Full of Grace and Truth

Show Notes

Bryan Howard teaches from John 1:14 about sharing the gospel with the grace and truth of Jesus. Through personal stories and biblical examples, he encourages believers to build patient, loving relationships with people who do not know Christ while remaining faithful to God’s Word.

What is The Vue?

Bellevue Baptist Church College Ministry

I don't know about y'all, but it feels good in the room, right? It feels really good. I get a really cool vantage point to be sitting back there and just watching y'all worship. And that's like one of my favorite things in the world, is just to sit back and get to know you guys and watch you encounter the Lord and raise your hands and surrender. So for those of you who don't know me, I'm seeing a lot of faces that I have not met yet. So please come talk to me afterwards. I wanna get to know you guys. But if we have not been introduced, my name is Bryan, I'm the new Vue pastor here. And if this is your first time, we want to hang out. We wanna get to know you, wanna take you out to coffee or buy you lunch or something. And so if you would, come find me or come find one of our leaders and we'd love to get you connected to more things Vue. And then maybe this is your first time back in a couple months or maybe a year or so. We're really glad you're here. And so tonight, we are gonna be looking at a passage in John. And so last week we were in Acts chapter two and we were looking at some of the essential characteristics that Christ has for his church. And when we were looking at this, we realized that our ministry, The Vue, it has to have community with God, community with believers, and then community with non-believers. I don't know about y'all, it feels good in the room, right? It feels really good. I get a really cool vantage point to be sitting back there and just watching y'all worship. And that's like one of my favorite things in the world is just to sit back and get to know you guys and watch you encounter the Lord and raise your hands and surrender. So for those of you who don't know me, I'm seeing a lot of faces that I have not met yet. So please come talk to me afterwards. I wanna get to know you guys. But if we have not been introduced, my name is Bryan, I'm the new Vue pastor here. And if this is your first time, we want to hang out. We wanna get to know you, wanna take you out to coffee or buy you lunch or something. And so if you would come find me or come find one of our leaders and we'd love to get you connected to more things Vue. And then maybe this is your first time back in a couple months or maybe a year or so. We're really glad you're here. And so tonight we are gonna be looking at a passage in John. And so last week we were in Acts chapter two and we were looking at some of the essential characteristics that Christ has for his church. And when we were looking at this, we realized that our ministry, The Vue, it has to have community with God, community with believers, and then community with non-believers. Those are the people that we're talking about tonight. And I thought it would be helpful for maybe me just to start, I know you guys don't know me very well, but there are a lot of people in my life that would fit into that category. A lot of people who honestly were walking with the Lord, who challenged me in my life, who were in discipleship groups with me, who were in small groups with me in high school and were my best friends and who were in my wedding. And now I've just walked away from the Lord. And so I thought it'd be helpful to tell you about a relationship like that in my life. And so now that I know that these sermons are recorded and put on the internet, for confidentiality sake, because he might listen to this, we're gonna call this friend Joe. His name is not Joe, but I don't know if I've met a Joe yet. And I was trying to find a name that wouldn't be, is there any Joes in here? And if so, I'm sorry. No, okay, perfect. All right, Joe, we're going with Joe. Okay, so I met Joe in high school. He transferred to our school our junior year and just to set the stage, I went to a private Christian high school for all my high school years. And so everyone looked the same and I was scholarship there, so I didn't fit in as well. And my friend Joe, who showed up junior year, he did not fit in well either. He was a like huge, burly, full grown man, number one. He was like 300 pounds and he had this full grown beard, long curly hair, and then the best part about Joe was his mustache. He had a curled handlebar mustache, okay? And so Joe wasn't just a man's man, he also was like artsy and loved music and loved to like create things and was super creative. And so all that to say, Joe did not fit the status quo of our high school. He was super weird and we became best friends instantly. Instantly, and I don't know if that was because there was some weirdness in me, but we just cling to each other. And so we got really close and then going into our senior year, Joe's dad got arrested and went to jail for three years. And so Joe's dad missed his graduation and missed the other two of his kids' graduation. And