Morgan Teruel: Thanks for tuning in to the Sandals Church podcast. Our vision as a church is to be real with ourselves, God and others. We're glad you're here and we hope you enjoyed this message.
Pastor Adam Workman: Hey, so when I was in sixth grade, I was in a remedial English class, which just means I wasn't a great student and I needed some extra help with the old English language. So my teacher comes into class one day and she says, Class, I have an announcement to make. Our class size is too large and we have to reduce the size of the class by one student. And I looked around and thought, there is five of us in here. What does she mean by this?
And then she says, and Adam, yesterday when you were absent, the class took a vote. Yeah. And she said the class unanimously voted that you would be the student to leave the class and go to a different English class. And man, I remember thinking, well, of all, this is remedial English and you're using words like unanimously. Second, do I even get a vote?
This was like Survivor Island before there was Survivor Island. And so she says, Adam, gather your things and leave. And so, man, I gathered my stuff and embarrassed and humiliated, I left and I went to a new English class. And I remember thinking that whole day, like that entire day, I'm thinking to myself, I can't wait till I get home because when I get home, I'm going to tell my mom what happened. And my mom's going to come up to this school and she's going to crash out on everybody, man.
The teacher, the principal, the secretary is going to catch shrapnel when my mom comes up in here. So I go home and I tell my mom what happened that day. Ma, I said when I walked through the door, Ma, you're not gonna believe this. They voted me out of English class. They kicked me out.
The teacher said there's too many students, there's five of us. They kicked me out of class, Ma. My mom just stops and looks at me and says, Adam, follow me. We're gonna make cupcakes. And I thought to myself, okay, a little sugar can't hurt, you know?
And she said, Adam, these cupcakes are not for you. They're for your new class and for your old class. And I said, Ma, I don't think you understand. Didn't vote me class president. This teacher led a rebellion against me.
There was an uprising and they voted me out of class. And she said, I know, I heard you. And you're gonna take these cupcakes to school tomorrow morning. And I have to tell you, man, my mom is an amazing baker. Like she's an incredible baker.
And what she's telling me to do is I have to take these delicious, scrumptious cupcakes to like my mortal enemies. These jerks that voted me out of class. She wants me to bring cupcakes. And I'm not going to say no to my mom. And I rode the bus, the school bus.
It's a forty, forty five minute ride to school. So I'm bouncing around with the cupcakes all morning. I get to school, walk inside and I go to that class and I drop the cupcakes off. And I have to be honest with you. I don't remember.
I don't remember how they responded. If they said thank you, if they threw them in the trash when I walked out, I don't know. But I do know this, when I shut the door to the class that day, I felt amazing. I felt incredible. I felt like the weight of the world was lifted off my shoulders.
And I don't know, I don't know if that act of kindness impacted my classmates or my teacher. I don't know if it changed them in any way, but I promise you this guys, it changed me. It marked me. It was like a cannon event in my life. And I remember thinking, where did my mom get an idea like that?
Today, we're gonna look at a passage where Jesus teaches us that lesson. We're in Matthew five, we're on the sermon of the mount, one of Jesus's greatest teachings ever. And he's gathered his closest followers around him and he's teaching them. And in the meantime, some other people gather around too and everyone's listening. And Jesus says this, You've heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and tooth for tooth.
This is the law of retribution. The idea that the punishment should fit the crime, but not be excessive. Like you could take an eye for an eye, but you can't take an arm for an eye. You can't take a life for a tooth. And then Jesus says this, he says, But I tell you, and anytime Jesus says that in the Sermon on the Mount, this is incredibly significant because every rabbi quoted other rabbis.
Every rabbi quoted scripture, but Jesus is seeing himself as the ultimate authority. He's seeing himself as God. Jesus wasn't just a good teacher. He wasn't just like a nice guy. He was God.
And so what He's about to tell us, what He's about to say is incredibly important for our lives. It's radical what He's about to say. He says, do not resist an evil person. In other words, don't repay evil with evil. And then he says, If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.
That sounds a lot like baking cupcakes for your enemies. And he says, if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. The people that Jesus is talking to were two garments, an outer garment and an undergarment. So if they took Jesus literally here, they would be walking around naked. Is Jesus telling us to walk around naked?
