Pastor Stan Mons
Sermon Transcription:
Lord, we bless You in this place today. Lord God, we thank You, Lord, that You have opened Heaven over our lives, Lord God, and that You've sent forth from Heaven good gifts. Lord, thank You, Father, that in spite of our behavior, in spite of our shortcomings, in spite of our sins, You opened up goodness over our lives, over our situations, over everything we've ever faced. Father, every painful thing, every difficult thing, every horrible thing we have encountered, You have promised that You will turn those things around for good. Every attack of Satan himself, Father, You've promised that it will all work together for our good. Father, what kind of people have You made us, Lord, that even Satan himself can no longer have any of his weapons prosper against weak men and women like us? Father, what You have done through giving us Your Son, who died in our place on Calvary Hill. Father, You've made us a purchased people. You've made us a people that belong. Father, You've taken us out of every place we came from, and You've brought us home into Yourself.
Father, how could we not worship You? How could we not shout glory to Your name? How could we not give glory, Lord God, to You, who have given us all things with Jesus Christ? You are worthy of our praise. You're worthy of our adoration. You're worthy of our trust, Lord God.
And Father, I ask You one more time: Father, would You give me the breath, Lord? You know the desire of my heart, and Father, I am so confident that You will give it to me for the things that You have shown me. Father, Lord, I pray that Your people, every person online, every person in this place, may receive from You, Father, what my heart has so desired for every single one. Father, I know it's not my desire; it's Yours, and I pray, Father, that You will bring it to fruition.
We stand against the devil and all of his workers, every distraction that seeks to draw our attention—the attention of our heart—away from what You seek to give from Heaven. Father, we stand against it, and we pray, Lord God, that You protect our ears, that You protect our hearts, and that You allow us to receive from Your word today, from Your Spirit today, Lord God, that we may see, Lord, Lord Jesus, with all of our heart and all of our eyes. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen, amen.
We're going to get into the word today. As we celebrate and as we were in worship, I was just so grateful to remember that we've seen quite a few people come through our ministry over the years who were not able to conceive a child. And I am so grateful to our Lord that, to this day, every single person that has ever come in now has received a child from the Lord. Amen, amen, amen! We've laid hands, we've prayed, we've believed the Lord, and never has He left us empty. We're incredibly grateful for that, and we're seeking to celebrate some of that with you today. But first, we want to go into the word of God, and the word He has given me for you today is titled "Seeing Forgiveness." Seeing forgiveness is a very special thing, as there's often a great misconception about what forgiveness really is. We often forgive each other for things, and then, when he did it again or she did it again, we may be a little extra upset because not only did you do it before, but I gracefully forgave you, and then you took that forgiveness and were good for maybe a week or two, and you just went and did the same thing all over again. Our forgiveness sometimes becomes all the more reason to be more upset the next time.
When in all reality, that is not the definition of forgiveness. That is not what forgiveness is. That's not the biblical definition. To be forgiven doesn't mean your sins in the past are forgiven; it means that your identity has changed. Who you are has changed, and you now have become a forgiven man or a forgiven woman. To be forgiven, to be beheld, to be looked at by God, by all of His angels, all of His people, by Satan, by demons, to be looked at by anyone as someone who has never done a thing wrong in the entire span of their life and could never commit a wrong until they enter eternity—that's what it means to be forgiven. The question is: Are we seeing that forgiveness that God has over the people around us? Do we see it over those people? And maybe most importantly today, do we see it over ourselves? Are we seeing forgiveness?
Just yesterday, here at the church, during every service, we give out food packets to every person that comes. We ask you to carry it in the door of your car so that you never have to turn a blind eye to someone who is in need and may be asking for help on the street. Just yesterday, I found myself with all my packets given out, and a person was asking for something. I'm scrambling through the car, trying to find something, and I'm concerned because I have nothing to give. Then, I find an open drink can—it’s all I had. I open the window and say, "Miss, can I give you this?" and she thanks me. I said, "I'm so sorry, I don't have more with me. I usually do. But do you know Jesus Christ?" She says, "Jesus? Yes, yes, I know Jesus." And I said, "He so loves you." Right there on the side of the road, she began to weep and just break down.
The reason I'm sharing this with you is that sometimes I hear people talk; sometimes they don't need to say anything—you can see it in their eyes. Sometimes they're next to you in another car; sometimes you overhear a conversation. So many people cannot see forgiveness over people they take offense with. They can't see forgiveness. They see, "Well, that person is in that place because they're lazy," or "That person is weak; that's why they're addicted to drugs," or "That person is just weird and strange; that's why they live this way or that or the other way."
