 All right, good evening, Radiant Church. Good to be with you. Please check out the website. Pastor Lee, last week, unpacked a little bit about what the Big Give is going to look like this year, but we're really excited about who we're partnering with and the impact we're gonna have. So please, as Sarah said, pray about that, but also you can get more information about it on our website. My name's John, I'm the Campus Pastor here in Richland. I think this is the first time I've spoke since we've had Saturday nights in Portage, so I wanna make sure I say a shout out to you guys. So if you're here, you probably recognize me as the Campus Pastor, but I also have the incredible privilege of being one of the teaching pastors here and filling the pulpit for Pastor Lee, which is an incredible honor. I just want to say Pastor Lee is literally one of my leadership heroes. He is a man, again, who could say, look, hey, look what we've done. Look what God's done. We have a great church, it's a large church. We have influence. We have a level of success, if you will. And he could just kind of sit back on that. And I just wanna tell you that Pastor Lee is the most visionary leader that I have ever known in my entire life and he doesn't wanna do it. He literally wants to see this city and the world impacted with the love of God. And that's why we keep doing more. That's why we keep asking God, give us favor, give us grace, give us downtown buildings because we wanna see your kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven. So I just wanna honor him and tell you, you are in an amazing church with an amazing leader. So let's give it up for Pastor Lee and Jane. It's incredible. So if you brought your Bibles, turn to two scriptures and you kind of put your ribbons or your fingers or whatever there to Colossians, chapter four, so that's Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, General Electric Power Company. Anybody learn that? Four people and no one imported. Okay, you guys skip Sunday school. All right, Colossians is the chapter four and then John chapter one. And for the last, I don't know, four and a half years, we've been in a series called The Battle. So if you're not aware of that, shame on you because you haven't been to church in forever. And I'm just kidding, it's fine. But when I found out I was speaking, I didn't realize that Pastor Lee was ending the battle. So I thought this would still be under the umbrella of the battle. So I'm announced to me, it was like, nope, we hard closed that. So I was like, fine, then just call it the balance because that'll work too. And the Christian life isn't like a balance, people. The Christian life, okay, didn't go that smooth. That's all right. Thanks for working with me. Let's do it all in one leg. Can we do that? No, okay. But it's gonna still kind of fit under the battle umbrella and let's just pray and then we'll dive into God's word. Father, we thank you. We do that. We have the opportunity to join together freely, freely in this nation, in this room, to worship the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. So lift high the name of Jesus. And God, I do pray that you would awaken us to the call we have to be ambassadors, to be salt, to be light, to be witnesses of who you are and what you've done. God, awaken us, God, to the reality that time is short, God, that there is a season of grace that we're in right now where the word of God is literally impacting lives for eternity. And we ask right now that as your word is proclaimed, it would not return void, but it would accomplish all that you have it to do. The power of the Holy Spirit would be in this room. Speak to every single heart, every single situation. In Jesus' name and everyone said, amen. Colossians chapter four, I'm gonna read it off the screen because this translation I chose is better. Verse two through six, Paul's writing to the church, and it says final instructions or additional instructions under the heading. And he says this to the Christians there, devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us too that God may open a door for our message so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ for which I'm in chains, as often Paul was writing from prison. Pray that I may proclaim it clearly as I should. And then he goes on and he says, and be wise in the way you act towards outsiders or people who aren't Christians. Make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt so that you may know how to answer everyone. Paul is giving instructions 2,000 years ago to the church. This is how I want you to address people outside of the faith. This is how I want you to speak or act or love towards people who may not be Christians. And he says, be wise, recognize that we have limited time and then he says, let your words always be gracious, seasoned with grace. Have an opportunity to hear people, love people and understand people so that you'll have an answer for them when they ask about your faith, when they ask about Jesus. And so it's just amazing to me that 2,000 years ago we still have this outline today of what Paul wants