Full of Grace and Truth

WELCOME
Pastor Chris Paavola:
Thank you Mr. Grant. Thank you guys. Hey everybody. Good morning. Good morning. Wonderful to be with you guys today. Actually, today is this day called Reformation Day. It’s not really a day that we celebrate out there with federal holidays and stuff like that, but it’s this day where we remember Martin Luther kind of rediscovering just the beauty of scripture and the truth of scripture and really entering, starting the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago on this time. And what he’s celebrated actually is going to be a little bit of what we talk about fitting as we wrap up our series. Then Christian Witness in a Complicated World, and man, oh man, this series, we could tell by attendance numbers and live stream numbers and podcast numbers and shares that are going on social media with these sermons that this series resonated with you guys, and I hope you’ve been able to find it helpful, but it tapped into something for you and we’re grateful for that and I hope today is just as helpful.
In week one, we talked about just in general this idea that there’s a whole lot of conversation about speaking the truth right now and standing up for what we believe and those are good things or the good things. But as I watched and I looked at all the conversations that were happening on my newsfeed or on news stations or in the newspaper, I noticed some things that were missing and three things in particular, and I wanted to talk about those in this series. And so in week one we talked about this thing that is missing in the conversation.

THE FIRST QUESTION
WHAT DO YOU THINK HAPPENED ON EASTER MORNING?

It’s just this assumption that everybody agrees with us and this idea of the resurrection that for us who are followers of Jesus, the resurrection is our main concern. It’s the most important thing above any other issue. It doesn’t matter the issue, the resurrection, it takes precedence over all of that.
And I even pushed on it further that when we care more about if somebody agrees with us or follows our morality, if we care more if somebody follows God’s law than if they follow God’s son, we become accidental Pharisees and what businesses of ours as Christians to hold non-Christians to a Christian standard should our first concern should be what do they think about the resurrection? And so we ended with this question and introducing into the conversation the most important thing to us and the most important thing to them is just this question of what do you think happened on Easter morning? And how you answer that question changes how you answer the issues that follow. And then in week two, we talked about another missing component in the conversations we have with people. Okay, well what if you do agree on the resurrection but you don’t agree on the issue?
And we talked about just kind of like the operating assumption again in there is what do you think about scripture? And we had a conversation about this fancy word inerrancy of scripture, is scripture without error and does scripture have authority? What authority does scripture have?

THE SECOND QUESTION
DO YOU HAVE AUTHORITY OVER SCRIPTURE
OR DOES SCRIPTURE HAVE AUTHORITY OVER YOU?

Because if really it comes down to this question, do you have authority over scripture or does scripture have authority over you? And again, these two questions not only simplify the conversation, but how you answer that question changes how you answer the issues that we’re talking about and arguing about. But that then brings us to week three, right? So you’ve got this idea of, okay, well we do agree on the resurrection and let’s say we do agree on the authority in the inerrancy of scripture. Well then now when we disagree on an issue, and this could be theological, you might be debating and arguing with somebody over baptism or communion or the end times and that’s possible.
But my hunch is that when I talk about a complicated world, you’re not thinking about theological debates, you’re thinking about personal issues, things like, well, I read scripture and I think we should discipline our kids this way, and my spouse reads scripture and they think we should discipline kids in this way. And you both are armed with scripture that seems to support your point or you’re arguing about like, well, is self-defense right? Or should we turn the other cheek? And both of you have scripture that supports your point, or then maybe it even goes beyond the theological and beyond the personal to political concerns. You read scripture and you see how we should be defending the immigrant and they read scripture and they see how we should be defending the border where you read scripture and you see how we should be fighting for the rights of the poor and for women, and someone else reads scripture and they see how we should be fighting for life and the womb.
So what do you do when you do agree on the resurrection and you do agree on the authority of scripture, but you don’t agree on the issues? That’s what we’re going to talk about today. Now, every week we’ve had a question that we’ve ended, that we’ve ended the sermon with that we want to include into the conversation because they are missing conversations about the resurrection, conversations about the authority of scripture. But today the question that we’re going to ask and the thing that we’re going to include is not a question that we ask of others today. We’re going to end with a question that we ask of ourselves, and this is a question that places a lot of responsibility and burden on us before we engage in the heated debate. So that’s what we’re going to get to you today. Now, the thing that’s missing and the question that’s posed for us was actually in the reading we just heard from John chapter one and the book of John is this biography of Jesus written by a first century follower named John.

