Radical Grace - Ben Stuart

well I grew up in the suburbs of Houston and it wasn't an entirely monocultural experience I had a Muslim neighbor from Egypt had a Hindu neighbor from India on either side of my house but it was a primarily white experience it wasn't until high school that I could say honestly I had a close black friend that was able to for the first time explained to me some of his experience growing up in a prior primarily white neighborhood and we would process that together and I'll never forget the day he took me to the movie theater to see menace to society and we walked in the theatre and I noticed both of us got nervous and for me I realized laters it was my first time to be in the minority ethnically in a room I had never experienced that and then I looked and he was nervous I think because he was the guy who brought the only white guy to the to the movie but by the time I got to college I was a part of Campus Crusade for Christ and they had opportunities in the summer you could go to different parts of the world for the summer and it wasn't just a little mission trip it was to go integrate into a culture you get job work and many of more overseas primarily most of my friends went to China but there was a brand new opportunity to go to the inner city of Denver and lived there and of a multicultural experience and I wanted to go and I wanted to understand more than I did so I moved into a pretty rough neighborhood that in the middle of it was a very vibrant church that was ministering to an urban poor primarily black neighborhood and it was eye-opening to me it was difficult but I'll never forget we began to read the writings of John Perkins and they had a huge impact on my life so I was thrilled when John Perkins came to speak to us and I'll never forget when he spoke he turned to the Prophet Jeremiah like many civil rights leaders before him the prophets gave him the language of the cry for justice and the lament over the lack of it and I'll never forget hearing him read Jeremiah chapter 8 when he said my joy is gone and grief is upon me my heart is sick within me behold the cry the daughter of my people from the length and breadth of the land is the Lord not in Zion is her King not in her why have they provoked me to anger with their carved images and with their foreign idols the harvest is past the summer is ended and we are not saved for the wounds of the daughter of my people is my heart wounded I'm mourn and dismay has taken hold of me is there no balm in Gilead is there no physician there why then is the health of the daughter of my people not been restored oh that my head were waters and my eyes have found the tears that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughters of my people the Prophet Jeremiah was looking at the injustice in his nation in that day and crying against it but also feeling deeply said I wish my head was a fountain of water because I can't stop crying and he said I mourn which is interesting to me that the word in Hebrew is I'm black and he was saying it is a place the morning and he said I'm black and dismay has come upon me and then he said the hurts of my people the daughters of my people are my herd I'm not separated from the pain of the people among me who are suffering and then he grabs a metaphor when he's trying to talk about the suffering of his people and he asked the question is there no balm in Gilead balm wasn't as an ointment Gilead was the region he said is there any healing for our nation is there any physician that can heal us and when he talked about the injustice he saw in his nation he went to a medical metaphor is there any healing possible and he points to the idea and the reality that you can't heal an illness by a norine it you can't heal a disease by denying its existence if you want to heal a wound you have to expose it and that's a scary thing to do because when we can hurt we want to cover it up my son fell flat headfirst on a concrete yesterday busted his head open and like any person who's heard he wanted to turtle up and hide it from us and there's risk and exposing a wound particularly if people around you don't know how to handle it and his sisters bless their heart wanted to help him and they're pokin at it which is not helpful at all but it doesn't change the fact that if there's a sickness or disease you have to expose it but you expose it to a physician who can heal it and Jeremiah asks that question is there no balm in Gilead is there healing for our nation is it possible then he asks is there a physician in her is there someone who can bind up the wounds of a hemorrhaging nation and the reality is that he points that is that the magnitude of the solution is commensurate to the magnitude of the problem the magnitude of the solution has to fit the magnitude of the problem if you skin a knee you need a band-aid if you break your leg you need surgery if you're dead you need a miracle and the Apostle Paul in Ephesians chapter 2 gives us the diagnosis of our problem and then he presents the remedy and so I'm hoping we can all go on a journey today Church to let the Scriptures give us perspective and Paul is going to give us a diagnosis that's worse than I think many of us think and then a solution that I think provides the pathway forward but as he diagnoses our problem the human problem he backs the lens up there and he says in verse 1 and you were dead and he makes it personal as he speaks to the Ephesians that he knew