God Doesn't keep score - Shane Willard

[Applause] thank you everybody i'm glad i'm glad you're all here this is great we can meet and gather if you're like if you're the type let's follow actual bible first corinthians 13. uh we're going to get there in just a second um as always it's an honor to be here with my friend justin chrissy and the team here at presence church and um and as always we uh you know we we we just counted an honor uh to be a part of of what you guys are up to right so um and so my job is to open the bible right and so i take that very seriously so anytime you open the bible you want to ask two questions one what happened and two more importantly what's happening in us right now because of what happened and so we're going to deal with that as as over the course of the day i'm going to do three completely totally different messages and bring these ideas around so if you could see your way clear to come to all three you would be more than welcome just check with the powers to be that there's enough seats and um and we we will make that happen um on in between services um my team will be out in the foyer over to the right there um and we'll have our usb set up audio video as always a hundred percent of that goes to the poor and the afflicted all right so we have three homes in china that look after children with disabilities two and henyang one in chiang sha we also have a rescue home in cape town that gets girls um out as the sex industry off drugs high school educated and job trained so we can do our part to break the cycle of poverty in the cape flats and so a lot of my new stuff yeah thank you most of it's the new stuff from the last two years so we we did a a whole series on revelation because i just couldn't cope with what i was seeing christians put on the internet about it we did uh we did the acc in um in queensland asked me to do a christology course so we professionally recorded that with my friend chris mulher and dustin bell and so we've we've got that out there as well um so there's just a lot out there today's message will be out there as a part of another series so you could come pick those things up audio video usbs and again 100 of everything we make we give that to the poor and the afflicted so which leads me to the bible right so when you open the bible you want to ask a few questions one what happened two more importantly what's happening in us right now because of what happened so i want to read a very familiar piece of scripture if you've ever been to a wedding in your life you've uh you've definitely you've definitely heard this this is first corinthians 13 and it's a guy named paul making an observation about love if you could bring that up for me this is what it says love keeps no record of wrong love keeps no record of wrong i'm going to read that the third time just to let that sink in love keeps no record of wrong the way the way i pictured if you will excuse my imagination everybody has an imagination about how things uh how things work and and what actually words matter less than how we picture those words functioning that's a that's a big big deal what someone says does not matter how you picture that word functioning matters oh so i'll give you i'll give you an example and if you i will use this example again because this is a a throughout the day because this is a great example of what i'm saying here like if i was there there's a way to say something that's true but the way we create an imagination around that truth isn't true right so so i'll give you an example right here here i'm going to say something that's true and i promise you it's not going to be a true imagination all right right here it is ready jesus is your judge true yeah yeah but i've asked all over the world when i say jesus is your judge what is your primary picture almost every person says i picture a heavenly courtroom and jesus is the judge a judicial officer declaring people guilty or not guilty gauging up what you did and what you didn't do and they picture jesus as a judicial officer here's the problem in hebrew the word judge is not a judicial officer it's someone anointed by god to set you free and you already knew that to be true because there's an entire book in the old testament called the book of judges and those people are not judicial officers they are people anointed by god to set people free right and so here's what we do is we say jesus is your judge now come on press in and get close to jesus ain't nobody want to be in court no mentally healthy person wants a relationship with someone keeping score on everything they do but what if we said jesus is your judge which what that means is is he is the one anointed by god so one day you're going to stand in front of jesus and finally be completely totally set free because he is the one completely right that's a whole different thing right so so in other words it's possible to say something true but it creates an untrue imagination so i want to start with a story about my nana right since we're telling stories about nana's today right so i'll tell you a story about my nana and hopefully you identify with this story my nana was a great great woman she kept me from the time i was six weeks old to the time i started school right she was a fully voted follower of jesus uh she's in an old school sort of pentecostal holiness such as a weird group of people but nonetheless she was an outstanding person but she said some things you you realize the things you learn when you're a kid those pictures stick right and i'm going to tell a story about something she said to me and hopefully you identify with some version of it with your pictures as well this is what it would sound like shane hey careful even when granny can't see you anybody identify with that now like all lies they have at least 70 truth to them straight lies never have enough to get going all lies with um have 70 truth to them and there's at least 70 truth in that statement but there's two big fallacies one is that god is somewhere else