A Grace That Embraces
Just Grace • Sermon • Submitted • 1:04:16
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· 208 viewsGrace re-names and re-makes what the Law and Tradition excludes and will not embrace.
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Just Grace Slide
Just Grace Slide
Lauren and I have been active doing ministry for the last 20 years together. We have spend almost all of our time in the messianic movement. Being in the movement, we have met some of the most wonderful people. People like Seth Rydelnik, and his dad Michael Rydelnik, Robin Rose, Joel Liberman, Mike Stepakoff and Larry Feldman.
These are great guys and gals who have been in ministry a long time. Michael R has been through some challenges in his ministry career. As a matter of fact, there is nothing that I have been through that Michael has been through and even more. Larry Feldman, don’t even get me started. These guys have been wounded, tried and tested and have earned their metal.
All of these guys at some point have experienced first hand the embrace of Grace and at the same time the sting of Law and Tradition casting them away.
Because Jesus re-named and re-made those things tradition and law called unclean and clean, we must...
...we must challenge our own traditions.
Explain the Story of The Text
Start the Story Here: Matthew 15:1-2
Then some Pharisees and Torah scholars came to Yeshua from Jerusalem. They said,
“Why do Your disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? For they do not do the ritual handwashing when they eat bread.”
The Conversation Ended Here: Matthew 15:12
Then the disciples came and said to Him, “Do You know that the Pharisees took offense when they heard this saying?”
Malachi walked 70 miles uphill both ways to find a ill-mannered Jewish Rabbi.
Yitzchak walked 70 miles uphill to be made to feel guilty about his summer home in the Judean Hills.
Nichodemus walked 70 miles uphill to report back to the leading Pharisees that Yeshua up ended rabbinic tradition.
All of them were offended, no one wants to be called a hypocrite Matthew 15:7-9
Hypocrites! Rightly did Isaiah prophesy about you, saying,
‘This people honors Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.
And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’ ”
Pharisees:
Impurity was the wrong thing appearing in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Purity was a place for everything and everything in its place.
Tradition loosely based on the Law determined impure and pure, clean and unclean.
Illustrate the Farmer and the Dirt
Sin is here the kind of purity that wants the world cleansed of the other rather than the heart cleansed of the evil that drives people out by calling those who are clean “unclean” and refusing to help make clean those who are unclean.
Traditions are not bad but traditionalism is deadly.
Traditions are bad when they
...run counter to God’s ethical command to love.
…become more important to upholding than obeying God’s direct commands.
Illustrate:
Quote: “Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” Jaroslav Pelikan
Image: The Blue Crab Shell
Yeshua roots impurity and purity in the transformational love of God that comes when one is born again. Matthew 15:13-20
But He replied, “Every plant that My heavenly Father has not planted will be uprooted.
Leave them alone; they are blind guides of the blind. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.”
Then Peter answered and said to Him, “Explain this parable to us.”
“Are you also still lacking understanding?” Yeshua said.
“Don’t you grasp that whatever goes into the mouth passes into the stomach and then is ejected into the sewer?
But the things that proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart, and those things make the man unholy.
For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, and slander.
These are the things that make the man unholy; but to eat with unwashed hands does not make the man unholy.”
Having the wrong thing appearing in the wrong place at the wrong time does not make you impure/unholy.
Impurity is acting on evil heart attitudes towards others, this defiles you in any place, at any time.
Purity is any act of love born out of a transformed heart.
...we must challenge our relational “why”
Law and Tradition have clean & unclean
places
peoples.
priorities
Read the Story Matthew 15:21-28
Now Yeshua left from there and went away to the region of Tyre and Sidon.
And behold, a Canaanite woman from that district came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, O Master, Ben-David! My daughter is severely tormented by a demon.”
But He did not answer her a word. And when His disciples came, they were urging Him, saying, “Send her away, because she keeps shouting at us.”
But He responded, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”
So she came and got down on her knees before Him, saying, “Master, help me!”
And answering, He said, “It’s not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
But she said, “Yes, Master, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”
Then answering, Yeshua said to her, “O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed in that very hour.
Jesus Re-Names and Re-makes what L & T Forsakes
Re-Names Her “Woman of Great Faith”
Re-Makes Her Daughter “Healed that Very Hour”
Because grace embraced what Law and tradition forsake, people unlike Yeshua were attracted to Yeshua.
Yeshua embraced her with grace
because the woman embraced him in faith.
Illustrate: The answer, I hope, would be that at the core of the [messianic] faith lies the persuasion that the “others” need not be perceived as innocent in order to be loved, but ought to be embraced even when they are perceived as wrongdoers. - Volf, Miroslav. Exclusion and Embrace
...we must challenge ourselves to see our “to whom we give glory” embracing a larger “to who will we go?”
Read Matthew 15:29-31
After Yeshua left there, He went along the Sea of Galilee. Then He went up on a mountainside and was sitting there.
And large crowds came to Him, bringing with them the lame, blind, disabled, mute, and many others. And they laid them at His feet, and He healed them.
So the crowd marveled when they saw the mute speaking, the disabled made whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel.
Yeshua welcomes a much larger group.
The much larger group now worships the God of Israel.
What is really stopping you from embracing “others?”
I’am not saying to put yourself at risk.
What will you make a person do in order to be accepted by you? What will you make a person conform to in order to feel part of your life?
What will you do to stay in control of your world? Who will you scapegoat to make you feel better about your world?
We will attract people unlike us to the degree we embrace people in grace.
Grace brings an end to the exclusion of Law and Tradition because faith in the Messiah creates birth into a people.
The Law says you are born into a people but Grace says, “ They were born not of a bloodline, nor of human desire, nor of man’s will, but of God” (John 1:13).
They were born not of a bloodline, nor of human desire, nor of man’s will, but of God.
Grace embraces what Law and Traditions forsakes.
The reason why people unlike Yeshua were attracted to Yeshua is because they believed he would re-name and re-make them.