BEHOLD! Week 5: JESUS FORGIVES FAILURES

Until a few months ago, I was a member of a uh select group of uh Baptist pastors in the state of Arkansas.

And after I now give that some thought, I may have actually been the only member of that select group of Baptist pastors.

Um you see, until a few months ago, I may have been the only Baptist pastor in this entire state who had uh never in his life uh picked up and swung a golf club nor played a round of golf.

All that changed though.

Um one Thursday morning I was having breakfast with uh Chris Cleveland.

He's the pastor at First Assembly of God on Hillsboro.

Uh he and I and Kent Job were having breakfast over at Johnny B's, and Chris is an avid golfer, and he was like, hey guys, you should you should come with me tomorrow.

I'm gonna go.

Tomorrow morning's Friday.

It's your day off.

Come meet me at the Lions Club and let's go play some golf.

Um I agreed to go play because uh Chris and Kent are my friends, but it was not without some significant protest.

Um my first uh kind of part of the protest was I reminded Chris, like I've never played golf, and so I don't own golf clubs.

Explain to me, Chris, how one plays golf without owning golf clubs.

And Kent answered the question.

He said, Don't worry, I don't own any either, but don't worry, we'll use Austin's.

That's uh Kent's one of his teenage sons.

We'll use Austin's golf clubs, no problem.

Solved.

My protest, though, it just continued, and I was like, guys, here's the thing: like, I don't have the experience playing golf.

I'm not athletic.

I'm gonna embarrass all of us out at that course.

Kent, again, he's a great friend, and he just chimed in.

You're not the only one.

But my you know, excuses kept coming.

And I said, Chris, you know, you're telling me I need to go play golf because it'll be fun and it'll be relaxing.

And I said, every time I see a golfer, they don't look like they're relaxed or having fun.

They they just look like they're really frustrated.

So I'm gonna be frustrated and get more frustrated.

And he just said, No, no, I promise, I promise, I promise.

We're gonna have fun.

Just come tomorrow morning, Lions Club.

I finally said, All right, I'll do it.

So Friday morning comes around and I drove to the Lions Club.

I uh meet Chris and Kent.

We're at the first hole, and uh uh Chris gives me this less than two-minute swing tutorial.

Um again, I've never picked up nor swung a golf club in my life.

I've played mini golf, but that does not count, all right.

Um so he gives me this tutorial, and now it's time for us to tee off on that very first hole.

Uh Chris tees off, then Kent tees off, and then it's my turn to tee off, so I grab a T Austin's tee.

I take, I don't even have a T or a golf ball.

So I take Austin's T and Austin's golf ball and put them in the ground, and I take Austin's driver, and then um I approach the ball and I practice sports psychology.

Do y'all know what sports psychology is?

Where I visualize success.

I visualize uh being a natural at something I've never done before in my life, and I'm not a natural at anything that requires hand-eye coordination.

So I visualize this moment.

I'm gonna hit this ball for the very first time.

It's gonna be amazing.

Um, and some golfers are hackers, but on that day I coined a different phrase.

I'm a whiffer.

I swung the golf club for the very first time, and I just I totally missed the ball.

It's possible, guys.

Chris, he laughed at me, and he should have.

Um he just said this: don't worry about it.

Try it again.

For the golfers in the room, you know what that's called.

It's called a mulligan, right?

You take another shot.

That shot doesn't count, it won't go on the scorecard.

It'll be as if it never happened in the first place.

And over those nine holes of golf, I didn't even play an entire round.

Over those front nine holes of golf at the Lions Club, I took a mulligan on every hole.

At least one mulligan.

Many times more than one.

And for a beginner like myself, mulligans in the game of golf are something akin to forgiveness in a game that is otherwise pretty unforgiving.

If I'm being honest, though, I think I would trade all of the mulligans that I took on that morning on the golf course for just a few mulligans in life.

I recall another morning from the fall.

Um, for some reason, on this morning, the moment I woke up and got out of bed, I was irritated and frustrated.

Has anybody ever had a morning like that before?

A morning this week like that?

So I got up and no one else is up in my house.

It's just me and Sebastian, our schnauzer, and I'm making coffee and I'm already irritated and frustrated.