No, he's exaggerating to make a point. He's trying to get our attention but most of all, he's trying to get us to think. He says, if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. There was a Roman law at the time where a soldier, a Roman soldier could compel any Jewish person to carry all their stuff for a mile. And Jesus is saying, if that happens to you, you have the opportunity to go a second mile and turn and make an enemy into a friend.
And then he says, give to the one who asks you and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. Guys, listen, not only was no one teaching this way, nobody was living this way. Do you know anybody who really lives this way? What is Jesus getting at in this passage? Well, first of all, this is what he isn't doing.
He's not giving us a new law that must be followed in every circumstance. This is not like the new commandments. It's not a new law. These are examples. He's not telling us to ignore evil that's done to others.
And he's not telling us to accept physical abuse. He's not telling us to be passive. Like when I was in kindergarten and this kid walked up to me and I stood there while he poured an entire carton of milk over my head till every last drop fell out. And I just stood there while the milk dripped down my face and my whole body and the teacher came to move me away to finally clean me up. I was so passive.
Jesus is not saying be passive. In fact, in every instance, there's a call to action of some kind in this passage. What Jesus is doing is that he's teaching us there's a new way to live by giving us examples of how we can respond when our instincts tell us to do the opposite. When someone insults you, when someone rage baits you, when someone pulls a power trip on you, as a disciple of Jesus, you have options. You don't have to respond like everybody else responds.
What Jesus is saying, listen, write this down. What Jesus is saying is you can surprise people with grace. Man, you can surprise people with grace when everything inside of you is like just screaming for you to defend yourself. Jesus is saying, give them grace. Bake them cupcakes.
Peter says it this way, don't repay evil for evil, he says. Right. Don't retaliate with insults when someone insults you. Instead, pay them back. That's what we wanna hear sometimes.
But he says pay them back with a blessing. That is what God has called you to do. And if you do that, he will grant you his blessing. But that's not easy, is it? No.
That's hard. Yes. But if we want the blessings of the kingdom, we have to embrace the priorities of the kingdom. And what what Peter is saying is don't let the evil, don't let the evil done to you become evil done through you. You don't have to treat people the way that they treat you.
You don't have to become like them. And too often we think that retaliating and fighting will make us feel better. But man, think about it. How has holding a grudge helped your relationships? It's only hurt mine.
I mean, when's the last time you retaliated and you felt good about it later? I always leave feeling like a jerk. I always leave regretting it. How has withholding love and withholding grace made you a better person? Man, it can't.
Jesus is teaching us a new mindset. I'm gonna get you back. Jesus is teaching us our mindset should be, I'm gonna give you grace. Amen. It's completely backwards.
That's right. It's an upside down kingdom That doesn't make sense to us at first. It sounds like it's the exact opposite of what we would do. I grew up in Jersey and at the Jersey Shore, there's these giant boardwalks. I mean, they're miles and miles long.
And on these boardwalks are these huge amusement parks. And they have some of them have these things called fun houses. And you walk into a fun house, and the lights would be strobing. There'd be loud music. There'd be spinning tunnels that you'd have to try to work your way through.
There would be these things called mirror mazes. Anytime I walked into a fun house, I had to just kind of pause and collect myself because it was so disorienting. That's what the Kingdom of God is like a bit. We have to adjust to what Jesus is saying. It's like writing trying to write with the the other hand that you're normally writing with.
It's so different than what we think. It's the upside down kingdom. It's the opposite of what we think. Because what we what we do, what we think is, if you take advantage of me, I'm gonna take advantage of you. Right?
If you cheat on me, I'm gonna cheat on you. If someone at church offends me, I'm gonna find another church. If you hurt me, I'm gonna hurt you. Why? Because we want the people that hurt us to hurt like us.
It seemed that every time we were getting ready to go on a family vacation, Melody and I would have packed up the car, and we're getting ready to leave. Something would go wrong for me in my eyes. Something would go wrong, and it would just set me off. Someone didn't do something, someone did something they shouldn't have done, whatever it was. It would just bother me.
And I would kind of like just pout a bit, you know, I'd go quiet. I'd get cold. And here we're leaving to have a fun time. And I'm kind of ruining it. And I'd get in the car and I would just be silent.
Dani Crowley: We are so glad that you are here. If this message has served you or encouraged you in any way, I participate in what we're doing and to give whatever you can today. You can do that by going to give. Sc. And for now, let's get back right into the message.
