Living With Lions | Part 1: Grace and Truth

Well, welcome to Canvas Church and the start of our four-week series. Again, we're calling Living with Lions. And Daniel and the physical lion's den may be the most widespread and well-known story in the book. Even people who don't go to church that often have heard of the story of Daniel and the lion's den. But the truth is, that was just a very small part of a much larger scope of issues that Daniel was dealing with while living in a Babylonian culture. And I'll explain that deeper in a moment. He was surrounded by an entire society that was trying to devour his faith and his belief in the one true God. And the reason that I felt so compelled by the Spirit of God to share this with you over the next four weeks is because there is no doubt, I don't think anyone would refute this, no one would doubt this, that we are living in an ever-shifting culture where there is a greater rejection of what we believe as followers of Christ than I have ever seen in my 51 years on this planet. And if we don't learn or understand how to respond, it has the potential to not only discourage us and not only make us see the world pessimistically and see the world through the lenses that it's all going to hell in a handbasket, or even worse, has the potential to cause some people,

and it's happening, to lose their faith and to lose their followership of Christ and to lose everything that is spiritual and holy and meaningful in their life. So today, let me just lay a foundation, and it's gonna be a very important one. Again, these four weeks are gonna be pivotal, but let me lay a foundation to get us started in the right direction. The book of Daniel is comprised of 12 chapters. The first six chapters are purely historical. They cover the history and tell the story of the Jewish people as they lived for 70 years in exile in Babylon. The last six chapters are prophetic. They are dreams and visions that God gave to Daniel about the things that were to come in the future. Now let me tell you why that's important, because you need to know that the Bible that we hold in our hands is not necessarily put together or laid out chronologically. That is to say, the books of the Bible are not organized in a way that is strategically time-sequenced. Now, it's interesting, you can go to the Christian bookstore and you can buy or order on Amazon a chronological Bible, and it's a fun way to read it, but the books of the Bible that we have in our hands today are more grouped together by category. So for example, when you read the Old Testament,

all the poetry books are grouped together, all the history books are grouped together, all of the major prophets are grouped together, all of the minor prophets are grouped together. Now, the reason I mention that is because I think it's important to recognize that even though the book of Daniel is half history and half prophecy, it has been grouped and categorized with all of the other prophetic section, and I think that is very significant. I am convinced that the reason God did that is because he wanted us to know that what is recorded history can also be revealed prophecy, that what is recorded history has the potential to also be revealed prophecy. In other words, the documented history of Daniel's life and experiences, I believe is a modern-day playbook for exactly where we are living right now because Daniel was a devout man who loved Jehovah and was deeply devoted to the God of Israel, but had to navigate a Jewish faith in a very dark Babylonian culture that did not respect his faith, subscribe to his faith, or any of his convictions about life and about God, and he didn't just survive it. The Bible says that he thrived in Babylon and actually became extremely influential and made a huge impact with his life,

and he did it, and he did it without ever compromising his faith, and if Daniel did it, I am convinced, so can we. But how? How do we live in a 21st century world that seems to reject everything that we believe and hold sacred as followers of Christ and not cave to cultural pressure or alienate people that we deeply love that we are trying to influence for him? And let me just say to you that maybe you know some, I know some, there are a lot of Christians and a lot of churches out there that believe this can't be done. They don't believe it can be done, that you have to somehow choose a hill to die on, and because they think that way, I believe that it has led the church of Jesus Christ to two very dangerous extremes. Some pastors, Christians, and churches have dug into the stand firm and declare war type of faiths, and you've seen them. You're on social media, I've seen them, I hear them all the time. They're dogmatic, they sound angry, they're turn or burn finger wavers that love to engage in we're right and you're wrong debates and they almost sound mad and almost glad. Mad at the world and almost glad they're going to hell. I mean, they just, they come off that way