And then the kids wake up and it's time to get start getting ready for school, and um the intensity of my emotions, they begin to grow.

The kids are struggling to find their socks and their shoes and their mask.

They they don't know where anything is.

We're just like moving at this snail's pace, and everything seems really difficult.

And I decide to um, you know, offer my kids some inspiration in the moment.

I just raised my voice.

Well, better described, I yelled.

I just started yelling, like, wa, wow.

And eventually, you know, we start getting all of our things together and we um make our way towards the door.

Because those yells, you know, it was not inspiration, it was all about irritation and anger in the moment.

So we're approaching the door to walk out into the carport, to get into the car, to go, to drop offline.

And I just have this moment of clarity in my life.

And I was reminded, I think, by the Holy Spirit, that I was irritated that morning before my kids ever woke up.

They weren't the source of my irritation or my anger, but they were the recipients of my irritation and my anger.

Something else was going on in my life that morning.

I'm not really sure what.

And the embarrassment that I experienced on the golf course, wow.

Wow, the embarrassment I had in the home that morning, man, it just like overshone that totally.

I was so embarrassed.

So we got in the car, and uh, before I even started the car, I told the kids, I was like, you know, I'm I'm really sorry for getting so angry this morning and yelling.

It really wasn't your fault.

It wasn't your fault at all.

Can you forgive me?

Spencer's sitting in the front seat and he looks at me and he goes, It's okay, Dad.

We all get angry.

I forgive you.

And when a son tells his father, I forgive you, when he says the word forgive, something really supernatural happens in that moment.

Have you ever experienced it before?

It was as if the weight of my failure was lifted.

The wall of my failure was torn down, the worry of my failure was washed away all because of that one word.

Forgive.

And in that car, what I was reminded of is this great spiritual truth that forgiveness is for failures.

Forgiveness isn't for perfect people.

Forgiveness isn't for people who have it all figured out and have it all together.

Forgiveness is for people who fail.

Who fail with the people they love the most.

And it's my guess that all of us in this room have our own story of failure.

Maybe like me, you have a story of irritation and anger that was directed at some innocent bystander.

Or in an argument with a friend, you said something you wish in the moment you could take back.

I should have never uttered that word.

Or you hurt someone who is so close to you unintentionally, and now you don't know if they'll ever trust you again.

Or maybe the failure you identify with is not a single choice in your life.

It's more like a series of choices.

It's your way of life that feels as if it's a failure.

And whether the failure that comes to mind is a single decision or a series of decisions, you know what it's like to carry that weight.

You know what it's like to run into that wall.

You know what it's like to experience all of that worry.

And when all of us confront our failure, we know that there's one word we want to hear.

Forgive.

We hope that our spouse will forgive us, that our friend will forgive us, that our children will forgive us, that our colleague at work will forgive us.

We hope our neighbor will forgive us.

We long to hear those words, I forgive you, because that statement and that word forgive, it carries a note of grace to our lives in a world that is otherwise unforgiving.

We long to hear those words because when a child tells a parent, I forgive you, when a spouse tells her partner, I forgive you, when a friend tells a friend, I forgive you, it points us to the one who is full of grace and forgiveness, Jesus Christ.

You see, Jesus forgives failures.

At First Baptist Church, we're in the midst of a series called Behold.

And in this series, we are learning to pay attention to God, to pay attention to the character of God, the works of God, the person of God, the qualities of God, the characteristics of God, so that we can be transformed by God, so that we can be a different type of person in light of who our God is.

And in last week's sermon, uh we focused on this characteristic of God, that God is speaking.

Looked at that story of the prophet Elijah.

But not only is God speaking, we forced ourselves to answer the question: Am I listening?

Am I listening to God when He speaks to me?

And listen, this morning, one of the most important words that you need to hear God speak over you.

The whisper of the gospel you need in your life this morning that is freeing and liberating and transformative is this your sins are forgiven.

You see, today we just want to behold the glorious truth, the glorious reality that Jesus forgives failures.

I think that's one reason that Luke chapter 15, verse 1, it begins this way.

Luke 15:1

It tells us that sinners drew near to hear him.

In other words, failures, failures in that society and in that world, they drew near to Jesus.

They came near to Jesus so that they could hear Jesus talk to them.

