Peace & Love: Stop Being Offended

MESSAGE TRANSCRIPTION: 

But today and next week we’re talking about:

“Peace and Love.”

It’s our new sermon series. And if you are new to Eastside, you may not understand what peace and love is all about. But peace and love is a phrase that they help to develop for me because- no seriously. I don’t know if you know this or not, but I can be pretty direct; be matter of fact. I can just be blunt. Sarcasm is indicated here, but I can be really blunt. And so I was offending a lot of people. I wasn’t meaning to; it’s just that I just see what it is and call it what it is. And so then they came back with a phrase: peace and love. And they go: “Virgil, you just tell people that. You’re going to say, ‘I got something to tell you, but I got to do it in peace and love.'”

And when you preface it with peace and love, it means that you can’t get offended about what I’m about to say. And so we even created coffee mugs back in the day with the peace and love logo and we gave these away on Father’s Day or something. How many of you still got your peace and love? Yeah, the coffee mug, I still got mine. And so today we’re launching into this brand new sermon series about peace and love. And my goal today and next week is to offend every single one of you. And I’m serious; because if I don’t make you mad a couple times a year, am I really doing my job, right? And am I really stepping up and being your pastor? And so my objective over the next two weeks is to offend you at some level so that you can overcome your offenses, your anger, and your unforgiveness that maybe resides in your heart.

And today the message title is:

“Stop being Offended.”

Would you say that with me? Stop being offended. Now, I don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not, but we live in a world that is easily offended; that’s easily angered. And I don’t know if you know this or not, but Christians are some of the worst at being offended and being angry. And the question is:

How do we, as Christians, respond to all the hatred, to all the division and to all the anger that exists in our society today?

And as I was getting ready for this sermon series, I was listening to a podcast and as I was listening to this podcast, the speaker, the host of the podcast was talking about a book that he read over the summer; and the title of the book was: “Living a Life of Being Un Offendable.”

And the podcaster who read the book was saying that the author, Brad Hansen, is actually making the case that you could live your life and not be offended. And I got thinking about that and I’m like: “I’m offended because he thinks I should be unoffended; because doesn’t he know the crazy people that I have to deal with that he said, I mean, does he understand that they are know-it-alls? That they are loud? That they are sometime overzealous? Does he understand that they criticize my sermons and does he understand all of this?” And I’m going through the litany of all the things and then I just begin to understand that we live in a society that is easily angered about a lot of different things. And so today, what I want to do, I want to introduce our big thought that comes from James chapter one, verse 19, and James, the half brother of Jesus says it like this. He goes:

“Now my dear brothers and sisters, take note of this…” Listen up, perk up. Tune in If you’re thinking about something else; don’t be thinking about something else. Pay attention to what I’m about to say. “…Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.”

James 1:19

He goes: “If you want to excel with diffusing anger, if you want to live a life that is worth living, then follow the principles that’s found in this verse.” And here’s the question that I have for you: how are you doing with this assignment? How are you doing with being slow to speak, quick to listen and slow to become angry? How are you doing with that? Now when you think about it in our society today, we are very slow to listen, we’re very quick to speak and we’re even quicker to become angry at whatever the issue may be.

Now what I’m about to tell you is true. I have a friend and he’s got an original name, James Smith, that’s his name. And James wrote his dissertation about the life of Jesus. And what he did is he wrote his life, wrote about the life of Jesus around the questions that Jesus was asked and what he answered. And so what he did is he studied the life of Jesus and he was basically saying that Jesus was slow to speak, he was quick to listen, and he slow to become angry. And when Jesus was asked a question, I think he was asked 187 questions. And you know how many questions that Jesus actually answered directly? He only answered three questions directly. Because what would Jesus do? You would ask Jesus a question and he would turn around and do what? Josh? He would turn around and ask you a question in back.

You thought you was going to escape not being on the front row, didn’t you? But you didn’t. And so anyway, Jesus would return and he would’ve asked them a question. In fact, Jesus asked over 300 different questions. But when you take out the duplicates, it’s a little bit over 200 questions that Jesus asked to the people around him; because why? Jesus was other focused. He wasn’t quick to anger, he wasn’t quick to speak, he was really slow in listening and in responding. Now, I don’t know if you know this or not, but it seems like that anger is evolving in our society. Does anybody notice that or not? I mean anger. I mean the things I used to get mad about, I’m no longer mad about; and there’s new things I’m mad about. Is anybody else in that category? I mean, lemme just tell you what used to be low level offenses for me, okay?

