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[Music] [Music] Glendale Presbyterian Church People Moving Power brings you Dr. Bruce W. Thielman

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with a message, "The God Who Falls For Anyone." I'm grateful for this opportunity to stop in the tape room here at the Glendale Presbyterian Church to address a few words to you

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before going into the sanctuary to be a part of our congregation's worship. The young man who is taping this at this moment is standing here with yellow slacks and a pink shirt.

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He looks like an advertisement for a circus. And I guess that's appropriate for the morning because I have some good news. I have some thrilling, exciting, circus-type news.

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Something that's worth shouting about and sending balloons into the air about. I want to talk about the amazing grace of God. And I'm glad you're going to be sharing these thoughts with me.

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And I hope they will be a blessing to you, my friend. Let us continue our worship by giving reverent attention to the reading of the Word of God. As we find it in the Book of the Acts,

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the ninth chapter, beginning the reading at the tenth verse. Will you please be upstanding for the reading of the Word? "And there was a certain disciple at Damascus named Ananias. And to him said the Lord in a vision,

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'Ananias?' And he said, 'Behold, I am here, Lord.' And the Lord said unto him, 'Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and inquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul of Tarsus.

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For behold, he prayeth, and hath seen in a vision a man named Ananias coming in, and putting his hand on him, that he might receive sight.' Then Ananias answered, 'Lord, I have heard by many of this man

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how much evil he hath done to thy saints at Jerusalem. And here he hath authority from the chief priests to bind all that call on thy name.' But the Lord said unto him, 'Go thy way,

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for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him how great things he must suffer for my name's sake.' And Ananias went his way, and entered into the house,

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and putting his hands on him, said, 'Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost.' And immediately there fell from his eyes, as if it had been scales,

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and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized. And when he had received meat, he was strengthened. Then was Saul certain days with the disciples which were at Damascus. And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word.

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Please be seated. [The Lord is with you.] Let us pray. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

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I apologize in advance for the horror which is a part of the story which I am about to relate. If I could think of a better way in which to begin what I have to say, I assure you I would use it. You are all aware of the fact that we are seeing an increasing interest

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in the occult and witchcraft across the United States. There are many covens of witches throughout our country. The largest accumulation of them seems to be here on the West Coast. Not too long ago, such a coven up north near San Francisco

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was about to have its annual service of initiation when new witches were being brought into the group. The leader of the group decided that something particularly spectacular should be a part of the ceremony.

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So he and some other witches went in a car to a nearby campus. They waited until they saw a young girl walking alone, and they abducted her. They took her to the place of initiation,

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removed her clothing, and stretched her upon their improvised altar. As she struggled, she fell from the altar to the floor, whereupon they proceeded to kick her and to stomp her with their heavy boots until she was bruised and bleeding at their feet.

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And then they raped her repeatedly. Some weeks later, after she had recovered, she was walking on her campus and saw a man whom she recognized to be one of the witches who had so brutalized her.

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She went up to him and she said, "I know you." He said, "I know you, too. So what?" and turned and walked away. She walked after him.

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He stopped, he turned, he looked at her and he said, "What do you want?" And she replied, "I just want to tell you that I love you. I have accepted Jesus Christ as my Savior, and I love you." That story is absolutely true.

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It is documented in every detail. And I find it to be absolutely amazing that anyone could have in them such a forgiving love. It is to me astonishing.

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It is to me challenging, and it is to me very humbling. It makes me think about this disciple in Damascus named Ananias. You recall how the story begins. Saul of Tarsus is a leading Jew.

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He is busily engaged in persecuting Christians. He understands Christians to be spiritual subversives, ecclesiastical saboteurs. He has succeeded in driving a great number of them out of Jerusalem,

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but has learned that certain of these refugees have holed up in Damascus. So he decides to go to Damascus to finish the persecution he had begun in Jerusalem. The Christians must be safe nowhere. So Saul of Tarsus sets out for Damascus.

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The Bible says he sets out "breathing threatenings and slaughter." But on the way, he is ambushed by Jesus. He is knocked from his horse into the dust of the Damascus road. He is wounded with blessing.