watching down choosing whether to use his power to help or not versus god being insistent in the story instead of existence somewhere else that's a problem the other problem is that intimated in that story is that god is keeping score that god is keeping track of everything you do and over the top of your head there's a credit side and there's a debit side and one day you'll face jesus as your judge and you better be in credit does that sound familiar is somebody identifying with that right but then the next word out of their mouth is but the cross worked how did the cross work if that's the case and so they they create this thing about score keeping and then they make heaven the worst place possible here's what i was told maybe you're told something similar hey one day you're going to go to heaven and god's going to put your whole life on a big old video screen anybody ever heard that one right okay first of all how boring can you make kevin i'm 45. you want to watch my whole life that be boring right there's been 13 billion people who've lived and died with an average lifespan of 50 years old that means the first 650 billion years of eternity is watching people's lives and people want to go there imagine that buckle in everybody next up methuselah right that would be just horrible horrible and here's the truth in the statement is it true that god sees everything sure is it true that god knows everything sure is it true that the best life is found in never losing our awareness that god is as near as the air that we breathe absolutely all those things are true but if we only heard that side of the coin with no focus at all on in his love and in his consent he chooses to keep no record of wrong the primary definition of god in the new testament is god is love and love is one of those things that's hard to define because love is not that which has a meaning love is that which renders all things meaningful and that is two different things so can you imagine being paul and trying to define love in a linear thing right okay love is patient true or not true yeah yeah but but is that enough no i know it's more than that love is kind yeah the patient and yeah love love isn't envious love doesn't boast love isn't proud i could see paul writing this and going yes but no like yes but more there's got to be more than that and then he gets to this amazing line that god is love and love keeps no record of wrong and here is why that is so important it's because as the great g.k beale said it we make god in our own image and then become what we worship if you need a bible verse to that that's what the whole psalm 135 is about is that when we make god into a big giant projection of us we then become that and if god keeps score then we justify being score keepers in our life and that's part of the reason why that score keeping's just built into almost everything like next like there's a lot of things that keep score like fear keeps score it's easy to keep track of the things that the reasons we should be uh afraid anxiety keeps score anxiety anxiety there's plenty of things to to worry about and we can just we could keep a tally on this and look i'm a big fan of the internet i think the internet has made the world better i prefer netflix right over 400 years ago this friday night entertainment was going to to the city center to watch the village betrayer be disembowelled right it's like netflix is better but but in one sense the the the internet's made the world worse and that is unqualified people can have the same voice as qualified people i mean i had a good friend a good friend called me the other day and offered to raise money to get me out of australia because the news where he was said that australia was under martial law and he was worried about being and it's not and look look at us we're not in martial law myanmar is in martial law and so but it was clearly on a news feed he was reading and he's clearly an intelligent person and so so the availability of more see we used to think if we just knew more we'd worry less not true actually the more information available can sometimes just lend itself to score keeping anxiety keep score anger keeps score for sure like where we keep track of just how far i might have to go to get even it's just so scorekeeping gets built into our in the way we think about everything because and honestly if god keeps score then score keeping should be how things work but the scripture and the god revealed in christ is a whole other thing which is what if god it's not that he ignores what you do it's he acknowledges it and then chooses not to count that against you that is proud because we could just say it this way at the end of the day unhappy people keep score people who think god keeps score and then build that pattern of thinking into their own life eventually unhappy people keep score because score keepers are unhappy can you imagine living life keeping an internal track of who's ahead who's behind who's hopelessly behind but this gets built into everything this is why things that are truly done out of love are so confronting imagine if you went to lunch and with a friend and you were having such a meaningful conversation you weren't paying attention to anybody else that was there and then you go to pay the bill and the manager says oh no no no somebody already took care of your bill what would your first thought be who where i need to know why so i can get them next time so when someone pays the bill with absolutely no expectation of return it confronts the scorekeeping thing in us why because score keeping is built everywhere it's everywhere we look every think about it in marriage how many times have you heard this line oh i don't want to do this but this will give me points with the wife points with the wife does she make you collect points and what exactly are you going to cash those points in for oh i don't want to do this but he'll give me points with the husband points he makes you collect points for what and honestly that marriages that do