JOHN DESCRIBING JESUS
What’s interesting about John is he writes this at the very end of his life, and he’s an old man at this point, unable to really get around and we think he writes this in relative seclusion and this island called Patmos before he peacefully passes, and he’s actually the only remaining disciple when he writes this. All of the other disciples and apostles have been martyred horribly martyred for their faith at this point, but not John. Somehow he has gotten to this point where he can just die peacefully. And as he’s at the end of his life, people ask him, they’re like, Hey, John, can you write down what do you remember about following Jesus? And at this point, there’s already the gospel of Matthew and Mark and Luke and John’s like, well, how can I be different? What hasn’t been said? And so we get a lot of unique things in the book of John and Matthew starts his gospel. He writes about Jesus’s Jewishness and the heritage and the lineage of Jesus and the genealogy.
And Mark, when he writes, he just jumps right into the action and he focuses on Jesus’s ministry and what he did, Luke takes in kind of the historical context and Caesar and Roman and Augustus issued a decree and everything going on. That’s how he begins his book. But when John sits down to write his book, John’s a creative guy. He’s a poet like this artistic heart. And so when he writes, it’s like this epic saga and he doesn’t start from the perspective of what’s happening on earth. He writes from the perspective of God and what’s happening from heaven.

1 In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.
John 1
And so, he begins with just this kind of sweeping epic saga language poetry in John chapter one verse one where he says “In the beginning was the word,” not just the word that God spoke, but the word is present with him, “and the word was with God and the word was God.”
It’s an important verse on the divinity of Jesus, by the way.

14 The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth…
John 1
And then in verse 14, he says these words, “The word became flesh” This is this mystery of the incarnation “and made his dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only son who came from the Father full of” say it with me,

Response: “Grace and truth.”

17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ
John 1

Pastor Chris Paavola:
And to avoid all confusion, he makes clear who this word is, this word made flesh in verse 17 when he writes. “The law was given through Moses; grace and truth,” there it is, “came through Jesus Christ.” Grace and truth. And when John sits down to reflect on the entire life of Jesus, he’s like, this guy was full of grace and truth, not half grace and half-truth, full grace, full truth, not like a little bit of grace and a lot of truth, not a little bit of truth and a lot of grace.

GRACE AND TRUTH

GRACE AND TRUTH DEFINED
These two things that are in tension with each other. Jesus was just full of grace and truth and he’s like this walking kind of contradiction because grace is a gift. It’s graciousness giving. It’s not mercy. It’s more than forgiveness. It’s more than acceptance. It’s a giving of something. It’s graciousness, it’s a gift. Truth is like a verdict.
Grace is a verb, an action. Truth is a noun. Grace is unearned. Truth is largely earned. Grace is this flourish and color truth is black and white. Grace is like this warm embrace truth is as cold as steel and sometimes cuts like it. And Jesus was full of both even though these things kind of stand in tension with each other. And so it shouldn’t surprise us.

GRACE AND TRUTH IN JESUS
Then in the rest of John’s biography, he shows the grace and truth and of Jesus and he struck by it and it shows up in these stories like there’s a woman a well one day, and Jesus talks with her and he brings the truth to her and critiques her that she has had four divorces and five husbands and calls it out in truth. But then he demonstrates grace by deciding to reveal his divinity to this Samaritan woman. And there’s another story where there’s a woman caught in the act of adultery and they bring her to Jesus and they have rocks in their hands ready to stone her.
And Jesus in grace refuses to pick up a stone and says, neither do I condemn you. But then in truth, he tells her, go and sin no more. Jesus would sit with tax collectors and drunkards and sinners and he would dine with them in an act of grace, but then he would turn and look at them and be like, you’re sick. I’m a doctor. You’re a sinner. I’m a savior. He was full of grace and truth and this walking tension between the two of them time and time again. And so my friends, if your world is complicated, so is his world. He almost like it seems like he would run into the phrase, he would run into the complication. He enjoyed the mess. He liked it.
And so it shouldn’t surprise you if you’re a follower of Jesus and your world is complicated, you’re walking behind him going where he goes. And if he walks into a mess, don’t be surprised if you are standing in a mess. If your world is complicated as a follower of Jesus, this good, you’re right where you need to be. In fact, if your world isn’t complicated, might I suggest you’re leaning too hard towards grace or too hard towards truth? It’s just no hard and fast way of doing this parents this. You’ve parented a kid, one kid one way, next kid comes along.
You can’t parent that kid the way you parented that kid. If you had a hard and fast rule that wasn’t dynamic and was rigid, then you’d be hammering one kid with the truth and it would crush them. And another kid, you just lavish them with grace and it enables them and it corrupts them. This, I remember my experience, which by the way, as parents to think that we demonstrate grace and truth to our kids is, oh my God, that’s intimidating. I don’t like that. But it’s true.