during those three years that Joe's dad wasn't in the picture, our families became really close. Like my family and his family really became one family. And we spent all of our holidays together, we spent all of our birthdays together. He really became like my brother. And when we got to college, there was a day, we went to different colleges, so we started to grow a little bit apart, but we kept up. We would call each other and text each other. And there was a day that he texted me, I was like, hey, I just like, I really need to talk, Ryan. And so we got on the phone and he was being kind of weird, you know? He was being weird, he was doing some small talk and normally Joe is pretty straight to the point as you could tell from his handlebar mustache, he was a bold guy. And as we're talking, I could tell that he really wasn't saying what he wanted to say yet. And eventually he got to what he wanted to say and he told me that for a long time, he had really been struggling with like same sex attraction. And he wanted me to know before anyone else that he was gay. And for us, we came from like really traditional Christian families. And so that was like a pretty big deal for us. We had not had many people in our lives who had come out as gay. And as we were on this phone call, we're talking through it and I just wanted to listen. I wanted to listen to his story and what he was struggling with. And he talked about how he, he literally started weeping on the phone and was like, Bryan, you understand, I have begged God. I've begged him to take these feelings away and they haven't gone away. And so I guess this is just who I am. I guess the Lord has just like made me this way. And he just wanted to make that his identity. And so at first he kind of struggled with it and over the next couple months, he really embraced it. And that really became like who he was and what he wanted to be known for. And he stopped struggling with the feelings and he became okay with it being outside of God's plan. For the next few years, Joe and I would keep up. He was in my wedding. I love him still. But we would talk about his lifestyle often and try to figure out, like this was a friend who was in Bible studies with me. This is a friend who is still professing Jesus as Lord. And I just want you guys to know there has never been a time in my life that I felt more hopeless trying to share the gospel with Joe. I just felt completely hopeless. I had no tools and I didn't know how to get to him. I didn't know how to talk to him. And I wanted him to feel the relationship with Christ and the freedom of Christ that I felt like I had. I wanted him to have that too. And so that really is the question. Like how do you share the gospel with someone who has heard it and they believe it and they're even professing Jesus as Lord, but they're living completely opposite of what his word says. And so tonight in the gospel of John, John gives us an answer for how we should live with these people. The people who are living outside of God's will. And it says this, John 1, 14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. Full of grace and truth. Friends, that is the answer. That if you have lost people in your lives that you regularly encounter, that you care for deeply and are at just a total loss for how to help them see that Jesus really is the answer. Like Jesus is what they're looking for. And this verse shows us that. It gives us the answer that Jesus Christ was the perfect example to pierce the hearts of the lost. This verse shows us that the gospel, the message of the gospel, it was full of grace and truth because Jesus was full of grace and truth, which means that you and I, when we share the gospel, when we live out the gospel, it should be full of grace and truth. These are two words that should always be on the forefront of our mind when we are thinking of sharing the gospel, whether it's in word or deed. So what do these words mean? These are important words. Let's start with grace. Grace is kind of a churchy word. Grace is a Bible word, but grace is receiving what we do not deserve. Receiving what we do not deserve. You know, it's different from mercy. You guys know this, but mercy, it's not receiving what we do deserve. So if I were to go out after cookout tonight, who's coming? Everyone, cool. If I was gonna go after cookout and rob a bank, and then the police officer was like, I'm not gonna take you to jail. I'm just gonna let you off. That would be mercy. That would be not receiving what I do deserve. I would deserve to go to jail. Okay, but mercy or grace is different. Grace is like God giving Kindle to me as a wife. I didn't deserve that. Grace is the Lord calling me to be a pastor. Like I don't deserve that. These things are grace. So grace is very important, but it's very unique. And then truth. You know, truth is kind of a hard one. Truth is tough for us, but I would say if we were to define it, truth is what is real, what is right. It's reality. It's not relativism. And I'm sure you've noticed, but whether it's you or your friends or the people you know, like our culture has had a really tough.

