If you're forgiven, if you're looking at Bullock and are looking at your Bibles at Colossians chapter 3 and
Hear the word of God Starting at verse 12 Chapter 3 verses 12 through 14 says this Therefore as God's chosen people Holy and dearly loved clothe yourselves with compassion Kindness humility gentleness and patience Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another Forgive this the Lord forgave you and over all these virtues put on love which finds them all together in perfect unity Let me pray Dear Jesus I pray that even now you would come and you would forgive the sins of him who he teaches For there are many that you would come and you would open the eyes of those who have not seen you would open the ears of those who have not heard In Holy Spirit most of all I pray that you would simply apply your gospel that you would do the work that you have promised to do When your word is preached and so I pray that this morning you would come and you would make this word effective onto the hearing of it in your name we pray in them many of you know um I spent several years in the army when I was young I was 17 when I went into the army and when I joined the army I went to a unit that is pretty famous and when I got to this unit there was a man there who was legendary His name was Sergeant Allen And Sergeant Allen there was a thing about about Sergeant Allen that made everyone afraid There was this thing where if you had made it through Sergeant Allen it was a good thing But since there were so many options there were many platoon sergeants in this battalion and you sort of hope that you didn't get Sergeant Allen you sort of hope that he did not choose you because you see what happened as you go through all this stuff That I went through and then you get to this battalion and when you get to the battalion the platoon sergeants walk through And they choose the guys who they want to be in their platoon for that given time period And so everyone there's all this buzz in the air about you don't want to get Sergeant Allen You don't want to be you don't want to be chosen by Sergeant Allen and so I made it through I was I was in this group of guys And I was the smallest guy by about 50 pounds We were all standing in line and Sergeant Allen out of these platoon sergeants when we arrived at this unit Guess he was the first one because he was so senior to get to choose whoever he wanted It's a sergeant Allen walk down this row of young private and he picked out he said who's the fastest runner here? And he began walking down and it was a guy named Reagan Tara and he said guitarist he stepped over there And he was walking down and he said who's the strongest guy here and someone some other sergeant said it's hunting He said hunting come over here And he was walking along and his my name tag caught his eye and he said Alex. I like that name step over there It was nothing that I had done. I was no good. I was not the best. I was not the biggest I was not the fastest. I was not the smartest He just decided that he would choose me and and make me part of his elect if you will and I can remember being very afraid. I've been through a lot by that time But to be chosen by Sergeant Allen was way was far beyond anything that I ever hoped I would not have to deal with And I remember he said follow me and we walked back into this cageed room That was literally a room that was made out of chicken wire And that you can't get out of it. So you see we walked into this room and all he did was he looked at us and he said I'm going to tell you guys one thing If you trust me I'll always take care And I'll never ask you to do something that I haven't done myself or wouldn't do
You know I'm sitting there of course I'm sitting there thinking that's it You know it's all that's been about two weeks later we were out on our first exercise Our first firing exercise you know I was in a weapons platoon which meant we dealt with all the heavy stuff And we're firing weapons since I was a private I was stuck out on a road guarding a road to make sure no cars drove in and got blown up by our mortars And I had a radio out with me one of the big things in the army that everyone is very concerned about is accountability for equipment You see we were going to fire that day and at the end of the day actually was at noon we were going to road march about 14 miles to some trucks that were going to take us in Now I was in Savannah, Georgia so it was about 105 degrees So at noon I'm Friday afternoon the exercise ended everyone was called in and they did an equipment accountability check And everyone had their equipment except one person Private Allen I was missing a radio And we ended up staying there about three hours looking for that radio in the woods Sergeant Allen was not too happy with me In fact Sergeant Allen made me low crawl around the firing range two times This is before we go on this 14 mile road march He made me low crawl around the firing range and when I finished low crawling around the firing range twice I was about to die I got back and I found that Sergeant Allen had told the other men to place a whole mortar system on my rucksack A mortar system is usually carried by three people He put the whole mortar system on my rucksack which meant my rucksack weighed roughly the equivalent of news And two guys had to lift it