Inland Empire: Riverside
No Shame in His Game - Audio
Please sing out with us. Standing o'er your power and your glory, Standing o'er your trembling and fear, Standing o'er your sworn men and your holy, Lord of God, we stand in awe, Your dee, Your name, Your words of creation, Your love, Your love, Your love, Your plan of salvation. The far theme of number lining the thunder, Yours of universe, our day, our way, We stand in awe, Your power and your glory, Standing o'er your trembling and fear, Standing o'er your sovereign and your holy, Lord of God, we stand in awe, We stand with pride and your holy nation, We take your word to our generation, Your name is upon us, Your healing, We stand in awe, we stand in awe, We stand in awe, Your power and your glory, Standing o'er your trembling and fear, Standing o'er your sovereign and your holy, Lord of God, Lord of God, Lord of God, Lord of God, we stand in awe. Well, good morning, church. Great to be worshiping with you. You guys know what time of year it is? Spring time? It's basketball season time. And I've been bummed out because my greatest school of all time, UCLA is not even in the NCAA tournament. We didn't even make the lower tier level tournament, the NIT tournament, we didn't even make that. It's a low time for the greatest school of all time. So what are you going to do? Everybody has their ups and downs. A lot of you don't care at all about basketball, and I never played it really grown up, but I enjoy watching it. And it is that time of year, the NCAA basketball tournament is on, and you know they have the men and the women's tournaments going on. Any of you guys watching that? Anybody in here? Can't full case, we're not a big basketball crowd. Okay, well, you have learned a little bit about basketball today, because today that's going to a little bit about the theme today. I think that's okay. My son plays, and there's a lot of spiritual parallels between sports and the way God wants us to live our life. And so I want to begin today and inspire you a little bit with one of the greatest shots I ever saw in basketball. This is over ten years ago watching the NCAA tournament in 1998. We're going to start off with a little clip, and the reality is, you know, we need to have confidence in our life. We need to have confidence in what we do. And those that play sports a lot of times have some amazing confidence. Well, the last second shot demonstrates an incredible confidence and one's ability to accomplish a goal. And right here I want to show you this is Bryce Drew in 1998, hitting the final shot in the NCAA tournament game for his team, which had never won an NCAA tournament game in the big dance, the big tournament. And there's like just seconds left on the clock, and I want you to see this right now. Let's go ahead and turn it on. Clock is ticking down. Five, four, three. This first round match up featured 13-seated Valparaiso versus four-seated Ole Miss. Bryce Drew, the closest son, led his team to an improbable finish. Drew hits the three. Two point five seconds left. Why do some athletes have no fear in the closing moments of games? Do they have a focus? They know what needs to happen? Is it that they practice so much? You know, certain people, they just can't wait for the opportunity. And in the world of sports, if you're like that, you're said to have game. You're said to have serious game, meaning that you can really play well. They say, "Hey, he's got game," or "She's got game," right? That means you can play well. And I want to apply this to our spiritual lives this morning. In a spiritual sense, do you have game? Or do you have shame? The title of my lesson this morning, "No Shame in His Game." You know, the best players in any sport have great confidence as they approach their endeavor. Now, I don't like the cockiness and arrogance that comes out of some of these athletes, but I do like the confidence. And I believe that Jesus combined the perfect level of confidence in everything he did. He had no shame in his game. He had the ultimate spiritual game and simply had no fear in telling the truth and doing whatever was needed to inspire and change people. You know, shame really means dishonor or disgrace, having to guilt something not right. Something we maybe have done or we know about ourselves produces a shame and a lack of confidence. An inability to really walk into the situation we have before us and believe the right thing is going to happen. You know, if we are filled with, you know, a lot of unrighteous acts and things that we know we shouldn't have done just a few minutes before, we're going to have a sense of feeling of shame. And we should. The great thing is that God came to take away that shame and he showed us how to have no shame in our spiritual game. And I want to show really an example of this from Jesus. And as our main text today, I want us to turn to Luke chapter 4. And I want to study Luke chapter 4, one of the most inspiring accounts of Jesus beginning his ministry. And only the writer Luke here puts this account in this kind of detail. We don't find this account of Jesus's experience in his hometown as detailed as we find it right here in Luke. And I want to begin reading in Luke chapter 3 or 4 rather, verse 14. We're going to read this example of him having no shame in his game, verse 14. It says, Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit and news about him spread through the whole countryside. He taught in their synagogues and everyone praised him. He went to Nazareth where he had been brought up. And on the Sabbath day, he went into the synagogue as was his custom. And he stood up to read. The scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written. The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind and to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, "Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. Isn't this Joseph's son they asked? Jesus said to them, "Surely you will quote this proverb to me. Physician, heal yourself. Do hear in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum." "I tell you the truth," he continued, "no prophet is accepted in its hometown. I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah's time when the sky was shut for three and a half years, and there was a severe famine throughout the land. Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them but to a widow in zerafath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of a lysha of the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed only naming the Syrian. All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built in order to throw him down the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way. Isn't that an awesome account of Jesus beginning his ministry? It's amazing. The end of it inspires me. That's why I thought I'm going to use this text for this theme of no shame in our game, our spiritual game. I like how at the end they try to throw him down the cliff and it says he walked right through the crowd. And we're not sure, was it like a miracle they all went blind? I mean clearly they drove him out of the town. We're not sure exactly what happened. Commentators aren't sure. There are many different opinions. I just think of it as, you know, he was just there yelling at him. So he got up and he's listening to him. They're yelling at him. He lets him kind of scream at him as they're pushing him out the synagogue to the edge of the hill. And then I think he finally just looks at him and stares him down. Like the pitcher who's about to strike at that guy, right? Like the basketball player knows he's going to hit that shot or like that. You know, whatever sport or activity or thing, it's just the confidence he looks at him. And I think he just looked him right in the eye and they were like, "Are we really going to do anything?" And he's like, "You're not doing anything." And he just walks right through the crowd. Look at that. And I just don't think they, you know, they weren't going to really touch him. Now we know he had all power. He's Jesus. He had all power. They didn't quite know that. But something told him, "Okay, we better not touch him." He walked right through that crowd and went on his way. No shame in his game. How did Jesus have such confidence? Who are the secrets to having no shame in our spiritual game and having a spiritual confidence that can be felt? You know, if you go back to the beginning of these verses here, we find in verse 14, that he returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit because he had been out fasting and praying for 40 days. He had just overcome temptations and difficulties. He was full of the Spirit and his motivation came from within. You know, people, it says that he was teaching in their synagogues. People wanted to hear the Word of God. People knew they needed spiritual food. And he was the man to give it out. And where did his confidence come from? Well, certainly you see that it comes from his time with God. You see that walking with God, spending time with God. You know, he goes to his hometown. And he's been preaching in other synagogues and he goes to his hometown. And certainly people, even his hometown, even our families, even those we know, they are interested in spiritual messages. You know what's interesting? It says he went to the synagogue as was his custom. You know, what was his game? He had a routine and it was an effective routine. How is your spiritual routine this morning? You know, no one becomes proficient at anything without spending time doing it on a consistent basis. You know, those guys, you see even the best basketball players, they miss free throws, right? Even the best ones. But some can make it when you never expected it. My son, Khan, I went to a little city league game just to watch our neighbor play. And at the end, you know, there was one kid that was really not that great. A player didn't hardly score any points in the rest of the game. But he ended up getting fouled to shoot the last free throws in the final of the game. And Colin everything. There's no way he's going to make it. All his pressure, this is for like the championship. And he hadn't scored any points. He sung both those free throws. And we're like, wow. And they won the game, you know. It was amazing. You realize that, you know, I'm sure he'd been practicing. Maybe if he hadn't practiced anything else, he'd been practicing his free throws. And our routine builds a confidence in us. You know, do you get up every day to have your quiet time? Do you do it at the same time? Do you really do again? You know, that's a hard thing to get up every day at the same time. I remember early on, Carrie used to get up at 5.30, go on the beach or long beach as a young Christian to pray. And I remember the fact that she did that inspired me so much. And every day as a 19 year old, she was out praying on the beach before she headed off to work. How are you doing today with just your routine, your spiritual routine? You know, I like that the campus ministry has a routine that they have, they call them, you know, morning quiet times. At least once a week, each family group will gather at 6 a.m. and have a quiet time together to make sure that they're spiritual, that they're thinking spiritual, that their minds are on the right thing. I like that spiritual routine. You know, we have the spiritual routine. We do come to church on a consistent