And see if you can resonate. A low level offense for me was somebody would cut me off in traffic. Now some of you, when that happens, you would probably give them the California peace sign. That’s why you would flip ’em off. Now, I just want you to know I’m more righteous and holy than you are. I would just pray that God would give them hemorrhoids or kidney stones or something and it would be a long lasting pain, right? I mean it was like long lasting. And so I would just pray for that, but I don’t pray for that anymore. I’m just like, okay, there’s idiots on the road. You just keep on going. And then I used to be that you’d send somebody a text message and then you would wait for them to respond and they would never respond. Or the worst offense out of all that is that they would read your text message, there’d be like the little bubbles that would come up, and as the little bubbles would come up, then it would go away.

Then they wouldn’t respond at all and it’d be a day or a week and they would just ghost you. Totally. But you know what I mean? That used to be the offenses of the day, but I don’t know if you notice it or not, but these offenses and things that’s causing us to be angry is elevating. And now there’s all of these idiots that are on social media, right? I mean, do you support vax or no vax? Mask or no mask? Do you support standing for the national anthem or do you stand or do you kneel for the national anthem? Which political party is the right political party? And now everybody is angry about their issue and everybody has their issue that they’re angry about and their issue that they’re angry about is the issue that they want you to be angry about. But because you’re not angry about their issue that they’re angry about, they’re angry at you for not being on their side of the issue that they care about. And here’s the reality: everybody has their issue that they are angry about and there’s thousands of issues that we need to be worried about, but we’re only worried about one issue and that one issue is our sole focus. And as a result, anger just continues to elevate in our society because everybody has their pet peeve issue. Is that too close to home? I’m just wondering; if not, I’ll get closer in a moment.

We have a thing around here, Austin. We have life groups, and this is where people with affinity ages or geographical areas, they meet in homes and we hang out and we do life together and we talk about things and we have ’em all over Madison County. We have like 56 or 57. Carla does a fantastic job with their life group ministry. Would you not agree with me? Let’s give it up for Carla, right? And then she did a great job last week as well. But you know what, Austin? I think there’s a lot of people that they don’t want to be in life groups. They want to be in angry groups. You know what I’m talking about? They want to be in a group that is angry about their issue. And it’s maybe on your social media feed that you got 73 friends and you and your 73 friends, you continue to post about the same issues and repost the same posts and you do all of that.

Or maybe it’s not your social media feed. Maybe it’s your buddies at the gym and all of you are angry about the same issue and you’re on the same page. Or maybe it’s not even that. Maybe it’s the soccer moms or the baseball moms or dads or whatever, and you’re all angry about the same issue. And the reason why you love to be angry about an issue is because it makes you feel right and it makes everybody else to feel, what? Wrong. It makes you feel morally superior. And we look at the other people and we go: “They are evil.” Or we look at other people and we go: “They are idiots.” And the only thing that is worse than an evil person or an idiot is an evil idiot. I dunno if you know that or not. That’s the only thing that’s worse, right? But we just have our issue and we are all amped up about it.

And I just want to ask you a question: How effective is your anger these days? How’s it going for you? How is your anger serving you? Is it making you more like Jesus? Is your anger pointing others to the intimacy, the life, the freedom and the joy found in Jesus? How effective is your anger? Is it making you more loving? Is it drawing other people to Jesus Christ and to his goodness? And a spoiler alert: it’s not working. It’s not drawing anyone to Jesus, because you know why? Because look what it says in James chapter one, 19 and 20.

“Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.”

James 1:19-20

Is that folks, whatever issue that you are getting offended about, whether it is a small offense or a large offense, your anger at the opposing political view, it’s vax or no vax, it’s mask or no mask, or the person who gave you the middle finger in the parking lot, whatever’s making you angry, you have to understand is that your anger, your human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires for you to produce.

Now, some of you are pushing back on me a little bit right now. And some of you’re saying: “Well, Pastor Virgil, you need to understand something; that my anger is righteous anger and it’s righteous because it’s my anger.” I mean, this is what I’m trying to get you to understand, but let’s just go with your story. “I have righteous anger.” Doesn’t God want us to be mad at other people and their sin and their dysfunction? Don’t God want us to call other people out and on the carpet? But I don’t know if you know this or not, but your righteous anger that you have is always a righteous anger towards someone else’s sin.