to see in the lives of believers when it comes to people outside of the church. And so today's message is really about us as Christians, being salt and light to the world around us. What does that look like in 2019? Because just like Paul who was writing under Roman occupation and there was a lot of persecution, there were a lot of people who weren't Christians, if you're not aware, we are in a similar situation in 2019 in the United States of America. I mean, that really is. And you may be in your own little Christian bubble and you're not feeling unaware of it, but I'm going to literally pop that right now, hopefully, with a pin and tell you that Barna Research, who is a respected researcher in Christian circles and fields, is stating that almost 50%, 48% of America right now is what is called post-Christian. Which means this, if someone is pre-Christian, then that means they don't really have any preconceived ideas about Jesus, maybe they haven't really heard, they haven't made a determination, they don't have a lot of context for it. Those would be pre-Christians. We know what Christians are, they're people who have a relationship with God or they're living out their faith. And then post-Christians are people who, it's not that they haven't heard about Jesus, not that they don't know what Christianity is, but that they have openly rejected Christianity, that they have just said, yeah, I know what that is, yep, I know what they say, but that's not for me, that's not who I am, that's not what I want in my life. And that really is a much higher number in nations like Europe and in the UK, which doesn't mean that God's not doing amazing things here or in Europe, he is. But it just means this, you go there and you see these incredible cathedrals and people who go to them are going as tourists. They're going to look at them and to marvel at them, but not because there's some sort of God experience or worship service going on. Much of Europe is what we would call post-Christian and that's really the direction in many ways that America's headed. So there was a time where being a Christian was sort of a staple of America. Maybe the 60s, 50s, a long time ago, like almost everybody went to church and being a Christian was considered a really good thing and having a relationship with Jesus was considered a good thing and pastors and people who worked in the church, that was a noble occupation. And I'm telling you that much of that is changing beneath our very eyes here in America. If you go to church now, you can be considered an extremist. If you're a pastor in some areas in the world, you can be arrested for hate speech, for saying what the Bible says and for communicating the truth that's in God's word. If you hear words now, especially if you're on Twitter or social media, like white evangelicals and Christianity and things like that, it's associated many times with bigotry, racism, homophobia, extortion, greed. I mean, you name it, we are in many ways being connected in a negative way with what we believe in who we are as Christians. It's not the first time it's happened. You look at the life of Daniel. If you wanna read a great book, Pastor Chris Hodges, has a book he released a couple of years ago called The Daniel Dilemma. We read the book of Daniel. He's literally taken captive. He's just in his own little Christian Jewish bubble in Jerusalem and they get attacked by Babylonians and he gets transported into a culture where he doesn't know the language, doesn't know anything. And what do they do? They take him and they take Shadrach, Meshach, all the smart people and they say, we're going to indoctrinate you with our culture. And they change their names and they change their identity and they say, no, now you're gonna eat the king's food and drink the king's wine. And they literally were like, we're going to conform you to who we are as Babylonians. And you remember Daniel refused it. He said, I don't wanna do that. I'm not gonna defile myself. And Daniel found a way not just to survive as a God follower in culture, but to thrive as a God follower in culture. And the Bible says that God anointed him and favored him and gave him the miraculous breakthrough he needed to do what God was asking him to do. And so you fast forward to today and we have to as a church be aware of the surroundings that we're in that not everybody thinks being a Christian is a good thing, not everybody thinks that following Jesus is a stance you want in life. And so how do we do with that? What do we do with that? This is the premise of the message is this. How do we stand strong for the Lord in a culture that's becoming increasingly anti-Christian? How do we do that? I really feel like we want to, most Christians believe that they're supposed to but we don't know how it's becoming more and more difficult. So I just wanna help us hopefully today because our options are not to bury our heads in the sand. Our options are not to just hunker down in our little Christian clusters and make sure nobody else gets in with our testaments and our Christian everything, right? It's not supposed to be just bumper