basis. That's a good thing. We come to midweek on a consistent basis. We have family group meetings. We have prayer devotionals. We have all sorts of different events that are crucial. Jesus did the same thing. Says, as was His custom. How is your spiritual routine? Is it all over the place? Is even church attendance hit and miss for you? You want spiritual confidence? You got to have that effective spiritual routine. You know, why else was He bold? You know, what brought that kind of confidence? Here's an interesting thing. A lot of people have confidence because they have credentials, right? You know, you have your PhD or your master's degree or all your training. What's interesting is his confidence came from his time with God and he really didn't have any degree. He hadn't gone to the finest schools. And yet, he knew what he was supposed to do. He knew what he came to do. And he knew when he planned to do God's will, God was his credential. A lot of times we don't have confidence because we just don't really know what we're trying to accomplish. We don't really feel called by God to accomplish anything great. But notice what he says, he reads the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah in verse 17. And then he says, today, this is fulfilled in your hearing that I have some work to do. I have something I'm going to get busy doing. I'm going to put this stuff into practice, changing people's life. You don't need credentials for that. You need a heart. You know, yesterday was St. Patrick's Day. Any of you guys know much about St. Patrick? He's a great hero. He's an actual great Christian here. If you haven't read his history, it's amazing. St. Patrick, let me tell you a little background on him. He was born in Great Britain, but he was captured, and this is, they say, in the late, you know, late fifth century AD. He was captured by Irish slave traders, which was a common practice. Not too many people were really happy with the Irish back then because they were very active in slave trade. Just capturing their neighboring countrymen and putting them into slave labor for various, you know, agricultural needs. And so St. Patrick was captured at age 16. He became a slave and, you know, brought to Ireland, and he was a slave over there, working as a herdsman. And for six years, he did that. And then he began to pray to God while he was out in the field, serving as he prayed so much that he had a vision that he should try to escape and return home. Although, you know, I don't know if you needed a vision to know you should escape slavery, but he clearly had one. And he was very distinct as he explained this in his writings, you know, had a distinct vision that he needed to go. He escaped 200 miles, got on a boat, and made his way back to Great Britain. While he was there continuing the spirituality connected with his family, he began to get trained more in biblical knowledge, and he had another vision. He told him, you know, the vision said, "Come back." He saw a vision of people in Ireland saying, "Come and walk among us, and help us." And he believed, "Deeply that man, I need to go back and walk amongst those that I've been enslaved by and care about them and bring the message of Jesus to them." And he did it. And he returned to the country, and the things he did are quite amazing. What were his credentials? You know, you know, he wasn't that educated. And he was a little shy about the fact that he wasn't as educated in Ireland at that time. They were very big on the education. And he felt intimidated a little bit by that. But you know, his credential was his belief that he was going to do good to the people in that country, that he was going to change lives. He ended up being an incredible proponent of women's ministry. As you read his history, you find, wow, he's probably the foremost leader of women's ministry, guiding women. You know, calling women into the ministry, calling them into total commitment, really holding them up. Even in a time when women were marginalized tremendously in society. You know, he, of course, fought the slave trade and helped abolish the slave trade that occurred. He, of course, baptized thousands, it says, in his memoirs. Thousands and thousands were baptized. He said he focused on converting the rulers of each community. Man, if I could convert the leaders of the community, then the rest of the people will become followers of Jesus as well. And, you know, he succeeded that in a great way. Many people say there's even a book out that says that, you know, St. Patrick's helped save civilization in one sense, because of their devotion to the Word of God. They opened up these monasteries that preserve much of the Bible and preserved a lot of the writings of that age. When the rest of society was going into what's known as the Dark Ages, he's considered a great hero. He's a great hero of the faith of Jesus Christ. He read his writings like, "Wow, this guy was totally committed." And he died in Ireland. And, of course, tradition says on March 17th. And so, he's commemorated St. Patrick's Day. And he absolutely is a worthy hero of the faith. What were his credentials? What produced the confidence? His belief that God had called him to something great. His belief that, you know what, I can make a difference. Look what Jesus says he was called to do. And I want you to reflect, are we really called to anything different? Verse 18, "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor." He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind. To release the oppressed to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. He says, "Today, this is fulfilled. Today, he was called to do something to change lives." He took action. You