Sunday message---Stories

This is a message I gave at the Rescue Mission last year. It's just some stories from the Bible and how they relate to us today. Hope it's a blessing to you....

Anybody wanna hear some stories tonight?  I thought it might be a change of pace to just listen to some stories before dinner instead of bringing a more traditional message.  It’s Saturday night, it’s spring, and we’re in the middle of a big celebration that remembers a story that came to its end in the middle of the west desert in a little place called Promontory Point.  That story when it was finished, ushered in a new chapter for our country, and tied our country together from coast to coast.

Stories are important ways to remember things that happened in the past.  If you’ve ever spent time with veterans, they love to tell war stories. Older people love to tell stories about the good old days.  And some of us have stories that have some dark chapters that we’d just as soon never tell.  

Some stories are long.  Some are short. I can tell you the best story ever told in two words:

Jesus saves.

I know you’ve heard that story because the sign out front tells you that every time you pass the building.  

So let’s delve a little deeper into that story of Jesus saves tonight as we look at how He played a pivotal part in the stories of some of the people who He met:

The first story comes from the Gospel of John, Chapter 8:1-11

8 1 but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4 and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

11 “No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

In case you didn’t know it, Adultery was a big deal back in the day.  Back in the Old Testament days, it was on the top ten list of “Thou Shalt NOT” and it was furthermore punishable by death.  And here we have some Jews who were using this woman to bait Jesus into a trap. As a storyteller, I think this story is missing an important detail which we’re not given.  Where’s the guy? It takes two to tango. Yet only the woman was brought before the Lord by a bunch of angry people holding great big rocks.

Stoning was the prescribed method of killing adulterers.

This woman is in a tough spot.  She’s been ‘caught in the act’ of a capital crime and the Jews bring her to Jesus to trap him into saying something against the laws of the Jews so they can accuse Him of another crime.  They’re trying for the two-fer. They’re going to use the woman to trap Jesus, and in the meantime, stone her for being an adulteress.

The Lord always knows how to reply.  He pretty much ignores the situation for a minute, and when pressed, He just comes up with the perfect response:  Let any one of you without sin throw the first stone at her.

Ouch.  Talk about instant conviction of who and what you really are.  A bunch of soul searching happened and slowly people started dropping the stones and leaving, until only the woman and Jesus were left.

And Jesus set her free by telling her that He did not condemn her either and to leave her life of sin.

Sin is messy business and has consequences that we never can forsee.  How many of you think that woman thought in the moment what would happen if she got caught?  If she knew she was gonna be paraded through the streets do you think she’d have had second thoughts?  

That’s the thing with sin. It’s messy business.   It’s based on a lie. The first lie was told to Eve back in the garden.  She believed it. She got Adam to believe it. And we got into this mess through no fault of our own.  We still today live with the consequences of that very first lie that led to the very first sin.

And you know it was bad because after God confronted Adam and Eve, the first thing Adam did was rat Eve out and blame her for it.  God forgave them, but things have been a mess ever since.  

Can anybody relate to the woman caught in adultery in this story?  If you’re answering NO, then let me ask the question in a different light.  Have you ever done anything you knew you shouldn’t do and did it anyway, without too much thought to the consequences?  Ever convince yourself you wouldn’t get caught, and then got caught? For what it’s worth, I stand here with the guilty.

I couldn’t throw the first stone.  

 The next story I want to tell you picks up where this one left off:  

12 When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

13 The Pharisees challenged him, “Here you are, appearing as your own witness; your testimony is not valid.”

14 Jesus answered, “Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going. But you have no idea where I come from or where I am going. 15 You judge by human standards; I pass judgment on no one. 16 But if I do judge, my decisions are true, because I am not alone. I stand with the Father, who sent me. 17 In your own Law it is written that the testimony of two witnesses is true. 18 I am one who testifies for myself; my other witness is the Father, who sent me.”

19 Then they asked him, “Where is your father?”

“You do not know me or my Father,” Jesus replied. “If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” 20 He spoke these words while teaching in the temple courts near the place where the offerings were put. Yet no one seized him, because his hour had not yet come.

Dispute Over Who Jesus Is

21 Once more Jesus said to them, “I am going away, and you will look for me, and you will die in your sin. Where I go, you cannot come.”

22 This made the Jews ask, “Will he kill himself? Is that why he says, ‘Where I go, you cannot come’?”

23 But he continued, “You are from below; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world. 24 I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am he, you will indeed die in your sins.”

25 “Who are you?” they asked.

“Just what I have been telling you from the beginning,” Jesus replied.26 “I have much to say in judgment of you. But he who sent me is trustworthy, and what I have heard from him I tell the world.”