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This one who thought he knew the truth is confronted by the truth with a power he had never experienced before. And this one who thought he saw everything so clearly is now confronted with Christ so magnificently

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that he is blinded with the very sight of it. He left Jerusalem proud, arrogant, unbending. He entered Damascus stumbling, blind, and broken. And after relating that story in Scripture,

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the Holy Spirit, through the author of Acts, goes on to write these words. "Now there was a disciple at Damascus named Ananias. And the Lord said to him in a vision, 'Go, minister to this man of Tarsus named Saul, for he is praying.'

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And Ananias immediately responds, 'Lord, do you know who this guy is? I mean, do you know what he has been doing to your people in Jerusalem? I myself saw him stand by with a sneer on his face while Stephen, one of the youngest of the saints, was murdered by the mob,

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and he had helped to incite them. Do you know why he's coming here to Damascus and what his intentions are? I mean, Lord, this man is a killer. How do you know that this isn't some kind of trick?

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Don't you think it would be good to establish some standards? I mean, do we want to go running to his side right away, or shouldn't we allow a little previous time for him to prove himself? His whole life up to this time has been contrary

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to what we have committed ourselves to as your servants. Now are you just going to admit him as soon as he has one experience and starts to pray? I mean, shouldn't there be some conditions attached? Shouldn't he have to justify himself, earn a few honor points,

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do a few good deeds to testify to the reality of this conversion experience? Shouldn't there be some kind of probation period in which he can show us that he really means it, and then after he's done that, then we'll--

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Lord, you can't just go falling for anybody. And I understand Ananias when he talks like that. I understand completely his reticence to go to be a blessing to a man who's had just this experience and the whole remainder of his life

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as a testimony against everything that Ananias believed. I'd understood that young girl, if she'd have walked up to that witch on that campus screaming and calling for the police and prosecuted him before the law with every accusation and crime

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that she could bring quite legitimately and justly to his account, I'd understand that. I understand it when some people say, "Look, we had certain young men who deserted their country in a time of war.

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They went off to other nations and they didn't stand by their country and they didn't follow the normal courses which are open to them if they don't want to be involved in the warfare. I think that those people have broken the law

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and they should not be allowed back in until they have paid the penalty and been properly punished and made certain commitments which will ensure that this kind of thing doesn't happen again." I understand that. I mean, let's be serious about this thing.

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You just can't go through life falling for anybody. So I identify with this disciple from Damascus. But then Ananias began thinking. It's very likely that he was himself from Jerusalem.

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He was probably one of the Christians who had been driven from Jerusalem by Paul. And having been in Jerusalem, he would have undoubtedly seen and heard Jesus. And I think that as he meditated over this assignment now being given to him by his risen Lord, that his mind went back and thought over some of the things he had seen Jesus do and heard Jesus say.

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He might have remembered, for example, the day when they brought that woman who had been caught in adultery to Jesus. She was stripped naked because people taken in adultery were always so punished. She was thrown on the ground in front of him and Jesus immediately bends down and looks away.

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He doesn't want to look upon her to increase her shame. And he writes in the dust so that those who are going to accuse her become ashamed and they turn and go away. And then Jesus says to her, "Where are your accusers?" And she says, "I have none." And he turns to her and he says,

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"Neither do I accuse thee. Go and sin no more." And as Ananias thought about that, he might have remembered that Jesus required no promises from that woman. There's nothing in the record that suggests that she even wept a tear of repentance.

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There's no conditional period. There's no probation. He grants to her immediately complete amnesty. "Go and sin no more. I do not accuse you." She's asked to make no commitments. There's no dotted line on which to sign.

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No suggestion of guarantees to be offered. And then perhaps Ananias remembered that Jesus spent a great deal of his time with those that the "nice people" weren't often with. He didn't spend his days with the "good," but with those who were "ungood."

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And when he was asked why he did this, he responded, "It is the sick who need a physician, not the well." Well, let's pursue that figure for a moment, as perhaps Ananias did. When a doctor goes to someone who is sick, does he begin by saying,

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"I will not begin tending you unless you promise me you will get well, unless you will sign here on the line asserting that you will, beginning today, improve?" Or does the doctor establish a probationary period, saying, "I will observe your case for a while, and if you begin to make some progress,

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then and only then will I begin to administer medical treatment." Not at all. The doctor takes the man right at that moment and begins his ministrations immediately. There are no guarantees. There are no commitments required at all.