sticker theology. In case of rapture, this car will be unmanned and sorry for you, I hope you crash and burn for eternity. That's not what we want to do, right? As Christians, our call is to be like Jesus. And so the battle I was gonna talk about under the banner of the battle is the tension or the battle for being people of grace and truth. Just wanna talk about it with you guys tonight. How do we stand for Christ? We have to be people who are of both grace and truth. So now I'll turn to John chapter one. Jesus was the expert obviously, he embodied this. And so it's a long section of scripture but if you've never read John chapter one, it is so incredibly beautiful. I just wanna read the whole thing even though we really wanna read verse 14. So John starts out his gospel in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him. He was not the light but came to bear witness of the light. The true light which gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world and the world was made through him yet the world did not know him and he came to his own and his own people did not receive him but to all who did receive him who believed in his name he gave the right to become children of God who were born out of blood nor the will of the flesh nor the will of man but of God. Verse 14 and the word Jesus became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory. Glory as of the only son from the father who was full of grace and truth. John bore witness about him and cried out this was he of whom I said he who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me. Verse 16 for from his fullness we have all received grace upon grace for the law was given through Moses but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Verse 14 and the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory. Glory is of the only son from the father full of grace and truth. Jesus Christ the word became flesh our savior our king at the incarnation he embodied perfectly what it means to be full of grace and full of truth. And when you read Matthew, Mark, Luke and John you see every encounter that he has with people he is embodying grace and truth to every person. And we obviously want to also have that same anointing have that same ability to speak to people with grace and truth. And the problem and what I wanna talk about often in the churches and individuals today is that we swing the pendulum to one direction or to the other and we don't have a balance of grace and truth. I grew up in a church that was mostly truth driven. Lots of rules. Truth without grace is the person who just says God said it. I believe it. That settles it, you know. You're going, if you don't turn, you're gonna burn. You're going to hell. Sorry. This country's a mess. They come over for Thanksgiving. This country's a mess. And it's a young people's fault. They don't wanna work. No, it's the Republicans fault. It's the Democrats fault. It's a preacher's fault. They don't even teach the Bible anymore. And they might be speaking some true things but how do you know they're just like terrible, right? If that's you and you go somewhere for Thanksgiving and you're sitting next to them, don't look at them, right? Just look at me right now, okay? But they're just like, bam, nah. And I don't know why I tend to talk like I'm in sling blade when I'm talking about truth. I don't know why that is. You're just a boy, y'all not think that. Okay, get it together. Okay, these are the truth people. And listen, they may have something to say. They may have some facts, right? But they're presenting it in a way that is just completely, not just inappropriate, but it turns everybody off. I mean, you can't have truth without grace. It becomes mean spirited. It becomes disconnected. It becomes a condemning word to people even if you're carrying truth. And what happens when your only truth is you have rules. That's what Christianity becomes. And I'm telling you, I grew up in a church that it was all rules-driven. And I'm not saying they weren't Christians and didn't love Jesus, but all I saw through Jesus through the lens of was rules, things we're not supposed to do. Like we weren't supposed to ride our bikes on Sundays. We weren't supposed to, there was just, we keep the Sabbath, we don't ride our bikes, we don't go out to eat on Sundays because then you're making other people work. That's how holy we were. And we don't mow our lawns on Sunday. We do it on Saturday. And I've said this before, but we had a neighbor who did mow his lawn on Sundays. And not only did he mow his lawn on Sundays, he mowed his lawn with his shirt off. And we would just watch him through the window, through our holy window. And I'd just be like, don't you even love Jesus? You sweaty Philistine, right? What's wrong with you? You're not keeping the rules. You're not doing it right. You can't be part of our club because you're not conforming to the rule. I had a friend, Nate, who lived on the street. His life was way worse. He went to some crazy church where they couldn't wear makeup. They couldn't wear pants. I mean, he could, but like girls couldn't wear