If you cannot see the forgiveness of God over a person's life, you also will not be speaking to it. You will not be in agreement with it. You will not be reminding people of the truth, and you will definitely not be presenting the truth to them, possibly for the first time. There are many people in our city who do not know that God has forgiveness for them, that He loves them, that He has sent Jesus Christ to bring them into a relationship with Him—no matter what their life looks like in the past, in the present, or what they are willing to give to God in the future. So many do not know. But if you don't see forgiveness over their life, you're not going to be speaking to it. It's not going to feel like a privilege to serve someone; it's going to be a lot more attractive to turn a blind eye and just pretend as if someone doesn't even exist. Seeing forgiveness also for your own life—let me take you to Matthew chapter 9. We're going to read verses 9-13: "As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office, and He said to him, 'Follow Me.' So he arose and followed Him."
A very strange scripture verse if you know anything about that time—and if you don't, I will gladly remind you. Tax collectors were a lot worse than our IRS. You may have days where you do not like the IRS so much, but these were not just tax collectors of your own kinsmen. These were your people, your brother, your sister, someone of your nation, who had gone over to the enemy's side—the oppressor that had come in as an enemy, taken the ground, defeated you as a military power. And your neighbor, who had lived next to you his entire life, went over to the enemy, came to work for the enemy, got paid really well, and what he did was collect taxes from you for the enemy that had come into your territory. This is what Matthew was doing. He loved money. He didn't care how people talked about him, what he was going to look like to his kinsmen, to his countrymen. He's sitting in his tax office; he's doing what, in many people's eyes, would have been a despicable job. And Jesus passes by many people, and when He sees this Matthew, who is doing what most people are turning their eyes away from, they're grudgingly giving him what he's asking for. Tax collectors were known to collect more than they technically should have and skim off the top a little bit for themselves. And Jesus walks up to Matthew and picks him. He tells him, "Follow Me. Follow the Son of God."
Verse 10: "Now it happened, as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples." Here we have tax collectors, and other translations also say prostitutes. We have sinners—they sin for a living; it's what they do, it's what they're good at. And they have found each other. They are all rejected by the "good people," so to speak. They love to hang out together, but they're not afraid to also hang out with this Jesus. There's something different about this Jesus. He behaves like a rabbi, He seems to have the authority of a rabbi, He definitely ruffles some feathers, but I can be around Him even though I'm not welcome around the other rabbis. There's something different—He's seeing something over my life that allows me to come into His presence even though others don't really get it.
And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to His disciples, "Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?" Here you have the Pharisees. These were the honorable men of their day. They had made a living out of trying to serve God perfectly, trying to keep the law perfectly, trying to do everything that was required to somehow be righteous before God and set a standard and an example for the entire nation. And here the Pharisees look at what this Jesus is doing. They look at His life, they see Jesus—"I mean, we can't say that He's unbiblical. He quotes the word, He seems to be right with everything He says. We don't really like what He's saying all the time, but He's usually right. He's definitely very smart; He's got some kind of wisdom, and He has a lot of influence. Why would He sit down with the scum of the earth? Why would He sit down with all of these sinners? What does He see that He would sit down with them?" And they go and ask the disciples. Now, if you are a follower of Jesus Christ, you'll get a lot of questions that belong to Jesus. And in the same way, these disciples get a question, and Jesus overhears it. This is what verse 12 reads: "When Jesus heard that, He said to them,"—He answered on their behalf—"'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.'"
In other words, Jesus is not speaking to the sinners at the table; He's speaking to the Pharisees. He's telling them, "Listen, you don't believe you are sick. You don't believe you are in need of any kind of help. You don't understand that God is sending something into your life that you desperately need. These tax collectors and these sinners are getting something that you are missing out on, that is bypassing you." And Jesus wasn't judging the Pharisees and trying to cast them aside—we often see that picture painted. There were moments after giving opportunity after opportunity after opportunity when sometimes Jesus told them how it was. But right here, He's not doing that. He is literally giving them an invitation and an opportunity. Watch verse 13. This is what He tells them: "But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice.' For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance."
He gives them an assignment, and they understood the assignment 100%. These men, it was their job to study the Old Testament. They would memorize incredible portions of it, and they knew what Jesus was doing. He was quoting an Old Testament passage that they very, very well knew. And He tells them, "Go and learn what this means." In other words, "Go and learn what is going on in that story. You will begin to see and understand what is going on right here at this table with all of these sinners, all of these broken people, and Me sitting down with them and dining with them. Go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice.'" He's quoting from the prophet Hosea.
