Word of Salvation – Vol. 31 No. 37 – Oct 1986

 

I Beg Your Pardon!

 

Sermon by Rev. A. I. De Graaf on Lord’s Day 51

Reading: James 2

Singing: PsH. 229, 406, 452, 55.

 

Sir, I beg your pardon!  When I was at a Dutch school learning English, I remember being slightly amazed when learning this expression.  In Dutch it is merely, “Excuse Me, Please!”  But the English expression makes one a beggar!  Ah yes, but then you learn quickly enough, in the ‘nitty-gritty’ of life itself that this kind of beggar can be pretty proud.

There can be a pretty posh way of saying, “I beg your pardon, sir!”  Beggars?  My foot!

Once a bunch of Dutch nobles came asking the Spanish Regent in Brussels for freedom of religion.  She saw them all come into her throne room and got scared a little.  “Don’t be scared of them, Madam,” said a cabinet minister standing beside her, “They’re nothing but beggars!”

Some beggars!  They were to upset the entire Kingdom and end the rule Spain over the Netherlands!

We can be that kind of beggars too, before God.  We beg His pardon, but do we really feel we need it so badly?  What kind of beggar am I when I say to God, “I beg your pardon…?”

As the French revolutionary Rousseau said mockingly: Forgive?  That’s His job!

Yes, but if it is something really serious for which you have to ask the Lord’s forgiveness, you will know only too well how hard it is to be that kind of beggar.  How hard it is, to ask!  You know, it is really easy to fool yourself when it comes to forgiveness… God’s forgiveness.  That’s why Jesus, who knew human nature, fitted a test – exactly to this prayer.  If you really live by grace you had better GIVE mercy, you had better GIVE grace.  Otherwise you show you didn’t get the point at all.  That’s how Jesus told it in the well-known parable of the two servants.

The one whose big debt was forgiven… who then turns around and does NOT forgive the small debt his fellow servant has with him.  He gets his big debt back again.

You cannot live by grace… if you cannot GIVE grace.  It is as simple – and at the same time – as ominous as that.

In Matthew 6 this prayer is followed by words with this deep threat in them: If you do not forgive your neighbour, God will not forgive you either…!

We should not only hear these words, but we should warn one another of this danger!  He who does not forgive his brother, who sinned against him, runs the risk of not being forgiven by God himself!  When we see an unforgiving Christian we must tell him that he is putting his eternal salvation in jeopardy!!  Why?  Because he has believed in vain?  No!  But because by not forgiving his brother he shows that he has really never seen, really never quite believed what Jesus did for HIM!

That is what the Bible says.  These things are rather important today now that everybody is crying for “RIGHTS!” and now that the world is so full GRIM people who want to settle accounts.

Our God is a God of justice, and there are a lot of accounts to be settled, but how does a Christian go about these things!  When someone says: “I want my rights,”  “All I want is justice!” – it depends very much how he says it.  And he who is not striving for reconciliation; he whose attitude is not that of the outstretched hand, cannot really fight for justice.  He is not God’s right soldier in that battle, because he does not see that he is a beggar and that he has received grace!

Maybe he has never received it.  It is amazing how exactly in James 2 the chapter we read, these two things come together.  There is the ringing call for justice, the ringing call for the rich to remember the poor.

But in that same chapter it is as if the Lord – through James – saw there would be people who would say: as long as you fight against injustice!  As long as you take up the yoke of revolution on behalf of the downtrodden of the earth!  That’s all important.  Never mind these old Christian doctrines, never mind this, “getting right with God” kind of thing.

That was good enough to be worried about in Luther’s days but now we have other priorities, like: how do I give my neighbour his overdue due?  Well, James 2 speaks of justice like Amos does.  But he says mercy triumphs over judgement!  Before you Christian, become all hard and holy and righteous in your Great Crusade: there is the word MERCY.  Crusader, don’t forget you’re a beggar, too.  Each day, as far as God is concerned.  Don’t forget, or you, too, may turn out to be the Pharisee who never really prayed and who went home a lost man after all.

Jesus did not just condemn in the Pharisees that they neglected the poor and the widows, but rather that they were so pleased with themselves.  When you are conceited before the face of God you will get pretty rough on the poor too.  That is only a matter of time.  Therefore in this prayer, when rightly understood, Jesus gives us the right balance between the vertical relation we have – or must have – with God, and the horizontal relation that joins us – or must join us – with those who need grace like we do.

I preach you the Word of God on: “I beg your pardon!”

We will note the following:
            1.  Beggars again, indeed
            2.  Reconciled to God, and
            3.  Reconciled to men.

1.  Beggars, indeed.

Yes, why else should you pray?  The Pharisee in the parable didn’t pray.  He just came to show off what a goodie he was.  We with our pride!  We with our talk of “Rights!” and “Freedom”!  Oh sure, we beg for pardon – “Beg your pardon, sir,” we confess, but what do we confess other than little dolls’ sins?  We are at times like the little Roman Catholic boy who was to tell the priest his sins and thinks and thinks and cannot really find much.  “Why shall I sit down in the confession box, I have never done anything wrong!”  But he who learns to look at himself from the point of view of a holy God learns to groan – not only over what he did or left undone! – but even over his evil nature that stinks in the nostrils of the Holy One.  He does not allow those so-called “psychologists” to comfort him with the thought that we do not really do wrong, that it is all somebody else’s fault.  Parents maybe, or our environment.  Criminals ought not to be punished, not even the fiends who try to import kilo’s of the killer-stuff heroin from Thailand.  No sir!  They waste taxpayers’ money to get those poor devils off the hook, who tried to make a few million’ by letting more young people get hooked on the devil drug.  With all that talk a criminal is no longer a criminal and in that process he is not only robbed of his guilt but above all of his responsibility.  He is made into a mere product of his environment, a log washed along on a swift stream.