defining that word. That truth has been a hot topic. And the thing about truth is that it is constant. It is steadfast. It is never changing. Truth is fact. It's ultimate. And if it could change, that would mean it's not truth. Does that make sense? Truth is real. Truth is fact. And I want you to notice back in verse 14 that Jesus was full of grace and truth. Not grace or truth. Not grace, truth. Grace and truth. It's both. And grace and truth, they're like an old married couple. They always live in tension, but you can't separate them. They have to be together. And that logically, grace and truth, they seem contradictory. But in the person of Jesus Christ, grace and truth live in perfect harmony. They live in perfect harmony. So why do we need both? Why did Jesus come full of grace and truth? Why is it so important that we have both in our life when we are living out the gospel? Let's start with truth. Truth is really, really important because truth, number one, reveals our condition. Truth reveals our condition. Now truth is a tough one because it forces us to come face to face with the reality that we're not good. That we're broken. That we need to be saved. And we can't do it on our own. And our culture fights against this concept of truth. That we want truth to be fluid and relative and fit into our agendas. And we hate the idea of something being ultimate or authoritative in our lives. We want to be in charge. We want to be in control. I like being in control. Like we want to find who we are and what we are and why we are. And truth, it hits a square between the eyes and it knocks us off the throne that we made for ourselves. It forces us to come face to face and admit that no matter how hard we try, we're just not in charge. We're not in control. That there is an authority over us. That truth does not ebb and flow with the times. It's constant. It stays constant through the ages. So why is it difficult to live out the truth of the gospel? Why is that difficult in our lives? Well, going back to the point, it reveals our condition. None of us enjoy admitting we need help. So what are some of the hard truths of the gospel that are countercultural? Some truths that make us a little uncomfortable, especially when we're sharing them with non-believers. Here are some truths in Scripture that we cannot flee from. We like to believe that we really aren't that bad. Romans 3.23 says, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Everyone. We have a tendency to believe that sin isn't that big of a deal. Romans 6.23 says, for the wages of sin is death. Death is the absence of life. That's a pretty big deal. There's a temptation to think that if we just live good lives that will offset all the bad things that we've done. Galatians 2.6 says something different. It says, yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law, but through faith in Jesus Christ. And some of us want to believe in God, but we really don't like the idea of Jesus, or specifically the Bible. In John 14.6, Jesus says this, I, Jesus, am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through me. And for those of us in the room who have surrendered to Christ, it's easy to assume that he's gonna make our lives easy. That he's gonna take away all of the hardships. That's not what Scripture says. Luke 9.23, Jesus says this, that if anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. That's a death sentence. It's not easy. Following Jesus is hard. That truth is difficult because it reveals our condition. That we're fallen, that we're broken, that we're sinful, and we need a Savior. And our temptation as Christians in this cultural moment would be to preach the gospel, but to leave out truth. To preach the gospel, but leave out truth. That Christians, we do so much harm when we choose one or the other. When we choose a gospel of grace or a gospel of truth, they have to be both. Jesus came full of grace and truth. And the gospel without truth, a gospel only of grace, it is a message not just ignoring sin, but affirming sin. It's affirming sin. And this is what our culture struggles with the most. It's ignoring the hard truths. We don't want to offend anyone. And instead of preaching, instead we like to preach the false gospel. It doesn't matter how you live. God's cool with it. He made you that way. That if you struggle with drinking or pride or language or sexual identity or lust, Jesus paid for your sins. You're good to go. That if you want to believe in God, but not Jesus, if you want to believe in something else, I'll see you in heaven. That's not what the Bible says. Absolutely not. This gospel without truth, it is a half-truth. Do you know what that means? It means it's a lie. Half-truths don't exist. It's not true anymore. It emphasizes how God loves us, which is correct, but it leaves out the truth. This is a type of gospel that shows that God loves us just as we are, which is absolutely correct. And we talked about this last week. But he loves us too much to leave us as we are. That God has standards for how he wants his children to look and live. That sin is not okay. And that salvation does not come to everyone, only those who profess Jesus Christ as Lord. Those who surrender to him. Not just know about him, but surrender to him. They will be saved. Friends, truth is difficult, but the truth will set you free. So truth reveals our condition. And secondly, grace reveals our hope. Grace reveals our hope. I think grace is actually a lot easier to talk about, but I do think grace is harder to believe in. Let me explain that. Even though truth is hard to talk about, I do think deep down we all know like we just don't have it together. We really do need help. I think we all can admit that. But grace, grace is difficult to believe in. Grace says that I have received something that I did not deserve. That I brought nothing to the table. That I did no earning, I did no deserving, but that someone else did for me what I could not do for myself. And deep down the lie that I fall into the most is that I brought something to the table. Does anyone else feel that? That if I can just, if I live good enough, I really can just earn like a little bit of God's love. Like if I go to church enough, if I read my Bible enough, then I'll deserve just a little bit of God's forgiveness. And that is just not what grace says. Grace says that you bring nothing, nothing. You are not worthy. You are not good enough, but Jesus is. Jesus is. And he has freed, freely gifted you his righteousness. And that in him, you are made new. You are made worthy. You are made holy. You are made set apart. That you have been made righteous before God in Christ. And so let's look at what scripture says about the grace that is countercultural. The grace that sometimes we leave out when we are trying to live out the gospel. And it's easy to believe that you've done too many bad things. And there's no hope for you. But Romans 8 would say otherwise. Verse 1, there's therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Well, if I can't earn my salvation, then how do I get it? How do I get it? Ephesians 2.8, for by grace you have been saved, through faith. And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Well, if I surrender to Jesus, won't I still have sin in my life? Won't sin still rule my heart? Romans 6.14 says, for sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under the law, but under what? Grace. Under grace. But what if I mess up? Like really mess up. And not just once, but like over and over and over. And I just can't get rid of this sin in my life. Ephesians 1.7, in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of trespasses, according to the riches of his what? Grace, which he lavished upon us. Friends, this is the good news of grace. This is the grace of the gospel. And we can all in this room fall in temptation of preaching a gospel without it, without grace. And when we preach a gospel without grace, a gospel of only truth, it turns into a message of condemnation and hate. This is what gives Christians a lot of bad name. This is the type of gospel that is really dangerous and damaging to the people around us. This is the gospel that says you're a sinner and you're gonna burn in hell. That's shame on you. You are unworthy. This is the sidewalk preacher. This is the gospel of fear, not of love. And to be honest, I don't think most of us in this room probably struggle with like over emphasizing truth.