and nobody likes these people, you know that, right? They win no one over, they have such a spiritual arrogance about them that they even turn off people that I believe are genuinely open to God, genuinely curious about God and about faith. And then there's this other extreme that has knee jerked in the other direction. That in order to not offend someone or not offend anyone or in an attempt to try to connect with our current culture, unfortunately, there are some pastors and some Christians and some churches that have compromised and are caving on true biblical issues and on important core convictions that are not ambiguous at all in the scriptures, but that are clearly taught in the Bible. And God warns us about these two extremes so that we would avoid them because God has called us to something better than these. Listen to me carefully, you're gonna hear this again at the end of the message and I'm gonna drop down and show you what it actually looks like. God has called us as followers of Christ to live in both grace and truth. Grace and truth. It is possible. I believe this with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength. It is possible to stand for truth, to follow the scripture, to obey and honor God,

to live scripturally and still love and connect with people in this world in order to help them experience and know a God who truly loves them and sent his son on a rescue mission to bring them back to life. I believe that both are possible. I didn't say easy, but I believe that it is possible. Now, what we're gonna do today is we're just gonna camp out in Daniel chapter one and I'm gonna walk you through the first 12 or 14 verses of Daniel one and I'm taking it straight from the Bible today. I wanna show you some stuff that I think is so, so important and then at the end, I'm gonna take you to John chapter one then John chapter eight and we're gonna tie all of this together as best as we possibly can, okay? So here we go. Daniel chapter one, starting in verse number one. In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim, king of Judah, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to Jerusalem and besieged it and the Lord delivered Jehoiakim, king of Judah, into his hand along with some of the articles from the temple of God. These he carried off to the temple of his God in Babylon and put in the treasure house of his God. Then the king ordered Ashpenaz, chief of his court officials, to bring into the king's service

some of the Israelites from the royal family and the nobility. Now, let me show you what this is. This was a pattern with Nebuchadnezzar. So he overthrew Israel and he burned the place to the ground and there were a lot of Jews that were killed but he also took hostage a large number of Jewish people and said, all right, we're gonna bring them back to Babylon. They are gonna serve as slaves, everybody will but what I want you to do is I want you to go to the royal family and I want you to find the most educated, I want you to find the most elite, I want you to find the sharpest and the best of the best. We're gonna indoctrinate them in Babylonian culture and then we're gonna leverage their skills, talents and abilities to now serve the nation of Babylon and our kingdom. He did it everywhere that he conquered and it was a brilliant strategy and it was working and so that's what they did. Verse four, he said, find me young men without any physical defect, handsome, showing aptitude for every kind of learning, well-informed, quick to understand and qualified to serve in the king's palace. He was to teach them in the language and literature of the Babylonians and the king assigned them a daily amount of food and wine from the king's table. They were to be trained for three years and after that, they were entered the king's service.

Among those who were chosen were some from Judah, Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah. Now you may not recognize these last three names because you may know them better by their Babylonian given names that's about to happen. The names Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, okay? All right, now I wanna show you three things today out of Daniel one that a shifting culture will always try to do in order to get us to compromise our faith and pivot farther and farther away from God and the things of God. But before I do, I wanna give you one very simple but pregnant and important truth to remember in everything that I'm gonna say to you today and it's this one. God has called us as his followers to set the culture not reflect the culture. We're supposed to be thermostats. We're not supposed to be thermometers. In Matthew chapter five, Jesus called us salt and light. He called us a city set on a hill that cannot be hid. We have been placed here, saved by Christ, left on this planet to season the world with the gospel, to bring illumination to dark society, to stand out as a beacon of hope and healing. The church of Jesus Christ, which is you and me, not this building, we have been called to affect the world, not be affected by the world, so that as we stay here longer, the world hopefully would begin to look more like God

and more like Christ and more like his son, and we would look less and less like the world. And I'm convinced that we can only do that. We can only do that if we start by understanding what the world and the culture are attempting to do to our faith and to the things of God. So today, this is just kind of an exposing. This week and next week and then the last two weeks, I'm gonna actually shift and turn the corner and show you how do we actually live a stand-up life in a bow-down world and what is the priority of love that God has called us to in this life. But here we go. Three things that a shifting culture will always try to do. I'm gonna show it to you right out of the Bible. Number one, shifting culture will always, always attempt to alter your identity. Daniel one, verse seven. The chief official gave them new names. Daniel, the name Belteshazzar, to Hananiah, Shadrach, to Mishael, Meshach, and to Azariah, Abednego. Now, I want you to understand something here. This was more and deeper than just we don't like your Jewish names. We wanna give you names that are reflective of our culture and reflective of who we are. It was deeper than that. It was bigger than that. It was broader than that.

