September 13, 2020 ~ Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost ~ Sermon & Sermon Video Link

https://youtu.be/ZhJGVHJZHXA

                                                                                      09/13/20—Highland—Meute

“Judgement Free Zones”

Psalm 114; Romans 14: 1-12; Matthew 18: 21-35

Pearl: The church is a judgement free zone, indeed, a grace-filled, healing zone.

Function: To commend growth of the Spirit of graciousness with each other in the church, not minimizing the need to right wrongs but in a manner of humility and charity (church is to be a safe refuge).

When you think about it there is so much in life for which we could be judged. We can be hard on each other at times but we may be even harder on ourselves.

1. This is why prayers of confession and assurances of God’s forgiveness are so regular and common in our worship services as well as in our private devotions.
   1. We confess because we are aware that there is so much in life for which we could be judged.
   1. We depend upon God’s grace because we are aware that there is so much in life for which we could be judged.
2. Yet the church is a “judgement free zone.” The Apostle Paul wrote: “Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand” (Rom. 14:4).
   1. That phrase “judgement free zone” comes from “Planet Fitness” where they have made it a marketing tool to get customers to join their clubs promising an etiquette where no one is to do things to flaunt their own fitness or say things about anyone else’s conditioning. I like the idea of “judgement free zones.”
   1. I like it because I like to think of the church as a zone like this: a “judgement free zone.”
      1. The church should be a grace-filled, healing zone. Not that we would minimize the need to right wrongs. This is part of our calling. But our work should be done within oceans of grace, mercy, charity, and with healing in mind.
3. In the ancient near east when the twelve tribes were set up among God’s people the Levites were the priestly tribe. They were given 48 cities in which to settle. Six of those cities were “cities of refuge.” Three were on the west side of the Jordan River and three were on the east side of the Jordan River.
   1. These were called “cities of refuge” because if someone committed a crime of manslaughter, that is, unintentionally killing someone, then they could flee to one of these cities and would be safe from retribution during trial and could remain there until the death of the high priest.
   1. So they might indeed be there for a very long time but they were granted refuge from the closest blood relative of the victim. If the high priest died in their lifetime they were free to leave the city of refuge and were protected under Jewish law from retribution.

Building on that idea of the “city of refuge” the church should be a place of refuge, that is, a place of grace, a place of safety because of the saving and healing work of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1. I’ve heard many siblings in Christ describe their churches as “safe places” where they are able to find peace, quiet, restoration, and so on.
   1. That includes many of you who have said this about Highland.
   1. Indeed, we should always work to make it so for everyone who seeks shelter with us and with Christ.
2. Now to say that it is a safe place does not mean that we ignore sin.
   1. Again, the fact that we seek God’s forgiveness over and over again in worship and in private prayer suggests that we are always in need of correction and adjusting.
   1. We do not look away from our sin, individually or communally.
   1. We are called to hold each other accountable to the way of Christ.
      1. The Proverb goes “Iron sharpens iron, as one person sharpens the wits of another” (Proverbs 27:17).
      1. But we do it with an awareness that in Christ we swim in an ocean of grace, gentleness, mercy, and love. That is key!
   1. And this comes directly from what God accomplished in Jesus Christ!
      1. God’s gift of God-self utterly and completely in the man, Jesus the Christ is nothing less than a universal pronouncement, a fundamental embodiment of the vast ocean of God’s love and mercy toward imperfect sinners that we are.
3. We can be grace-filled because we are well aware of just how much grace is extended to us.
   1. Not all know this. Take the Gospel story of the “unforgiving servant.”
      1. It is very difficult to understand just how this man acted as he did.
         1. A king sought to settle his accounts with his slaves. Not that this was a just arrangement of kings and slaves but it was a fact so the story was in that context.
         1. The slave owed the king millions of dollars. The king ordered him to pay up or be thrown in prison. The slave begged forgiveness and amazingly the king forgave the entire debt.
            1. It was an entirely generous action of an incredibly huge debt. Can you imagine how that slave felt? How would you feel to be forgiven such an impossible debt? It should utterly change you and humble you. It should bring you to your knees in thanks. It was such a colossal unburdening!
            1. But amazingly this slave very shortly saw another slave who owed him a very small amount and he insisted that this man pay him what he owed. When he begged forgiveness of the small debt the slave marched him straight to prison to for his debt.
            1. How could this happen? How?
4. Perhaps many of us are not so, so different, when we forget the massive amount of grace and forgiveness that God extends to us and yet we fail to extend and live out the very same goodness that was extended to us!
   1. This is why Jesus said to forgive 77 times a day, (other manuscripts suggest he said 70 times 7 times a day). That is a lot of forgiveness, a lot of grace. An “ocean of grace.”
   1. That tends to make for a “judgement free zone” does it not?

May we be judgement free, a safe place for thee?

We can all think of awesome examples of grace and forgiveness extended.

1. We know that by working to forgive others we do more for ourselves in the process than perhaps for the one being forgiven.
   1. The day Anthony Colon heard his older brother had been gunned down in East Harlem, he began struggling with a rage that would last for years. The anger wore him down. He missed him desperately. He hated the three men who had fired 13 bullets into his brother who was unarmed.
      
      “Oh, God, it just — it just put so much hate in my life. I hated everybody. I hated everything. It made me to be a person, like a monster,” said Colon, who considered his brother Wilfredo his only stable family. “I loved him because he always stood up for me from a little kid. He would not even allow me to fight. He would stand up for me, whatever happened, because he always saw that goodness in me.”
      
      But as the years passed the fog of anger began to lift. Anthony married. Had two children. He welcomed God into his life. And, he was overwhelmed by a desire to find reconciliation with his brother’s killer. “I just wanted it to be okay,” he said.
      
      Then one summer day, a chance encounter while visiting a friend at the Eastern Correctional Facility in Ulster County, New York, changed his life. He looked across the room and saw Michael Rowe, one of the men who had murdered his brother. Rowe saw him too and tried to duck down. “I was expecting that we would be you know, it would be a fight, some type of physical violent altercation,” said Rowe. Rowe recalls feeling remorse and shame, unable to forgive himself for murdering another young man — and afraid of retaliation.
      
      Colon walked straight up to him and said: “Brother, I’ve been praying for you. I forgave you. I’ve been praying I would see you again.” The meeting would transform both men’s lives.
      
      –Rose Arce, “From anger to forgiveness: Man befriends brother’s killer,” CNN, religion.blogs.cnn.com. April 13, 2013.
2. We are moved deeply by these massive acts of forgiveness for such grievous crimes.
   1. We pray that we might be able to act in such ways.
   1. But yet we find it hard to forgive even much smaller wrongs sort of like the “unforgiving slave.”
   1. We just received a letter from the missionary Butterfly. She has a clown ministry and helps us in South Dakota when we go to Porcupine.
      1. In her recent update she wrote about a homeless ministry she is providing. She said some of the homeless ask her to help them find a church where they will be welcomed, and not judged.

May we be judgement free, a safe place for thee?!

The church of Jesus Christ should be a safe refuge because we are those servants who were forgiven a debt we could not possibly repay.

1. And we worship a God who continually forgives us and who is continually gracious toward us regardless of our awareness or appreciation.
2. Pray that this truth transforms you today and every day as it should have transformed that slave who owed millions with no chance of making things right.
   1. Pray to be transformed…forever changed…unburdened by all that can burden us.
   1. Christ lifts the burdens.
3. As good as the goodness of God is, is it changing you? It doesn’t always work. Again, it didn’t for the slave of that king. 
   1. Will it work for you?

May we be judgement free, a safe place for thee?