pants. And no dancing. I was like, what? Who really cares about dance? And it was just, again, him and I would just be like, there was no texting or anything back then. You had to call on the phone. It's just like, we can't play today, we can't. And that's really how I saw Christianity. Raise your hand if you grew up in a church where you couldn't dance. Is that a real thing? Oh my goodness, it's hilarious. I was telling someone that this week, and he was a Baptist minister or used to be. And he goes, yeah, you haven't heard that? Do you know why Baptists are against premarital sex? Because it might lead to dancing. Sorry, I had to share that. I was dying. I literally died. And I have nothing at the Baptist. My name's John, I am one for Pete's sake. But anyway, that's truth with no grace. People don't want to hear it. People are turned off by it. And it's generally the older school of thought that comes up that's like this, this, this. And anytime you have rules that you want to keep, you either run into pride. Like I said, we kept the rules and my neighbor didn't. So we felt great about ourselves, even though we had so many other issues going on in our lives, or it just leads to rebellion. Which was another factor in my, I was just like, whatever, I don't care. I don't want to do this. And I just, you give people rules without relationship and it leads to rebellion. You give your kids rules with no relationship. It's gonna be difficult for those to want to keep them. If we give them rules but we don't follow them or they don't see it in us, people see right through that. And it's often what happens in these truth only environments. But then the other side of that pendulum is grace. And I feel like many times this is where churches are going today is this grace, grace, grace, grace, grace component where it doesn't matter what you believe as long as you are sincere, as long as you're happy. Look, God's love, God understands. It's gonna be fine. You don't have to change. You don't have to repent. You're perfect. Don't worry about anything. Just come on in, feel good. Let's have a homily. It's like nasty overcooked oatmeal. That's what I think of. Where it's just like, it's bland. It has no texture. It's just kind of, it's runny. You know that it's like Barney Christianity. You know, it's literally, it's like, God loves you. God loves me. We're all one big family. You know what I mean? But your truth isn't mine, so leave me alone. Cause I want God just not on the throne. That's what, that's what we do. That's the grace only. Mantell, I know, I'm sorry. The spirit of Barney came upon me and I wanted to share it with you guys. But that's where many churches are today. Oh God loves you, God loves me. And we don't have to really change. And listen, that's not truth. That's not true. God is love and God does love but we've taken our definition of love and we put it on God and said the reason God's love is because he knows this is who we are. He knows I was born that way. He knows I struggled with that but he doesn't really care. Listen, God does care. That's why he tells us to repent. That God embodies grace and truth. He doesn't want truth to be harsh but then he doesn't want grace to be a license for sloppy living. There's a balance between that and we have to understand that as Christians if we're gonna reach the world, if we're gonna reach our city, if we're gonna reach other people, we have to balance the tension of grace and truth. The grace dynamic I think is, the reason I think it's miskewed sometimes is we swung the pendulum so far the other way. When we saw that these churches, like I grew up in, really aren't flourishing and I don't mean anything wrong by that but I have been back to that church and it's literally the same people but they're like 30 years older. They're not, so other churches have come up like this church, praise God, where it's like, look, we wanna have more relevance. We really do want this to be more of a relationship, more of an experience and some have in church have swung the pendulum so far that it's become more about how we present it, that people like it instead of are we still presenting the truth as a church? And that's why I'm so grateful for this church. I'm grateful for Pastor Caleb Culver who leads our worship team and it's not just about the lights and the smoke. Those things are fine but we get emails sometimes, you know, it's just the lights and the smoke but no, it's really not. It's not, it really is about the presence of God. It really is about people encountering God and it's fine to be a relevant church. It's fine to be cool in church. We have some worship leaders who ooze cool. You squeeze them and skinny jeans come out, literally. Nothing wrong with that, nothing wrong with that but you can't become so fixated on are people gonna like it, are people gonna be comfortable, are people gonna be come back the next week that we don't present the truth that's in Jesus, that we just, it's all like, no, it's all good, it's all feel good. And Jesus said in the gospels, He said, look, do you wanna follow me? Then this is what it looks