know what, in your life right now, God is calling you to action. He's calling us to the action of preaching good news. Of preaching freedom from what? Freedom physically in our culture? Not so much, but I'll say what? Freedom from enslavement to monetary gain. Freedom from enslavement to selfish addictions. Freedom from a selfishness that Evan talked about that makes our lives empty. He's calling each of us today. Today is the day we are to change. Today is the day. You know, great athletes, they're not waiting for the future like, "Man, give me the ball now." I want the opportunity now. I want to do it now. I want to change things now. And you can notice, that's what Jesus said right today. You know, a lot of people think the future is when great things will happen. The future is when I'll be confident. The future is when things will be the way they need to be. No, the day of salvation the Scriptures teach is today. Today, what will you do different today? You know, God is a God of now. God is a God of today of now, of seeing your life change. And so often, you know, we just think it's in the future that we're going to do something great. We can't be that way. We've got to be willing to, whatever it takes in our life, to turn a new leaf now. Today as you sit here, there's things you want to do in your life. There's things you want to become in your life. There's things you know you need to change in your life. Are you willing to do something about it today? Jesus said today this is fulfilled. And his expectation, the exciting thing about walking with him is it's not the future that things are going to be great. He's talking about your life being great right now. Not because everything on the outside is perfect, but because you make a decision today. You know, the message of Jesus and being his disciple can change the world. It absolutely can change the world. And there's an expectation, the power of God comes not from just coming to church on a Sunday, hearing a lesson and going on, and continuing your life the way it's always been. The expectation of Jesus and things actually change in your life. Can one sermon change your life? Probably not the sermon alone, but the decision you make in response to it. Can one passage of scripture change your life? Maybe not that one passage, but your response to it. You know, I look around the room today, and I see changed lives. I see so many changed lives, and you look at your own life, and you think about how it took a decision to change. It took something inside you to inspire you, to not wait for tomorrow, to not wait for the end of spring break, to not wait for next summer. I'm going to make decisions now. I'm really proud of my wife. She's made a decision. I'm getting up early every day. I'm praying every morning. I'm reading my Bible early mornings. Consistently, that routine, this inner character. She's working out. She's loving it. She's seeing, "Okay, I've got to continue to be what God calls me to be." And it's inspiring. Today, what are you going to change? You know, we are all a total mess. You know, if I think about the biggest people that are messes that change, it's hard to think of anyone bigger than Doug, Mike, and Terence. Now, I'm definitely in there, but I just thought instead of sharing about myself, I'd share about them. They are as our ministers, we're total messes. Complete messes. But real change took place. Radical changes. When you hear this, Mike's stories. I know the first time I heard Mike's stories, I just didn't believe them. I was like, "I never happened." "What do you mean you saw 10 people killed in front of you by the time you're out of your teens?" I mean, less than that. Mid teens. He'd seen many people die in front of them. So many tragic and difficult things. The stories he shares are, you know, the demonstrate just a heart and a heart he was even sharing about how, even as a little kid, he was sharing the story with us, even as a little kid. You know, he was just, he was messed up. Yeah, he was messed up. He was violent. He was angry at people. He had challenging things in his character, and you know what, Mike changed. How did he change? Because he decided that today is the day I'm going to change. When he was, you know, I think he was 19 years old. You know, guys brought him the Word of God, and he saw the love, and he said, "I'm going to change today. I'm going to change. I am going to be different. Our lives are really different. How do we actually change this world as we change, as we preach the Word of God? It can change our world. You know, as Christians, as people who want to make a difference, we can't just settle in to hearing a lesson and feeling good about it. Real changes in our life have to take place. Real repentance of sin, sexual sin, addiction sin. And I appreciate Evan being a disciple for three years, sharing how he's got to overcome selfish sin. That, you know, I appreciate him sharing. Him and I had talked this week, and he's just, he admitted, you know, I could just be comfortable living out on a ranch, doing my own thing, shooting things occasionally, loving my beautiful wife and having a good time. And he realized, you know, but I know. I'm called to so much more. I'm called to be invested in people. Investing in people is uncomfortable. It's difficult. It's challenging. It's not easy to do. You know, I want to hold up a great sister in the campus ministry. She was recently baptized. That's Diana Castellon, really proud of her. You know, Diana, she had studied the Bible for about two years. And she was struggling with worldliness and challenges and the way her faith was and really putting her security in God. Truly putting it in Jesus. You know, I remember