GRACE AND TRUTH ON A FISHIG TRIP
I experienced grace and truth through my dad one time and I was about seven years old, so I’m seven years old and for my birthday, I got this brand-new fishing pole. It’s what I wanted. And I was so excited to get this fishing pole because that meant dad and I were going to go on a father son fishing trip. No siblings, just him and the two of us, right? So excited, and I don’t know if this is hard for you to imagine, but when I was seven years old, I had a lot of energy.
I was the kid. We didn’t have AD and ADHD back then. The kid was just really wound up. I’m the kid who was always talking like this and I’d be talking to you. I just demonstrated what I was like at seven years old. But that’s what I was doing. I was just constantly moving around and never, that was who I was. So I loved fishing. I loved the idea of it, but containing me to a boat, highly unlikely. So we go on this fishing trip and we drive a couple hours to Chamberlain, South Dakota to go fishing, and it was very early in the morning, we just got started and we drive to a fishing spot, and there I, I’m kind of bouncing in the chair with my life jacket, doing the thing, and he, my hook, we put the line in the water and I’m hopping. And I remember I liked the sound the fishing pole made when I hit it on the side of the boat.
Not an effective fishing method, but I was like, pew, pew, pew. I’m sure it was a lifesaver in my hand or something, I don’t know. And so I’m making a song and whatever, and he is like, Chris, please stop. But I kept on doing it one time when I hit the, because I wanted to hear the sound again, the pole kind of bounced a little bit my hand. And I went to catch it and knocked it further. And my brand new birthday present fishing pole went to the bottom of the Missouri River and we only had two poles in the boat, his pole and my pole. And my dad is watching this and he’s like, and you ever have as a parent, there’s four or five things you want to say and you start committing to one sentence and then you decide to start the other one halfway through. And then you’re like, well, then you got, and so four things came out at once. He was like, what did you, I told you not to. That was your birthday. You should.
And all of them are just out of his mouth at the same time. That’s the thing with truth. You just open your mouth and it starts coming and there’s so many things he wanted to say. And he was just dumbfounded. He reels in his pole, puts it in the boat, starts the engine, and just takes out his aggression on the motor and just we’re like hauling now to the next fishing spot. And he’s like, he’s not turning around and I’m just crying in the back, water, splashing in my face, just this horrible moment. And we get to the next fishing spot and he parks the boat, puts his line in the water and then puts the pole in my hand with grace.
And then he speaks truth and he goes, don’t drop it. Yes sir. And I didn’t like the rest of the time, I was like a statue. I was going to do one thing, right? But it was grace and truth at that moment. And I guess he decided it’s not a father and son fishing trip if he’s the only one fishing. But as long as I fish. And I think while he was driving, that’s like what grace does is it slows us down. He had so much he wanted to say, but he couldn’t say it because the motor is so loud and it wasn’t time to talk. And so while he’s driving, he’s thinking about not just what he’s going to say but what he’s going to do and started thinking about grace. My friends, truth tends to focus on what’s wrong.
Grace focuses on what’s right. Truth focuses on the cost. But grace focuses on the value, truth focuses on the error, the estrangement, the distance, the separation and divide and grace focuses on the relationship. And when I look at the world, the truth is so expected. It’s so common in every day. Truth is everywhere. Everyone’s talking about what they think is right. Truth is so prevalent, grace is so rare. And that’s the thing I see missing in so many of our conversations. And grace, when you encounter it, it is shocking. It is surprising and it’s amazing. And when he put that pole in my hand, do you think I was surprised? Yep. Did it change the way I behaved and it changed what I was focusing on here. I was wallowing in guilt and everything that was wrong and the very thing that motivated grace in him became the very things I started thinking about. When I experienced grace, I started thinking about what was right in the midst of what was wrong. I started thinking about what was valuable in the midst of what was lost. I started thinking about the relationship instead of the divide. That’s what grace does.

SURPRISED BY GRACE
And so, John who writes this biography of Jesus full of grace and truth and Jesus who is just this mysterious embodiment of both of these things and all of their fullness connects the dots that this isn’t just something that Jesus does. This is something that people who are trying to imitate Jesus should do. And the very same, John writes these words in a letter he wrote to the church.

18 …let us not love with words or in talk only. Let us love by what we do and in truth.
1 John 3

He says in one John chapter three, verse 18, ”let us not love with words or in talk only.” It’s easy, it’s expected, it’s everywhere. “Let us love by what we do,” this verb called grace. Let us love by what we do “and in truth.”
And you’re going, well Chris, I can’t respond to that Facebook post. I can’t, can’t text that angry text. I can’t hold a picket sign if I have to include grace in my response. Exactly. Exactly. There’s a mandate in this, you guys, if you want to speak up, speak up, but make sure it comes with a whole lot of grace. And these words from John, they take the bullhorn out of our hands and they put a fishing pole in it, something unearned, undeserved, a gift that surprises them and forces them to think differently. So here’s the question, question that we are asking, the question that identifies the missing thing.
And it’s not a question for them of what they think about the resurrection or what they think about scripture. It’s a question for us and what we’re going to do.