like. You deny yourself, you take up your cross and you die daily, then you can follow me. So if something's becoming too grace heavy, what that means is there's no obedience, there's no self-denial, there's no repentance and there's no change. That's when you know a church has swung the pendulum way too far into the grace realm and we don't confront truth because it's not always easy and it's not always comfortable and people don't wanna hear it which is why Paul said in Timothy, there will be a day when people have itching ears that only wanna hear the things they want to hear, only wanna hear the truth that they perceive as true. And I think this is how God should be and I think this is what love is and I think this is what marriage is and we put on God our truth and we can't do that. That's not how we balance grace and truth. So what do we have to do? First of all, I think we have to redefine the meaning of grace. Yes, Jesus is full of grace but grace and mercy are not the same thing. Mercy is how we are subject to the judging and condemnation of God but he spares us, he shows us mercy. He gives us his unconditional love, unconditional mercy no matter what we've done or where we are, it's one of the attributes of who God is and grace is part of that but grace is also in supernatural empowering of the Holy Spirit so that you can live the life that God has for you, so that you can grow in holiness and godliness so that you can fulfill the plans that God has for your life. Grace is not a cover up for sin, it's not a license for sloppy living, it is a supernatural empowerment so that you can live the way that God's called you to live. So grace ultimately is and it's from the Holy Spirit. He comes upon you, he comes in you and Paul said in 2 Corinthians 12, he's literally like God, I prayed three times, take this thing away from me, this thornness, this thing that has been coming against me and what did God say, my grace is sufficient for you and my strength is perfected in your weakness. You might not have the ability, you might not understand how you're gonna get through this but my grace empowers you, my grace strengthens you, it perfects your weaknesses and so it's not our job to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps or to be better people or to just try harder, it's literally to surrender more to the Lordship of Jesus. It's the dichotomy of the kingdom of God, the more you surrender, the more free you really are, the more you give God your life, the more grace he empowers you to live it with. Four times in the gospel, Jesus says this, if you try to save your life in this world, meaning if you try to just do what everybody wants, go with culture, don't stand out, don't get too crazy, just sort of stay in the middle normal lane, you're gonna lose it, you're gonna lose your life but if you'll lose your life, if you'll lay that down for my sake, you'll find eternal life. It's the only message that Jesus says all four times in the gospel and it is literally the summation of New Testament living. Hang on to this life and what culture says and what's acceptable and you're gonna lose it, you're gonna, not necessarily you're gonna die the next day but you're gonna lose the impact, you're gonna lose the influence that the Holy Spirit of God has inside you for to the world, you're just gonna lay that all down but if you're willing to lay down comfort, lay down popularity, lay down people might think less of you or think differently of you and take up the life God wants you to have, you'll live an abundant life, you'll live a life that every Christian can have fulfillment that can stand before God and say I took what you gave me and I used it for your glory and for your kingdom and I didn't hide my talents and I didn't hide my light under a bushel. That's what it looks like to walk in grace and empowerment and then the second thing is we have to help people redefine the meaning of truth. So we wanna be people of grace and truth but I'm telling you in our culture, especially among young people, truth is a trigger word because if you tell someone I know the truth immediately, especially in a younger generation, they start to think either you're arrogant or you're dangerous, literally. Like you don't, how do you know the truth? How can you be sure of that? Literally we have a generation who isn't sure of anything and so what I'm saying is when we present truth, in my opinion, it's much more important that we have honesty rather than complete clarity when we present truth. So what I mean by that is when we tell somebody the truth in love and we tell somebody the truth with grace, it's okay to say things like, but you know what, I still struggle in these areas. I still have doubts, I still don't know everything that there is to know. I think sometimes people think Christians know the truth and again, it's that, well the Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it and that somehow if they're a Christian, all of that's gonna just become so clear to them instead of us being real with people and saying, yeah, there's truth. Yes, there is a God and he loves