onto my back and I was buckled up under the weight and Sergeant Allen came and he looked in the eye and he said If that equipment does not make it to the truck you are out of here What could I say? So I'll give it the old college drive And so we began this road march and after about three miles I was delirious I was staggering all over the road and someone came up from behind me and grabbed the rucksack and nested off my back And they said give that to me And I said no I have to do it myself because if I don't do it I'm out of here And the man said if you don't give me that rucksack it'll never make it and you'll never make it And so the guy took my rucksack and put it on on top of his and carried that rucksack for the other 11 miles You know who that was? Sergeant Allen The same one who I offended, the same one who I offended and who had afflicted me came and took my burden He was the one who said Allen if that stuff does not make it to the end you will not be here and the stuff made it to the end but guess what? He carried it, I didn't carry it And I made it I'm preaching through this book in Colossians and what Paul has made a point for three chapters is this That all of us are carrying around this huge way to sin, this huge burden of guilt, all these things And Jesus has come along and he said if you don't give that stuff to me you'll never make it And usually we deal with it the same way I did with that rucksack which I've got to do it myself I'm going to make it myself because when I get to the end I want to say I have made it And he says you know if you don't give that to me you're never going to make it You need to admit that The book of Colossians says so far is that Jesus has taken that burden from you He has listed the whole weight of your guilt, He has listed the whole weight of your sin He has taken everything away from you, you don't have to deal with it anymore Now you can walk to the trucks if you will and perfect freedom And the question we deal with today is just this What does it mean now? What does it mean to say my sins are forgiven? What does it mean to now to live this out? What does it look like to be a Christian? You see every one of us has these sort of stereotypes in our minds of what it means to be a Christian And what we need to do is look and see what Paul says what it means to be a Christian What does it mean to live out this experience of having your sins forgiven? Let me tell you something When I became a sergeant I became a sergeant a few years after that When I became a sergeant I cannot count the number of times that I carried equipment for private I cannot count the number of times that I gave up my food for private Now why was it because I was following Sergeant Allen's example? Sort of, but it wasn't really because of that It was because I had experienced Sergeant Allen's example I had experienced the compassion and the grace of this man And because of my experience of him it transformed my life That might sound pretty big to you guys if you haven't been in the army But it literally transformed my life and I said I have to live this way because of how I have experienced these things And that's what Paul is going to tell us today He's going to say let's look at the things that you have experienced from Jesus And I'm not asking you, Paul is going to say I'm not going to urge you to follow the example of Jesus Because if you go through life and you say you know what? I'm going to follow the example of Jesus And that's what's going to make me a Christian Guess what you're going to end up being? You know that being a very bitter person because if you really try and follow the example of Jesus As if it were some kind of law, some example to follow It'll kill you because you don't have what it takes What Paul says is I want you to follow the example of Jesus Not just because he's a good teacher, not because it just happens to be a good example to follow But I want you to follow the example of Jesus because you have experienced it All I want you to do is to live out what you have experienced yourself And so that's what Paul is going to talk about this morning, two points You know, you guys many of you probably know that I break with Presbyterian traditions Don't go with three, I just go with one or two points usually And Paul is going to talk about two things this morning And he always does this, he talks about understanding who you are And then he's going to talk about being who you are Remember, Paul always make sure you understand who you are before he tells you to do anything He never says get out there and be good, he says here's who you are now Here's what you do about it So look at what you will with me about understanding who you are In verse 12, what does Paul say? Paul says therefore as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved Close yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience Now this could be one of the most humbling statements It should be one of the most humbling statements you ever read He says as God's chosen people, why does he say that? Why does he open with that line before he gets ready to tell us what to do? What does he say, you know, as those of you who have figured out the math As those of you who have gotten your acts together, as those of you who are very moral Now look without this nice life What does