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A doctor who is serious about his profession doesn't even require in the end that you pay him. And then maybe, as Ananias thought more about it, he recalled that parable that Jesus told of the man who owned a vineyard, and he went out early in the morning and hired some people to work in the vineyard,

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and agreed upon a price to be paid for their day's work. And then four hours later he went out and he hired some other people to come and work. And at the end of the day, everyone going home at the same time, he paid those who had started in the morning what he had agreed to pay them,

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and then he paid those who had only worked half as long exactly the same wage. And those who had been working twice as long for the same money came and protested. And the owner of the vineyard responded, "Do you begrudge my generosity?" Well, of course, it can't be argued that the man was generous,

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and it can't be argued that he could pay whatever he wanted to, and it can't be argued that he had honored his commitment to those who went to work early in the morning. But the plain fact of the matter is that it isn't fair, is it, to pay one man a certain amount of money for working four hours,

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and to pay another man the same amount of money for working eight hours at the same work. I mean, is that fair, really? No, it's not. By any earthly standard of justice, you don't pay two people the same amount of money when one works twice as hard as the other and twice as long as the other.

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But Jesus used that parable as an illustration of the love of God, which seems to suggest that love was more important to Jesus than justice. The Bible only defines God at one point, and it does not say God is justice. It says God is love.

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"Oh, that's foolishness," you say. "Why, if you start to act like that, the whole society would fall apart. I mean, you just can't go around loving with that kind of permissiveness. The results would be, well, you just can't imagine what would happen. That's just stupid." Well, people have always said it's stupid. People have always said it's foolish.

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That's the reason why in Scripture we read words like these. "We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles, but to those who are called, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, for the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men."

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And maybe as Ananias thought about that, he thought of how he had stood far off in the distance and watched when they crucified Jesus, spiked him naked up against the sky. And did he think in his mind as he looked up at him, "You see, that's what happens when you require no guarantees."

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So you laid yourself open to these people. You went and fell for them all the way. And where are these disciples who were yours? None of them are here at your defense now. If you had established some probationary period, not taken them on until they proved themselves, but oh no, you just went out and gave them spiritual amnesty just like that, you see.

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And what has happened? The results are, "That's what happens when you do." What is that you're saying? Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. Amnesty, even to those who crucify you?

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You're not going to fall for them too, are you? And maybe as Ananias thought about this Savior to whom he'd given himself, he remembered how often Jesus had spoken about the grace of God. If you go to the dictionary and look up the word "grace," you find it described as the unmerited favor of God.

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Something you cannot earn, something you cannot achieve, but something which God gives as a gift. There is nothing you can do to merit it. It's a difficult word to understand. That's the reason Jesus never defined it precisely. Instead, he told stories about it.

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The three most famous ones are all gathered together in one place of the Bible. First, he told about a shepherd who had lost a sheep. And the shepherd went out to get the sheep. And Jesus notes very specifically in the story that the shepherd sought for the sheep until he found it.

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He didn't stop short of his goal. He kept on going. He kept on trying until he found it. Now, the sheep had lost himself. It was not the shepherd's fault that the sheep was lost. And further, the sheep would probably get lost again.

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There was no guarantee that once it was found, it would be found forever. And not only that, but it was not good business to leave 99 sheep unattended while he went out after the one sheep that was lost. Yet Jesus uses this as an illustration of the love of God, that he would so care for one sheep, that he would go out risking everything in an effort to find that one and would keep at it until he found him.

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And then he goes on to tell another story about a woman who lost a coin. And she proceeds to turn the whole house upside down to find the coin. And Jesus uses exactly the same phrase again. She looks for it until she finds it.

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She turns the whole house upside down. She lights lamps. He mentions that very specifically. Chances are she spent more on the oil than the coin itself was worth.

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But the fact of the matter is that she was determined to go to whatever lengths were necessary to get that coin. And that Jesus uses as an illustration of the love of God. And then he goes on to tell the story, which was the most shocking one of all. It's shocking even today. How much more shocking would it have been then?

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About a young man who leaves home. That was never done in those days, you know. The authority of the father was absolute. No boy ever left home.

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You stayed there and you did what your father told you to do. This boy says to his dad he wants to go away from home and his father lets him go. His father was wise enough to understand that he could have locked him in the room as a prisoner, but then that's what he would have had, a prisoner and not a son.