you were dead and he uses an interesting word for death there he uses the word necross in Greek it's the word corpse when Spurgeon taught this text he went in great detail to describe the horrors of the deccan decomposition of a dead body and and I won't go into all that detail I'll let your imagination do that but he said when Paul was trying to describe the spiritual nature of his people the metaphor his mind grabs is of the morgue there's death inside here and he says we're dead in our trespasses and our sins trespass means we've gone places as people we were never meant to go soon as we arrived at places we were never meant to be we were meant to be something better than this and were not we have all fallen way short of the glory of God and then he says in which you walked following the course of this world the Prince of the power of the air the spirit it's now at work in the sons of disobedience among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh it's fascinating that whenever something conspicuously evil happens in the news whether it's a bombing of a building or the shooting of a school or the kneeling on a neck of a person for 9 minutes inevitably the culture tries to answer the question why why does that happen and we point to different factors and reasons and we go to societal reasons some people say well it's an environment it's a broken system there's systemic injustice and there's maybe a bad environment he was raised in there were people that that said things to you and it was the system that failed you a society that corrupted you but some people don't go to societal causes they instantly go to spiritual reasons there's a spiritual darkness here there's a dark unseen world behind this and still others go not to societal or spirital they personal reasons they go no you made a decision that was your choice you did that we don't have to look for evil anywhere else than inside of that person and then when people try to quantify where the Scriptures land they typically put them in that second box well the Bible speaks to spiritual things which is a little bit less hazy impossible to quantify and maybe a little less intellectually refined and so when the nation contemplates the origin of evil they typically move to more intellectual conversations about nature versus nurture and societal factors or personal ones but the Bible is more sophisticated than that as Paul looks at the evil in the world he says you were dead in which you walked following the course of this world there is a social component to our sickness there is systemic injustice alive in us and there are societal factors that infect us we are more shaped by our culture than we realize and we absorb our culture around us good and bad Thomas Jefferson who participated in slavery wrote in his journal I tremble for my country when I reflect on the fact that God is just he said I know what I'm a part of is wrong and yet he continued in the course of this world there is a social factor that must be named but then Paul says and we followed the Prince of the power of the air there is a spiritual component it's fascinating when ever people get really close to real evil when men were liberating Nazi concentration camps they didn't ultimately or instantly go to societal factors I didn't go man Hitler must have had a really a mean mom he didn't get enough hugs as a kid they would instantly go to some spiritual factors of there's a real darkness here that's hard to quantify and put in a test tube and people that maybe even don't have faith moved to spiritual language when they see real horrible darkness in the world John Perkins when he was in Mississippi ministering and was arrested and beaten to near death by the time racist police officers he said I looked at their faces while they were beating me and he said they looked like white demons and in a weird way it actually engendered pity in him he said I saw what the evil of racism had done to them he saw a spiritual force at work in him but then there is a personal culpability he says among whom we all once lived and that's good preaching he's been saying you you and then he says we it's a problem for all of us we all indulge the passions of our flesh and of the mind he said we indulged in the passions of our flesh that's talking about impulse all of us if we're honest at some point we were mad and we popped off whether online or rather to a person or we took the swing or we took a swing somewhere or all of us we've had some lust come at us and in a moment we indulged and lingered all of us have made a choice in the impulse to follow a passion we later regretted and he said we also followed the desires of the mind and all of us knew something was wrong and made a cognitive decision to do it anyway and we are very much sons of our disobedience following the course of a broken world and he says were by nature children of Wrath like the rest of mankind Paul calls out evil and he calls out a divine standard for justice justice isn't preference there is a God who has wrath there's a place for anger when you see injustice imagine if you owned an apartment complex and gave it to someone to manage while you left the country and you came back and 30% of the children there had been abused and molested and 99 percent of the money had been hoarded and not redistributed and people were discriminated against based on the color of their skin if fell someone managed it your property you'd be furious that's not my