Grace Truth and Love - Michael Mast

Good morning to each of you, and it is a

privilege to be here and once again see the people

that we hear about. We do hear your names from

time to time, some of your names more often than others,

and in good ways. And so it's good to see

you folks here again. And we appreciate I believe I

speak from my family. We appreciate your reception of our

mother here in your community and the way that you

have taken her into your hearts. And we appreciate that.

And it is a joy to be here in your community.

You can turn with me and your bibles to John

chapter one. I'm going to read several verses from there

here in just a bit. I have pondered what are

the stabilizing components of the Christian life and what helps

to maintain a follow or helps a follower of Jesus

to maintain stability in their life. And I recognize that

y'all have been I didn't realize what your Sunday school

lesson was about until we came here, and I realized

that you recognized that you were studying the early Anabaptists

and what caused them to be the people that they

are fast forwarding today, And part of what you were

doing this morning was trying to wrestle with the idea

of what does it mean to be a follower of

Jesus in the year twenty twenty five and living out

the same principles that the believers did in fifteen twenty

five and before then as well. And so so this

morning I'm going to I think I'd like to continue

that that thought as to what is it that provides

an anchor? And I think one of the one of

the popular ways of saying is what is it provides

the anchor of the soul that enables the follower of

Jesus to remain steadfast in the midst of difficulty and

remain steadfast in the absence of difficulty, Because we understand

that in difficulty we need to recognize the hand of

the Lord Jesus, But in the absence of difficulty, when

things are going well, we forget we need the hand

of the Lord Jesus with us as well. So what

is it that provides stability for a follower of Jesus

in all of life? And I recognize that this morning

I was only given about thirty minutes to speak this morning. Well,

maybe a little bit more than that. I'm not going

to be able to get through all of this, but

several of the components that I at the moment i'd

like to boil down to some of the stabilizing factors. Here,

I'm going to read in the Book of John, I'm

going to read Versus one through five, and then I'm

going to jump down to verse fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was

with God, and the Word was God. The same was

in the beginning with God. All things were made by him,

and without him was not anything made. That was made

in him was life, and the life was the light

of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the

darkness comprehended it not. And jumping to verse fourteen, and

the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and

we beheld his glory. The glory is of the only

begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. John

bare witness of him, And this is John the Baptist.

John bear witness of him, and cried, saying, this was

he of whom I spake. He that cometh after me

is preferred before me, for he was before me, and

of His fullness have all we received and grace for

grace verse seventeen. Yet, for the law was given by me,

but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. So there's

a lot of components here that we could talk about,

and I'm going to spend a lot of time on

all of them. Two of the words that stand out

to me in this passage are the words grace and truth.

And how does grace, How do grace and truth complement

each other? And what are their effects on our lives?

And how does grace and how does truth provide stability

for us in the midst of life? As a parallel passage,

And we're going to get to this here after a

bit in the Book of Ephesians, and I think I'll

have to turn to that. You don't have to turn

there if you don't care too. But in Ephesians, I

believe it's chapter three, and I'm breaking in, excuse me,

chapter four and Ephesians and I'm breaking in here right

in the dialogue of the dissertation about the giving of

gifts and the work of the Holy Spirit people's lives,

The words in verse fifteen jump out to me, and

it says this way, but speaking the truth. So here

we have that one component I talked about earlier, truth,

but speaking the truth in love. Here we have a

different word. And John, we have grace and truth. Ephesians

uses the word truth and love, and so I think

there's three components here. But I should finish this verse here,

excuse me Ephesians four fifteen. But speaking the truth in

love may grow up into Him in all things, which

is the head, even Christ. And once again I'm doing

injustice to this passage by not reading the rest of

it and pulling the rest of it out. But did

you notice what was said here the correlation between truth

and love and what that does to in this context

is speaking about the body of Christ, how it provides

stability and strength for the Body of Christ to be

who they are supposed to be. Jumping back here to

the Book of John, and I want to this morning,

I want to look at these components grace, truth and love,

and how that these components provide a foundation for us

as followers of Jesus to live our lives on. In

the Book of John, it says that the word, and

we understand the word is Jesus Christ. The word was

made flesh and dwelt among us. And here is one

of those interesting components, something that had not been done.