But I do think we can fall into it. I think we can fall into this category really easily without even knowing it, just taking grace out of the example. And for example, this is it. If there are certain sins you are particularly offended by that you tend to show it whether you realize it or not. And if you think that like getting drunk or having sex before marriage, if those things just like offend you, if you were homeschooled, my wife was homeschooled, there's certain things that just like offend you and that's cool. But you might find yourself when people who struggle with those things that offend you, when those people are brought up in conversation, maybe you do everything you can to avoid them. And when they talk to you, maybe you talk about them behind their back in a way that's ugly or harsh. And friends, when we do that, that is preaching the gospel without grace. It is preaching the gospel with our words, whether we realize it or not. And we're preaching a gospel which that is harshness and hate. And that is not an effective gospel. The gospel is full of grace and truth. And any message that leaves out grace or truth, it is not the gospel. It is a false gospel. So what does this look like practically? In our everyday life, how does the marriage of grace and truth come together to change how we live? How does it change that Jesus Christ is full of grace and truth? And I think maybe the best example that I've ever heard of of this exact thing is the story of Rosaria Butterfield. Does anyone know this? Has anyone heard of Rosaria Butterfield? Thank you. Anyone else? This is a name you should know. And I am talking about a lot of books. I'm gonna make a book corner and we're gonna have a bunch of books super cheap for y'all, okay? I'm gonna get that done. But Rosaria Butterfield is an incredible testimony. And before we get into her story, I do just wanna say this is another example of homosexuality. And I wanna be really clear. This sermon is not about sexual identity. And I do not wanna give the impression that homosexuality is any worse or any more pressing than any other sin. But I do think this is an area where the church has not handled this well. And we have fallen into the temptation, specifically with homosexuality, of emphasizing truth over grace. And it has caused a lot of damage, okay? And statistically, I would say in a room of 18 to 25 year olds, 25% of you would identify as something other than heterosexual. So there's a good odd that someone in this room is falling into this category. And I just want you to know you are exactly where you're supposed to be. I'm so glad you're here. You're welcome here and you belong here and you will be loved here. I think there is so much that we can learn from the LGBTQ plus movement. I think these are people who are hurting, who are image bearers, who are longing to find identity and found identity in the wrong place. And newsflash, that was every single one of us before Jesus. Can we just say that? That was every single one of us before Jesus. So all that to say, the testimony of Rosaria Butterfield is worth sharing. And the principles in the story are biblical and rich and really should be applied to all the time that we were trying to live out the gospel. So Rosaria, she was brilliant. She is brilliant. She's still alive. She earned her PhD in English literature, focusing on queer theory and feminist studies. And she was a tenured professor at Syracuse University and a very outspoken LGBTQ plus activist. And she was living with her female partner for over 10 years. That's a long time. She had a relationship of 10 years. That is a long time to be with somebody. And she grew up Catholic, but she viewed Christianity as anti-intellectual, anti-woman, and even hostile towards the LGBTQ plus community. And so her conversion story starts somewhat ironically. She wrote an article criticizing the promise keepers movement. Do y'all know who the promise keepers are? Anyone in the room? It's kind of like, thank you, Mark. I went to a promise keepers conference when I was, I think, in middle school. It was like a Christian purity movement for us to talk about the things that the church didn't really wanna talk about, which was like sex. And so it was a Christian purity movement and it did a lot of good and it probably did some bad. And so Rosaria, very outspoken, educated person, writes an article criticizing it of how harmful things like this are to our world. And she receives a plethora of hate mail from Christians, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of letters telling her that she is evil and she's gonna burn in hell and shame on her. And as she's reading through these letters, like no wonder LGBTQ plus people hate Christians, like how we treat them. She's reading through these letters and she's trying to sort them out. And she just has this giant stack of hate mail, hate mail, hate mail, hate mail, hate mail, hundreds of letters. And then she gets to this one letter from a guy named Ken. And Ken was a pastor and it said nothing about how evil she was or condemnation. All Ken said was, hey, my wife and I would love to have you over for dinner. We live close by, he's a local pastor. And because of how like radically different that letter was from all the rest, for some crazy reason, she said yes. And