that never win you can't play that game especially if you're a man a man gets one point at a time he loses 10 000 points at a time you can't you just can't win that and the truth of it is is that all of this comes back down to uh internal belief in picture that god is a scorekeeper that one day you'll face jesus and he's going to put your whole life in debits and credits on a screen as if that would make jesus i if that was the jesus that you heard about and you rejected that jesus i want to commend you for being mentally healthy because it makes me wonder what was wrong with any of us that said oh that sounds awesome let's say yes to that but the god revealed in christ the god revealed in scripture and the god revealed in creation reveals something better than that and that is a god that is willing to engage the disorder of our lives in order to make a better story without keeping track of all the mistakes now that's the kind of person that we'd want and honestly it next slide let's say this way you know can you take me to the airport at 4 am i'd have to get all my kids ready you know and if somebody says sure i'd love to do that that's a loving act until a week later they say remember when i did that for you now you owe me one now the divine holy privilege to be a loving person has been dumbed down to a score to a competition and our ability to show the world what a loving relationship looks like gets dumbed down to something and actually the relationship is not the problem it's the internal picture of belief that god keeps score and if god keeps score then it justifies me being a scorekeeper there's a great story in the old testament that illustrates this very well i'm more of a narrative learner so i could tell a big ol long story and get the point but if you're a linear learner i made talking points for you so that i can if you're a narrative learner you're going to love this if you're a linear learner you'll just follow along on the screen so there's this guy named joseph and the basics is is that there was a guy named abraham who had a son named isaac who had a son named jacob who had 12 children jacob was quite a dysfunctional father he loved one son more than everybody else bought him gifts that he didn't buy anybody else that's not the way to parent he he gives his son joseph a coat he doesn't give anybody else a coat and joseph doesn't help his cause at all he starts having these dreams and in his dreams these haystacks are bowing to him and so he interprets that as his brothers will be bowing to him instead of holding that to himself he calls a family meeting and in the family meeting he says hey guys i've had a vision from god and in my vision i'm standing and you're bowing and this goes terribly why because no one likes a vision where you're standing and they're bowing right and so they intent uh to kill him and so but instead of killing him they end up just selling him as a slave um into into egypt next slide and so what ends up happening is um joseph is quite a gifted person with systems and he ends up being in charge of all the slaves in in potiphar's house and so but the problem is he eventually gets falsely accused of assault and gets thrown into prison but while in prison he interprets the dreams of fellow prisoners and he says hey if you ever get reinstated to pharaoh's favor please remember me i'm here for no reason and of course they do get reinstated to pharaoh's favor and then they forget joseph uh next slide uh so pharaoh then has a dream that stresses him and and the original prisoner remembers hey this there's this guy named joseph so joseph eventually becomes the second most powerful person in all of egypt but it was 22 years after the whole process started so let's stop and think about this for a second if joseph is a scorekeeper how many people owe him a lot his dad sort of owes him his brothers definitely owe him potiphar owes him potiphar's wife owes him the prisoners who forgot about him oh him now he's given the political power he's given the political power to get even with everybody i want you to stop and think about that for a second i want you to think about a time that someone did you wrong and it wasn't like 50 50. it was like no no no they did me wrong and there was some conflict right and i want you to think about how that works right so there's a conflict and i know that this i'm not the only one person this happens to have you ever been in a conflict and three seconds after you left the conversation you thought of everything you should have said right and then what happens do you just drop it and live in peace and take deep breaths no what do you do you have imaginary conversations right right so you start the imaginary conversation right and we love imaginary conversations why because we always win right you will always win your imaginary conversations if you're losing your imaginary conversations get your head checked that's the one place you can win right and so you play out the imaginary conversation you play it out you play it out you play if they do you wrong enough you might do something really dark and lay in bed at night and picture something bad happening to them and there are some people that you would secretly you wouldn't be public about it because that would make you a maniac but you would secretly celebrate if you read on the internet that they were having a problem you would right we play this out now imagine being given infinite power to exact your revenge and choosing to do something better that is the story of jesus and that's the story of joseph all the temptations of jesus on the cross not in the wilderness all the temptations of jesus on the cross was what use your infinite power in violation of love get even with us and even in great stress jesus would not do that because the god revealed in christ is not a scorekeeping god that love doesn't keep score and if love doesn't keep score god doesn't keep score and all the temptations of jesus on the cross this is why this is why it should make you nauseated