This was a strategic effort. Please listen. A strategic effort to literally erase everything that was Jewish and godly and God-given in their life. Now, I've done this study for you, but if you were to do a study of these names, what it means in the Jewish and what it means in the Babylonian, you're gonna realize that the culture was trying to re-identify them to something else. For example, the name Daniel, the name Daniel in the Jewish language means God is my judge. In other words, I recognize there is only one true sovereign God and only the God of the universe, only the God of Israel is my judge, but Belteshazzar is a Babylonian name that means lady, protect the king. Now, don't miss this. Lady, protect the king. They were even trying to prescribe Daniel a different gender. This is not new. Gender dysphoria is not new. Gender dysphoria is not something that has just emerged in the last 20 years or 30 years or 40 years or 50 years. I can show you in the Bible, I can show you in history that for thousands and thousands of years,

the enemy has been trying to confuse people from their God-given identity and who God actually created them to be and Babylon tried to do it to Daniel. They were reversing everything that he had been given. Watch this one, Hananiah means God has been gracious to me. Listen to that, God's been good to me. My very name means, Lord, I love you, I'm grateful. We're just saying about gratitude. That's what his name meant. Shadrach means I'm afraid of God. You see how they're trying to turn everything around? Mishael means who is what God is. Literally, it translates, I am who God created me to be. I know that God made me this way on purpose, with a purpose and for a purpose. The name Meshach means despised, contemptible, humiliated. You see it? From confidence in God to cowardice in life. It's this reverse of the identity that God had given to his people. Azariah means Yahweh has helped me. Think about that. God has been good to me. He's been gracious to me. He has fought for me and he's blessed me to Abednego. I am a servant of Nebo, which was one of their pagan gods and they gave him that name. Trying to label us or change our identity

has always been one of the tactics of the enemy. Now, I relate to this. And let me tell you why I relate to this. Because I've always been transparent about my past and some of you know it and some of you don't, but I was raised in a pastor's home. And so for 32 years, my mom and dad pastored and when I was a young man, I had all kinds of encounters with God. In fact, my dad tells the story that at seven years of age, he really believes that God called me to preach when I was seven. And so I had all of these encounters with the Lord. I've experienced the presence of God. But from the time I was 12 or 13 till 20, the enemy and the culture tried to relabel me. Relabel me a drug addict. Relabel me a violent. Young man, which I was I was arrested three times twice for aggravated battery once for drug possession The the enemy got his claws in me and for a while did relabel me and try to cancel out and erase Everything that God had placed his hand on my life to become instead of God's identity. I became something Completely different and the enemy is going to try to do it to you as well He will always have a label for you that is different than God's Identity for you And if we don't recognize what he's trying to do and stand strong in who and what God says we are it could literally end Up defining our lives. I need you to hear this. You are not that last and greatest sin You are not that confusion that sometimes you feel in your heart. You are not that divorce. You're not that failure You're not that mistake. You're not that betrayal. You are who God says you are Well, who does God say that you are read the Bible God calls you forgiven God calls you loved saved delivered redeemed Holy sons and daughters of the Most High God filled with his spirit free indeed to live as Jesus has called you to live