she goes over to dinner to Pastor Ken and his wife's house and she is armed up, she is ready for a fight. She's just expecting him to just drill her about her lifestyle. And she shows up and none of that happens. Ken and his wife were so kind and they showed genuine interest in her life. And they never once brought up her sexuality or her lifestyle or her views. And over the course of years with an S, years, Ken and his wife invited Rosaria over to dinner over and over and over. And she writes about having over 500 meals with them. And they listened carefully to her perspectives and they welcomed her into their home and to their community. And they treated her with love and respect. And they answered her questions with patience and kindness. But they weren't just kind people. They did not compromise their beliefs so that Rosaria would like them more. No, eventually they moved from living out the gospel to actually articulating that Jesus Christ is Lord, to sharing the gospel with their words. And I think this is so important for us to realize that God did not just call us to be nice people. He called us to explicitly proclaim Jesus Christ is Lord. And this is where I've struggled with so much with the people in my life. I don't know when to move from being nice to being Christian. Like I don't know when that movement happens and when it's best, but we have to do it. We have to do it. Butterfield is writing during all these dinners she's having, she's writing a book. So not only did she write the article, she's writing a book criticizing how Christianity has doomed our culture and how much damage it has done over hundreds and hundreds of years. And so eventually Pastor Kidd and his wife convinces her to start reading the Bible. And she agrees to it, but she says it's only for research purposes, okay, for her book. And as she is reading the Bible, she reads the gospel full of grace and truth. And it pierces her heart. And she surrenders to the Lord. She quickly realized that the Bible was true. And she quickly realized that her lifestyle and her career and her relationships were built on defending and engaging in sin. And she describes this realization as devastating, absolutely devastating, but true. And even after all of that, knowing the cost, she surrenders her life to Christ at the age of 36 and her conversion and cost of her career at Syracuse University, her LGBTQ plus friends, her partner, and her entire community. And she writes this book called The Secret Thoughts of an Unlikely Convert. And the reason I love this book so much is that it helps us see what it's like, what the gospel is like from the other side. And most of us didn't become Christians as adults. It helps us see what it'd be like to be a non-believer being pursued by Christians, some doing it really well and some doing it terribly. Some trying to share just a gospel of only truth, which is condemnation or only grace, which is affirmation. And then comes along this faithful couple who shared the gospel in full and her life was changed forever. The gospel knows no bounds. It can pierce through the heart of anyone in any lifestyle, in any worldview of any religion. And when we hear a story like that, a story of such a radical life change, we have to ask the question like, why was Pastor Ken and his wife so effective? Why was the gospel so powerful in that relationship? And let's look at 1 Peter 3.15, it says this, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason of the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect. 2 Timothy 2 says this, have nothing to do with foolish, ignorant controversies. You know that they breed corals.

And the Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to everyone, able to teach patiently, enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness. And last verse, Colossians 4, 5, and 6 says, walk in wisdom towards outsiders. Those are those who are lost. Making the best use of the time and let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt. I love that phrase, seasoned with salt. And salt does a few things. Have you ever swum in the ocean when you have like a cut or something, and it stings, it stings so bad? That salt stings, but it also heals. In the same way, truthful words can hurt in the moment, but heal in the long run. Any beef jerky eaters? And beef jerky is salty. And there's a reason it's salty. Because salt also preserves. It protects from decomposition. And your words of truth, it will stand the test of time, even if your friends don't believe it in the moment. Friends, God has entrusted you to be his hands and feet, to go out of your way, out of your comfort zone, to preach the gospel in word and deed. And we are to do this full of grace and truth. Amen? Hey, if this is your first time here, we are gonna take two minutes. We call it 120, 120 seconds. And we are just gonna spend some time asking the Lord to speak to us. We're gonna ask ourselves two questions. One, what did God tell you? And two, what are you gonna do about it? I think far too often we get in these settings and we hear so much about God and then we go and talk about God, but we forget to talk to God. This is your time to talk to the Lord. So if you would, ask yourself those questions. God, what are you telling me? And what am I gonna do about it? Let's pray.