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So he lets the boy go. And I suppose there was quite a bit of talk about it in the neighborhood. I mean, after all, you see, this was the sign of weakness. How long is it going to be until our sons start hearing about what he did

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and then they're going to come to us with the same kinds of requests? I mean, this kind of permissiveness, you know, only leads to breakdown in the end. It always works out that way. And of course, the father does not go out searching for the son because, well,

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you can force a sheep to come home or you can force a coin to come home, but you can't force a son to come home. Not really come home. So the father does the most that he can. He waits.

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And then one day the boy returns. And the people in the village did exactly what they would do in a village in the Middle East today. As soon as they saw him, they ran out and they began to punish him because what he had done was a sin against society.

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It was part of the moral breakdown of the time. And so they would have done exactly what they do today in similar circumstances. They would have thrown stones and rocks and dung, ophel that they would pick up off the streets.

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They would indicate their contempt for him and everything that he did. And someone takes the word to the father that the boy has come and that this is what has happened. And the father gets up and the friend says, "Now, look, don't go running down there. I mean, that's not what you want to do. You've got him where you want him now.

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He's coming back. He's coming back on his knees. So now's the time to get a few agreements made. Let's get a few priorities established. You're not going to run down there, are you?

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I mean, you're not going to stop that running like that." See, that's the one thing in the Middle East that a father never does. A father never runs. A father is the picture of stately dignity and authority.

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When the father speaks, everybody else runs. But the father never runs. I have never seen a Middle Eastern father run. I have asked missionary after missionary who served in the area,

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"Have you ever seen a father from that part of the world?" A father never runs. And this father gets up and he starts to run. Don't run down there like that.

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I mean, look, this is what you wanted. You wanted him home and you wanted him under your control, haven't you? And here he is. He's on his knees. He's begging to come in. So tell him he can come in on some kind of probationary status.

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Treat him like a servant here in the house. And then after he's proved that he's quite sincere about this thing, then if you want to, you can gradually let him back into the fold. But insist on guarantees now and get some things down on paper

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so that you can show them to him. I mean, don't you have any sense of shame? Don't run down there like that. Please turn your cassette to the other side.

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Putting yourself at his disposal. I mean, listen to your other son. Listen to the one who stayed here at home. Now he's got the right idea.

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Maybe you shouldn't be in charge. Maybe you're a little too old and a little senescent now and it would take a younger man, a man who understands the practicalities of this matter.

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You just can't go around forgiving people like that. The whole order will turn into nothing. But stop running like that. You'll bring everything down about us in some kind of chaos

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and if he sees you throwing your arms around him, protecting him so that the crowd can't hit him with their sticks, and then putting that ring-- Don't put that ring on his finger.

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That's a symbol of his sonship. He hasn't earned that yet. If you give in now, he'll nail you whenever he wants to. Maybe Ananias thought,

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"Yes, nail him whenever they want to." And he endured the cross and despised the shame. Jesus says, "This is what the love of God is like." Maybe Ananias thought about that parable

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in which a man was forgiven a debt that he owed. The debt was $10 million. And the very day that he was forgiven the debt, he turned around and went out to a friend of his

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who owed him $2.50, and he had the friend thrown in jail until he paid up. And Ananias might have thought to himself, "Now, who would ever do a thing like that?

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Who could there be so ungrateful that when they were forgiven so much they would refuse to forgive someone so little? I mean, who is there who could have such love shown to them

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and then be unwilling to show love to someone else? Why, that would be like my being forgiven by God for all of my sins, all of my transgressions, all of the things that I've done,

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and then my turning around and refusing to be loving and forgiving of someone else like Saul." And when he thought that, this disciple from Damascus got up

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and he went to seek Saul to carry out the mission his Lord had given him. I think he did it because he suddenly became very much aware of the lovelessness in himself.

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It's not much fun to discover lovelessness in yourself. Last Tuesday evening I went to the Council of Churches Banquet here in Glendale. Two black choirs sang as part of the program,

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and as we walked out I heard one man say very contemptuously, "Too many chocolate drops around here tonight." Well, why not call black kids "chocolate drops"? They're chocolate-colored, aren't they?

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They don't care, do they? You know how your son feels when somebody calls him a "string bean"? Why don't they call him a string bean? He's tall and skinny, isn't he?