Now that's who you are That's who you really are and you can't worry about what the enemy tries to tell you you are so I want to give you When culture shifts we need to know and fully embrace who God says we are so that he and he alone can define our lives and How we're going to live them You can't leave this up to how you feel the worst advice in the world is just just trust your own heart bull Bull, that's a Greek word Means not true The Bible says in Jeremiah your heart is wicked and deceitful above all things who can know it Your heart will lie to you and tell you things that are not true We are not even capable of defining our own truth. One of the biggest lies of this culture is just live your own truth Child molesters are living their own truth You can't leave it up to us we don't know our own way it has never been a manufactured things Responsibility to determine what it was created for only in the mind of the Creator Does he know what the thing was created for we have to find our truth not in our own heart Not in what the culture tells us but in who God says we are and what he created us to be It's the only way we'll know the truth. It's the only way we'll find purpose and meaning in life But I'm telling you a shifting culture will always try to alter your identity watch this It's gonna get deeper number two shifting culture will always try to alter your standards and your beliefs Daniel chapter 1 in verse 8. I'm just taking it from the Bible y'all But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine. I'm gonna explain this in a minute a little bit deeper Okay, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself in this way Obviously We'll take a closer look at a moment But here's the essence of it because of Daniel's Jewish heritage and his commitment to God He had some deep core convictions concerning his diet and what he would eat and what he would not eat according to his faith He didn't want to dishonor God or his Jewish heritage and they were pressuring him to compromise his standards Let me point one more thing out real quick before we go on. I love this Daniel didn't boycott He didn't rail at Ashkenaz. He didn't say I'm not doing it. Y'all are pagans and we're we're godly You're you don't know God and going to hell but we're right and you're wrong and I'm not gonna eat that garbage

Bible says politely with grace with mercy With character. He just asked him and I think that this gave him favor with him that we're gonna find out in a moment We're not called to just stand up and say turn or burn bro. No, there's got to be grace there's got to be grace not just all truth, but I want you to hear this a Shifting culture will always try to make you hear me now a shifting culture will always try to make you question things today That were perfectly clear and settled in your heart yesterday It'll try to get you to just move the line a little It'll try to get you to just make a shift Just a little shimmy here and there just to adjust your standards Not a lot Just a little to give some ground to what used to be sacred to you What used to be clear to you what used to be unambiguous to you and it is a slow gradual process Because the enemy is too smart to just just unveil his plan to us in the beginning What he does is he gets us to just slip a little bit here and there and to embrace things that we used to never Embrace there. It never happens overnight. It is a slow gradual Drift away from the things of God. I'm gonna show you how it happens. I've seen this for 30 years I want you to see this verse with me. You may even be familiar with it, but I want you to see it maybe the way you've never seen it before. Psalm chapter 1. Blessed is the man that I want you to notice the verbs, walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful. You are looking at the the progression of how things come into our life that we used to never entertain or think was worthy of our time or we knew was destructive and dangerous. Here's how it happened. The first thing is you start walking around things that you used to know were wrong and bad and you never would touch with your life, but you just kind of start walking around it. You're still moving. You're not comfortable enough to just lay with it or sit with it. You're just walking around it, but the longer you walk around it and it doesn't bite you or burn you, you begin to grow comfortable with it. You begin to grow comfortable with it and then before long after you've walked around it didn't

hurt you, you find yourself where you never thought you'd be. Now you're not even moving. You're just standing with it and you're close to it and you get a little bit more comfortable, a little bit more comfortable and you realize, wow, it didn't burn me down yet. It hasn't destroyed me yet. And then before you know it, you find yourself so comfortable that you have reclined with it and you are actually sitting with it. Nobody gets up one day and goes, that's it. Today I'm gonna burn up my marriage and have an affair. Today's the day. I'm gonna find the first man or woman I can. It's on. Nobody. They start walking around suggestive conversations at work. Nobody wakes up one day and says, that's it. I'm going to burn my entire life down by becoming a hopeless alcoholic. That's what's gonna happen today. Nobody gets up and says, that's it. I'm gonna ruin my entire life by becoming a full-blown drug addict. Not how it happens. Things that you used to know were bad. Things that you used to know were destructive. Things that you had settled in your heart you know you shouldn't touch or be around. You start walking around and as you walk around that you get comfortable and before you know it you're standing with it and before long you've come so far so fast that you're sitting in the middle of it. You don't know how you got there and you don't know how you're gonna get out. It's how the devil works. How the enemy works. I've been I've been in ministry 30 years. I cannot tell you how I have seen this pattern repeated over and over in people's lives. It's the very thing that he did in the beginning. He didn't come to Eve in the garden. Remember God put Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and he said to them, I'm gonna, there's this big, huge, beautiful, wonderful garden. You can eat as much as you want from any tree in this garden. That's not a bad deal. Just this one I don't want you to touch. I don't want to get off on this but it was a form of a tithe. God said that's mine. I don't want you to touch that one. But everything else eat all you want. Pick all you want. Knock yourself out. But he said if you eat that one the day that you eat of it you're surely going to die. Well the devil didn't show up to Eve in the form of a serpent and go, dude you're gonna die one day. You're gonna have problems in childbirth. All of

