Judgment and Grace 1986

I'd like to begin by reading from Matthew chapter 11, verse 28, a very familiar passage. Jesus is speaking. Come to me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke apart and learn from me, for I am meek and lowly at heart, and you shall find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light. Jumping over to Matthew 23, verse 29, Jesus again is speaking. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and adorn the monuments of the righteous, saying, If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in the shedding of the blood of the prophets.

Thus you witness against yourselves that you are the sons of those who murder the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers, you serpents, you brood of snakes. How are you to escape being damned to hell? So we have those beautiful words here in Matthew 11.

Gorgeous words, words of hope, words of encouragement. And here in Matthew 23, from the same mountain, hard words! Very hard. We skip over to John 14.

I think if you're looking for your husband, you'll find him in the balcony. 14.1. Let not your hearts, again, Jesus is speaking, let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God.

Believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I have told you that I could have prepared a place for you? Again, such words of blessing, such words of hope and comfort and encouragement.

And then, Matthew 23 again. Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify, and some you will scourge in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, that upon you may come all the righteous blood on earth.

From the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Baratheon, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. You murdered him 500 years before you were born. Hard words.

Now how could such words of peace and such words of wrath come from the same mouth? It's called judgment and grace. We're living in an age which has almost no conception of grace, because it's an age which has rejected the whole idea of judgment. Evangelical Christians often talk about grace, but most of the time it's a shallow grace, an empty grace, because Evangelical American Christians have absorbed the atmosphere of Babylon around them and have no sense of the judgment of God.

And when we have no sense of the judgment of God, no respect for it, no fear of it, there can be no grace. It's an age in which three young men in this city about a week ago walked away laughing and joking after they had shot another young man, leaving him to die in a pool of blood on the sidewalk, as if they had done some great thing. They are a reflection of this age.

They are a symptom and really a reflection of all of us. The way it is, is if you can avoid the police and the IRS, who else do you have to answer to? You're not going to be struck by lightning in the garden. There were two trees, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Adam and Eve were encouraged to eat of the tree of life, which was the tree of grace, God's unmerited favor, God's love, God's life, eat of it all you wish. They were forbidden to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Yet it was this tree, which Satan promised them, would make them gods in their own right, if they would but eat its fruit.

And so they ate. And they fell under judgment. Now what is judgment? Judgment is the light of God finding you out and causing you to reap the consequences of your sin.

Adam ran for the bushes to hide. Adam, what have you done? There's no way Adam can cover what he did. And there is no way Adam can escape the consequences of what he did.

Back to the three young men, who shot this other one and walked away laughing and joking. They are under judgment. They are under a judgment far worse than your or my opinion of what they did.

Far worse than Detroit Recorder's Court or Jackson Prison. Because the blood of the innocent cries out to God against them and will not stop crying until they are exposed and until someone pays for the shedding of innocent blood. Now we all understand in our bones, even though we deny it intellectually, because it's not in style to think this way these days, we know in our bones that somewhere down the road, the light will come on.

And there will be an accounting. And so we read from Luke 12, 1. In the meantime, when so many thousands of the multitude had gathered together that they trod upon one another, he began to speak to his disciples first. Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.

Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known. Whatever you have said in the dark will be heard in the light. And what you have whispered in the private rooms will be proclaimed upon the house.

Now this knowledge, the knowledge of what Jesus said in those verses is built into us. And it can't be eliminated by any kind of therapy, any kind of brainwashing, or any kind of casuistry, any funny arguments. It can't be wiped out.

We know, we all know, that there will be an accounting. What we don't know quite so clearly is that the light which will one day uncover every secret and expose every fraud is already shining in this world, and is already shining in this place. And that light shines among us now, right here, not to get us, but to save us.

See, not to damn us to hell, but to bring us into heaven. That light comes to us now as grace. Now when that light comes to us, it shows us two things.

First, it shows us what a mess we've made of our lives. Get your eyes off the other guy. Look at yourself.

What a mess we've made of our own lives by eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And secondly, it shows us the tree of life and says to us, eat. The tree of life is none other than the lamb that was slain.

