Sermon Tone Analysis

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

The Conversation Ended Here: Matthew 15:12

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

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

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

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

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).

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.