27 They did not understand that he was telling them about his Father.28 So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up[a] the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me. 29 The one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what pleases him.” 30 Even as he spoke, many believed in him.

31 To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

33 They answered him, “We are Abraham’s descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?”

34 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. 35 Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. 37 I know that you are Abraham’s descendants. Yet you are looking for a way to kill me, because you have no room for my word. 38 I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father.[b]”

39 “Abraham is our father,” they answered.

“If you were Abraham’s children,” said Jesus, “then you would[c] do what Abraham did. 40 As it is, you are looking for a way to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. Abraham did not do such things. 41 You are doing the works of your own father.”

“We are not illegitimate children,” they protested. “The only Father we have is God himself.”

42 Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love me, for I have come here from God. I have not come on my own; God sent me.43 Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. 44 You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 45 Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! 46 Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? 47 Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.

Jesus in this story is pretty much setting the record straight about who He is, what He’s doing on earth, and what the Jews think about it.  For those that believe, he tells us something that’s just as valid today as it was when He spoke these words to the Jews. The Truth shall set you free.

And then, just like the woman caught in adultery, He tells us what we need to be set free from:

Sin.

And sin is so intertwined into our stories, as is the consequences of the sins we committed that we didn’t forsee at the time.  

Jesus also lets us know through this story who we’re following if we’re not following HIm.  Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He tells us who He is, and He also tells us some pointed things about the lies we believe and the liar that tells them to us.

You’ll notice I said something important just a second ago.  If we’re following Jesus, then we’re following Truth. If we’re not following Him, then we’re following the way of the world, the way we want to go, and believing the lies that sin offers.  We become slaves to that sin. Jesus put that to us bluntly.  

And the thing is this:  The liar, the enemy, never tells us up front how much following those lies is going to cost us.  I don’t know your story, but I do know mine, and they cost me just about everything. What has believing the lies you have cost you?

The last story I’m going to tell you tonight is about a crippled man who had some good friends who wanted their friend healed.  Physically. The story goes like this;

(Insert the story of the man lowered from the roof)

Jesus sees the desperation and determination of the man’s friends.  He sees the man can’t walk, but the first thing Jesus does is points the man out to the crowd and then tells the man,

Your sins are forgiven.

Getting what we need sometimes is far more important than what we want.  But to drive the point home, Jesus healed the man. The forgiveness of sins was far more important in His eyes than a physical healing.

So, all those stories serve to back up the first two word story I told you tonight at the outset:

Jesus saves.

Every person here has a story.  As I said before, I’m no pastor.  I’m a guy who has his own story but at a tipping point nine years ago, when I’d lost just about everything, I became painfully aware that if I kept on going the way I was, just about everything was going to turn quite quickly into absolutely everything.  I found Jesus waiting for me when I got to that place. He found me on my knees in my living room shortly before Easter in 2010. And because my sins got me to that place, my redemption story lets me come to this place and hang out with people just like me:

Sinners.

A lot of that isn’t our fault.  Our childhood, our experiences, our choices are often based on bad choices of others.  Don;t believe me? Think about how other people’s bad choices have affected you or led you to make similar bad choices?  And sometimes the very people we think should help us overcome those bad choices make things worse by shunning us. I know it happens.  If you’re among the homeless population, I know it happens A LOT to you.

If you’re here tonight, and you’ve been hurt by a church, I’m sorry.  I want to apologize for that. Sometimes well-meaning people do more harm than good because they’re applying their experiences to a story they often no nothing about.  Chirstians are not perfect people. We make mistakes. And too, there are those that call themselves Christians that have an idea of what Christianity is that often has little resemblence to what the New Testament teaches believers to be.  Remember this: Churches and people don’t save. That’s a job God gave direcly to Jesus.

If you could save you, if other people could save you, if a church or a religion could save you,  then what’s the point of the cross? If that lie were true, then Jesus died and went through all He did for no reason.

In the stores we looked at, we saw Jesus save a woman’s life and told her to leave her life of sin.  We saw Jesus tell the crowd who He is and who we’re following when we believe the lies of the world, and who is behind those lies:  The enemy of our very souls. We learned that if we’re not following the Truth, we’re slaves to our sin. We leared that sometimes what we want isn’t necessarily what we need in the story of Jesus forgiving the man’s sins and then healing him physically.

Every person here has a story.  I told you a little bit about mine.  I can tell you that story I opened with is true by adding one more word to that two word story:

Jesus saved me.  He can do the same for you.

I’d invite you to drop by Ogden First Baptist Church.  If you’re not ready to commit to going to church, drop by on Prayze Dog night (which starts on Tuesday,

 21 May about six in the evening).  We know everybody has a story to tell, and we’d love to hear yours.