he say? Paul reminds you who you are He says as those of you who are chosen by God Put on these things Paul starts that way in order to do one thing He does it in order to eradicate any sense of pride, any sense of arrogance, any sense of mean spiritiveness, you might have Because Paul reminds you that if you're here today, if you have a relationship with Jesus It is not because you were so good that you figured it out It's because God took initiative in your life Remember you hear that a lot in this church that God is always the one who takes initiative That's the basis for grace Everyone loves to talk about grace, but the bottom line with the issue of grace is it's the fact that God is the one who initiates God is the one who pursues You see most of us have a view of God that either says he's out there and he doesn't care He doesn't care what I do, he's just out there and others have this view That God is out there and he's really mad He's just waiting for me to screw up And what the gospel says is that God is here and he pursues sinners, he comes after you That's the best news a broken screwed up person can hear That's the best news you can hear It should not be offensive to hear that God is the one who pursues you Because many of us have gone through our lives pursuing affirmations from this and that and all these sorts of people And what happens, we always end up empty And what the gospel says is unlike any other relationship you've ever been in, the God is a God who pursues you That's the bottom line of the God So what does that mean? It means first of all, the Christians should not be as unpopular as they are Christians, if you look at television and you listen to the radio and you listen to any talk Christians are among the most unpopular people in the United States Now why is that? Christians are among the most unpopular people in the United States because they have forgotten this passage They have forgotten that God is the one who took initiative with them They have forgotten that they are in fact just beggars who have received mercy of Jesus And instead they become mass teachers And they say, all right culture, all right world, all right United States, we figured out the math We know how all this works, we know how morality works, we have answers for everything And we speak for God, so what you need to do is you need to come and let us teach you the math And you need to get right, you need to do things right And what the gospel says, there's no room for that, there's no room for Christians to do that If you're a Christian, you should be the most popular guy, the most popular kid in class Why? Because you're being who you are, you're being what you have experienced And what have you experienced in Jesus? That's what Paul tells us, that's the next point Look at what he tells people to do He says, it's those of you as chosen as therefore it's got chosen people, holy and dearly loved Close yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience Why did he tell them to do these things? Because these are the things that define the life of Jesus These words here, everything you see here are things that the gospel's used to describe Jesus It's run through them really quickly What does he say? He says, put on compassion What do we mean by compassion? Actually the Greek here says to put on bowels of compassion A heart of compassion What is compassion? You see compassion in Mark chapter 1 verse 4, do you remember a leper comes up to Jesus Someone who no one else in society would talk to, no one else in society would go around No one else in society would get it within ten feet of And he comes up to Jesus and he says, would you please make me clean? And what does it say to Jesus? Because Jesus looked on him and had compassion That Jesus looked upon him and had compassion And here it says the wildest thing in the world and Jesus touched him You see what compassion says is compassion looks at the person who is broken And instead of you know Jesus I guess could have looked at the leper and said Thank God I'm God Thank God I'm perfect Thank God I'm not like you Jesus looked at this broken man and he says how much does he need me? How much does he need compassion and mercy? He doesn't need someone to be arrogant He doesn't need someone to be mean spirited He doesn't need someone to go and tell him the right drugs to take what he needs Is someone to simply be with him and to have compassion upon him? What the gospel says is that Jesus has looked upon all of us And he has shown you compassion He has looked upon you and you're brokenness and he has compassion And I tell you if you're not a Christian Jesus looks on you right now and he still has compassion Because you're broken nonetheless There's no one in here could say I'm not broken at some level There's no one in here that could say I don't struggle at some level There's no one in here who can say I'm not dealing with things at some level conflict Interterm or anything and Jesus looks at you and he says I know what you see I know what you see And I'm here for you I want to be here for you I'm sort of standing here ready to help which is what the next term talks about kindness Jesus is the most kind person ever to have lived and what is kindness moving Kindness here defines means great care in the spite of gentleness Great care in the spite