getting with her almost a year ago to talk to her about the things she needed to change personally. I thought, okay, I don't get with, you know, all the girls that are studied. But occasionally I pulled, you know, I pulled her together. A bunch of other girls. Okay, I need some help. And I got with her and challenged her and talked to her. And I really want to see her change. You know, it still took her many months later, many months later, to make the decision. But what I'm so proud of, she didn't give up. Amen. She got baptized a couple of weeks ago. She's a faithful part of our campus ministry. She overcame. But many won't do that. Many won't respond. They have shame in their game. Let's look a little more at what happened here in the story. You know, as Jesus preached that verse and he, you know, he says, "Today is the day." And everyone praised them. They thought, "This is great. I like hearing these things." But then they began to get skeptical. Because I think it was the today thing that he was calling to change. And that hit him. And they're like, "Well, isn't he, Joseph's?" I know you. And we look for reasons to deflect so that we won't change. So that we don't take the Bible in God's Word serious. We're looking for ways to deflect and not take it serious in our life. They all spoke well of them. But then he tells them, "Surely you'll quote this proverb to me. Heal yourself." And I don't think he was saying, you know, I don't think it was an attack on him. But rather he sort of clarifies it in the next part. And he says, "Physician, heal yourself. Do you hear in your hometown what we've heard you've done in Capernaum." In other words, you know, okay, you're so great. Hey, do some of these really great things in our hometown. We want to see some of those miracles. Yeah, we want to see them treat us the way you treated them. We want all the good stuff in our life. And it became, I think, very selfish, self-focused. They were skeptical and they're like, "Yeah, let me see what you can do. We want to see all the blessings and all the miracles." You know, we read elsewhere in the Bible that he couldn't do miracles in his hometown because they had no faith. And he goes on and explains to them, he says, "Listen, you are like the hard-hearted people of old whose needs were not met by Elijah or Elisha because of the rebellion. Your needs aren't going to get met because your focus is yourself and your hard-hearted and you're skeptical. And he compares them to those that bowed down to Baal, right, when Elijah had that great story. In the book of Kings, you read about how he challenged them. He's telling them, "You're like those ones that worship false gods." Mind you, this is in the synagogue of Judea, right? This is a synagogue where they went faithfully every week. These were church-going people. You know, they read their scriptures in the synagogue. They had their prayers. They didn't invite someone like Jesus to come on in and comment on the scriptures. And yet he tells them, "You're hard-hearted because you won't receive the truth like a child. You're skeptical." And even now, sitting in this room, some of us are looking for reasons to not say, "Today is the day I need to change." There's a resistance in us. And so he tells them, "You guys are just like your forefathers who even Elijah and Elijah tried to help, but they were unwillingness, so God sent them to foreigners." And I think this, as I've been studying this, some of the guys we got together and we studied this passage, we tried to figure out what made the people so angry. And then, of course, of a sermon here, I mean, they were angry at him. And I couldn't think of a way to get you that angry at me, so it's not going to happen. But they were able to get really angry. What he did is he basically told them, "You're hard-hearted, and God's going to send his goodness to your enemies, to the Gentiles, who they thought were not worthy. They were God's chosen people. We're the ones." And we find that when he says that, he sent his message to the people inside in. And to the Syrians. In that day, there was a great, amongst those in the synagogue, there was a nationalistic fervor. They wanted the Jews to be the most powerful nation. The Gentiles, they were outcasts. They were not welcome. We were God's chosen. And when he was saying, "Listen, you're like them." In other words, "I'm going to go help them." They got mad. They got angry. But you know, God said that the Kingdom of God would be taken away from those that were hard-hearted. In Matthew chapter 21, verse 43, he says, "Therefore I tell you that the Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit." You know, I think we can lose our faith as disciples. I think we can get hard-hearted and get so hard-hearted that we will leave God. God doesn't want that for anybody. But he says it to them. He didn't want that to happen to the people. He wanted them desperately to change. But they wouldn't have it. They wouldn't make today the day of salvation in their life. They wouldn't say, "Now, some of us in here, we need to make radical decisions in our life. Decisions about where we work. Decisions about where we live. Decisions about what we do with our time. Radical decisions to change. Uncomfortable decisions to change. Jesus had no shame in his day and he wasn't ashamed to tell them the truth. And if they had a respondent, the scripture teach, "I have poured out my blessing on them." You know, this week is a great opportunity for this congregation. For the first time in the beginning, over 20 years of existence of the L.A. Church of Christ, which we are a part of, the great L.A. Church of Christ, we're the Inland Empire Church of Christ. We are having