God taking on the form of human flesh and living

among men. If you would read history and read all

these wild accounts, and I don't spend a lot of

time doing it. Of descriptions of the gods of the

people and the actions of the godds, it's fairly worthless pursuit,

but it is. It is interesting to comprehend what people's

or to try to understand what people's comprehension of God

is and how God relates with people. Excuse me, And

in all of these stories, the gods are always aloof

from mankind. And here we see that the God of

the universe came down to man. And John says that

the word Jesus Christ dwelt among men. And he said,

and we beheld his glory. Interestingly, we would understand that

Jesus became a man. He took upon him the form

of a man. I think a misquoting scripture there, but

you understand what I'm saying. He became like man. And

yet John said that there was a glory that we

could see something that was different about this man. Jesus Christ,

who was God in the flesh. Jesus came and dwelt

among us. And this is a powerful, simple statement that

has a powerful effect on our lives today. Excuse me,

Jesus was willing to mingle with the people that he

had created. And how did that affect people? I'm going

to lead that for just a moment. Hold on to

that thought. In the year nineteen forty eight, there was

a man named John A. Roebling and he had a vision,

and he had a dream that he could build a

suspension bridge across the Niagara River. Now, if you're familiar

with the suspension bridge, there are two towers and two

anchor points and then two main cables that go over

the towers that have suspenders that go down to the bridge,

and it creates the ability to span a large area

without supports in the middle of that. And to me,

this is a suspension bridge is a marvel of engineering.

Just how does that work? John A. Roebling believed that

he could build a suspension bridge across the Niagara River.

Not only was it a suspension bridge that could carry

two lanes of traffic going each direction, of lane going

each direction, but also that had a train track above

the lower traffic that could carry loaded locomotives. And this

was what really astounded people. How can you make a

suspension bridge strong enough to carry a locomotive. About two

miles up the river, there was another suspension bridge currently

in use, and this was a very interesting creation. It

was only wide enough for one horse and wagon to

pass at a time, and being it was almost nine

hundred feet across, it took significant time for traffic to

go one way and then traffic to go the other way,

and so there was always a backlog of traffic and

it was not very efficient. John Roblink said he can

make something better and it will work. Eventually, he received

enough support to continue his project, and of course there

was all these naysayers who said, how are you going

to do it? How are you even going to get

a cable across the river? He hired or actually he

opened a competition with all the young boys in their kites,

and he said, I will give five dollars to the

boy who was able to fly a kite across the

river pulling a string. Obviously there was a boy who

did it. The kite landed on the other side, they

hooked a larger rope to the small string and a

larger rope, and eventually pulled their first cable across this

ginormous or mis span. Here I should mention that at

this at this particular location, the river was one hundred

and forty feet below where the bridge was a very

rough river. After John Robling completed the bridge and the

first loaded locomotive passed over the bridge, people started to

believe him. And I was sitting here in church and

heard a locomotive go pasted on the trade tracks. Obviously,

the locomotives in eighteen forty were not the same size

as our current locomotives, and yet this bridge was strong enough.

And to prove his point, John Roblin climbed up to

the top of one of the towers that held the cables,

and he sat on this tower for several hours while

the trains passed by below him. He later said that

he felt more secure sitting on that tower, and there

was less vibration on the tower than there was in

his house that he lived in when the express trains

went past. The bridge continued on for a number of

years until it was no longer big enough to do

what was necessary and they had developed other techniques of

building a bridge. John Robling did what other people said

was impossible. Jesus Christ did what seems impossible and is

still a mystery for us today. How does God take

on human flesh and come and live among us? And

how does that affect how we live today? And how

does excuse me, how does the grace and truth that

Jesus Christ bring into our lives? How does that affect us?

And how does that change who we are and change

our relationships with other people? Some time ago, a good

friend of mine was giving instruction to me, and he

used the illustration of the Golden gate bridge of his

suspension bridge, and he said, he proposed that if we

would liken one pillar of the golden gate bridge to

truth and one pillar of the golden gate bridge to love,

we could get a better picture. Without either one of

those pillars, a suspension bridge will collapse. However, without the

anchor point behind the tower holding the cable, the suspension

bridge will collapse as well. So there's multiple components here.