of the fact that someone continues to sin Great care in the fact that someone continues to fail to get their acts together Jesus is kind And what this term also sort of talks about is the fact that Jesus stands ready to help whenever you're ready to turn Whenever you're ready to sort of admit and say Jesus you know I've been wrong my whole life I've been pursuing other things my whole life you're the one I need You're the one who has always loved me What kindness says is that when you come back to Jesus he is not going to say I told you so I told you so I told you we're screwed up Now since what you need to do is you need to go way to the back of the line You need to go way to the back of the line and if you prove yourself faithful to me After a while I'll pull you up and I'll let you sit a little closer What the kindness of Jesus says as soon as you are ready to turn from your sins and turn on to him He embraces you and takes you right into his bosom he embraces you and takes you and speaks you right at the right hand of God And God says what about Tommy? Jesus says he's as righteous as I am He's as lovely as I am He's as beautiful as I am He has everything that I have because I have given it to him There's no you've heard me say this before many people say you know I'm not as good a Christian as so and sorry I'm not as good a Christian as Tommy or as good a Christian as beauty You know what there's no room for that in the Christian life And that's because of the kindness of Jesus In the kindness of Jesus Jesus says you come unto me and I promise you I will embrace you and I'll never let you go And you'll be just as loved as the rest of the children You almost can't understand that unless you've had kids Because I remember thinking when we had two kids we got pregnant with mercy The third and I thought wow I don't know if I could love mercy I don't know if I could love that third one I don't know if I have enough It takes so much time it takes so much energy it takes so much emotional strength for two What am I going to do with this third one? Well guess what? I love mercy just as much as I love the other kids and I don't know how I do it but I do See the next thing Paul talks about is meekness He says here's what I want you guys to look like He says I want you to be humble and I want you to be meek Why does Paul want you to be humble and meek? Because Jesus is humble and meekness Never Matthew 11 Jesus says come and learn from me For I am meek and lowly of heart It takes my yoke upon you and I will give you rest What does it mean to be humble? Being humble means to give up all your rights I've got bad news for many of you in here who call yourself Christians When you become a Christian what that means is you give up all your rights It's amazing to me to see how much energy is put in by Christians who are fighting for their rights When the gospel says when you became a Christian you give up all your rights What you became was a servant of all you became humble Now whether you live that out experientially that's up to you But what the gospel says is you've given up your rights In spite of all your power That's what Jesus did, here's Jesus God sitting at the right hand of God the Father He did not have to come down He did not have to come down and die on a cross to the earth We might be saved from our sins And yet he gave up everything Remember the passage from 1 Peter I read last week When they threatened him and they spat upon him And they scourged him and they called the name Jesus does not retaliate, that's humility But you know it was also meekness Because you know what meekness means It doesn't mean weekness Weekness does not mean that Jesus was some kind of wimpy teacher who sort of walked around And when it came time for him to be crucified he couldn't do anything about it Meekness is usually used in the Greek language In ancient Greek as a term that describes a wild animal That has been tamed But at any minute he could take you out That's what meekness is You see it's like it's a circus You ever go to the circus when I was a little kid you go to the circus And say how in the world is that guy Taming those tigers with that little fly swatter What's because the tigers are meek For whatever reason that works in their tiger brain They could kill the guy and sometimes do And yet they don't They hold back in order to perform the task And Jesus when he had a task He had a task which was to save you To deliver us from our sins And what that meant was him dying on the cross That meant him taking every bit of your sinfulness And every bit of the wrath of God Every bad thing from every single conceivable person unto himself Now Jesus was meek because he didn't have to Remember what Jesus says when people are fitting upon him And they say, who do you think you are? And he says, I'll tell you who I am I could call 12 legions of angels right now And they would just take care of business But I'm not Because I'm the Christ And the Christ must suffer and die And the reason I need to suffer and die Is so that you don't have to suffer and die Remember he lived the life that you didn't live And he died the death that you didn't die That's the gospel The final thing, which is the hardest, frankly, for me Is patience Jesus put on compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience And what