an all L.A. congregational event right in our backyard, right at the Ontario Citizens' Business Bank Arena. Isn't that awesome? Eight, nine thousand disciples and friends gathered up to worship God to evaluate, you know, what does my life really matter? Does my life count? And I want to ask, will you have the confidence this week to live with no shame in your spiritual game? Will you go out this week? Will you talk to your friends? Will you talk to your neighbors? Will you invite your coworkers? You know, in my bag, I probably have 25 or 30 of those limitations. I commit to you 100%. And every one of those will be handed out and invite given to people. I commit to you. I don't know how many you have in your bag. But I want to challenge you however many you've picked up in the last two weeks. We've been handing them out that you say, you know, I'm not going to have shame. I'm not going to doubt myself. I'm going to push through the selfishness and I am going to give something somebody. The greatest thing we can give them is an opportunity to walk with Jesus, to clean up the mess of our life and to really change. Will you be bold this week? Will you invite a number of people? You know, I love our young youth ministries, our teens. I love our campus. I love reaching out to people in the teens and campus ministries because I know the future that they have in their hands. You know, I'm really proud of our teen ministry. We've been having a teen Bible talk in our home during the week. And, you know, we've been bringing regularly 4-5 my son. I'm so grateful. He brings 4-5 to his friends to teen Bible talk every week because he wants to. First of all, he wants great friends and he wants spiritual friends. What about you? Are you willing to bring your best friends? Or maybe your best friends are already a disciple and so you need to build some new best friends? And, you know, how do you build a best friend? You've got to be a best friend. There's nothing better you can give somebody than the word of God than the opportunity than the invitation. Today, do you have shame in your game? Or are you going to say, "You know what? No shame in my game. I'm going to share my faith radically." Amen. You know, let me close out. You know, Jesus was not ashamed of the message. My whole point is I don't want you to be ashamed of the message. But, you know, the last thing I want to bring your attention is he's not ashamed of you. He's not ashamed of you. Look down in Luke chapter 5. We'll close out here. Look in verse 12. In Luke 5, I love this story of the man with leprosy. He says, "While Jesus was in one of the towns, a man came along who was covered with leprosy when he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean." Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said, "be clean," and immediately the leprosy left him. When Jesus ordered him, don't tell anyone. But go show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing as a testimony to them. Yet the news about him spread all the more so that crowds of people came to hear him and to be healed of their sicknesses. But Jesus often withdrew to lonely places and prayed. You know, Jesus is not ashamed of you. You know, if you know anything about lepers, they were the captives of that society. Set the captives free. What was Jesus doing? Exactly that. The leprosy, if you study a little history of it, is one of the most horrible and probably terminal illnesses in that day. If you had it, you were utterly isolated, not only socially, but even from physical contact. You felt like an outcast and some of us feel like we really can't change. Or some of us feel like we're not worthy. Or some of us just, we have too much shame. You know, in that day, if you had leprosy, many times they simply equated that with you must have had a lot of sin. And that's why God has afflicted you in this way. And so they had that emotional guilt, that feeling of, "I must have done something wrong. I'm not worth it." And yet this man heard of Jesus and he runs up to him and says, "He knew he must be God." And he says, "If you are willing, you can make me clean." And Jesus touches him, right? A communicable disease, the most feared in that day, and he touches him. Because he was not ashamed of this man and neither of you. Wherever you're at today, has there been drug addiction in your life? Is it still going on in your life? You might feel like, "I can't really get open with that, Steve." I mean, if people in here knew that, they'd be ashamed of me. Uh-uh. No, we would not. Every one of us is a total mess. In fact, the more mess you are, the more excited God is about changing. And I want to just hold up. I like holding up Gary Johnson. He's a great coach of mine. My son's a basketball team. But let me tell you something about Gary. He has a weakness as a coach and that's he never cuts anybody. He won't cut anybody from the team. But here's why he won't. Because he believes that they can get better. And they do. And, you know, he's not interested in, you know, NBA players and all the prestige. He's not interested in that. What he's interested in is people changing. People growing. And I love seeing that. He's helping these young guys change. Even guys that really aren't too good. He knows they can get better. And God is the same with you. He is not ashamed of you. He knows you can get better. He believes in you. And for Jesus, he knows that you can even be the star who shoots that final shot that wins the game. Let's not have shame in our game. Let's be like Jesus. Amen. (Applause) (Applause) [BLANK_AUDIO]
Steve gives a powerful lesson on stepping up our game when it comes to having a relationship with God and severing Him. Lets not be ashamed.