And I propose that that was the way that it was.

And then I read this passage in John where it

says that the Lord Jesus Christ, excuse me, that was

not the proper inflection. The Lord Jesus Christ brought grace

and truth to mankind. And yet it is the truth

and love that is within our hearts that changes how

we relate to other people. So possibly it is as

Ecclesiastes says that a threefold chord is not easily broken,

that when we have grace, truth and love, and they

are intertwined, they provide a stability and strength that is

not replicated in any other way. Let's think of these

words just a little bit. What does grace mean? What

is the meaning of grace? One of them, obviously, I

think we understand is the divine influence the law on

the heart and its reflection in the life as we

ponder the work of grace. And here's where those Grace

is one of those words that we can spend hours debating.

What does grace mean, what does it look like, and

how does it work itself out in our lives. And

yet it seems that as the divine influence of the

Lord Jesus Christ works in our hearts, it changes the

very nature of our hearts. So the divine influence on

the heart, another definition, is unmerited favor. We could also

define Grace's virtue coming from God, and there's many more definitions.

We're not going to spend a significant amount of time

on that. But as we think about the divine influence

on the heart, the work of Grace, how that changes

our lives? What does truth mean? How do you find truth?

Define truth? I find this difficult. We can define what

isn't the truth pretty easily right. We have words like

half truth, partial truth, where we say that's an untruth,

a lie, or we say, well I misrepresented the truth.

I find it's easier to define truth by its opposites

than actually trying to define it with words, because when

I say I'm telling you the truth, you don't say, well,

then how are you going to verify that you're telling

me the truth? Because we assume that truth is in

its essence, it comes at face value. Truth is the

state of being the case. Truth is sincerity and action,

character and utterance. We have grace divine influence on the heart.

We have truth that is just the real deal. And

what do we call love? What is love? We hear

words like tough love. What does tough love mean? Does

that mean that we assume love is the soft, mushy,

gushy feelings that we have to wards people, and that

if we don't have these mushy feelings then we don't

have love to them. And sometimes we say, well, children

just need to feel the tough love of their parents.

What does that mean? That mean that sometimes love has well,

I was gonna say love has I don't think love

has teeth to it, but love has stability and substance

that is not swayed, is not pushed around. Love takes

on different forms depending on what is happening. And it

seems that as we look at the Lord Jesus Christ,

we understand some of these ideas a bit better. I

can stand up here and try to wax eloquent on

the descriptions, and I'm still gonna fall short. But we

do know that as the Lord Jesus came to earth

and lived and walked among men, he revealed the grace

and truth and love that came from the heavenly Father.

So perhaps it'd be it would do us well this

morning to look at a few instances. There one more

thing before that. Here's some time ago I was talking

with a friend and he said, so, so we understand

what it means to not take the name of God

in vain. We know how not to take the Lord's

name in vain. And I think we understand that we

were careful on our speech. We don't use I was

going to say, we don't use unnecessary words. We're careful

on the unnecessary words that we use. We select them carefully.

But what But my friend though proposed he said, what

if it is possible that we actually dishonor the name

of the Lord Jesus by the way that we live

our lives, not just in the words that we speak.

He said, what if my actions are actually as dishonoring

as using these words that we say are taking the

name of the Lord in vain? That caught my attention

because it reveals to me a connectedness in our lives,

that we cannot separate different parts of our lives for

our own selfish purposes. I watch my words. Therefore, I

don't take the name of the Lord in vain. However,

my actions reveal that I'm not revealing the Lord Jesus

Christ to those around me. Does that also mean? Does

that mean that I am taking the name of the

Lord in vain? I think that that deserves some further

development there, but put that in your mind and think

about that. How does the divine influence of the Lord

Jesus Christ in our hearts work out in our lives

and how does that affect our relationships with other people?

A question that does come up and does arise here

is how can we accurately represent the Lord Jesus Christ

to the world around us? And I think that some

of what you were working on in Sunday School, and

I'd like to hear some more of that further dialogue

because it is a valid question that we face today.