is patience? Patience is simply putting up with the exasperating conduct of others Patience is putting up with the exasperating conduct of others Now why does Jesus want you to do that? What does Paul say do that? Because that's what Jesus does You see, if you don't think that you are exasperating to Jesus sometimes You don't understand the gospel If you don't think that you're understanding to Jesus sometimes You don't understand yourself And you know you're exasperating to God If you've ever been exasperating to another human being And if you're like me, you're probably very exasperating I didn't know how much so until I got married But Judaism continues to tutor me in how much patience he has with me And what Paul says, and as much as you've experienced these things, put them on And as much as you've experienced these things, put them on And what does it look like? And I'm going to sort of close quickly here What does it look like when you put these things on? Verse 13, it says, bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another Forgive as the Lord forgives you He tells you to do two things When you put on these things, when you begin to look like Jesus What it is going to look like in the context of community is this That you will begin to bear with one another And that you will begin to forgive one another Now it's very interesting that your translation we use made this into an imperative Bear with one another, forgive one another But actually in the Greek these are participle Which means when Paul's writing, he says put on these things, bearing with each other and forgiving each other Which leads me to believe that Paul presupposes that life does not always teach Now Paul presupposes that life, we tend to look at life as being sort of this very clean thing that we go through And if someone offends us, we'll forgive him Or if we will avoid unsavory people as long as we can But if we have to be around and every now and then when we get to church we will bear with them And what Paul says here by making these participles is he presupposes that these things are going on all the time That the context in which these acts of Jesus are worked out in the church is a context in which everyone is exasperating And which everyone is in process And what that means, if you look around the church and you say to yourself everyone here is in process Everyone here is somewhere along the way, they're not there yet, they're not perfect, they haven't arrived If you look around and you think that way There's no room in the Christian life, there's no room in the Christian faith for being means spirited There's no room for it, at all John Newton had a letter writing ministry, John Newton is the guy who wrote amazing grace And he actually wrote a few hymns, but really he had about seven volumes worth of letters And one of the letters he has written is entitled on theological controversy And there's a man who asked him, he said, you know, I've got a guy down the street Who says he's a Christian, but he doesn't believe correct doctrine So what I'm going to do is I'm going to write a book and totally destroy this guy, I'm going to write a book and totally kill this guy I'm going to make him wish he was never born, I'm going to wish he never stepped foot in our church And Newton wrote him back and he said, let me remind you of two things, that you have two options with this man He said your first option, if you think he is a Christian, is that you must consider him a brother And you must treat him as a brother because you have the same father And you both start from the same position You see it's very interesting to me to watch conservative Christians and liberal Christians through a bomb that each other They lob mortars over the fence at each other and every different issue Whether it's men or women, whether it's gay or straight, anything, people are lobbing bombs over each other And what Jesus says is you come to the table, conservative here, liberal here, you're in the table and Jesus stands as the mediator And he says, I'm conservative, what do you got? What does the conservative say? What should he say? I got nothing He says, I'm liberal, what do you got? What do you begin with? What's your starting point? How much do you bring to the table? How much do you offer me? And the liberal should say, I got nothing He says, I conserved that you got nothing, liberal you got nothing now, now we can talk Now both of you guys can look to me Well, one of you please ask me what the answer is Well, one of you please look to me and see what we should be doing over any given situation Whether all the situations that you see thrown about in the media Those wouldn't happen if Christians would look and they would begin with the preposition that I got nothing I start with nothing, I bring nothing to the table, I'm a beggar so when I come to the table with Jesus I come with my hands out expecting everything The only thing that makes you nasty or mean spirit is when you think you have something When you think you're the possessor of something that other people need or you're the possessor of something That you think other people must have to be correct And what the gospel says no matter who you are, liberal are conservative anybody You start with nothing And if you understand you start with nothing Then what you have