character reflected on my place and that's why God feels wrath he looks at the earth and says look at the statistics 30 percent of young girls by the time they're 18 have been molested and abused look at the history of abuse in our culture God has indignation every day when he looks at the world there's a place for wrath and he says God as a divine standard and he will judge the world by it and he says we've all fallen short of it all of humanity like the rest of mankind and sin manifests in different ways but we all have the disease it's interesting coronavirus is ravaging us and I've talked to several friends who had it and some had a fever and joint pain others had shortness of breath and difficulty breathing others had no symptoms at all there was very different manifestations of symptoms and yet they all had the disease and sinners like that it's fascinating Jesus and his ministry he raised three people from the dead that little girl who had died moments before still look like she was sleeping still had color and her skin was probably still warm he raised from the dead a young man in the middle of the guys funeral literally stopped a procession raised the guy from the dead the guy was probably already stiff then the third one he raised was Lazarus who had been in the grave for days so when Jesus showed up and said roll the stone away Lazarus his sister instinctively responded no don't do that he's going to already stink he's got the stench of decomposition already on him different manifestations of death and yet one common factor they were all dead this person was exhibiting more of the symptoms of death this person and yet they all had the same disease all still dead it wasn't that he's dead and he was mostly dead and she was a little dead it's they were all dead not in need of an astronaut in need of a band-aid in need of a miracle and all of us have fallen short but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses made us alive together with Christ by grace you've been saved he raised us with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus pastor Louie says this all the time and I love it because it's worth saying all the time Jesus came not to make bad people good but dead people alive that's what Jesus did he didn't stand back from our pain he didn't say that was your problem he saw the pain of his people and he entered into it I will take on the shame you're experiencing I'll take on the injustice you've experienced I'll take on the inconveniences and devastations that are part of your life I will make a part of my life I will not stand distance from you I will enter in with you whether you've been the perpetrator of violence or the victim I will move towards you and you see in this moment he came towards us not because of something good he saw in us although yes we're made in the image of God and there's something beautiful about us the hope today is that God isn't coming to save you because there's something good in you because some of you maybe you look at your life and you say there's nothing good in me I'm not worth saving and God saves us not because of something good he sees in us but because of something good in him because of his great love wow we were sinners Christ died for us that's the hope today restoration is not rooted in our worthiness but his and so he moves towards the broken and he says I'm going to bring you back to life and I'm not just going to raise you with Christ I'm gonna seat you with Christ I'm gonna put you in heavenly places with Christ I'm gonna associate you with him so that in the coming ages I can display the immeasurable riches of His grace and kindness towards us in Christ Jesus I'm gonna take objects of my wrath and make them emblems of my mercy that's how radical the grace of God is it bridges the gap between heaven and earth for by grace the kindness of God you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing it's a gift of God that through faith is where it gets personal it's the empty hand he gets personal here it says it's with him with him with him I'm United with Christ this has to be personal if it's going to be transformational if you study Jesus and the gospel like it's a history book and will not transform you and it will be powerless to transform the pain in our culture it has to be personal with us for me I live right near by the Arlington Cemetery in DC and I always respected Arlington Cemetery as a place to rest the bodies of servicemen and women who gave their lives for us and ever since I was in Middle School and visited Arlington I had a respect for it and saw the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier the incredible detail with which soldiers guard that place to display honor to those who died for us I I always had respect for that hill but now that I live here in DC I I have a different experience because a year ago this week I presided over a a burial service in Arlington Cemetery for a man it was part of our church who I knew and our church loved and I stood there with him and his family and honored him and so I've never seen Arlington Cemetery the same again and I got to know a man who guards the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and now every time it rains or snows or is cold or is hot in DC I think about the fact that those men rain or shine heater cold or out there showing honor to the fallen and I have a different personal connection with that place and it's intimate for me and for