now I for me, we just kind of went from like, you know, college 401 level to some PhD level, which I didn’t gain entrance to yet. I’m still working on that. But friends, when you look at Jesus Christ and you discover that it’s a limitless journey ahead of you, if you and I are climbing this mountain of discipleship together, we’re at various stages of the mountain.

00:47:49:22 – 00:48:19:26
Michael Gewecke
We’re all in different places for sure, but we’ve all got a lot more mountain to go. And the invitation is to turn again to Jesus and to see to Clint’s point, what, when we’re called to bless those who curse, how can we imagine our lives in that moment of our greatest suffering, as Jesus was on the cross to look with compassion upon the ones perpetrating injustice?

00:48:19:28 – 00:48:49:15
Michael Gewecke
How is that possible? Each and every day we arise with that forming our imaginations. If Jesus was that, then he’s calling us into that ourselves. And of course, none of that happens in a day. I, is you work on forgiving that person who’s eluded forgiveness your entire life. You don’t bite that off in one day, right? You journal, you pray, you reflect, you find yourself stuck, and you go talk with a pastor or a counselor.

00:48:49:15 – 00:49:21:02
Michael Gewecke
You you talk with a friend, a mentor. You. This is a journey, right? But it’s a journey that is holy. And it’s a journey that we’re called into. Why? Because it’s Christ’s journey and therefore we’re called into that, that if we’re going to resolve this whole story, we have to remember, friends, that when you walked into this room, you left a world that is convinced that the best path is the path that has the shortest route, which is always lying.

00:49:21:04 – 00:49:48:24
Michael Gewecke
Right. That’s the quickest path to advancement. And when we walked into this place, we have to put that beside us. We have to recognize that the only way forward is the way that goes through the character Jesus Christ, but the one that tells the truth, the one that admits the reality of our brokenness, the one that invites others to see the forgiveness that we’ve received, is also the forgiveness that’s all in store for them.

00:49:48:27 – 00:50:11:21
Michael Gewecke
And all of the cutting corners and all the withholding the information, all the ways that we try to make our self and our team and whatever ideology we might have look better. We discover that all of that falls away when it stands in the face of the true revelation of God in Jesus Christ. And if you believe that, then your task in life has changed.

00:50:11:23 – 00:50:33:07
Michael Gewecke
The task in life has changed. You’re no longer trying to store up all of the information that helps you win. The next argument with that really annoying family member at the next Thanksgiving. And it now becomes for you, an opportunity for your heart and mind to be transformed so that you can serve them as Jesus Christ would have served them.

00:50:33:09 – 00:50:43:16
Michael Gewecke
And that is a transformation of our character, which means we’re getting closer to the reality of God’s revelation of truth in Jesus Christ.

00:50:43:18 – 00:51:14:13
Clint Loveall
Okay. It feels like we’ve said a lot of words. What? What’s out there? Comments, questions? Thoughts? Yeah. So the question is this. Yeah. The story of Jesus at the temple, the idea that Jesus gets angry throws some people out. Friend of mine says Jesus made a whip and that was ministry. I think, that there are I would speak to that in two parts when maybe Michael has something else.

00:51:14:15 – 00:51:54:05
Clint Loveall
But first, I would say that there is an anger that is righteous. It’s an anger almost always, that’s on behalf of someone else. When we see the poor abused, when we see someone taken advantage of, when we see a child harmed, there, there is, there is within the anger, the power to motivate. And if that motivation is to a good end, then I think we can speak of our anger being righteous.

00:51:54:08 – 00:52:02:01
Clint Loveall
I, I will caution that by adding.

00:52:02:03 – 00:52:46:23
Clint Loveall
There’s essentially one story of that and it’s Jesus. And so I think we have to be very careful in assuming that what makes me angry is also what would make Jesus angry. And I know Christians who like the idea that that story is somehow permission to unload on people that they feel are wrong. And I don’t think it is that I think that story is more about why Jesus is angry than allowing me to be angry, that there are more words about do not be angry and do not sin your anger, and do not let anger get Ahold of you.

00:52:46:23 – 00:53:05:05
Clint Loveall
And and do not give the devil a foothold. There are more cautions in the Bible about anger than there is permission, but there is a moment where the wrongness of the world gets to Jesus and he reacts to it.

00:53:05:07 – 00:53:38:21
Clint Loveall
If not violently, passionately. In fact, the disciples go on to say, zeal for your house will consume me. They remember a verse about that. So, it is, I think, not unchristian to be angry. I’m I’m going to I will. This is close. This this. I’m not going to get this exactly right, but I’m I’m very close here, and I think it was Augustine.

00:53:38:21 – 00:54:09:09
Clint Loveall
But that might be wrong. There was a Christian theologian who said, it is no small feat to be angry. It is easy, but to be angry for the right reason, in the right way, to the right extent, to the right length of time for the right end is nearly impossible. And I. I find deep wisdom in that.

00:54:09:09 – 00:54:28:17
Clint Loveall
I that whoever that was, I think it was Augustine may have been somebody else. I think they kind of nailed it. It’s easy to get mad or to get mad for the right reason. To the right amount, for the right length of time, for the right purpose, in the right way for me. And I don’t get that right very often.

00:54:28:19 – 00:54:51:19
Clint Loveall
So getting mad is way easier than that. Kind of mad. I of that helped. All right. Well, thanks again for food and, for your time tonight. One more next week. Palm Sunday we will gather next Sunday and I think that’s it. And I think, if someone is willing, I think maybe we still need a couple of fruits things.

00:54:51:27 – 00:54:57:19
Clint Loveall
So the right one more soup. Looks like we’re down to. Thank you.