WHATS THE GRACE YOU’RE GOING TO SHOW
WITH THE TRUTH YOU’RE GOING TO SHARE?

What’s the grace you are showing with the truth you are sharing? What’s the amazing grace, this gift that you are going to give, this tangible thing that surprises them? What is it? Share your truth, speak, okay, but make sure it comes with grace. So lemme give you some thoughts because you’re only limited by your creativity. So let me kind of get the creative juices flowing and you’ll figure this out.
Thanksgiving is coming in a few weeks. You’re going to see that one relative who loves to go toe to toe on politics and you guys just elbowed each other. I saw it like a bunch of couples. You know exactly who I’m talking about, right? Here it comes. You got three weeks to get ready, buy ’em a gift, send them a gift through Amazon, just send them something, surprise them with a gift and anticipate that maybe a conversation’s going to happen. But now they’re going to be thinking about what’s right. They’re going to be thinking about the relationship. They’re going to be thinking about the value and the worth rather than just their stance and their viewpoint. Okay? Your neighbor across the street that flies that flag that you disagree with and you’ve gone back and forth with them a couple times, it’s October, go rake their yard, start with yours, and then just look over and finish with theirs. Surprise them with the gift of a raked lawn.
That person on Facebook that you’ve gone, I see you guys, that person who has a different opinion about the expansion of the White House, don’t play dumb. I see you guys talking about this. You’ve got an opinion on it, okay? Before you go back to another post that no one else is going to read, but that one person or whatever and everyone else is blocking you and stuff, okay? Before you do that, DM them, send ’em a direct message or text them or whatever and say this, Hey, I would love to learn from you some more on this. Can I buy you lunch? My treat?
Lunch is the grace. An open ear, a heart to learn is grace. And then have a conversation about the truth. And you’ll notice in all of these examples, grace is best shown through presence. Isn’t that interesting? There’s something about presence that we don’t need to be present for the truth, but grace is best shown through presence. Actually. Think about Jesus, what he did, the word of God in the beginning, the word was God. The word was with God. And that word, that law that he spoke, it condemned us. The truth hammered us. But then the word became flesh and dwelt among us, presence.
And his grace was best expressed, best shown, best experienced through his presence when the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And that’s what Jesus does. We believe in this meal. Think about it, this communion meal, we’re about to celebrate that Jesus himself is resin and he gives us his body and blood and the bread and wine for forgiveness because grace is best shown through presence. Come on, this is. And so when you walk away, you’ll come here, you’ll receive God’s grace and his body and blood in the bread and wine. Just go show that same grace you’ve received to a world in dire need of it. It is so lacking.
And when you leave here and decide that you’re going to go be a people of grace, what better way to celebrate the reformation? The core discovery of the reformation was that we are saved by grace through faith, and that’s what we celebrate today on Reformation day. So let’s go be a people of grace and I don’t know, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know if they’re going to change their mind. That person you’re going to talk to when you show them grace and you decide to talk about truth, I don’t know if they’re going to change their mind. I dunno if they’re going to change their position, but I do know this, when they experience grace through you, when they are surprised by grace through you, their thoughts will change to what is right instead of what’s wrong, to what’s valuable. Instead of what’s costly, they’re going to think about the relationship instead of the estrangement.
And they will experience the grace of Jesus through you. Friends, they will be eyewitnesses of God’s grace, behold him after all. Isn’t that what it means to be a Christian witness in a complicated world?

PRAYER
Lemme pray for us, heavenly Father, your word convicts. And we hear a message like this, and we are so convicted, God, that we once again have become accidental Pharisees, hammering people with the truth, absence of grace. So God, would you show each of us what it looks like for us to be a people of grace to the people in our lives who need it most? What does it look like for us to give a service of time, of energy, of something, of value, of worth a gift? What does it look like to do this verb called grace towards them before we speak a word of truth?
So, I pray that God, by your Holy Spirit, your creative spirit, you would speak to them and make them creative with grace towards the people they love. Thank you, God for your grace towards us that forgives us and renews us and leads us to be ambassadors of grace in a world that just, it’s so rare, God help us to be a Christian witness in a complicated world, that we may be a picture of your son Jesus, and they may witness Him Jesus who taught us to pray:
Our Father who art in heaven,
Hollowed be thy name,
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven,
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us,
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil,
For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory,
Forever and ever. Amen.