the hill of Calvary to be transformational for you and for me it's got to get personal we've got a thing like BB King that when I look at the cross say I was there when they crucified my Lord I held the scabbard when the soldier drew his sword I rolled the dice when they pierced his side and yet true love conquered that great divine with shame I hear my mocking voice crying out among the scoffers it was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished and his death has brought me life and I know that it is finished when the gospel becomes personal I'm with him I'm with him I'm with him his grace comes to me through faith not through works but through empty hands then it becomes transformational it changes something in me because you realize there's no boasting for me it's not as a result of works the grace of God generates humility in me I don't deserve to be forgiven I don't deserve anything but he loves me is transformational and when that transformation happens I realize in verse 10 I'm his workmanship created in Christ Jesus now ready to do good works that God has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them he changes me on the inside and that chain just the way I walk on the outside no longer according to the course of this world now I walk in the Corden's with his works of radical grace of God changes me on the inside and it changes how I live on the outside that I become something new in Jesus now here's something interesting Church don't don't turn this off just yet because many of us this is where we stop Ephesians chapter 2 we go that's it man I was lost now I found Jesus came now I'm alive let's sing put your faith in Jesus bring out the band and normally in our text we put a big break between verses 10 and verses 11 but Paul's not done speaking and in verse 11 he says therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision which is made in flesh by hands he's in the same conversation and he says hey Gentile it's the word ethnics where we get the word ethnic he says I want you to remember that at one time you were called uncircumcision by those who were called the uncircumcision you already preached the gospel that the gospel is enough and Paul goes no as an extension of speaking the gospel I will now raise up the conversation of ethnicity and as a function of the gospel I want you to remember that there was F Nick's separation among us that there was distance because of our culture in the color of our skin talking about racial tension and ethnicity is not the product of some political agenda it is gathered inextricably from the cross of Jesus Christ because the cross has a vertical beam that Jesus Christ reconciles by his grace God and man and the cross has a horizontal beam the grace of God is that powerful that now it reconciles humanity and so Paul while discussing the gospel raises up the conversation of cultural tension it's not a separate conversation from the gospel it is inextricably linked he says Jesus has changed us yes Paul yes so let's talk about race let's talk about that there was one ethnicity that called the other ethnicities this name Gentile and didn't just call them that name they called you the uncircumcision some you go what does that mean well I won't go into all the details of circumcision and how it works you can ask your parents of your child but the idea in the Old Testament was it was an outward symbol that was meant to reflect an inward change of a circumcised heart that the people of God who were the ethnic Jewish people would have a heart that was tender to God so they could be a kingdom of priests to the Ethne to the nation's and they were meant to take a place of honor as God's chosen people to be a place of distribution of His grace to the nation's and yet he says there was a clientele of people that distorted that message and made the external symbol of circumcision a place for pride we're special you're not by virtue of my ethnicity God likes me more that's the idea between calling you the uncircumcision see I'm the circumcision I'm a part of the ethnic group that God truly likes you're the uncircumcision Paul surface is not just an ethnic distance he surfaces deep-seated ethnic pain in the same conversation he says here in the context of the gospel let's now bring up these issues you used to say some horrible things to them when you read the word uncircumcision there insert a racial slur because that's what it was and Paul says there's a place to bring that up to surface it remember it and then he tells the Ethne remember you were separated from Christ alienated from the Commonwealth of Israel strangers to the Covenant of promise they knew to expect a hero who would one day calm you did not know that he was coming so you had no hope and you were without God in the world but now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ and don't miss this for he himself is our peace who has made us both one it has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility why use the metaphor of a wall because back in that day in the temple the Jewish people ethnically could be closer to the inner courts where God was and there was a big wall the f may had to stay out there and there wasn't just a physical wall there was this wall of deep-seated prejudice and Paul says there is a wall but the gospel of Jesus Christ is so powerful and significant that it not only bridges the gap between heaven and earth it breaks down the walls of hostility between