Don’t you see that this is robbing a man of the dignity he received from God?  But God does not talk that way and Jesus doesn’t either He teaches us to pray: “Forgive me MY sins…!  I have sinned, O God.  I have done this…!, I…!”  For Jesus teaches us that a man made in the image of God should not give up the privilege to say “I”.  Especially not when it comes to begging pardon from Him who knows the heart of every rebel.

Judgement is terrible but at least it honours man as a responsible being.  Whatever modern psychology does, God does not take that responsibility away from us.  Judgement, retribution and punishment are heavy words, but they fit in the life of a human being who does things and then must be man enough to bear the consequences.  And if he cannot bear the consequences he must be small enough to become a beggar before the face of the most high and pray for the grace God has offered.  That occurs when I see what I have done to the Holy One when I turned Him my rebellious back.

Oh, Jesus was to say it to such a rebel, “Then I do NOT accuse you either,” but that was after that sinner had come to see herself as she was (just as those high-falutin’ accusers had seen themselves and slinked away NOT daring to cast the first stone!!).  But when Jesus said to her, “I do not accuse you,” it was because He would carry this woman’s grievous sin – in his body upon the tree.  There he would die for her right to go with open eyes as a beggar to the Holy God of heaven and ask for something so preposterous to BEG for something so preposterous… as PARDON!!

Then you learn what St.  Augustine meant when somebody asked him: what are the 3 main Christian virtues?  “Well,” said Augustine, “the first one is humility, the second one is humility… and the third one is humility!”  That sounds like a somewhat sick joke but it is more profound than you think.  Okay, you can see you need humility when you COME to Christ as a sinner needing forgiveness.  But to see that you still need grace every day once you have become a church member and other Christians are getting impressed with you, that is something quite different.  At times, in order to make you see it, you need to bump your head real hard.

And then there is that third kind of humility when you have become so old and so experienced that not many PEOPLE dare to tell you off, no, maybe they really mean it when they say you’re a terrific guy.  And you hear it and quietly deep down, you agree: not bad you know!  You could have done a lot worse for yourself.  And the begging for God’s pardon becomes an empty phrase.  And you never see it until you have to forgive a fellow man… then you find out that you weren’t living off grace any more: you were taking for granted that even God thought you were quite a guy.

But we live by our reconciliation with God.  Even in our day when we learn how much things must be put right on earth, and how man must learn to live with man even now, we commit spiritual suicide if we would put this great need, that God forgives us for the sake of the blood of Jesus, somewhere on a back burner.  No, without the blood washing away our grievous crimes against God there is no life, no forgiveness.

A man or woman who does not live by the wonder of grace – as a beggar – can never be a kingdom builder.  It would be the kingdom of man instead of the kingdom of God.  Yes, the kingdom of man with another tower of Babel in the middle to see if we can reach heaven with that towering goodness ours.  God’s justice was the justice hurt most on earth.  That’s why human rights are violated.  Because His were!  And that’s why human rights will always he violated again because God is not given His holy due.  Be not deceived… God is not mocked.

But the other side is equally true.  You say you have received reconciliation with God?  Then it is impossible not to begin seeking reconciliation with men on that ground.  It is in the chapter from James that talks about MERCY triumphing over judgement, yes, in that very same chapter we read that Abraham was justified by works when he offered Isaac!  And that’s why Hebrews says he DID SO BY FAITH!!  You cannot separate what God has put together – even in the prayer Jesus Himself has taught us!!  You either have both or you have neither of them.  It is as simple as that.

He who lives in amazement from the forgiveness of God that cost so much and was for such bitter sin, He who lives by that – as by a miracle, as a beggar made rich, can give forgiveness even to the most “undeserving” cases.

The test of truly getting that daily blood transfusion from Jesus is whether His life of grace now starts making you like Him.  And then you can forgive.  Then you stop that silly attitude of offended majesty.  Then I can even forgive if someone does NOT grasp my outstretched hand!!  After all, in a sinful world it is no wonder that others do not trust me straight away.  So what!  Have I always earned that trust so well?  God, You know me!  And then I can forgive even if that other one is my wife, my husband, and I have thought divorce was the only way.  Then I can forgive that business partner, or that black Christian, that white one.  Then I can even forgive that drug peddler who has hurt my child, and I need not be the one who does him harsh justice… even when the government must do so to protect its citizens.  Then I can forgive, that communist warder (did you read how Pastor Wurmbrand forgave his torturers?).  That does not mean he can now say communism is alright.  That is another story.  Bonnhoeffer fought against the Nazi terror but he forgave his prison torturers and so won many for his Lord.  To live by grace is anything but living like a sissy.  The Christian who has suffered because of his fellow man does not lick wounds.  He is like a king towards him because he is like a beggar to God.

Am I a child of my Father who gave me His Son?  Then what else can I have in my heart but the testimony of the Spirit who makes me forgive?  Now that is something I bring before God in the prayer Jesus taught me.  I bring it there because it is so hard.  I have to ask God, as a beggar who begs God’s pardon.

Tell me, my friend, honestly now, what other way could be the way of God with you?

AMEN.