you and has a plan for you but it's a process and you grow in the grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and God's not expecting you to have it all together right away. God's not waiting for you to clean yourself up before you come into the kingdom. We can't have churches that look more like country clubs where we all kind of are like-minded and everybody pays their dues and we all have similar stories instead of a hospital. That's what the church is supposed to look like. God forgive us if we have a church that looks more like a country club than it does a hospital and people can't come here if they're struggling. People can't come here if they have issues. I grew up in a church where that was the case. If you got divorced, you just never came back. If you had those kind of issues, you were just, I mean, it wasn't even like you got kicked out, you just knew this isn't my thing anymore. We have to be a church. When you balance grace and you balance truth, people believe that they can come and they can belong even before they believe. That's what radiant church needs to be. A place where they can come in and say, you know what? I don't know everything there is to know. I don't know if I believe in Jesus. I don't know if I believe at what Pastor Lee's saying completely, but you know what? These people have been awesome to me. They've invited me in. They've been warm to me. They've welcomed me in my weakness and my brokenness. That's what a generation is looking for. They're not looking for a cool church necessarily. There's hurting broken people and they're looking not for a cool church but for a real savior that's in the church. A real savior that can meet them where they are that can say, look, even in your brokenness, even in your unbelief, even in your doubt, I love you and I'm for you and we have to be people of truth. Yes, that doesn't mean that we bang people over the head with truth. The second part of the truth component is we have to communicate that truth is not just a formula. Truth is not just an equation. Truth is not just A plus B equals C and that's truth. No, truth is a person and his name is Jesus. He's a person. He loves you. He knows you. He knows your situation and he's for you. That's what truth is. So many people think that truth is restrictive, that God's out to get them. God's out to be a killjoy. God's out to snuff out all of their fun or all of their, and if I say yes to Jesus, then I'm gonna be in Africa and somewhere in a hut and I don't wanna do that. So many people think that truth is, I know in my head the knowledge. No, truth is in Jesus. That's what Ephesians 421 says. As the truth is in Jesus. That's how you've learned. Truth is a man. Jesus in John 14.6 said, I am the way, the truth and the life. Truth isn't meant to be constricting. Truth is meant to be freeing. Jesus said, you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. And what the enemy wants to say is no. God is keeping things from you. God wants to be this stifling presence in your life and if you let go of your life and give it to God, you're gonna be a little puppet and it's gonna be terrible and nothing can be further from the truth. God's truth is liberating. God's truth is freeing. It sets the captives free and that's how it's been all the way back to the garden. Remember God said, I've given you all of these trees to eat. All of them are yours. Anything you want. Just not that one tree. That one I don't want you. Oh God, you're so restrictive. I can't have anything. It's literally like when you tell your children you can have anything you want in the refrigerator. Literally, just don't drink the white bottle bleach under the sink, right? And your kids are like, I can't do anything. It's whole house's rules. It's like, no, you have Gatorade. You have Capri Suns. You have Coca-Cola. You're gonna have those. I'm telling you, it's for your own good. Every kid who drinks bleach regrets it later. Right? But the idea is, no, it's so restrictive. It's so, no, God says, no, this is all yours. I want you to have good things. Be fruitful. Multiply. That's good news when you're standing naked next to a woman in a garden. That's all I'm gonna say. It would be anyways, right? Truth is not restrictive. It's freeing. It is the freedom of Jesus Christ that is so liberating. And we have to be able to present the grace component. Yes, God's for you. God knows you. God loves you. Which is that God has a plan for your life. And sometimes we have to be bold. Sometimes we have to say things that are uncomfortable. And the last thing I wanna say is when we do this, we have to lead with love. Jesus came full of grace and truth. Grace was first. I think that's intentional. Because people don't wanna have truth crammed down their throat without love, without relationship. We have to be very careful about just trumpeting truth from a pedestal or from a pulpit when there's real people involved. Real people that God loves, that God died for, that God sent Jesus for. Even sometimes our language. Well, you know that. Homosexuality, abortion, whatever. That's an important issue for