Let's go there. Hosea, Chapter 1, Verse 2, is the call of Hosea the prophet. When the Lord began to speak by Hosea, the Lord said to Hosea, "Go, take yourself a wife of harlotry and children of harlotry, for the land has committed great harlotry by departing from the Lord."
Here, God calls a man who is willing to obey Him, trust Him, listen to Him, and speak on behalf of God in his generation. God gives him this incredible direction. He tells him, "Listen, I'm going to need you to find yourself a wife." God didn't bring him a wife; He sends him out to find one. And here is the criteria: "Go find yourself a wife who is a prostitute. Go find yourself a wife who cannot stay with one husband, who is untrustworthy, who is not willing to be content with you, who is not willing to trust you, who is not willing to stay with you. Go find yourself a prostitute and have kids—build a family with a prostitute," is what the Lord says to Hosea.
Hosea obeys. By the time they have their third child, a son—two sons they had and a daughter—God says this in verses 9 and 10: "Then God said, 'Call his name Lo-Ammi, for you are not My people, and I will not be your God. Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered. And it shall come to pass in the place where it was said to them, "You are not My people," there it shall be said to them, "You are the sons of the living God."'" Here, again, an incredible instruction is given to Hosea. Literally, as a monument, his third child is to be called "Not My People." That's what the name means—Lo-Ammi means "not My people." That's what God tells Hosea to call his third child, his son. And then the Lord explains Himself and reiterates, "Listen, and this is what it means: I will not be your God; you will not be My people."
Now, Hosea knew the promises of the forefathers. Hosea knew what God had promised Abraham, what had passed down to Isaac and Jacob, continuing in the lineage of the Israelites. And then God makes this incredible statement: He says, "Yet the number of the children of Israel"—you know, the word Israel means "peace with God"—"those are the children of Israel, to have peace with God, princes with God, unity with God. The number of the children of Israel shall be as the sand of the sea." He's referencing that promise, "which cannot be measured or numbered. And it will come to pass in the place where it was said to them, 'You're not My people.' In other words, 'You're no Christian. Look at the condition of you; you're not a godly man; you're not a godly woman.'" Sometimes we don't say it; all we do is think it. We don't see the forgiveness over that person's life, and in our heart, "Well, that person doesn't belong to the Lord; that person doesn't look like a church person; that person doesn't behave like God." Wash their mouth: "You are not My people." There it shall be said of them, "You are sons of the living God."
He tells Hosea this incredible thing: "I'm gonna do something extravagant. You guys are missing the point. I'm not going to dwell with the people that are doing this thing; I'm going to do something extravagant. It's going to cause people who didn't do anything right—they did nothing to be My people—they're going to be called My People."
Jesus tells this to the Pharisees: "Go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'"
Here we have a man, Hosea, married to a prostitute, having children with her. And then Hosea's wife, whom God told him to marry—this is the bride that God had for him—she turns away from Hosea, leaves him, and goes back to prostitution. She leaves him behind, leaves the home, moves on. And now, one day, she's in trouble, and she's waiting that day to be sold in the marketplace. She's right there being presented among the slaves, waiting to be sold. We don't know the extent of the trouble she got herself into, but it came to a point where she had sold herself to such an extent she couldn't pay the bills, and she was going to be sold as a slave.
And the word of the Lord comes to Hosea, Chapter 3, Verses 1 and 2: "Then the Lord said to me, 'Go again, love a woman who is loved by a lover and is committing adultery, just like the love of the Lord for the children of Israel, who look to other gods and love the raisin cakes of the pagans'"—those were the offerings, the worship offerings—"So I bought her for myself for fifteen shekels of silver and one and one-half homers of barley."
You see here, Hosea again gets an instruction from the Lord. Not only does God tell him to marry a prostitute and give her the benefit of the doubt and give her love and give her children, but now, when she turns away, goes back to where she came from, God says, "Go again." So, "I bought her for myself." You see, Hosea all this time has been a type of Christ, a story, an example, a prophetic example of what Jesus Christ would really come to do for you and me, for the children of God, for the people that God was already seeing forgiveness over, all purchased, all ready for you to receive. And Jesus Christ comes into your life, and you may have given Him your life, and you've turned right back to your filth, or you've turned right back against the Lord, or you've turned right back to being angry with your husband, or speaking evil of your wife, or coming against your children in an unreasonable way and chastising them when you're emotional. You're not righteous; you're not doing it in righteousness; you're not doing it for their upbringing. You're frustrated, or you still go back to a foul mouth.