It’s never toward yourself. And maybe it’s not a righteous anger. Maybe it’s a self-righteous anger. See, we’re upset about their foul mouth, but we don’t see the spiritual pride that we have in our own hearts. “Oh, you’re sexual behaviors out of whack. But let’s don’t talk about your gluttony.” Have I offended you yet? See friends, how is your anger serving you? And I would suggest that your anger is not helping anything. Your anger is not drawing people to the grace, the goodness, and the love of Jesus because you are so angry. Is your anger bringing you more joy? Is it blessing and enhancing your marriage? Is your anger worth your children to emulate or to reproduce? Is your anger helping people come to find Jesus as their Lord and Savior? Is your anger blessing others? And here’s where we have to come to a point of decision. My friends, this is where we’re at as Christians. And can I just tell you these next two statements that I want to say in a moment? And Sophie’s going to put up, you’re going have to make the decision. You’re going have to come to the day of reckoning. You’re going to have to decide how you’re going to live the rest of your life because you have to come to the conclusion:

Am I going to make a point or am I going to live to make a difference?

And those two things are totally different. Most people today in our society is living to do, what? To make a point about their issue. They’re not living to make a difference; because you know what? If you’re going to make a difference, it means that you’re going to have to show love. You’re going to have to have dialogue. You’re going to have to have conversation. You’re going to have to ask the person to tell you more. You’re going to have to be empathetic. You’re going to have to have some sympathy. You’re going to have to be able to listen. You’re going to have to be able to bite your tongue on whatever the other person is talking about and ask the Holy Spirit to lead and guide and direct you. See folks, there’s a lot of smart people that ask Jesus questions. And on one particular occasion, we find that the Pharisees sent someone that was really smart to ask Jesus a question. And it says:

“Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together…” and they’re mad now because the Sadducees are silenced. They couldn’t do anything with Jesus. “…So they get together and one of them, an expert in the law tested Jesus with his question: ‘Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?’ And Jesus replied, ‘Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it. Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Matthew 22:34-40

And here’s what Jesus is saying. You want to love God. If you want to love God with every fiber in your body, you have to honor him, you have to worship him, you have to exalt him, you have to love him. You’ve got to lift him up. And the way that you honor and lift up God is by loving the people that He’s placed in your life. And you know what I’ve discovered? You don’t have to be angry to love the people that God has placed in your life. Did you hear what I said? You don’t have to be angry, you don’t have to be mad, you don’t have to be upset. You don’t have to be honed in on an issue. In fact, I would say, can you be angry and love people in a consistent manner? And the answer is: probably not. And the question is: Do you want to make a point or do you want to make a difference? And can I tell you something? Jesus never told you and I that we have to be right, but what Jesus did tell us to do is to love. Now one time did Jesus say: “Go there and be right in every conversation you be right. You make the point. You are superior than everyone else.” Jesus never did that. Jesus did tell us however to love the people they placed around us.

Now, I have to be honest with you; there’s part of me that don’t like preaching like this because there’s part of me, Colin, that wants to be full of anger, to be full of self-righteousness, to call people out for whatever. But then I realized that the people who are the most effective, Jake, especially police officers, are not the ones who get mad. The most effective police officers in deescalating conflict or bad situation are the police officers that does, what? That keeps their cool. And when we keep our cool, we have an opportunity to make a difference rather than trying to make a point. And we, as disciples of Jesus, if we are going to make a difference, if we’re going to battle the forces of darkness, the way that we do that is that we lead with love and not anger. It’s that we have conversations that we point people to Jesus.

Now here’s the reality, Jake, is that because our society’s so divisive, we all have anger that we need to let go of, right? We all have anger, whatever level it is, small offense, large offenses, major offenses, we have anger that we have to let go of. And how do we let go of the anger? I just want to give you two things very quickly. The first thing I want to give to you is:

Lower your expectations of others.

