Grace Overflowed Series

Pentecost 16 Grace Overflowed

9/16

† In the Name of Jesus †

May God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord give you grace, mercy, and peace.

Kevin Everett

Our Goal – perhaps as challenging?

As Kevin Encourages others, so Paul encourages us!

Paul’s quote

It is something most athletes desire, to open the paper to the sports section, and see a picture of themselves, and the main headline to mention their name. I imagine that like most young professional football players, Kevin Everett would have dreamt of such fame. A second year, back-up tight end, he dominated every newspaper and sports broadcast this week. But not for a game winning touchdown catch. For an injury as bad as any in the last 30 years of football on television, college or professional.

Immediately rushed to the hospital, the young man underwent 6 hours of surgery on his spine, last Sunday afternoon and evening. Early reports from the neurosurgeons were not positive at all – full paralysis was nearly guaranteed. Monday morning, it was no better, but then, movement started. His mother and aunt declared a miracle, the doctors pointed to a revolutionary, theoretical treatment, given to the man in the ambulance.

It seems, that perhaps in a few weeks now, the young man will walk out of the hospital. Some are even holding out hope that he will again play the game that he loves. Almost all are indicating a fairly normal life. Doctors, neurosurgeons, trainers, all indicate that the radical treatment gives the 300-500 people a year that suffer spinal injuries hope – hope for a life beyond beds and wheelchairs. An example, a display of what might be.

Such a display of hope, is how Paul encourages Timothy in this letter, and how we are encouraged today. For Paul starts out with a high standard, a high goal for us to achieve. He writes, “5 The aim of our charge is love that issues from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith. A small task Paul identifies for us, for those who are tasked with serving God’s people – just develop in each of them a few things. A pure heart, a good conscience, a sincere faith, all combined which result in love. Love towards God, love towards fellow men, that is all.

As a young pastor like Timothy, as I tried to make people become more spiritual, more loving towards each other, I often felt paralyzed. There was nothing I could preach, or teach, or use that would provoke loving behavior. Nothing I could do to my people that they would demonstrate the faith I knew lurked within them.

Such passages like these, with Paul’s example gave me hope. They re-focused my message, and yes, though seeing love develop often is… challenging, I do see your purified hearts, cleansed conscious’s, and growing trust in Christ.

The Law used right

Can it be used wrong?

Wrong to use it to justify

Wrong to use it for us to condemn

Used Right – it confronts sin – to point to Jesus

God’s forebearance quote –

One of the greatest temptations for anyone who teaches and preaches Christ, is to get waylaid by the many distractions out there. Discussions that are, to blunt, worth-less, because they desire to define, that which God left hidden. Man, in his question for Godliness, attempts to define the un-definable. Such things, the how/when/why does this happen, or when will that happen, about which God simply says, it is so.

One of the most common errors, is in the use of God’s law, which Paul addresses this way,

8 Now we know that the law is good, if one uses it lawfully, 9 understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their fathers and mothers, for murderers, 1 Timothy 1:8-9 (ESV)

It is amazing to me, that despite this verse, and chapters of Romans, Galatians, Colossians and the Gospel, many of us misuse the law, applying it to those who are declared justified. Just do a little better at this, or give a little more of that, and my friends, God will find you acceptable, they say. Or we use the law to judge and condemn our enemies. No hope for you, you’re a sinner, and paralyzed by sin. Yet these are the people, that need the hope that we already count on, the love we already have come to know, and trust in!

The Law, properly used as the law, is about confronting the thoughts, words and deeds which earn God’s wrath and judgment. But the purpose of the law is not the judgment, it is have what happened to Paul, happen to those convicted by hearing it, and who come to fear what they deserve. To see them realize that they need something more than their own work.