How do we represent the Lord Jesus Christ to the

world around us? And does do the people around us

actually see what we want them to see or are

they seeing something that we'd rather them not see. I

looked like, excuse me. I'd like to look at just

a couple of examples this morning of how the Lord

Jesus revealed his heavenly Father to people and maybe some

of the some of the ways we can learn to

relate to people through him. And I'm not going to

spend a lot of time on this simply because I

know that you know the scriptures well, but I'd like

to just look at just a couple here this morning.

There are three things, though, that I would like to mention,

Three points that I'd like to mention this morning. And

as I'm giving the account of these people she's interacted with,

notice how he modeled these three areas. And also, then

if you have the brainwidth to do this, think about

how you can model these three areas in your interactions

with people as well. And the first one is that

words can bring hope through the Gospel of Jesus Christ,

and the second one is a quickness to listen to

other people, and the third one is speak the truth

in love. Several stories here. I'm going to try to

do this by memory. If I get stuck, I'm going

to depend on your memory. You recall the interaction that

Jesus had with Nicodemus in John chapter three says that

that Nicodemus was a ruler of the Jews. He came

to Jesus by night, and as they talked, he had

some questions to ask Jesus. Jesus, in his wisdom, did

not answer all of his questions directly, but in turn

also asked Nicodemus questions and in a certain in a

way required Nicodemus to answer his own questions. We record that,

we have that record of that account of the discussion

with Nicodemus, and it is a valuable interaction, and I

believe it's recorded for us today for us to get

a picture of how we can interact with people. Notice

that Jesus asked questions. He also listened to Nicodemus, but

neither was he afraid to speak the truth to Nicodemus.

The second account that I'd like to look at this morning,

or think about this morning, and won't look at it

is the Samaritan woman. And you recall this. This account

was that in John chapter four, some of you scholars,

Bible scholars, in John chapter four, Jesus had an interaction

with this woman from Samaria. And it was in the

middle of the day. Jesus and disciples were passing through Samaria,

which was an astounding activity in and of itself. Jesus

sat down by the well, send his disciples to get

something to eat, and this woman came to the well

and Jesus asked her for a drink. We know the story.

You understand the colorful nature of this woman's life. What

is fascinating, though, is Jesus, the author of truth, the

one who knows people's hearts, the one who is able

to see through the facade of everyone, did not ask

the woman the questions that in our minds would be burning,

like what are you doing out here at this time

of the day. Jesus said, can you give me a

drink of water? And surely excuse me? Hur initial response was,

why do you ask a drink from me? Who am

a Samaritan woman? You're a Jew, I'm a Samaritan. You're

a man. I'm a woman. This is no, no, you

don't do this. Jesus in turn said, actually, if you

knew who I was, you would ask for me, ask

me to give you a drink of water. This led

onto the conversation Jesus said, why don't you go call

your husband? I don't know what color did her face turn?

I don't know what her response was. She said, well,

you know I don't have a husband, and jes said, well,

notice what is happening here. Rather than Jesus condemning the woman,

he is inviting her to tell her story. He listens

to her, and the woman ran back to her village

and she told everyone she said, come see a man

which told me everything that I ever did. Interestingly enough,

the people in the village knew some of what she

had done, but probably not everything that she had done.

And she was even willing to admit to those that

there were things that she had done that they didn't

even know about. Jesus didn't lecture this woman, but led

her to the place where she saw something much better

than what she had. Jesus offered her hope. And I

believe that this is the work of grace in our lives,

the divine influence on our heart that offers us something

better than what we have, that we in turn have

something better to offer to other people. And as we

develop those skills the ability to pass on what we

have learned what we know, we are able to pass

on the love of Jesus Christ to others as well.

Ken Sandy says it this way. Good listening is important

in relationships. It improves your ability to understand others. It

shows that you realize you do not have all the answers,

and it tells the other person that you value his

or her thoughts and opinions. And I find it fascinating

that Jesus Christ, who came down who was God in

the flesh, modeled good listening to us and the powerful

effect that it has on people. There's a number of

others here. I'm not going to spend a whole lot

of time on them. Maybe just one more quickly here.