when you see followers of christ claiming freedom in christ to use their liberty in violation of preferring a more vulnerable person because freedom in christ is best expressed and experienced when it's submitted to the higher moral ethic of love and preferring others as better than ourselves is a central tenet to seeing the world how jesus saw the world right because jesus people christians are not people who are supposed to believe in jesus there are people who are supposed to let jesus frame the way they see the whole world which means the way jesus saw the world the way jesus saw god and the way jesus applied scripture is what christianity ultimately is and one of the most obvious places of that is is that jesus never used his power in violation of something higher than love what we see in joseph and what we see in christ is people who were given infinite power to exact revenge and they chose to do something more profound than score keeping because here's what happens in the story a famine hits israel and the brothers hear that egypt has a storehouse but they don't know that the guy they sold is the guy in charge of the storehouse and so they're going to have to go front up with the guy they sold in the process his father dies which removes any motivation he would have to be nice this whole thing culminates around a table again if you'll excuse my imagination everybody has a picture of how the story plays out i i picture i picture the brother sitting around the table with the military standing behind the brothers waiting on one of two commands cut the throats or serve the food and joseph is in this agony because in that moment if he's normal and he would have been fairly normal he would have at least for a second played out all the play all the people who owed him all the people who owe him in the are they're in the debit side and he can get even right there in one fail swoop and it torments him so much he goes outside and he cries out loud but then he comes back and he says something profound serve the food in other words we're not going to do it this way see in hebrew culture if you eat a meal on a shokon that meant we were reconciled shulkan is the word for table it's also the word for reconciliation without one letter difference so to put something on a table to eat a meal together meant whatever you've done we're just leaving we have eaten at the table of reconciliation and watch what he says this is genesis 50 or so he says but joseph said to them do not fear for am i in the place of god as for you you meant evil against me but god meant it for good to bring it about that many people should be kept alive as they are today so do not fear i want you to notice he doesn't ignore what they did he doesn't say i'm sure you meant well i'm sure you're a good hearted person no no no you were evil and you meant it for evil and we all we both know it we both in other words joseph does something more profound than rationalizing a different motive he says no no i know it and you know it you meant it for evil the forgiveness shown in christ and the forgiveness shown in joseph is more profound than just acting like it didn't happen it's actually acknowledging what happened and then choosing to keep no record of it that is way more profound than just ignoring it so do not fear i will provide for you and for your little ones in other words i'm going to make sure you have food and my nephews and nieces thus he comforted them and spoke kindly to them the details of that are left out but whatever it is it's not what you would expect about how the world works because the world works in a way of score keeping and if the world's way works he should be a scorekeeper here but what jesus taught us and what joseph taught us and what the god revealed in christ taught us the god of creation is it never even if you have a right to keep score it's never wise to keep score because score keeping eventually leads you unhappy why because if life's a competition someone's ahead and someone's behind and some people are hopelessly behind how many marriages could actually be saved if we remove the score keeping how many marriages end because someone truly is hopelessly behind the score how many business partnerships could actually be salvaged if we stopped keeping score but we can't stop keeping score until we repent from our thought that god is a score keeping god and where does that thought come from nana hey even when even when granny can't see god sees and one day your whole life's gonna be put on a giant movie screen for everybody to see so god god publicly shames us god keeps score all of those things how anybody said yes to jesus with that being the primary message i will never know makes me wonder if we didn't all lose our mind for about 20 years but the truth of it is is there's a better way to live the god revealed in jesus and the god revealed in creation and the god revealed in scripture is is a god of love and love does not keep any record of wrong now is it true that we should keep our awareness that god is close yes is it true that he knows yes is it true that we should never lose sight of that yes because that changes the way we treat people we'll treat people better if we're aware of the god in them and the god in us absolutely but if we only think of it that way without any remembrance that in his love and in his consent he keeps no record of wrong way let's say this way let's put some linear language on this next slide so joseph prioritizes love which allows the brothers not to be afraid because perfect love casts out fear joseph frames his place and gods he's like look if there's any giving even here i'm going to leave that in god's pay grade i'm not going to step over into that joseph chooses a perspective of gratitude he's like i could focus on all the bad that happened but actually if i step back and choose to only believe the good part of the story it changes my perspective on the whole thing wakes me up to this joseph honors a position of grace let's say it this way next slide