this is gonna happen. God is gonna reject you and have to put you out of the garden. There's gonna be this terrible fallout. Your sons are gonna be at each other's throat eventually and one's gonna murder them. He didn't show you the end. He never shows you the end. What he did was he showed up to Eve and go back and read it in Genesis 2. Did God really say that? I mean come on Eve. Let's examine what God actually said. Do you think he really meant that? That's what's going on in the culture today. People are saying oh come on man you're preaching that sounds so antiquated, so outdated. That may have been good a hundred years ago but times have changed. Did God really say? And before you know it you'll start entertaining things that we never ever used to compromise or entertain before. Ladies and gentlemen when culture shifts we must reaffirm our core convictions and stand firm in the truth that God has set for our lives. We must reaffirm our core convictions and say no no no no no I'm not gonna let them tell me who I am. I'm not even gonna let myself tell me what's true and what's right. I am going to reaffirm what the scriptures say for my life and I'm going to trust that God actually does know best and I'm gonna live my life for him. Here's the third thing shifting culture does. Shifting culture will always test your character. Watch. And make you prove where you stand. It always will. Let me show show you this in a minute. Eventually what I'm saying is you're not going to be able to skirt around the truth. You're not going to be able to just be a follower of Christ and stand in the corner and go look man I'm just gonna stay neutral. I don't want to offend nobody. I don't want to hurt nobody. I don't want to say anything. I don't want to do anything. I'm just gonna stay silent here and I'm just I'm just gonna try my best to just be friends with everybody and just do the right thing and love on everybody and love is a priority and we're gonna talk about that. But I'm telling you, a shifting culture will always force you to stand for what you truly believe and listen to me carefully, especially young people,

if you're not sure of what you believe, when the pressure is on, you will cave every time. Daniel, verse nine. Now God had caused the official to show favor and compassion to Daniel. I think it was because of the way that he conducted himself as I mentioned earlier and he just asked him, man, listen, I wanna cut you a deal, just can you please do something different with us? But the official told Daniel, I'm afraid of my lord, the king who has assigned your food and drink. Why should he see you looking worse than the other young men your age? The king will then have my head because of you. And Daniel said to the guard whom the chief official had appointed over Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, please, test your servants. Test your servants for 10 days. Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink, which was commensurate with their Jewish diet. Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food and treat your servants in accordance with what you see. So he agreed to this and tested them for 10 days. Now this is the first of several tests that will come. As we read through Daniel chapter six, through the first six chapters, you're gonna find that there was the test of prayer, there was the test of the lion's den,

there was the test of the fiery furnace. And ladies and gentlemen, our faith will eventually be put under fire and we will have to stand in the moment and do the right thing eventually. I'll never forget when I first gave my life to Christ at 20, when I came back to the Lord, I worked at the hospital and I worked in central supply and I worked in that department with three other men. And I'm just telling you right now, this was some of the most difficult moments of my life. And let me tell you why, because those three men hated my guts. Not because I wasn't likable. Come on, you know. How could you not like me? I'm kidding, a bunch of people don't like me. But let me tell you what it was. I want you to hear this. I'll never forget this as long as I live. I had given my life to Christ and I mean, I had went full bore. I mean, when I had an experience with God, I had a radical transformation and experience with God. I was so hungry for God. I loved him so much. I was so thankful for salvation. And every day that I would work, when I got a minute here or there, I would read my Bible and they would see me