Pastor Adam Workman: That's what I'm like sometimes when I'm in my kingdom, The kingdom of Adam. And man, I am way too good at holding a grudge. What about you? What are you like when you're living in your kingdom? What's it like?
One of the things that makes Jesus so attractive, so beautiful to me is grace. I love grace. I'll sing songs about grace. I want to sing songs about grace. I'll read every book that you have on grace.
I need grace. I want grace. But oftentimes when it comes to my relationships and in my life, do you know what's true a lot of times? As often and as much as I love grace, I don't live grace. Can you relate to that?
A few weeks ago, Melody and I were having a discussion, whereas when the kids were little, we would say, We're having a conversation. We were fighting. And here's what I know, I don't remember what it was about, but it was definitely my thought. I mean, fault, my fault. I just wanna make sure she knows that.
This was my fault. She came to me, She swallowed her pride and she came to me and apologized and tried to make things right, But I still was stewing on it. I still was, holding a grudge. And then she came to me with tears in her eyes and she said, you know, Adam, sometimes you're the hardest person in the world to make up with. I'm embarrassed to say it, but when she said that, my pride, my pride just kind of said, You got her.
She hurt you, now you hurt her. Now you're even. And the second that thought came to my mind, another thought came and kind of consumed that thought. And this voice said, this is the person you say you love more than anyone in the world and you're proud that you hurt her. Let me ask you, do you recognize when that second voice speaks to you?
Do you Are you familiar with that voice, the voice of truth in your life? Because you and I, we will never ever surprise people with grace until we hear the voice of God. Write this down. We must learn to hear when God speaks. I've talked to people over the years, man, that they just think God is quiet.
He's forgotten about them. He doesn't care. I've talked to other people who, they used to hear from God. They used to hear from him, but they haven't heard from God in a long, long time. And they think God is silent.
Do you feel that way sometimes? Jesus, of John, which was one of Jesus' closest friends, he described Jesus as the word, which is such an interesting way to describe a person. Like we all have people in our lives that have a lot of words, the yappers, you know, they just don't quit talking, but to call someone the word. One of the things Jesus was, John was saying when he called Jesus the word was that, in the same way that our, our words give life to our thoughts, they reveal our thoughts. Jesus reveals, he shows us what God is like.
Jesus said, if you've seen me, you've seen the father. Jesus reveals God to us. He isn't distance. He isn't far away. He isn't aloof.
He isn't quiet. He's not hiding from any one of us. God wants to be known by you in the every day of your life. God wants to be known by you when you're at the gym, when you're at work, you know, when you're stuck in traffic again, when you just feel like life is unfair and you're hurting, God wants to speak to you. But if you want to hear him, you have to listen.
Are you listening to the voice of God? Jesus says this, my sheep listen to my voice, which assumes he's speaking. I know them and they follow me. They listen and they follow. Sometimes we're not gonna wanna do the thing that God tells us to do.
We're just not gonna wanna do it. And oftentimes I've found over the years that a lot of times it's when the things I don't wanna do, that when I hear that little voice, that confirms to me it's God because I don't want to do it. God's ready to speak to you in the everyday. The question is not, is he speaking? That is not the question, my friend.
The question is, are you listening? Listen to what God says in Isaiah 30 verse 21. He says, whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, this is the way, walk in it. God is a God who speaks. He's a God who gives direction and gives guidance.
A few weeks ago, my son and I were working on his car and I had to keep consulting this YouTube video of this dude who did the job previously and documented it. I have to keep watching that. My knuckles are all bruised and scraped up. I got engine coolant all over my feet and then it never rains here and it starts pouring rain. Hood's wide open and it's just pouring down rain And I can't get this stupid bolt off.
And I'm so frustrated. And I started thinking, if I could have my mechanic friends here, like if I could have Yaz and Michael on my shoulder right now, just telling me how to do this thing, that would be incredible. I mean, imagine you're trying to get healthy and Andrew Huberman is on your shoulder. Or you're out playing a pickup game and you've got LeBron and he's giving you pointers on your shoulder. You're trying to get your financial life in order and Warren Buffett is there helping you navigate and negotiate that.
Listen, God is on your shoulders all the time. He's with you and he's the expert. There are three of here are three of the ways that God speaks to us. First, God speaks to us through his word. You will never know the voice of God unless you spend time reading his word.