Lower your expectations that you have of others. In other words, what you expect from people; just lower your expectations. Because here’s the reality, Linda, there’s going to be people that’s going to let you down. There’s going to be people who doesn’t remember your birthday. There’s going to be people who’s going to betray you. There’s going to be people who’s going to lie to you. There’s going to be people who’s not going to say thank you for the things that you did for them. There’s going to be people who’s not going to call you back or text you back. There’s going to be people who’s not going to be there for you. There’s going to be people that you showed up for their shower and they didn’t show up for your shower; and they didn’t do this thing and you did that for them, but they’re not doing it for you. And all of a sudden, here’s what’s going to happen; people are going to let you down. And here’s the reality. And here’s what I wanted to say to you. What do you expect? Have you not let other people down as well? I mean, here’s the reality:

Sinners will do sinful things.

Come on now, that’s an amen. Sinners will do sinful things. And what do you expect from people? People are sinners. They’re going to do sinful things. They’re going to miss the mark. And here’s the thing; we think the whole world revolves around us and we think everybody should love us and that their love for us should be outside of this universe. It should be extremely high. It should be overwhelming. Can I tell you something? You’re not the center of everyone else’s universe; and they’re going to let you down. They’re going to disappoint you. They’re going to mix things up. They’re going to hurt your feelings unintentionally. In fact, you know what Paul said? Paul said to Timothy, you really want to know what to expect from other humans? Here’s what Paul says to Timothy:

“People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.”

2 Timothy 3:2-4

And you’re shocked when people let you down. How is that the case? Sinful people will do sinful things. And there’s only one perfect person who ever lived, and his name was Jesus. Jesus was the only perfect one. And see folks, lemme say something to you. He said: “If you follow me around long enough, can I tell you what’s going to happen? I’m going to disappoint you. I’m going to let you down. I’m not going to call you back. I’m going to forget to text you back. I get quite a few texts and phone calls in a day. There’s sometimes that I’ll disappoint you.”

And when that happens, not if, but when it happens, I want you to know something. God didn’t let you down. This is what happens. A lot of times people will say: “Well, the pastor let me down; therefore God let me down.” Or I will let you down, and then you go: “Well, the church is not who they say they are.” Can I just tell you something? When I let you down, don’t blame it on God and don’t blame it on Eastside. You blame it on me because I’m an imperfect, sinful individual just like you and I will let you down. I promise you 100% on that. Don’t blame it on God, don’t blame it on the church. Blame it on me. And here’s the reality: Jesus was never taken off guard by scandalous behavior. Remember the story in John chapter three? This is a good story. Anybody know the story in John three? It’s about the woman who’s caught in adultery.

Remember that? The man was nowhere to be found. That’s another story. But the woman is pulled out of the house, she has a bed sheet, she’s thrown in the middle of the floor, on the ground on the road, and all these men are gathered around her. And John chapter three, you remember the story. And as she’s thrown down in there, and she’s called an adultery and she’s got five husbands, she’s had five husbands, and the husband that she has now is not her husband and they’re committing adultery. They’re doing the nasty if you will. And as they’re doing the nasty, this is just a preview of what’s coming in November. I’m just telling you, so I’m warning you. It’s going to be PG 13. But anyway, so this woman, she is living with the guy; Jesus confronts her, says: “The husband, that the guy that you’re living with, you’re doing the nasty with. It’s not your husband. In fact, he’s the one that you’re shacking up with. And as you’re shacking up with this individual…” Then Jesus didn’t go: “Oh my gosh, you’re that person. I’ve got to back away from you. I can’t be around you; in fact, I’m going to find Peter and John right now. And I’m going to sit down with Peter and John and I’m going to tell them all about what I discovered. And it’s not gossip because we’re just going to do a little prayer session right now.” And so he doesn’t do any of that. He doesn’t run away from her. He doesn’t quit on her. He’s not overwhelmed by that. He’s not like: “This is scandalous behavior. I’m not concerned about that.” He just understands it. You know what Jesus does? Jesus offers her, what? Living water. The thing that you need to make you whole.

I can give it to you because you know why? Because here’s the reality, the thing that you’re looking for, you can’t find it in all the wrong faces and all the wrong places. The only place that you can find it is in me. And Jesus helps the woman who’s caught in adultery, who’s living with someone that’s not even her husband. Jesus is not disappointed by that. Jesus says to her: “Here’s living water.” And friends, if you want to make a difference in the world, the first thing that you need to do is:

Lower your expectations of other people.

The second thing that you need to do, very quickly, is to:

Raise your gratitude for God’s grace.