the church. And that would challenge us. It's not an issue. They're real people. They're real people with real hearts and real lives and real value to our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ. It's not us against them. It's not all the blue, the red, the Democrat. It's not how God designed us to walk in grace and truth. He said, no, you lead with love. Ephesians 4.15 says, speaking the truth in love. Meaning you can be right, you can be true and still be wrong in the kingdom of God if your motivation isn't love. If your motivation isn't God, help me see like you see. I don't want those people to be my enemy. I don't wanna be jaded. I don't want my heart to be hard towards people who may not believe like I do, may not see like I do, may not have experienced Jesus the same way I have. We have to be better as the church. We have to lead with love. It's what Jesus did every single time. Grace and truth, what did he do? When he saw the Pharisees and he saw the hypocrisy, he addressed it with the truth component. When he saw the temple being run as a business and people were being extorted, he flipped tables. That's the true side. But what did he do when he saw the woman at the well? He extended living water to her. He said, no, let there be love. Let there be grace before there's truth. Anybody who has a humble heart in scripture, God showed grace to you. Jesus walked in grace to you. Jesus showed love before he ever presented truth, no matter what. And he had a terrible reputation for it. People would say he eats with sinners. What is he doing? Zacchaeus, you remember him? He was a wee little man. And a wee little man was he. And he climbed up for the Lord. Yeah, so you got Zacchaeus. He was a chief tax collector. The worst of the worst. An extortionist stole from his own people. Jesus walked up to him and he said, Zacchaeus, thank you, you come down. For I'm going to your house today. I need to stay at your house. And it wasn't because Jesus was like, dude, you got a place to crash. I'm homeless. It was I want to have relationship with you. Didn't confront him. He came down out of the tree. He didn't yell at him. He didn't condemn him. He didn't do MMA moves on him. He said, let's go. We're going to your house. And people were freaking out. Why is Jesus, if he's so smart and so holy and claiming to be who he, why is he going to a sinner like that's house? Why would he do that? And I'm telling you, Jesus cares more about reaching sinners than what the saints think. And so he went with him to his house. And it might be easy to think that he shut the door. Look, man, I didn't want to say this in front of everybody, but you got to change, bro. You, you're a thief. You're an extortionist. You're a liar. You're little. You're sure. I don't like anything about you, right? Jesus could have done any of that. He didn't do anything. The Bible doesn't say he says anything. He shows him love. He comes into his house. He shows him grace first. And what does that key is say? He says anybody that I've stolen from, I'm going to pay it back four times. There's repentance. Something about experiencing the love of Jesus without judgment changed his heart, changed his trajectory. Jesus didn't have to condemn him. Jesus didn't have to beat him over the head. He just loved him, just showed him, I'm willing to come to your house. I'm willing to build relationship with you because it's the kindness of God that leads to repentance. It's not the repentance of man that leads to God's kindness. It's God's goodness and kindness that leads people to say, well, there is something to this. There is a love I've not known before. I'm going to end with a story and I'm a tennis player, which is why I didn't bring up Michigan and Michigan State because I'm Switzerland there. So can't we all just get along? I'll sing Barney again if I have to. But I played tennis and it was probably 10 years ago. I was, I'm on a team and there was a gentleman on the team. I'll say his name's Joe, it's not his name. I don't know if he's still around or listening, but he didn't know who I was. I didn't really know who he was, but I knew that he was homosexual. And so we're talking and we're actually at a tournament and so we're talking and just asking, you know, looking at this match that's happening and talking about it. And then we both had matches upcoming and we played on the same team. And then the, you know, we're having a conversation and then he asked, well, what do you do for living? I said, I'm a pastor of a church in Richland. And instantly there was kind of a bit of a, I'll say awkwardness, not terrible, but you know, kind of like, oh, and then we talk some more and he got pretty vulnerable and he just said, so what does that mean that you follow Jesus? And what does that mean for someone like me? Like he wanted to know my opinion. And, you know, of course I said, well, you're gonna burn in hell, bro. Let me just tell you, if you don't turn right now, God's gonna fry you and you're gonna have a cabin. Good news is by a lake, bad news, it's a lake of fire. And right, of course I didn't do that. It sounds