And we don't read the Bible just to kind of try to get favor with God or make him like us or make him happy with us. We read the Bible so that we can know God deeply. Then God talks, speaks to us through people. Do you have people in your life who talk to you about God, who love you and speak truth into your life? Do have people like that?
I don't know where I would be if I didn't have people speaking into my life. And then God speaks to us through his spirit. But the more you tune him out, the more you dial that voice down, the less you're going to hear him. And we are so used to dialing voices down. We're so used to muting voices.
I mean, Melody and I will be driving in the car and we'll be listening to a true crime podcast of some kind. The guidance voices on the Google maps, turn left, turn right, do this. And we're trying to shut it off. We just want to shut that voice off. Listen, God is a voice that you don't want to silence.
Man, you need his direction in your life. A couple months ago, was, pulling out of the barbershop and as I was pulling out, there was a homeless guy on the corner and our eyes locked. I don't know if you've ever experienced that. And God said, Adam, go talk to him. And I said, no.
And I drove on. And I got about ten seconds, fifteen seconds maybe down the road. And the prompting was so strong that it was almost like God turned the car around. And I drove back and he vanished. This guy was gone.
I drove everywhere trying to find this guy and I could not see him anywhere. And I look back on that and I've looked back on that since and I've wondered, what did I miss? And then I've even thought, what did he miss out on? Because I was so slow to respond. What might you be missing out on because you're not listening and obeying the voice of God in your life.
We all have those yes or no kind of fork in the road moments when God is going to tell us to do something. And if you don't do it, you may miss out on the amazing life that God has for you. About twelve years ago or so, the church where I served at, at the time was taking a missions trip to Ethiopia. Not only had I never been out of the country at this point, I couldn't find Ethiopia on a map, but God said, Adam, go on that trip. And this is one of those times where I said, yes.
I went on the trip. We get there and one of the things that we did was, was we visited different orphanages, lots of orphanages. I went to this one orphanage and I walked into this just giant room. It was a massive room. The room was covered wall to wall in cribs.
There was one little path that you could walk on to get from one side to the other. But other than that, it was packed with cribs. The kids would jump from crib to crib to get around the room. That's how tightly they were packed. And I was standing there talking to this one little girl named Salam.
When all of a sudden I felt someone turn me around, just physically turn me. And I turned around and there was this little boy. He climbed into my arms. He looked me in the eyes. He grabbed my cheeks, grabbed me by the face, and he said, are you John Cena?
Morgan Teruel: I
Pastor Adam Workman: said, no, I'm not John Cena. I'm Adam. What's your name? He said, My name is Mehetatab. He spoke incredible English for a little boy in Ethiopia.
We spent thirty minutes to an hour together, just talked. When I left that day, I got back in the van and drove away. The only way I can describe that is that, I felt like I left my son there. And as I felt that and thought that the Holy Spirit said, Adam, you have to find a way to bring him home. And when the Holy Spirit said that, I thought that sounds like, yeah, but Melody's not here.
She doesn't know him. She doesn't feel this way. What would that mean for our family? I know anything about adoption, let alone international adoption. How could we afford?
I had all these questions. And even though guys, even though it went against everything in the kingdom of Adam, we did the hard thing. And three years later, Mehdi became a part of our family. And I can't imagine my life without Mitti. I can't imagine.
Why did that happen? Did that happen because we're amazing people? We're just incredible. We're awesome. Not a chance, man.
It happened because God spoke. God spoke. And when He speaks, we have two choices. We can say no to ourselves or we could say no to God. But which one of those choices do you think leads to the life you've always wanted?
Not only is God not hiding from you, He's gone through extraordinary lengths to reach you. And you will never find your way back to God without Jesus. We have a dog, her name is Sessie. And Sessie is a runner, man. Sessie gets three inches of daylight and she's gone.
She just runs. Several months ago was, I don't know, 10:11 o'clock at night, we were coming in and out of the house. The door was left, it was closed, but it wasn't closed all the way. And we later could see on the cameras that Sassy walked over to the door, She put her nose to it and she nudged it open. And she stepped out into the darkness.
And then she ran. And it took ten or fifteen minutes for us to even notice that she was gone. She got a really good head start. And when we found out, when we noticed that Sesse was missing, we all jumped into three different cars and started searching for Sesse. Thirty minutes turned into an hour, an hour turned into two.