Here is what Hosea shows us: the Father says to the Son, "Go again." So, "I bought her for myself." This is what God does for a bride in His Son. This is what God has for His Son. He gave His Son a bride. He showed that He had a bride for His Son, and so the Son came to the earth to come to His bride. Some believed, some didn't, some applauded when they put Him to death. He died for every single one of them. And time and time again, as we have hearts that grow cold or grow full of unbelief, or we abandon the place of prayer, or we abandon the place of the Word, or our trust in the Lord, this is what is in the Father's heart: "Go again." That is the Father's heart towards His Son in your case: "Go again." So, "I bought her for myself." This is what Jesus is sending them to.
And then just a couple of chapters later, this is what we read in Chapter 6, Verses 4-6:
"Oh Ephraim, what shall I do to you? Oh Judah, what shall I do to you? For your faithfulness is like a morning cloud, and like the early dew it goes away. Therefore I have hewn them; I have tried to draw them by the prophets and warn them. I have slain them by the words of My mouth." In other words, "I have tried to cut them to the heart to get their attention. And your judgments are like light that goes forth, for I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings."
You see, this is not a harsh passage. It's often explained that way. It's wrong. If you read the entire story, this is the cry of God, who is seeking to have a people fall in love with Him, a people turn back to Him that so easily is distracted, so easily trusts in other ways of provision, other ways of protection, other ways of fighting their battles, other ways of seeing victory come into their life. "Help yourself, let someone else help you, but don't run to God." It creeps into the people of God in all generations. And here, God says, "What shall I do to you?"—not in a threatening way—"What shall I do to you? What is it going to take to have you respond to My love? What will I do to you, Judah? What will I do to you, Ephraim? Your faithfulness is like a morning cloud." In other words, it's there, but it's so easily—the sun comes up, it's gone. It just evaporates for nothing. It's the first thing that goes away in the morning; it's the first thing that disappears. Like the early dew, it goes away.
"I send prophets," in other words, "I send My word. I even send correction. I even sent a law to show you your need of a Savior." And then He says this incredible verse that Jesus sent the Pharisees back to: "For I desire mercy"—that word mercy in the original text means "steadfast love"—"for I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than offerings."
What He's telling them is, "You're not faithful to Me." He's telling them, "You serve Me with your sacrifices; you're willing to show up at specific times; you're willing to do specific things; you're willing to abstain from specific things, but I don't have your heart. And I want to win your heart. I don't care about the sacrifices. I don't care about you trying to do everything right. I don't care about you trying to get the bad stuff out of your life. I'm trying to win your heart." And that's where Jesus sent the Pharisees. He told them, "Go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice.' You're going to begin to understand something about those prostitutes and those tax collectors at the table, sitting with me right here, having dinner." He sends them back to His Word so that they may understand.
As we go back to the book of Matthew, just a short time later, after Jesus gave them the assignment, the Pharisees and Jews gather again, and Jesus speaks to the Pharisees once more. We're just a couple of chapters later, in chapter 12, verses 1 to 7: "At that time, Jesus went through the grain fields on the Sabbath, and His disciples were hungry and began to pluck heads of grain and eat. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to Him, 'Look, your disciples are doing what is not lawful to do on the Sabbath.' But He said to them, 'Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, he and those who were with him, how he entered the house of God and ate the showbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the law that on the Sabbath, the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are blameless? Yet I say to you that in this place there is one greater than the temple. But if you had known what this means: "I desire mercy and not sacrifice," you would not have condemned the guiltless.'"
They’re not seeing the forgiveness over the lives of the disciples; they’re still seeing the law over their lives. Suddenly, their law gauges go off, and they think, "They’re breaking the law! This Jesus gets a lot of attention, a lot of influence. If you follow Him, you ought to know better than this—you’re breaking the law!" And Jesus says, "You never went to check out and learn and see what I taught you to figure out. If you had, you would not have condemned the guiltless." Church, do you still see the law, or can you see the Son over people's lives? Do you still see your guilt, or can you see forgiveness? Is it real? Has the Holy Spirit revealed it to your heart? Because you’ve turned your eyes away from the law, through which no man can be justified, and you’ve turned yourself to the only way that man can be saved. You’ve turned from the law, you’ve turned from your sins, you’ve turned from your unbelief towards the Son of God, who came to take away the sins of the world.