reading my Bible. At lunch, they would see me pray over my food and they would see me praying out in the yard between all my breaks. And the more that I read my Bible and the more that they heard me pray and the more and the less I wouldn't cuss like them and act like them. And I was different than they were. The matter they got at me and they spent three years trying to bait me and antagonize me and get me to live how they live. And it got so bad that they would almost try to physically engage me to get me to compromise myself. And you need to understand this. I'm not proud of this. I'm just gonna tell you. All right, remember, I was arrested twice for aggravated battery. So I come from the country. All right, and in the country, our motto is if you can't get along, get it on. That's how we live, okay? You turn your hat backward and it is what it is. And so I like physicality. You need to understand, I'm not proud of this, but I liked it and I like it. It's in my DNA. And I remember one day, this guy, the second dude in the group,

he was this close to me, cursing me out, talking trash to me, trying to get me to do something. And I'm not proud of it, but I'll never forget the thought that went through my mind. I literally said, God, if I knock this dude cold as a wedge, I know you'll forgive me. I know you will. If I slap the taste out of his mouth, I know that your grace is greater than that. And then I'll start over again tomorrow. And I'm sweating and I'm clenching. And I mean, I'm so, mm. And I'm telling you, the Holy Spirit stopped me and he said, they're after your testimony. They don't hate you, they hate me. They hate me in you. And I knew that God would forgive me if I'd have done that, but I would have never be able to get my witness back to those men. My testimony would have been compromised and everything that I had preached and talked about and demonstrated in my walk with God would have been squandered and filtered away. Some of y'all know that. Some of y'all are in it right now. The world is baiting you and culture is baiting you. And some of you are gonna get a chance to live this out before the week is even over. There's gonna be moments when the enemy and the world

are gonna provide you an opportunity to see if you just sat in this room and when I said something good. You amended it, but you didn't really believe it because you can't stand for it out there. They're going to give you a chance to see what you really believe. About four of you really believe it. I praise God for you. They're going to give you a chance. They're going to give you a chance for you to demonstrate if you really believe what you say you believe. And what I'm telling you is that when culture shifts, we have to lean on the power of the Holy Spirit and do the right thing even when it's the hard thing. You know this is true because the right thing and the easy thing are never the same thing. It's always the hard thing. But the Holy Spirit, if we lean on Him, will give us the power to truly be salt and light and cities that are set on a hill that cannot be hid. There are things that they're going to try to get us to compromise, but we have to stand strong and do the right thing even when it's the hard thing because our witness and our testimony for Jesus Christ is on the line. And it matters more than you know. And so what I'm telling you is this, you're going to have to do it. Nobody navigated this better than our example, Jesus Christ Himself. I love John chapter 1 because remember what I told you? I said there are two things that Jesus has called us to, two things that we are called to as followers of Christ, grace and truth. And watch where it comes from. The Bible says in John chapter 1 and 14, the Word became flesh, made His dwelling among us, Son of God. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son of God who came from the Father. Watch this.

He was full of grace and truth. Please don't miss this. Grace comes first, then truth. Not truth and grace. It comes first. Jesus knew how to connect with people before He ever tried to correct people. He knew how to connect before He ever tried to correct. The Bible says He walked in both. He walked in grace and truth. Why does this matter? Don't miss this one. You need this. Because I'm telling y'all, truth without grace is just mean, but grace without truth is meaningless. Truth without grace is mean. It's just mean. I'm right, you're wrong. We know the Bible. You're going to hell. You need to turn or burn. You need to change your wicked ways. It's that spiritual arrogance. And I've seen so many people live with that. We're right. We know the Bible. You're ignorant. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's this terrible thing that turns people off. Truth without grace is just mean, but grace without truth is meaningless. The most wonderful, loving thing that God has ever done is to call us out of our sin. Yes, of course, God loves us like we are, but He loves us too much to let us stay that