In order to take to himself and receive on himself the consequences of our sin, when we eat of that tree, we are healed, and we are restored, and we become new. Put in simplest terms, grace means the light comes on, exposes my evil, and Jesus pays. Judgment means the light comes on, exposes my evil, and I pay.

In either case, it's the same light, the same God bringing out into the open all the hidden things, uncovering the secrets of every heart. If I respond to that light by confessing my sin, repenting of it, and throwing myself on the mercy of God, the tree of life comes to my rescue, absorbs the guilt, and takes on himself the consequences of my sin, and I am healed. I'm restored.

I'm redeemed. On the other hand, if I respond to that light by hardening my heart, then I'm under judgment rather than grace, and I will pay for my own sin, and there is no lawyer, no advocate, no judge, no jury in all the universe that will spare me reaping what I have sown. Of course, if I throw myself on the mercy of God, confess my sin, and receive forgiveness from the tree of life, then my life is no longer mine.

I've been bought with a price. My life isn't mine, but his. See, this modern, American, evangelical conception of grace in which Jesus pays, but I retain all rights to myself to go on living for myself and to myself just like everybody else is not grace.

It's a sham. The light that in grace shines among us now, burns with holy fire, shakes and sifts our lives in order that we might bring them to the cross and receive forgiveness for the sins we confess and repent of, that light offers us deep grace, real grace, true grace today, and all we have to do to have it is absolutely and totally abandon ourselves to that grace. That's what it means when Jesus says, take my yoke upon you.

Get under my yoke with me. See, to apprehend grace, to take hold of grace, means that I leave myself when I enter, in fact, into Jesus. Come to me, all you who labor and are having labor, and I will give you rest.

Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am meek and lowly of heart and you'll find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

To have that rest, to enter into that wonderful Sabbath, I have to enter into it. And to enter into Jesus, to come to Him, I have to leave everything else. For instance, we've talked many times about Peter.

The light came on for Peter that morning on Galilee. When the net comes up, he sees the fish. He sees the glory of God in that sign.

And immediately, he knows that he is exposed by light. And he says, depart from me, I'm a sinful man, O Lord. He has a sense of the Holy.

He's taken off his shoes. Now, grace comes to him out of the lips of Jesus. Don't be afraid.

From now on, you're going to be catching men. But now notice how Peter brought their boats to land. They forsook everything and followed him.

No longer business as usual with Peter. Peter doesn't go on living the way he lived before. He's a different man.

His life belongs to Jesus now. And he goes with Him. Never again was he the man he was before.

All kinds of problems, all kinds of stumbling, all kinds of mistakes. But he's clear in his own heart, and so is God, that this man belongs. We see the exact same thing with Isaiah.

Isaiah receives light that day in the temple when he sees the Lord high and lifted up. And he cries, Woe is me, I'm undone. I'm a man of unclean lips.

I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. I'm going to die.

Then comes grace. The seraph, the angelic being, brings it over to him and says, Woe, this has touched your lips. Now your sin is forgiven.

Your guilt is taken away. Grace. But notice how Isaiah apprehends that grace.

Then Isaiah hears God say, Whom shall I send? Who will go for us? And Isaiah says, Here am I, send me. And from that day, this man Isaiah belongs to the living God as never before. In a few minutes, we're going to be kneeling at this rail to feast on the tree of life.

On Jesus. On grace. The light will come on.

It's coming on now. And Jesus receives us as we confess our sin and he forgives us and changes us. But if the grace that visits us today in the bread and wine is going to stay with us, live in us, rule us, direct us, protect us, we have to do what Peter did.

What Isaiah did. We have to abandon ourselves to it. Here am I, send me.

Are we willing to say that? Are we ready to abandon ourselves and go with that grace wherever it leads, at whatever the cost? 1 John chapter 5, chapter 1 verse 5. This is the message we have heard from him that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin.

That God is light and in him is no darkness at all. The certainty is that the light is finding us out and will find us out. There is nothing covered that will not be revealed.

Neither hid that will not be made known. Whether the light finds us out as grace or as judgment. Today comes to us as grace.

Offers to forgive, to save, to heal, to abandon ourselves. Come to me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am me and lowly a fighter.

You will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy, my burden is light but you, you have to get under that for just a minute in silence.