Three hours we're driving around trying to find this dog. My wife and my son, they drive home, start posting on social media in different places, lost dog, help us find our dog. I kept driving around. 30 goes by or so and Melody texts me, Adam, you've got to come home. You need some sleep.
It's like 02:30, something like that in the morning. And I texted back one word, No. So, she calls me. She says, Abby, you got to get home, we'll pick this up in the morning kind of thing. And I said, Listen, I'm not coming home until I find this dog.
And I kept driving. I needed gas, so I went and I got gas. And on the way back from getting gas, I thought there's this one part of this one neighborhood that I hadn't checked. So, I pulled in, I turned the corner and there was Sassy, Right in the middle of the road. She looked hopeless, scared, lost.
Put in park, I jumped out of my car and I got down on the knee because she's a runner. And I stretched out my arms really wide. And I said, Sassy, pup, I've been looking everywhere for you. She ran right into my arms. I scooped her up, hugged her, put her in the car, and I drove her home.
I wasn't mad at Sassy because she ran away. I was so glad that she was back home with us. God is not mad at you because of your sin. He loves you. He just wants you to come back home.
And that leads us to this profound truth that we all must, must wrestle with and just sit in. It's the third thing I want you to write down. We give grace because we've been given grace. Amen. You can't give the kind of grace that Jesus is talking about until you come for grace yourself.
And we see this with one of Jesus's very own disciples, Peter. Peter was all over the place in his journey with Jesus, just all over the place, man. He started out with, I'll die for you, chopping off dudes ears in the garden when they tried to arrest Jesus to, I've never even heard of that guy before, like within five minutes. But late in life, not long before he dies, this is what Peter writes. He says, Those who fail to develop in this way, in what way?
Becoming more like Jesus, are shortsighted. They're blind, forgetting. What do they forget Peter? Forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sin. We're runners because we're forgetters.
If you have a hard time giving grace, it's because you've forgotten the state that you were in when God found you. How lost you were, how separated from God you were when he found you. If you've wandered away from Jesus, he hasn't gone anywhere. You can just turn around and come back to him because he has even more grace for you. And some of you who maybe have never received God's grace, the gospel is your invitation to come home.
Jesus said this in John 10. He said, my sheep listen to my voice. I know them and they follow me. And what does Jesus do? Jesus says, I give them eternal life and they shall never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
Do you know how Jesus feels about you? Listen to this. If a man, Jesus says, has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do? Won't he leave the 99 in the wilderness and go search for the one that is lost until he finds it? And when he finds it, won't He just pick it up on His shoulders and carry it home?
Listen, if I'll look for a dog for hours until I find her, how much more will God go on an all out search for you? He's been moving toward you since before you drew your first breath. He's offering you radical, extravagant grace. God is kneeling. His arms are flung open wide and He's looking at you in the eye and he's saying, I've been looking everywhere for you.
Just run into his arms. When I was seven years old, God found me, a little kid from a small town with nothing to offer. A mom who barely knew Jesus. A dad who didn't believe in God. But I knew that I was a sinner, that my sin separated me from God.
And that Jesus came, that He died on the cross in my place to give me eternal life. And He offered me eternal life as a free gift by faith. So I received it. I believed in Him. I trusted Him for forgiveness of sin and eternal life.
You can do that today too. Listen, His free grace, His forgiveness, it doesn't come by being a good person. It doesn't come by making a promises that you're going to start doing something or stop doing something. It doesn't come by being baptized. It doesn't come by being at church.
It comes as a free gift for you when you receive it by faith. Jesus says this in John three thirty six, Anyone who believes in God's son has eternal life. Jesus invites you into a new way of life. And if you've received that grace, how are you doing at lavishing it on others? And if you've never received his grace, you can receive it today by faith.
Your father wants you to come home. Let him surprise you with grace. Let's pray. Jesus, would you give people the courage right now to hear and obey your voice? For those who don't know you, God, would today be the day that they learned they don't have to be lost anymore, that they would come to know you as the God who rescues, the God who speaks, the God who saves.
And it's his in his strong and wonderful beautiful name we pray. Amen.
Morgan Teruel: Thank you so much for tuning in today. If you want more content from this series, we have the YouTube playlist linked in the description. And if you want more information about who we are and what we do, you can go to sandalschurch.com.