way. He's called us into something better and more meaningful. He calls us out of darkness into His marvelous light. He calls us out of sin into righteousness. He calls us to repent so that we can actually discover the kind of life that He created for us to live, not a distorted, perverted version of it. Truth without grace is mean. It's just mean, but grace without truth is meaningless. There has to be a moment where we walk in the truth of God and say, no, no, no, I really do believe that God loves me and that He's not trying to manipulate or take control of my life. He doesn't have to wait. He's God. He can do what He wants. But that He is a loving Father who is standing in my path and sees destruction that can take place in my life and warning me of a better way so that I can turn from myself and turn to Him. I say, pastor, is there anywhere in the Bible where we get to see Jesus do this? I just asked. John 8. But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives at dawn. He appeared again in the temple courts where all the people gathered around Him and He sat down to teach them. Teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in the act of adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of adultery. Don't ask me how they caught her, but they did somehow. I don't know what they were doing around there, but they were. In the law, Moses commands us to stone such a woman. Now what do you say?

They were using this question as a trap in order to have a basis for accusing Him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with His finger. And when they kept on questioning Him, He straightened up and said to them, all right, let's do it. Let's get on with it. Let's go ahead and put her out of her misery. But I'll tell you what. Let the one that is without sin among you be the first one to rear back and beat her in the head with it. Go ahead. I'm waiting. Again, He stooped down and began to write on the ground. Now there's a lot of speculation about what He wrote on the ground, but I got a theory. I'm going to give it to you. Those who heard began to go away. Here's why I got the theory one at a time. The older ones first. I've always took note of that. The older ones began to leave first instead of the younger ones. Why is that? Because I believe this is just my theory, pure conjecture, can't prove it in the Bible. But what I believe Jesus did is he stooped down and he started to just write names. Sally. Martha. I got you back here in the back, bud. Mary. And they looked down and said, man, what in the world?

Just theory. Until Jesus was left with the woman standing there. Jesus straightened up, Nastor. Where are you people at? Where'd they go? Where are all the people that were so gung-ho to kill you? Has no one condemned you? No one, sir, she said. Here it is. Then Jesus said, neither do I condemn you. And then declared, go now and leave your life of sin. Grace, truth. Grace. Grace, I know you messed up. I know you were caught in a terrible situation. I know you made a bad decision. I know that you have sinned horribly and you have sinned deeply and you have sinned terribly. But I'm not here to condemn you, but I am neither here to condone you. I'm not gonna, do not take this moment of grace as a condonement of your sin so that you can leave this moment of grace and continue to go back to the bed of the adulterer. I am giving you grace so that you will see this moment as an opportunity to begin a new life in freedom, a life that is lived for God and purity and holiness and righteousness.

I love you just like you are in spite of the sin that has tainted you. But I do not want you to walk away the same way that we walked into this moment. I'm asking you to turn from your life of sin and begin to honor and glorify God with the second chance that I have given you. Amen. There's things in our life that have to change. It is a sloppy gospel. Be careful of it, be aware of it. It is a sloppy gospel that says He is a God of love and He just loves everybody just like you are, even whatever lifestyle you choose. It's not true. He will always love you, but He has called us to follow His way and to follow His will. And that means that when we experience the grace of the cross, which He died for everyone, there's no sin in this room that's greater than the blood of Jesus. I don't care what you've done, I don't care what you've said, I don't care how vile you think it was, I don't care if you sit here and you're thinking, man, if people knew what I did, they would know that God can't even forgive me. That is what the enemy will try to tell you. There is nothing you've said, nothing you've done

that is greater than His grace or that outrun the blood of Jesus. But once you experience that grace, when we get up from the foot of the cross, we should walk a different way. We're called to live a different way. And the culture will ask us to compromise that over and over and over again. And this series is about helping us understand how to navigate this tension between grace and truth because we're called to live in both.