ridiculous, right? But I could have said, well, here's my opportunity. No, I prayed and I said, God, give me some wisdom here. But you know what I couldn't do? I knew I couldn't say, no, I'm sure it's fine. I mean, love is love and I don't believe that. I don't believe that's true. I don't believe that God hates him. I don't believe that God wants anything other than for the best for him. But what I said is, you know, I'm gonna tell you something, Joe. Jesus would have hung around with you. Jesus would have came to your house. Jesus would have loved playing tennis. And I said, but I believe homosexuality is outside of God's best for you. Just like I believe a lot of things are and I don't wanna condemn you, but I need to tell you the truth about what I believe. And I only share that because it was a moment where at least he could say, hey, I met somebody. We didn't believe what I believed, but he didn't hate me and he didn't condemn me and he didn't picket sign about how, you know, I'm gonna, this is gonna happen to me someday. And I didn't have an opportunity to do anything else. But honestly, and I'm just being real with you guys, I was like, I wonder what people would think as a pastor if they knew I'm having a conversation with this gentleman. Would there be people are like, I can't believe John plays tennis with someone like that. Doesn't he know? That's exactly what they did to Jesus. And listen, I'm miles away from Jesus, but in that moment I was just like, you know, I want to have grace. I really do, but I need to know that I can walk in truth. I'm not gonna turn my back on what I believe. And I believe that's the call that God has for every single one of us is what does it look like for you in your home, in your marketplace, at your job, young person, where you go to school to walk in grace and in truth. Are you willing to be bold for Jesus, but to do it in love? Can you build a relationship first like Jesus did? Can you say, look, I love you and I'm not against you and still be able to speak truth. It's not easy. I'm not saying I do it perfectly. I'm saying I believe that's what Jesus is asking us to do. Jesus was full of grace and he was full of truth. And we do a disservice to his name and we swing the pendulum one way or the other. And I believe that when we do that, God's gonna move. Here's what I wanna make sure we know. It is not our job to tell people, get yourself together, get yourself cleaned up, get your act where it needs to be, and then you can come and join us and be part of our club. Our job is to say, come as you are, Jesus will meet you, he loves you, he for you, and the Holy Spirit is the one who changes lives, not me. That's what we need to do. That's what it looks like. It's not our club and it's not our rules. People should be able to be before they belong, be here, belong before they believe. And we have to have a church that does that. When it's time to speak truth, we'll speak it. And we'll do it in love and we'll have conversations. But we're not in here saying you stay out there. You're the darkness. No, we don't run from culture. We shine into culture, arise, shine. For your light has come and the glory of the Lord is upon you. We don't bury our head in the sand. Darkness covers the land, deep darkness the people. But you are called to arise and shine for the glory of the Lord will be seen through you. Give God an opportunity to use you. Reach out to people no one else will. Be a light, be love, lead with love every single time and let God do what only he can do. You guys stand up with me, I wanna pray with you. And Father, I just, I thank you for this church. And God, we want, we want like Jesus to be full of grace and to be full of truth, God, we do. We know that, Lord, you came and you walked this earth for three years and you said now all authority on heaven and heaven on earth has been given to me. Go therefore, make disciples, baptize people, teach them to do, to obey all that I've commanded you. We wanna do that. We wanna be great commission followers of Jesus. We wanna be like Daniel, Father, in a Babylonian culture where it's becoming increasingly difficult, we ask for strength, grace, and wisdom to be full of love, full of grace, full of truth to the people around us, God. God, even when it's uncomfortable, I pray you give us courage. Even when it's not easy, I pray you give us strength. Even when we think other people might judge us or come against us, God, that we'd remember, we live for an audience of one and his name is Jesus come. You alone be glorified in our lives, God. You alone, and I pray for every single person. I want you right now to think about your family, your workplace, your school, the environments you're in and, God, I just ask you, give us new eyes to see the people around us. Too often we walk into a room and we don't even really look, we don't even really try to see. I'm asking you, God, give us spiritual eyes that see the woman at the well, that see the hurting, see the broken, see the destitute, and Father, reach out with love and grace and compassion. Make us more like you. We pray in Jesus' name.