And I think one of the reasons these people came back time and time and time again is because they heard Jesus say things like, Your sins are forgiven.

Or it's why Jesus one day his opponents questioned him.

Jesus, why do you spend so much time with failures?

Jesus answers that question when he says, It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.

But the gospel of Jesus Christ, what it does, it calls us to be honest, it sets us free so that we can confront our failure.

Because then when we confront our failure, we draw near to Jesus.

Maybe one reason we struggle with our relationship with Jesus, one reason he feels so far away is because we are trying to hide our failures from him.

We don't want him to see the very worst of us.

But over and over and over again, the gospel says that the people who are failures, Jesus says, come closer to me, keep coming closer, keep coming closer.

I came for people just like you.

Your sins, your sins too, they are forgiven.

And all of us need to hear that word this morning.

We need to hear that word forgive, spoken by Jesus, so that the weight of the shame of our sin is lifted.

We need to hear that word spoken by Jesus so that the wall that separates us from him can be torn down.

We need to hear that word forgive so that we know even though the world says I'm a failure and the world says I'm unlovable, Jesus says you are worthy of my love, and I do love you.

So, church family, this morning, are you ready to be open and honest about your failures?

All so that you can draw near to Jesus.

And then experience that glorious reality.

Jesus forgives failures.

In the Gospel of Matthew, we meet a man who drew near to Jesus.

His friends brought him close to Jesus, and then he received the forgiveness of Jesus.

Listen closely to his story.

This is a Matthew chapter 9, verses 1 through 9.

Matthew 9:1–9

Matthew tells this story.

And behold, some people brought to him, this is Jesus, a paralytic lying on a bed.

And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, Take heart, my son, your sins are forgiven.

And behold, some of the scribes said to themselves, This man is blaspheming.

But Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, Why do you think evil in your hearts?

For which is easier to say, Your sins are forgiven, or to say, Rise and walk, but that you know that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.

He then said to the paralytic, Rise, pick up your bed and go home.

And he rose and went home.

When the crowd saw it, they were afraid, and they glorified God, who had given such authority to men.

At the beginning of Matthew 9, Jesus steps out of a boat and he steps onto the streets.

He steps onto the streets of this fishing village called Capernaum.

It's located on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee.

Capernaum was the base for Jesus' Judean ministry, and it also just happened to be the hometown of one of Jesus' favorite failures, a tax collector named Matthew.

Yeah, this Matthew, the Matthew who wrote the gospel we read from this morning.

I wonder if on the day that Matthew sat down with his quill and his scroll to write down this story to record it.

As he thought about this story of forgiveness, he was reminded of his own story of forgiveness.

I wonder if he was reminded the day he met Jesus and Jesus forgave his sins.

I wonder if the day that Matthew wrote this story in his gospel, he wrote it with an unusual amount of eagerness and expectation and excitement because he imagined that for generations to come, people would need to know that Jesus forgives failures.

Each generation to come would need to know that the moment Jesus steps off the boat and steps into the streets of your city, he wants all of the failures to draw near to him and to hear him say, Child, your sins are forgiven.

On that day in Capernaum, the man who hears Jesus speak those words.

He's a paralytic.

He's lying on a mat.

He's unable to stand up and to walk on his own.

So for him to draw near to Jesus, it required some of his friends to pick up the mat on which he lay every single day.

They carried him like this giant burrito human towards Jesus and then just plopped him at the feet of Jesus.

They had heard how Jesus could cure every disease and affliction.

They had heard all of these stories told.

So it was kind of this act of faith in that moment.

Jesus, can you do for our friend what you've done for so many other people in every other village, in every other uh home, God, can you do for him this one we love, what we've heard stories about for weeks and months?

And in response to their faith, Jesus looks at the man lying on the mat and he says, Take heart, my son.

Your sins are forgiven.

Think about that.

The paralyzed man didn't come looking for forgiveness, but Jesus knew what?

Jesus knew that he needed forgiveness.

So, what's the connection between this man's physical paralysis and what you might call his spiritual paralysis?

Did this man have a choice in his life, a sin he committed that led to his uh state, his physical incapacity, his inability to stand up and walk?

Or maybe his parents had done something in the past and this was God's judgment on them.