Can you see the forgiveness, or is there still guilt that you walk around with, and you can’t see it? You can’t see it over your life; you can’t see it over other people’s lives. All you see is all the things people keep doing wrong: "Get it by now, get your life together, figure it out, stop doing that stuff." And all the strong are able to do it, and the weak and the broken—the sinners who are only good at sin—they end up at a table by themselves, together with the Son of God, who says, "Go and learn what this means: 'I desire steadfast love, not sacrifice.'" I'm not looking for a people that always do the right thing. I’m not roaming the earth trying to find those that put in so much effort to be good, so much effort to abstain from things, so much effort to try and live up to the expectations of God. I’m not looking for your service; I’m not looking for your works. I want to win your heart. All along, God has been trying to win the heart of His people.
That word "guiltless"—"You would not have condemned the guiltless"—only appears two times in the entire Scripture. That Greek word means to be innocent, to be blameless. "You would not have condemned the innocent; you would not have condemned the blameless," Jesus says. As far as He’s concerned, they’re blameless; they’re innocent. He uses such a strong word in the Greek. It’s only in the Bible two times, but it finds its root in the Hebrew language of the Old Testament. This word comes from the numerical alphabet, the very first letter—Alpha—the same letter that’s only used a number of times in the Bible when God describes Himself and says, "I am Alpha and Omega."
That’s the word—the word Alpha is what is used right here to describe the guiltless. In other words, Jesus is saying, "You’re condemning someone who has become like God in their righteousness. The righteousness of God has been given to sinners. The righteousness of God has provided for the brokenness and the guilt of sinners, and you can’t see the forgiveness in your heart. You’re still condemning them in your heart; you’re still condemning your own life for your mistakes, for the things you’ve done wrong, for the shortcomings that you may very well have."
But are you seeing the forgiveness? Can you see it over your own life, or are you still condemning the guiltless? You’re still condemning the one that God says, "I sent My Son. He laid down His life; He laid down His righteousness and gave it to you. He took all of your sin, everything you were to blame for, and He took it upon Himself, and He suffered the death you deserved. But I gave you life; I gave you righteousness." Can you see the forgiveness? Are you seeing it over your own life? See, God was never looking for a people that learn to behave well. God was never looking for a people that could impress Him by how they abstain from sin or do good. All these things may happen when the Holy Spirit comes upon your life—let it be, and let God have the glory. But God is not looking for a people that try to change themselves. God is not looking for a people that have something to offer to Him in their service.
All this time, He told the Pharisees, and He longed for them to see—He longed for us to see—all I've been trying to do from the beginning of time is win your heart. I want to be in your presence; I want you to love me back. That is the cry in the heart of the Father. And Church, I'm telling you now, online and in person, if you give your heart to Jesus Christ, if you give Him all of your heart, Jesus Christ will never allow you to be guilty in the presence of any law. He says, "As far as I'm concerned, they're innocent. As far as I'm concerned, they are alpha—they have been made a part of the righteousness of God by my own blood. You would not have condemned the guiltless if you knew why God was sending His Son."
He didn't come to look for the impressive; He didn't come to look for the godly. He came so that sinners may be called to turn from the condemnation of the law and turn to the Son of God, to see that God freely would justify by faith in that name and that name alone. That is why we glorify that name, we honor that name, we sing of that name, we spread that name everywhere we go—that by the name of Jesus Christ, all men may be saved. Church, you represent Jesus in this generation. Tell the truth about your God. Go and learn what this means so that you never condemn the guiltless. Church, you are guiltless by the blood of Jesus Christ.
If you've been condemning yourself, if you still struggle with guilt, if you still feel responsible for the things you've done wrong, if you still feel shame—shame means you can't openly talk about it, you feel people are going to look at you so badly, they're going to see what you're really made of, and you're going to be rejected by them—that's what shame feels like. When God takes shame off of your life, you can talk about everything and anything, and no one will ever reject you for it.
This is the miracle that God does through His justification. He will guard you from being wounded for the actions that involve you coming into the light. There's not been a person in this world that trusted God, came into the light with all of their life, and met rejection from all people—Church, I would know. If you give Him all of your heart, Jesus will never let you be guilty in the presence of any law, any law at all. He says, "Oh, he's given me his heart. I don't care what he's going through. I don't care the mistakes he's made. I don't care that he went right back to prostitution—I will go again and put him right back, because this is what I figured I would do."
"I'm going to come into this world, and after I've departed, I'm going to send my Spirit time and time and time again, because I'm not looking for a reformation in their heart; I'm looking to win their heart. I'm looking for them to finally see that I love them so unconditionally, so much, that they would begin to love me back. And they would speak to me from their heart daily, and they would want to know what I have to say to them daily because they've fallen in love with me, because they began to see why I came into this world."
-Pastor Stan Mons