There once was a centurion that came to Jesus. Interestingly enough,

he was a Roman. Jesus was a Jew. He was

in the army. Jesus was not involved with that. And

this centurion came to Jesus because his servant was sick.

He had a need and he knew where to go

to find answers for it. There were many, many of

the details in this story that we do not have,

and I love details. I get bagged down with details

what transpired in this centurion's life that motivated him to

humble himself as a Roman to go to a Jew,

not only a Jew, but an itinerate speaker who didn't

have the best reputation among the religious elite. The centurion

came to Jesus and he asked that Jesus would heal

his servant. But notice what else he said. He said, Lord,

he said, I'm not worthy that you come to my house.

He said, if you speak the word right here, my

servant will be well. And Jesus, if I have my

stories correct here he said, I have not found so

great faith. No, not in Israel. This man, in the

presence of Jesus Christ, modeled something that made God in

the flesh marvel. Does that happen today? Do you think

the Son of God marvels at the great faith of

his followers today? Sometimes I wonder if he would like

to say to the rest of us, have you seen

my servant so and so and the faith that he has?

So words can bring hope, we should be quick to listen.

And the third one that we want to spend just

a little bit of time is speak the truth in love.

When we realize that God has put his love in

our hearts, we can ask him to help us communicate

that love by speaking to others with gentleness and patience,

and by showing genuine concern for their well being and interest.

I find that there are times when I have the

truth burning in my heart that begs demands to be spoken,

and the truth needs to be spoken. In its power

and strength and rawness, truth is truth, and it needs

to be spoken. Truth that is truth that is spoken

is sometimes not well received, as I have been made

aware of. And I don't know if y'all have ever

found that out or not, but it does work that way.

Why is that truth needs to be spoken in love?

And why is it that love needs truth? At one

point in time in my life, I made the conscious decision.

I said, there is truth and there is love. Truth

is harsh, love is gentle. I'm putting my camp in love.

And he guesses what happened? I discovered my inability to

have any significant contribution in the things of life. Why

is that I could be lovey dovey. I could give

all the good vibes, I could give all the good feelings,

I could say all the nice things, but I had

nothing of substance to offer to someone. And this has

been a journey for me to understand that love requires

truth to be effective, and truth requires love to be acceptable.

Without these two combined, either one of them is either

repulsive or powerless. I recognize this as a hasty generalization

and an overstatement to a certain extent, but you're getting

my point here, Okay, so you're thinking about it. There

are times when things must be said as they really are,

but they can't also be said in such a way

that they are able to be heard. And sometimes the

truth can be spoken in let me back up again here,

let me start over. I had had to get run

at this one here first they stalled out on the

first one. Sometimes we are actually more effective in speaking

the truth when we get the individual themselves to verbalize

the truth and ponder. The woman in Samaria, Jesus could

have told her, you know, the man you're living with

right now, he's not who you should be with. What

you're doing, isn't right. He didn't tell her that. The

woman herself said that she came to that realization why

she was presented with the truth, and she herself verbalized it.

And I think sometimes we can actually be more effective

in helping people come to the realization of the truth

themselves and having them speak the truth, rather than us

speaking those words of truth to them. And I'm not

here saying we don't ever have to speak the truth,

because we do. We should always speak the truth and

nothing but the truth. But we should always speak the

truth in love. In speaking I believe that we can

learn a few things from the word that became flesh

and dwelt among us full of grace, and truth. The

word pause is used as an acronym to help us

remember these things, and so the next time you're faced

with this pause For p we could use the word

prepare In a conversation that has potential to be difficult.

We do ourselves a great favor by preparing before we

enter into it. The conversations we enter into without preparing,

we find ourselves causing more pain than progress. Prepare. The

second one, for A is a firm relationship. Rather than

saying I am out to put you down, affirm that

you are actually making an effort to raise another up.

Affirm the relationship rather than destroy relationship. For you, we

have the idea of understanding interest what motivates this person?

And how does knowing what motivates them affect how we

relate to them? Where do we have where can we

connect on common ground? Fascinating into conversations with people, how

you discover things that you both have mutual interest in

and how that creates such a bond. You know, you

leave a conversation and say, yeah, I had a good

conversation with that guy. We like the same thing. Other

conversation you say, you know, we had absolutely nothing in

common we could not get anywhere. It was just better.