Well, nothing in the text suggests that.

Nothing in the Bible suggests this man did anything wrong that led to this state of affairs.

His condition is not the direct result of a sin.

But it is, listen, but his physical condition is the physical manifestation that demonstrates the reality of sin.

You see, ever since sin has entered into the world, it manifests itself through grief and suffering and death.

And the paralysis of this man, lying on the mat, is just a declaration that sin is in the world.

It is doing its best to destroy lives.

It has a destructive presence in the world and in this man's life.

As he lies on the mat, as we look in his eyes, as Jesus looked into his eyes, he saw grief and suffering and death.

You may not be, listen, you may not be lying on a mat paralyzed.

But you can identify with this man.

You can identify with this man lying on the mat.

Because the presence of sin in our world is still very real.

And the presence of sin in your life is still very real.

That man, again, what was it?

He didn't come looking for forgiveness, but he needed forgiveness.

And that destructive presence of sin in the world and the destructive presence of sin in my life, it's one of the reasons that I so often fall short of God's plan and God's purpose for me.

Romans 3 23, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

It's the destructive presence of sin in my life that at times leads me to live in opposition to God.

Jeremiah 14, for we have often rebelled.

We have sinned against you.

It's the destructive presence of sin in my life that leads me to at times know the word of God, but not to obey the word of God.

James chapter 4.

James 4 · chapter mention

If anyone then knows the good they ought to do and does not do it, it is sin for them.

Sin is a destructive presence in my life, and I bet sin is a destructive presence in your life as well.

This confrontation with our failures, listen, we all know that we fail.

We fail people in our lives, we fail the God that we love, and too often we believe the lie that our failures are final, that it should leave us lying on the mat, unable to move.

But in reality, a confrontation with failure is actually an invitation to draw near to Jesus.

Jesus forgives failures.

And that's the point the scribes, the religious people in the story, they can't quite wrap their mind around.

The scribes, it's a group of men who devoted their life to knowing the law of the Old Testament and to interpreting the law of the Old Testament.

They knew all of the steps a person would take, they knew the sacrifices that a person should offer so that God could forgive them of their sins.

And they were like, Jesus, you're not part of the steps.

You are not part of the sacrifice we read about, and that we understand you are playing the role of God, but you are just a man.

Jesus knows what these men are thinking and what they're saying to one another.

He calls them out on it.

He speaks to them, but the most important thing that he does is he has another demonstration of his power, of his authority.

What happens?

Jesus looks at the man who's paralyzed.

He's already forgiven his sin and he says, Okay, you're good.

Stand up, I made you well.

Get up, go home, start a new life.

And the man does it.

He leaves.

He gets up, he picks up his mat and walks home.

Jesus' point is this.

He's like, I could forgive this man.

And anybody can say the word forgive, and you can think, oh, he can't really do that.

But I'm gonna show you just how powerful in my authority and how far it extends.

I'm gonna heal this man.

I'm gonna give him what he came looking for in this moment, and he is gonna get up and he is going to go home.

Why does Jesus possess that kind of authority?

Well, as it turns out, God's plan for forgiveness.

Well, there is a step that includes Jesus.

God's plan for forgiveness, the sacrifice is Jesus.

Later on in the Gospel of Matthew, he tells a story about how Jesus is gathered with a group of 12 failures, his 12 disciples.

They're celebrating the Passover together.

And Jesus takes the wine, the cup of the Passover, and he says this.

He says, For this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

Jesus can forgive failures because at the cross the sinless Son of God bore our failures.

Jesus never failed.

So he's the one who can now forgive.

So this morning, are you willing to draw near to Jesus even in your failure?

Just so you can hear him say, Child, your sins are forgiven.

Are you wanting and desiring to hear that one word, forgive, the one word that can lift the weight, tear down the wall, dispel all of the worry.

Now here's my honest concern, friends.

I worry that some of us are like scribes in our hearts.

We don't want to admit it, but we're like a scribe.

We doubt Jesus has the authority to forgive sins.

Here's what I mean.

We believe that Jesus can forgive some sins, but not all sins.

Like we see sins on this kind of a scale of a little white lie all the way to the most heinous act that humans have ever perpetrated.

