Sermon Tone Analysis

Be slow to anger and quick to overlook wrong

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Be slow to anger and quick to overlook wrongs

Patience with Zach - insight into his past - words of affirmation lifts his head

Patience with Zach - insight into his past - words of affirmation lifts his head

Be slow to anger and quick to overlook wrongs

Fred Allen: “Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats; then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.”

Patience with Zach - insight into his past - words of affirmation lifts his head

Fred Allen: “Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats; then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.”

Pursue Peace with all people

Patience with Zach - insight into his past - words of affirmation lifts his head

CommunionCommunionPatience with Zach - insight into his past - words of affirmation lifts his head

Wild oats, what we are thinking, how we treat people

Heb 12 14-15

Pursue Peace with all people

Pursue Peace with all peopleReagan & Gorbachev

Pursue Peace with all people

Pursue Peace with all people

pursue - follow to overtake; employ measures to obtain

Reagan & Gorbachev

“Looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God”

Drill Instructors watching and correcting every small failure to insure recruits are successful.

Goal is graduate every one.

Bearing offense opposes grace

Grace - Undeserved favor and acceptance

We defeat the trap of offense by helping others to experience the grace of God - by offering undeserved forgiveness, loving unconditionally

Reagan & Hinckley - In 1982 would be assassin John Hinckley shot President Reagan.

Reagan underwent surgery and recovered.

His daughter Patti Davis said through the whole ordeal she saw God at work.

In Angels Don’t Die she writes: “I give endless prayers of thanks for whatever angels circled my father, because a devastator bullet , which miraculously had not exploded was found a quarter of an inch from his heart.

The following day my father said he knew his physical healing was directly dependent on his ability to forgive John Hinckley.

By showing me that forgiveness is the key to everything, including physical health and healing, he gave me an example of Christ like thinking.

God’s will is for us to look for opportunities to offer grace and heal.

We help by living and sharing the Good News of the kingdom, God’s grace to the lost, to help them understand and receive the love of the Father

God’s will is for us to look for opportunities to offer grace and heal.

God’s will is for us to look for opportunities to offer grace and heal.

“Looking carefully lest anyone fall short of the grace of God”Help others to experience the grace of GodUndeserved favor and acceptance We help by living and sharing the Good News of the kingdom, God’s grace to the lost, to help them understand and receive the love of the FatherReagan & Hinckley - In 1982 would be assassin John Hinckley shot President Reagan.

Reagan underwent surgery and recovered.

His daughter Patti Davis said through the whole ordeal she saw God at work.

In Angels Don’t Die she writes: “I give endless prayers of thanks for whatever angels circled my father, because a devastator bullet , which miraculously had not exploded was found a quarter of an inch from his heart.

The following day my father said he knew his physical healing was directly dependent on his ability to forgive John Hinckley.

By showing me that forgiveness is the key to everything, including physical health and healing, he gave me an example of Christ like thinking.

God’s will is for us to look for opportunities to offer grace and heal.Welcome Mr President: Former US President Richard Nixon is infamous for his place at the center of the Watergate scandal.

He disgraced both the office of the President of the United States and the United States itself in the eyes of the world.

When Hubert Humphrey, a former US vice-president died, Nixon attended his funeral.

Dignitaries came from all over the country and the world, yet Nixon was made to feel decidedly unwelcome.

People turned their eyes away and conversations ran dry around him.

Nixon could feel the ostracism being ladled out to him.Then Jimmy Carter, the serving US President, walked into the room.

Carter was from a different political party to Nixon and well known for his honesty and integrity.

As he moved to his seat President Carter noticed Nixon standing all alone.

Carter immediately changed course, walked over to Nixon, held out his hand, and, smiling genuinely and broadly embraced Nixon and said “Welcome home, Mr President!

Welcome home!”The incident was reported by Newsweek magazine, which wrote: “If there was a turning point in Nixon’s long ordeal in the wilderness, it was that moment and that gesture of love and compassion.”Carter

gifted Nixon with love and compassion.

Nixon certainly had done nothing to deserve it.

It was an act of pure grace on Carter’s part.

When the bible speaks of God’s blessing it speaks in exactly the same way.

Blessing is never a reward for good behaviour.

It’s a gift, a gift of pure, unadulterated grace.On the morning of Sunday, Nov 8, 1987, Irishman Gordon Wilson took his daughter Marie to a parade in the town of Enniskillen, Northern Ireland.

As Wilson and his twenty yr old daughter stood beside a brick wall waiting for English soldiers and police to come marching by, a bomb planted by IRA terrorists exploded from behind, and the brick wall tumbled on them.

The blast instantly killed half a dozen people and pinned Gordon and his daughter beneath several feet of bricks.

Gordon’s shoulder and arm were injured.

Unable to move, Gordon felt someone take hold of his hand.

It was his daughter Marie.

“Is that you Dad” she asked.

“Yes, Marie” Gordon answered.

He heard several people begin screaming.

Are you all right?

Gordon asked his daughter.

Yes, she said.

But then she too began to scream.

As he held her hand, again and again he asked if she was alright, and each time she said yes.

Finally Marie said “daddy, I love you very much.”

Those were her last words.

Four hours later she died in the hospital of severe spinal and brain injuries.

Later that evening a BBC reporter requested permission to interview Gordon Wilson.

After Wilson described what had happened, the reporter asked, “How do you feel about the guys who planted the bomb?”

I bear them no ill will.

Wilson replied.

I bear them no grudge.

Bitter talk is not going to bring Marie Wilson back to life.

I shall pray tonight and every night that God will forgive them.”

In the months that followed, many people asked Wilson, who later became a senator in the Republic of Ireland, how he could say such a thing, how he could forgive such a monstrous act.

Wilson explained, “I was hurt.

Hi had just lost my daughter.

But I wasn’t angry.

Marie’s last words to me, words of love, had put me on a plane of love.

I received God’s grace, through the strength of His love for me, to forgive.”

For years after this tragedy, Gordon Wilson continued to work for peace in N Ireland.

Love, particularly agape, can do miracles.

Just as Marie Wilson’s last words to her father lifted him onto the plane of love, so God’s love for us lifts us onto a whole different plane, enabling us to love others no matter how they treat us.

Ask yourself this morning who did I offer undeserved forgiveness to this week?”

What words or actions of undeserved encouragement did I offer?Is there someone undeserving that I can reach out to this coming week?Communion( NIV) This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.It is an interesting thing that Jesus Christ went around in his earthly ministry saying, “Your sins are forgiven.”

We don’t think of it this way, but this is an extremely presumptuous statement -- one of the many radical things Jesus said in such a humble way.

Perhaps you don’t think so; look at it this way:Suppose that I decide that you need a good punch in the nose.

Being a man of action (and rather limited sense) I decide to carry out this plan, and I bop you in the face.

You (being a superb Christian) now have the Christian privilege of granting me forgiveness.

Let us suppose, however, that Satan arises and tempts you to petty vengeance, namely, you decide to bop me in the nose.

The fight seems to be on, but (let us further suppose) that Graydon Jessup steps between us.

He directs you to cease and desist, because, he says, “I have forgiven him.”Now,

being the logical sort of person you are, and greatly given to debate as opposed to combat, you decide to reason with Graydon.

“Hold on, preacher,” you say, “if I want to punch his lights out (in a decent Christian manner, of course), why, that’s my business.