We just both had to walk away because we weren't

making any headways. We were polite to each other, but

that was the end of the conversation. Understand interest For us,

we have the idea of search for creative solutions rather

than assuming that I know the answer to the situation,

use dialogue to work together to find helpful solutions rather

than coming with preconceived ideas. I will say this, you

do yourself a favor by having some ideas thought of

ahead of time, but allow them to happen organically in

the relationship, rather than presenting them at the beginning of

the relationship of the conversation. And for E have the

idea of E value wait options objectively and reasonably. If

any of you have ever heard this, when you're in

the midst of a difficult situation, stop and take a

breath and breathe and think for ten seconds before you answer,

then you are aware of this. But in relationships, in

talking with people, in speaking the truth in love, remember

to pause and think about your options before speaking. And

I believe that as we do this, we reveal to

the people around us the grace and truth and the

love that comes from Jesus Christ. Because when Jesus came

to this earth to live among men, he made it

possible for us to have a connection with people that

was different than it was before. Because as the power

of the Holy Spirit lives within our lives, we are

enabled and we are empowered by the very presence of

God within us to relate to people and to connect

with people on a deeper level because it fundamentally changes

the perspective in our hearts and our lives. No longer

are we seeking to make sure we end up on

the top of the pile, but we are seeking to

find a way to have a mutual working together. I

have a few I have a few relationships. Actually I've

got a lot of relationships, but I have a few

relationships where the truth is spoken fairly uncovered by love.

I think as well, the relationship is covered in love

and the truth is spoken in that relationship, but the

truth is just ends up being just bare bones. I

don't know if any of you ever have those relationships.

Those relationships are actually fascinating for me because there is

a refreshing aspect of speaking your mind freely without worrying

what the other person is gonna do with it. Ideally,

we get to that point in other people with other people. Realistically,

there is likely only to be a few relationships like that.

Most of our relationships we cover truth in love and

grace as we offer it to people. However, we can

be the type of person ourself who is able to

receive the truth that didn't happen to be packaged in

love when it was given to us, and I believe

that is a real mark of a follower of Jesus

Christ who takes the truth that is thrown at them

with a bit of malicious intent and accepts the truth

and allows the love of Jesus Christ to soften that

truth and to surround it. Truth in a relationship implies honesty,

being real with each other and living out the truth

of God, and a safe relationship is one of those

that offers grace to other people as well. Grace implies

unconditional love and acceptance with no condemning, but neither backpeddling

and being wishy washy. Relationships without grace tend to be

hurtful and do not always produce growth. So when we

have to earn love in our relationships with others, we

find that difficult, and the relationships tend to peter out

and disappear with time. However, when we have received the

grace of God in our lives, we are then enabled

to extend that to others and convey to other people

that they will not be shamed or face anger from

us by what they are experiencing. A safe relationship gives

grace to others, but it also speaks the truth, because

without truth, the grace filled relationship will be destructive and harmful.

Truth provides the stability grace and love provides the cushioning

that enables truth to be accepted. We need people who

will speak the truth to us and tell us where

we are wrong and where we need to change. And

we also need to be the type of people who

are able to speak the truth to others. Because in

Galatians chapter six, it says it this way, Brethren, if

a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual,

restore such an one in the spirit of meekness. What

does the rest of the verse say, considering thyself, lest

thou also be tempted? In an effort to sum this up,

we as a people desire to have a deep connection

with Jesus Christ and with other people in I believe

we have been created this way, and it is beautiful

and it is how it is supposed to be. In

search for a connection with people, we sometimes are hurt

by others, and that can lead us to withdrawing from

people and ultimately withdrawing from God. The goal is to

learn to accept the grace and truth from Jesus Christ

and then to accurately reveal that to others as well,

because as we experience this from those around us, we

are also able to experience grace and truth and love

from Jesus Christ. May God bless you as you continue

to be people who reveal Jesus Christ to those around you.

God bless you. I'll turn the time back to Joel

or whoever else is in charge you