And Jesus can forgive about 60% of them.

But once you move over into this category, you're on your own.

For some of us, we feel like we've committed one of those unforgivable sins.

Jesus can't bear to forgive me of what I've done, the pain I've caused.

And in that moment, we are just like the scribes who thinks that Jesus lacks the authority, that the power of Jesus' death and resurrection cannot forgive even the worst of sinners.

We are underestimating Jesus.

One author puts it this way: he says, if there is one way that human beings consistently underestimate God's love, it is perhaps in his loving longing to forgive.

Whatever your failure is this morning, behold Jesus.

Draw near to him and just hear him say, Child, your sins are forgiven.

And also, when you draw near to Jesus, what else do you hear him say?

You hear him say, get up, go home, start a new life.

Live like someone who has been forgiven by me.

How do forgiven people live?

Well, forgiven failures, forgive failures.

Forgiven failures, forgive failures.

That's a little bit of a tongue twister, isn't it?

It's hard to say.

It's even harder to live, isn't it?

I'll be honest, it's easier for me to say it than it is sometimes to live it.

But that is a critical, non-negotiable part of following Jesus Christ.

To be someone who forgives others.

Jesus teaches us to pray, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

I still occasionally teach an online class at Washita.

And throughout the semester, I have students in the class turn in sections of their final term paper.

So, section by section, they turn in the term paper, and I offer them kind of criticism and feedback so that they can improve their rough draft and make it into a final draft, all right?

Rough draft into a final draft.

And occasionally I have a student in that class who just refuses for some reason to take any feedback that I offer them, and they offer me a rougher, rough draft as their final paper.

And occasionally that rough, rough draft is poor enough that it earns an F.

They failed the paper.

Some of us know what it's like to fail a paper, some of us know what it's like to fail a test, but all of us know what it's like to fail in life.

We failed others, we failed to God.

We've earned an F.

I failed at this moment.

But this morning's message, I hope, has shared some really good news with you.

That if we are bold enough to approach Jesus, to draw near to him, the F that for so long we've worn that means failure, it is transformed and now stands for forgiven.

We still bear the F, but now it stands for someone who has been forgiven by Jesus Christ.

All because why?

Jesus forgives failures.

Let's turn our hearts to him in prayer.

And right now, would you just close your eyes and bow your head?

The story that Matthew told us in chapter nine about this paralytic.

I want you to visualize yourself lying on that mat.

Imagine the conversation you had with your friends and said, take me to Jesus.

Get me as close as you can to Jesus.

Help me draw near to Jesus.

Imagine the steps as they carry you, and his face as you get closer and closer and closer to him.

James four: eight, draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.

And lying on your back, looking up at Jesus.

Would you name your failure to him?

Psalm thirty-two, I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity.

I said, I will confess my transgressions to the Lord, and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.

As we sang earlier, as you name that sin, just feel the holy water of God's forgiveness washing over you.

Jesus forgives you so you can also forgive yourself.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Almighty God and everlasting Father.

We draw near to your Son Jesus.

We approach him with our failures, with our baggage.

We approach him holding in our arms the very worst of us.

We're not going to hide it from him.

Jesus, for too long, we've tried to carry these failures on our own.

We've tried to hide them, minimize them, ignore them.

But Lord, they have just left us lying flat on our back, unable to move.

They're too much for us to bear, so we bring them to you, Jesus.

Jesus, will you forgive us this morning?

Forgive us when we know your word and fail to obey your word.

Forgive us when a careless word comes out of our mouth.

Forgive us for the habit that we can't seem to break.

Give us the Holy Spirit to break it for us.

And Jesus, would you even remind us of the depths of your forgiveness?

That there is no limit to your grace and mercy.

That you have the authority to forgive all sins.

So long as we confess them to you, you are faithful and just.

Father, I pray for the person within the sound of my voice at home or in the congregation this morning in our sanctuary or listening on the radio who feels like their failure has been final, their failure, they can't move on from it.

May they hear the words of Jesus this morning, your sins are forgiven.

Get up, go home, start anew.

Release them from the past, Jesus, in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus, we are humbled to know that we can draw near to you.

And you will draw near to us.

Thank you for loving us.

In your name we pray.

Amen.