is Jesus, and if you have Jesus you can bear with other people That was Newton's first option Newton tells him the second option if you really hate this guy If you really think he saw us to mark that he's not a Christian Guess what? He doesn't deserve your scorn, he doesn't deserve your anger, he doesn't deserve your malice If you think he is not a Christian, what he deserves is your utmost mercy and compassion And so you could see Newton and arguably Paul has hemmed him in There's no room if you call yourself a Christian to be mean and nasty Because if someone is a brother you can't be mean and nasty to him And if someone is not a Christian you can't be mean and nasty to him Both of them deserve your compassion and mercy and kindness and gentleness Why? Because that's what you receive from Jesus And Paul reminds you here, he says, forgive people as the Lord forgives you Forgive people What is the basis for any of your forgiveness? It's because you just write it off and say, you know what? Sorry Sorry, I won't think about it anymore The basis for your forgiveness is that there's been a huge, you have done this huge offense to God And God has come to you and he has taken care of 100% of the work He says, I forgive you My son died on the cross and I'm in a impute you all his righteousness And I give you that completely free and free of charge All you have to do is embrace it I'm giving that And remember, he said that to all the people around you as well So now you have to look at each other and say, how can I not forgive Jim? When Jesus has forgiven Jim, how can I not? Now here's the thing, how can I not forgive myself? Here's the thing I deal with most of all in church There's not that people can't forgive other people so that people can't forgive themselves People continue to hold on to their past sinfulness And say, Tommy, if you only knew how bad I was, if you only knew the bad things I did to other people If you only knew the depth of my sin, if you only knew how badly I've harmed my family Then what I always ask him is I say, did Jesus forgive you? And if the answer is yes, you've got to forgive yourself, you must Because if you refuse to forgive yourself, you know what you're saying about the forgiveness of Jesus? It's not valid Jesus, your forgiveness isn't big enough And since your forgiveness isn't big enough, I'm going to have to hold on to it When I was growing up, I was just a sort of transparent day for me When I grew up in a house with a very abusive alcoholic And as I was growing up, one of the reasons I ended up in the army was because I was speaking very bitter towards this man And as I was growing up and watching my views, my family, and watching my views, I remember thinking to myself, that someday, you know, someday I'll be a man And someday, when it's my turn, you know, we'll see who does the abuser We'll see We'll see who snacks people around, you see, and then I'd be went into the army and I became a ranger And I remember coming home from a leaf once, about three years after being in the army And my mom said, hey, I heard your stepfather is in the hospital He's been hurt pretty badly And for some reason, I don't know why I felt compelled to go to the hospital And I went to the hospital, I didn't know what I was going to do Because yeah, I was a man now, and I was sort of trained to deal with people like him now And I wasn't sure what I was going to do, and I walked into the hospital room And I saw this guy who, in his heyday, was a huge man He sprawled out in traction, completely gaunt, and just destroyed by alcohol laying in his bed And he was completely helpless And I looked at him, and I walked in the room, and he didn't know what to do either, you see, because he knew I didn't like him And I walked in, and there was this tense moment, and for some reason, this wave of forgiveness And I couldn't remember being conscious of the fact, not that I was just going to sort of let him go But conscious of my own sinfulness, conscious of my own brokenness, conscious of my own how screwed up I was How bad I was, the people that I had hurt, the people that I had offended And as I sat there and looked at him, I said, how could I not forgive him, given all the Jesus has forgiven me? It was that simple, and so I looked at him, and he was wondering what I was going to say, and I just said, Sam, I forgive you I mean, I was almost like upset that I just sort of had, that I came to that You know, all of my life worked, culminated in this, and that's what the gospel is Are you bitter, you look around, I mean, some of you have been through more crap than I would ever even want to think about You've been divorced, you've been abused, you've been sexually abused, all of these things And you struggle with forgiveness, and you deal with forgiveness, and you deal with bitterness And what the gospel says, if you want to deal with forgiveness, the first thing you must look at is not the other person The first thing you've got to look at is yourself, have I been forgiven? That's what Paul said, he says, forgive each other, how is the Lord forgiving you? Let me pray Father, we praise you, and we thank you, that you are God who forgives, that you are God who comes unto us And simply, it races our death, you are the one who forgives all We praise you, and we thank you for that, in your name, amen