God @ the Billboards: Unwritten
Pastor Mark Batterson
10.02.06
Highlight Tape
When I was in High School I played basketball and I did alright. I wanted to play in college so my dad put together a highlight tape to give to college recruiters. He went through all of my game tapes and spliced together my best plays. The bottom line is that it made me look a lot better than I really was. All of my turnovers and missed shots were deleted. And all of my steals and rebounds and dunks and three-pointers were edited-in.
So one day we had a family friend over for lunch. His name was Wiley. And he was 117 years-old. Not really, but he was really old and wasn’t exactly a basketball buff. So we showed him the highlight tape and I’ll never forget what he said: “Mark never misses.” Wiley didn’t pick up on the fact that it was a highlight tape. He didn’t notice that I was wearing my home red jersey in some of the shots and my away white jersey in others. And our opponents kept changing jersey! Wiley thought it was one game! We laughed so hard about that. If only the college recruiters had thought it was one game!
It’s amazing what you can do if you have the ability to edit. You can delete all of the lowlights. You can splice together all of the highlights. And you can make yourself look pretty good in the process! In fact, you look better than you really are.
I want to suggest that God wants to do for you exactly what my dad did for me. Think of your life as a videotape. Think of God as editor and producer. God wants to delete the turnovers and misses. We call it sin. And He wants to splice together the spiritual highlights.
That is precisely what happens when we confess our sin. While we’re confessing our sin God is editing the tape. He is deleting everything we’re confessing!
Hebrews 10:17 says, “I will never again remember their sins.”
God doesn’t just forgive. God forgets. He destroys the evidence against us. He deletes the sin. And what you’re left with is a highlight tape.
The bottom line is this: God is in the editing business. He wants complete editorial control of your life. And if you give it to Him, there is no telling what kind of story He can write through you. He wants to rewrite the script of your life. He wants you to be part of his-story.
Pharisees and Prostitutes
Now one of the Pharisees invited Jesus to have dinner with him, so he went to the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table. When a woman who had lived a sinful life in that town learned that Jesus was eating at the Pharisees’ house, she brought an alabaster jar of perfume, and as she stood behind him at his feet weeping, she began to wet his feet with her tears. Then she wiped them with her hair, kissed them and poured perfume on them.
Let me make a couple observations.
First of all, I guarantee this woman wasn’t on the invitation list. She crashed this party.
Secondly, can you say awkward? You’ve got your straight-laced Pharisees. Then you throw in a prostitute who starts crying and kissing Jesus’ feet and breaking perfume bottles. That has awkward written all over it.
I may be reading into things, but I have a feeling this was a totally lame party before this woman showed up. Pharisee party is an oxymoron if there ever was one! Pharisees didn’t know how to have fun. They didn’t believe in fun. They probably had laws against laughter. How fun can a party at a Pharisee’s house be?
I have this mental picture: everybody was just standing around eating Ritz crackers and having meaningless conversations about the latest sandal styles. And in walks this woman. That’ll spice things up. I think there were ancient jokes that started: so you’re at a party with a bunch of Pharisees and in walks a prostitute. You don’t even have to finish the joke.
Things go from boring to awkward in two seconds. She starts crying and kissing his feet and she breaks open a bottle of perfume that smells to high heaven. What a scenario!
What do you do?
Emily Post hadn’t written her book on etiquette yet. But even that book doesn’t cover this scenario.
Labels
Reactions reveal so much! The Pharisee reacts out of self-righteousness, but Jesus comes to this woman’s defense.
The Pharisee who invited Jesus says, “If this man [Jesus] were a prophet he would know who is touching him and what kind of woman she is—that she is a sinner.”
Notice the way this Pharisee labeled this woman? We do the same thing. We tend to reduce people to labels, but it’s a form of judgmentalism. We give people political labels or sexual labels or personality labels or religious labels and in the process we dehumanize them. We strip them of their individuality. We reduce the complexity of an individual and replace them with stereotypes.
All this Pharisee saw when he looked at this woman was a sinner—nothing more, nothing less.
I think Jesus saw a little girl playing with dolls. I think Jesus saw a teenage girl going out on her first date. I think Jesus saw the sexual scars. I think Jesus saw who she could become.
I love the line of lyrics from unwritten:
I am unwritten
Can’t read my mind
I’m undefined
We are way too quick to write people off. We’re way to quick to think we know what another person is thinking. We are way to quick to reduce a person to a label.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said, “If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”
Jesus saw past the label. That’s why he came to her defense. And I wonder how long it had been since this woman had felt valued or defended. How long had it been since a man had looked at her with neither lust nor contempt?
The Pharisees were always writing people off.
Jesus was always writing people in.
The Pharisees were so past tense.
Jesus was future tense.
Goethe said, “Threat a man as he is and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he can and should be and he will become as he can and should be.”
That is what Jesus did.
This Pharisee said, “A prophet would know what kind of woman she is.” Wrong! A prophet wouldn’t just know what kind of woman she is. A prophet would know what kind of woman she could become! To borrow a line of lyrics, a prophet would know that the rest is still unwritten.
I don’t care how bad your past is. I don’t care how many people have written you off.
The rest is still unwritten.
The Author
Hebrews 12: 2 says, “Fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of your faith.”
When you read the gospels from an authorial point of view you discover that Jesus was awfully good at rewriting scripts!
There was a man in John 5 who was lame for thirty-eight years. Everybody has written him off. Everybody thought they knew how the story was going to end—the man was going to sit on a mat and beg for money the rest of his life, but Jesus rewrote the script. He healed him and the man began a new chapter—a chapter he never dreamed of. Jesus wrote this man into the script of Scripture.
Do you remember the funeral procession in Luke 7? Everybody knows where a funeral process ends—the cemetery. But not this one! Jesus rewrites the script! Jesus touches the coffin. The boy is resurrected. He literally gives this mother and son another chance, another chapter! Jesus writes them into the script of Scripture.
What about the thief on the cross? He was being crucified for him crimes. Everybody knew how the story was going to end—a shameful death. But Jesus rewrote the script. Jesus said, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Jesus writes him into the script of Scripture! What a fairytale ending!
And my personal favorite is another prostitute in Mark 14. Everybody knew how that story would end—sexual scars, loneliness, and shame. But Jesus rewrote the script. He said to her in Mark 14:46: “I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” Sure enough! Two thousand years later and half a world away, we’re talking about this woman! Isn’t that amazing? She is talked about more than the Roman Emperors who were her contemporaries.
All I can say is this: what an author!
Jesus knows how to rewrite a script! And that is what he does with this woman in Luke 7. Jesus says, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” In other words: Today is where you book begins.
So here’s the deal: Jesus is still rewriting scripts. But we have a choice to make. You can try writing your own story with no editorial help. Or you can give God complete editorial control and let Him write his-story through you. And I can tell you which one will have a better ending. In fact, if you give God complete editorially control, your last chapter will not only have a better ending, it will have no ending!
II Corinthians 3:3 says: “You are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”
God is an author.
You are the book.
Will you let him write his-story through you?
This evotional concludes the God @ the Billboard series.
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