To raise your gratitude for God’s grace. Lower your expectations of other people, but raise your gratitude for God’s grace. Now, I just want to ask you; if you’re here this morning and you’ve never ever sinned, you’ve never done anything wrong, I want you to raise your hand. If you’ve never lied, if you’ve never cheated, if you’ve never looked lustfully at another person or another thing, if you’ve never had envy, if you’ve never gossiped about a friend, you’ve never farted in the elevator or whatever; I just want you to raise your hand right now and that you’re perfect and you’ve never done anything wrong.

And the reality is, we’ve all blown it. We’ve all messed up. We’ve all sinned. See folks, here’s what Paul says in Ephesians chapter two:

“For it is by grace, you have been saved through faith. And this is not from yourself…” In other words, this is not of your doing. This is not of your holiness. This is not of your good works. He says: “…it is the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast.”

Ephesians 2: 3-9

It is by grace. It is by grace. It is by grace. It is by God’s amazing grace. It is by his mercy, his goodness, his righteousness, his perfection, his holiness. It is by God’s grace that you and I are made right with God. It’s not by our works. It’s not by our good deeds. It’s not by how we live life. It is by his grace. And some of you, you’re still sitting there and you’re still have your righteous anger. And some of you’re saying: “Pastor, you don’t understand. He lied to me.” Can I tell you something? I’ve lied. “He’s arrogant, preacher, you don’t understand. He’s arrogant.” Can I tell you something? I can be arrogant sometimes.

“Hey, pastor, but he stole from me.” I’ve stolen. I don’t think I’m going to tell you any more of my sins or you may not come back next week; but you get the point. And what happens is, what we do is that we pick up the stone of righteous anger and we hold onto it. Now, folks, I understand that some of you that are here; you’ve got a major offense. And I’m not trying to make light of any of that. You had someone to abuse your child; your partner who you thought was the one for all of your life has been living a double life and you are in the midst of a betrayal. But I’m talking about the offenses that we’ve talked about. Which political view or which side of the political party are you on? We’re talking about those different offenses. Vaccine or no vaccine, mask or no mask, to kneel or not to kneel for the national anthem. See, you’ve picked up this righteous anger and you hold onto it like this stone. You’re holding onto it and you may not think that you’re going to use it, but because it’s righteous anger, you’re holding onto it, you’ve got a death grip on it. And if somebody hurts me, I can have the right to hurt you back if I want to. Someone hurts my kids, I can hurt them back. I don’t plan on using it, but it’s mine. I have the right to it because, you know why? Because it’s my righteous anger. And Jesus tells a story in John chapter eight about the woman who was brought out into the street who was caught in adultery.

All the men of that town looked at Jesus and said: “David, Jesus, what do we do? Moses said we should stone this woman. She’s deserving of death.” And Jesus says: “Slow to speak, slow to anger, quick to listen.” What does Jesus do? All these men, they have their stone ready to stone this woman and to give her death because that’s what the law said. And what does Jesus do? Jesus kneels in the road. He starts doodling in the sand or the dirt. We don’t know what he said, but some scholars will believe that what Jesus did, he started writing out the sins of the men who were standing around this woman. And the Bible says that from the oldest to the youngest, what did they do? One by one, they dropped their stone and left. And Jesus asks the woman: “Woman, where’s your accusers?” Jesus is still doodling in the dirt. She looks up, she looks around, she goes: “They’re all gone.” And he goes: “You go and sin no more.” And she got up and she left. And I think what Jesus wants to say to each and every one of us, the reason why you’re here, you may not even know the reason why you’re here, but I’m telling you, here’s the reason why you’re here, is that you’ve got righteous anger that you’ve been holding onto.

It’s your issue. It’s your offense that you’re holding onto because one day you might want to get even. And Jesus is telling us that we can’t make a difference if we’re holding on to a righteous anger. And what he’s inviting us to do is to drop the stone, to throw it down. Don’t lead with anger, lead with love, lead with love. He said: “You can’t make a difference if you don’t lead with love.” And let’s, as a congregation, lead with love and let’s make a difference in this world. And that’s my challenge for us as we move into this ministry season, hot and heavy, full force, and we have more and more people that comes to the Eastside, there’s going to be more and more difference of views and opinions. Let’s don’t try to make a point. Let’s love one another and let’s make a difference in this world. Let’s be the salt and the light of this community. What about it? Would you agree with me? If you would, would you say amen?

Amen.