joseph saw the potential for grace in the situation he found himself in in other words score keeping stops when we see the purpose to save rescue restore it will paralyze our lives if we get into that paradigm of yeah but they were wrong and they deserve and i was wrong and i and now they're up and now i'm up eventually that destroys all this this is when people paralyze their life trying to figure out what's the will of god for me i don't know i don't want to move till i figure out god's will well in thessalonians paul says give thanks in all things for this is the will of god for you in in other words like you know do i marry this person or that person i don't know pick one and then give thanks right and pray and depending on the wisdom of your choice you'll either give thanks more you'll pray more either way right right so right it's like oh you know so there's always there's always uh oh i just want to be married i just want to be married i just want y'all yeah well you can still give thanks right now for the money you have today that you won't have after yeah it's always something to give thanks for joseph was in prison he said i want children that's another good one my life's not complete without children okay i want you to have children if you want children when you have children but you can still give thanks today for the sleep you're getting that you won't get once you have the children yeah see the truth of it is a lot of people oh joseph did they not joseph chose to do something way way way more profound serve the food now great sermons are not meant to be agreed with nor disagreed with they're meant to be wrestled with for application like what we do that's that's my best effort explaining what happened let's examine what's happening in us next slide scorekeeping cheapens the relationship into a competition see when we keep score we start to believe that god keeps score and if god keeps score then we rationalize us keeping score and we get into a crazy cycle of unhappiness because if god keeps score then the whole beautiful holy divine life inside of us simply gets dumbed down into a score and some people are ahead some people are behind and when we talk about that in terms of relationships that's funny but it's not funny if it's your relationship when we talk about that in terms of business it's funny unless it's your business but when we talk about that in terms of how we think about god that kind of gets really toxic and really disgusting pretty quickly because if you're here today and you're like i'm hopelessly behind the score the good news is better than that and the good news is that although god knew everything and sees everything in his love and in his consent he chooses to keep no record of wrong maybe let's say this way next slide see the real danger in score keeping is that it violates the love of god as represented by the cross all score keeping ended at the cross use your power to get even nope because the god revealed in christ is not a score keeping god the god revealed in christ is not a score keeping god let's let's stay this way next slide see joseph jesus didn't simply die to fix a problem but to destroy an entire framework of living by scorekeeping jesus's world had mastered the art of scorekeeping what did you do you did what did you mean to do that no you didn't mean to do that you owe a bird and a quarter hand of wine and a half a hand of water and then god's good with you what you did what you meant to do you know you meant to do that you owe a goat a half a hen of wine a quarter hand of water and god will be okay see jesus came into the world in a situation that had mastered the art of score keeping if you did this then you owe god that and then you're fine jesus didn't die to fix that jesus died to obliterate the entire framework of living by scorekeeping entirely so so where are we violating that in our marriages or in our relationships or are we feeling hopelessly behind the score somewhere or maybe if i was to pick one line that i want everybody remember from today it would be this next slide where do we need to remember that god keeps no record of wrongs god keeps no record wrong so what i'm going to do is i'm going to reread first corinthians 13 which is a description of god and i'm going to replace the word love with the word god and i want to see if this change is not our doctrine but our primary imagination of how the doctrine works so if i was to say god is love yeah yeah yeah yeah but then we what is love is love putting someone's mistakes on a giant screen i think not if i'm nicer than that surely god is nicer than me so i'm just going to read this and see if it changes our primary image when we say the word god what are we thinking of god is patient god is kind god does not envy he does not boast god is not proud god does not dishonor other people god is not self-seeking god is not easily angered that's probably one we need to think about for a bit god keeps no record of wrong god keeps no record of wrongs god does not delight in evil but rejoices in the truth god will always protect you always trust you always hopes with you and always perseveres for god never fails one of the primary metaphors of the nature of the forgiveness of god is things like the sea of forgetfulness as far as the east is from the west i think there might be a simple way to say all that and that is god doesn't keep score and if god doesn't keep score then we should abolish all score keeping in our life i hope jesus got bigger for you today the cross worked better the resurrection is central scriptures got bigger not smaller if you can stay around for the day i promise you i have some things coming out that will change your life if it doesn't i'll pay you back whatever they charge you to come okay grace and peace everybody

Channel: Presence Church AU

Views: 188

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Keywords: Presence, Church

Id: LBcjGcnhJhs

Length: 31min 52sec (1912 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 14 2021