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He doesn't care, does he? He does care. And that remark was insensitive, and that remark was bigoted,

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and that remark was cruel. And I felt rising up within me an anger, and I turned. Suddenly it hit me

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that what I was feeling at that moment was bigotry against the bigoted. And what I was about to say was as cruel as what that one had just said. Lovelessness in me.

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I can be very intolerant of those who are intolerant. And that's to be without love. Or a few months ago, I wrote an article for the PeopleMover on amnesty,

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and let's not get involved in the issues of it this morning, but it received a lot of mail, and some of the mail was for it, and some of the mail was against it.

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And in the mail that was against it, some of that mail was very reasonably, coolly, responsibly stated in a Christian and a loving manner,

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and some of the mail that was against it called me a Nazi, a communist, said I was without patriotism, that I was at the center of a Watergate scandal

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right here in the Glendale Presbyterian Church. And as I read those words, I wanted to take those letters and jam them down their throats. I wanted to point out to them every historical inaccuracy,

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every misquotation, every perversion of the teaching of Scripture that was in those letters, and I wanted to do it as quickly and as... And then suddenly,

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it dawned on me that these people were angry at me for being willing to give amnesty. And yet I was not willing to give amnesty to them.

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It's not good to discover that kind of lovelessness in yourself. It shapes you down inside. And that might have been what happened to Ananias.

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Because you see, with the thought that there is lovelessness in you, there also comes the thought that God fell for you, that God loves you in spite of your very lovelessness. I stand before you this morning absolutely assured of my salvation.

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I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior, that I am saved in this life and for the life that is to come. I know that. It is not because I am a Presbyterian.

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Presbyterianism is worth only as much of Christ as it shows. It is not because I am a conservative theologically. Any theology, conservative or liberal, is only worth as much as of Jesus Christ it shows. I am not sure of my salvation because of good deeds.

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If I had to earn my way to God, then I would never make it. And I'm fully aware of that fact. And I am not saved of God because I was baptized and because I regularly participate in the sacrament of Holy Communion.

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Those are not magic rites like idols or fetishes or a witch doctor's totem that assure to me the kingdom of heaven. And I'm not saved on the basis of my ministry. God forbid that my eternal destiny should hang on as insignificant thing as that.

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And I'm not saved because of my love for God. Because when my love for God is its very hottest, it's not very hot. And it's a weak and a wavering thing. And I am not saved for eternity because of my faith in Jesus Christ.

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Because my faith in Jesus Christ becomes weak precisely at the moment when I most need it to be strong. And it is described in the most grandiose terms, a pitiful thing. But I stand before you this morning and say that I know that I am saved. And I know that I am saved because the Christ who saves me doesn't lay down any conditions.

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If he did, there'd be no hope for me. He gave me amnesty. And if he hadn't given me amnesty, there's no way I ever would have made it home. I quit on him all the time.

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And my only hope lies in the fact that he never quits on me. That he will abase himself, despising the shame for the love of me. I think that's what Ananias thought. I know that's what I thought.

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So Ananias gets up and he goes to the street called Street. And did you notice what his first words were to Saul? He says to him, "Brother Saul, brother." This one whom he had called a murderer.

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And he puts his hands on him. And Paul's blindness goes away as if scales fell from his eyes. That's often the way it happens, you know. There are a lot of people who never really begin to see

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until some Christian loves them and forgives them like Christ loved them and forgave them. Like that witch up in San Francisco. You see, when he heard that girl say, "I love you because of Jesus Christ,"

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he turned to Jesus Christ. And the reason I know every detail of that story is true is because he himself has told it in his own confession and in his own testimony.

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So we are called as the people of God not to rebuke the love of God, but to remember it. And having remembered it, to resemble it. We are called, you and me.

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Not me for you or you for me, but each of us is called to go out to all the world's faults and say, "Only a God who falls for anybody could have fallen for me." Or to put it in another way,

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"The God who would fall for the likes of me would fall for anybody, including you." That's the gospel. That we are to preach and that we are to live. Let us pray.

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O Father, love me in spite of myself. And, O Father, help me to be so sensitive to that for which I have been forgiven that I might love others in spite of themselves. Father, I want to do more than preach a sermon.

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I want to be one. And I pray for all of these people who are among those for whom you, in heaven's magnificent love, have fallen. I pray my prayer in Jesus' name.

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Amen. You