ethnic groups and it takes them both and reconciles them together in one body this gospel is not worth preaching if it doesn't have the power to reconcile the difference between ethnic groups but here Paul looks at the Jew who had been enslaved in Egypt and enslaved in Babylon and oppressed by Rome I'm so cautious among the Romans and it looked to the Romans who used their superiority and didn't care about the plight of the Jew he says the gospel of Jesus Christ acknowledges our tensions ethnically it's the human propensity to create us versus them yet the gospel is powerful enough to reconcile you both in one body Jesus Christ grace is that radical it makes enemies not just into friends but into family he abolished the law of Commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two so making peace and reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross killing the hostility what burden was Jesus bearing on the cross he was bearing the burden of racist shame I mean that's what that sign was about King of the Jews you remember Pilate made that sign and the Jewish leadership said no don't put that sign up there say he claimed to be the King of the Jews and Pilate saw their Envy and said no I'm gonna call him that as a mockery of your people I'll say look what Rome gets to do to humiliate the king of this ethnic group Jesus bore the shame the Jewish people but then while he hung on the cross he was also being mocked by the same Pharisees the leaders of those people were mocking him because he didn't fit their version of a radical they wanted Barabbas who would destroy not of Jesus who would heal and so he was taking it from both sides and he took the wrath of God against the sin of humanity he stood in the middle of all of our pain and he absorbed it all and he didn't redistribute it but he prayed for forgiveness while they drove the nails through his arms God forgive them because they don't know what they're doing and he prayed for us and he cried out his pain to his father why are you forsaking me but he didn't curse his God in the process entrusted him with a spirit and we who were unworthy received an unbelievable gift of grace from a nun obligated giver not because of something beautiful in us but something beautiful in him and he made peace with us killing the hostility what's the secret to the death of hostility it's the humility to understand the only way we get into the family of God is through the grace of Jesus he reconciled us both in one body through that cross and he preached peace to we were far peace to those who were near and through him we both have access in one spirit to the Father the key to unity is humility but the ground beneath the cross has been leveled that the only people worthy to be there are those who fall on their knees and say I am not worthy to be here and so I don't hold on to some feeling of superiority over you or you because it's the admission of my unworthiness that makes me land here on my knees before the cross and you see that it's the humility that the cross calls for that is the seedbed of unity the radical grace of God assumes you need it grace means to stoop down and bestow and I need someone to stoop to me and so if he crossed through all that hostility for me that I can cross through any barrier of hostility for you if he bore my suffering for me then I will bear your suffering with you does that make it easy no and in the book of Acts you see in Acts chapter two and the Spirit of God lands in people they begin to speak in tongues and men and women from all different nations come to Christ it's a revival the Spirit of God breaks loose people are getting saved coming to Jesus Redemption is happening all through these people from all different nations and started putting their faith in Jesus solve all their ethnic tension now you see like verses later not even in a different ethnicity with any Jewish people the Hebrew Jewish people denied bread to the Greek assumin Jewish people that because you dressed and talked differently there was tension and the church had to say no wait a second everybody deserves bread guys and then as more people came in from different ethnicities you see the Apostle Peter who would preach the gospel at the drop of a hat I mean there was a guy that was poor that asked Paul from Peter for money and Peter instantly says money I do not have but what I have I give to you believe the heel and preaches the gospel didn't even ask for it then when God told him to preach the gospel to someone outside his ethnicity Peter didn't want to go and when God told him to go to Cornelius house the Gentile house Peter showed up and said what do you want me to do and you see that the arrival of the Spirit in his heart didn't solve all the ethnic tension in their culture and so I want you to put your faith in Jesus today but will that fix everything no but hear this it provides the framework for constructive conversation not destructive it creates the ability to heal there is a balm in Gilead because there is a physician in her and he invites us in a safe place to both be reconciled to himself in one body he says I delight to see you be as one and in this context I will call you to remember your hurt and give you the opportunity to listen and not speak and you see in Ephesians chapter 4 as he unpacks this he says I urge you walk in a manner worthy of this calling and he says with humility and gentleness and patience bear with one another in love eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace God has built us together different ethnicities into one building good by brick and now you're calling the good deeds to walk in is to be eager to maintain that unity purchased by Jesus brought by the spirit but it's going to take patience and humility and gentleness it's going to take time and I don't have a lot of advice for my black brothers and sisters on how to minister but I will say I'm grateful for my black friends who have humility and gentleness and patience with me I think about a conversation I had a couple weeks ago where one of my friends texted me to just tell me how he was feeling after the death of a Matar burry and I knew that was a risk for him to share his heart with me and I was grateful he did and even more grateful that he was willing to process with me he told me stories about things crazy racist things that had been said his teenage daughter last month and some naive part of me just was like I just wanted to believe that that was mostly over and I know better than that but some part of me still thinks someone still wouldn't say that and yet here it is and I need to be reminded of your experience because it's not mine and I could walk away from it but I don't want to because when one part of the body suffers all suffer in Christ Jesus gave his body to reconcile not just heaven and earth but God and man and humanity together the cross has a horizontal beam and a vertical beam that the grace of God is so radical it creates unity and I remember when I first became a part of a church that would do communion where you walk down front and would grab the bread out of a basket and dip it in the grape juice or wine and eat it I I've never done it that way and I thought that version was kind of weird and we may never do it that way again now with coronavirus but when I was on staff I remember standing there once and I was the guy holding the cup and his people would come forward I would tell them the blood of Christ was shed for you and we do this or did it as a church and it was so good for me to see my white brothers and sisters come and be able to say to them the blood of Christ was shed for you daughter to see my brothers and sisters come off a variety of ethnicities the blood of Christ was shed for you Rosa the blood of Christ was shed for you yesterday to see my black brothers and sisters come forward and say the blood of Christ was shed for you Morgan you Jason that he came for all of us that I find renewed day after day a sufficient amount of grace to understand humility is birthed at the foot of the cross because we all need his shed blood and that humility is the seedbed of our unity the grace of God is that radical so I want to thank my black brothers and sisters who are manifesting Ephesians 4 to be humble and gentle and patient bearing with me and love and I want to challenge my white brothers and sisters our church meets in the Howard theatre in the neighborhood called shawl named after Robert Gould Shaw he was a white man who was called up to be the officer over the first all-black regiment in the Civil War as he was able to stand shoulder to shoulder with his african-american soldiers he walked because they were offered to pay that was a fraction of the pay of white soldiers and he encouraged him don't put up with that don't suffer that that's wrong when it came time to go out to war he ran out with him and he died alongside of him it was customary in those days for the Union and Confederacy to have a time of ceasefire so the each side could grab their generals or their commanding officers to bury them in their family estates the Confederacy denied that honor to shool they said he dared to go out to battle with black men he can die in a mass grave and be buried alongside of them when Union forces took over that piece of real estate his family was contacted and they said would you like us to dysentery your son's body and take it to your family estate and his dad said no we can imagine no holier place for the bones of our son delay there's no holier ground and to stand with our black brothers and sisters and try to understand the suffering they've endured in our country and said as a function of the power invested in me by the gospel I will be eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace I'm moving towards you and the grace of God can change us I believe it I have hope for that today and I have hope for you there is a balm in Gilead there is a king in her there is a physician and his name is Jesus would you trust him I want to invite you to put your faith in him then I want to invite you to believe we belong to the Third Way today we're not choosing sides in a battle we are a part of a new kingdom in his name bringing brothers and sisters together for his glory

Channel: Passion City Church

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Keywords: louie giglio, passion city church worship, louie giglio sermons, passion city, giglio louie, city church, passion, giglio, passion city church sermons, Atlanta, temptations, passion church, louis giglio, cumberland, Passion, Passion City Church, Passion Sermons, Ben, Stuart, Washington D.C., Passion D.C., radical grace, ben stuart, anchor, passion city church, atlanta, jesus, passion sermons, passion messages, passion city church dc, passion city online, washington d.c.

Id: 5mPkZlpf6ZA

Length: 41min 18sec (2478 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 01 2020