Word of Salvation – Vol. 27 No. 09 – December 1981

 

I Beg Your Pardon!!!

 

Sermon by Rev. Arent I de Graaf, B.D. on Lord’s Day 51

Scripture Reading: James 2

Psalter Hymnal: No. 229:1,2,3; 229:4,5,6; 406; 452; 55:1 & 3; 55:5

 

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, “I ask for being excused.” 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 – and in French, “Ils ne sont que des geux!” “They’re nothing but beggars!” Some beggars! They were to upset the entire kingdom and end the rule of Spain over the Netherlands!

We can be that kind of beggar 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: “Pardonner…. c’est son metier!” He’s got to forgive…. happens to be His job!”

Yes, but let it be 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 and does NOT forgive the small debt his fellow servant has with him. He gets his big debt back. 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 also 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 not to be 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 everybody cries for “RIGHTS!” And now the world is so full of GRIM people who want to settle accounts. Now 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 what a beggar he is, and what a grace he received. Then maybe he 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 – sees it coming that there would be people who would say: as long as you fight against injustice and as long as you take up the yoke of revolution on behalf of the downtrodden of the earth, never mind these old Christian doctrines, never mind this “getting right with God” kind of thing.

It was good enough to be worried about in Luther’s day 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 falls the word MERCY. Crusader, don’t forget you’re a beggar, too. Each day, as far as God is concerned, you are a beggar. Don’t forget, or you, too, may turn out to be the pharisee who never really prayed and 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. They were so conceited before the face of God. Then in the end 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: our neighbours, never mind what their colour, their status or their smell.

Beggars like us, …we hope they are.

I preach you the Word of God on “I beg your pardon…!” what was it we see?

1. Beggars again, indeed

2. Reconciled to God, and

3. Reconciled to men.

1. Beggars, indeed. Yes why should you pray, otherwise? The Pharisee from the parable didn’t pray. He just came to show off what a goodie he was. We come with our pride! We come with our talk of “Rights!” and “Freedom!” Oh sure, we beg for pardon – “Beg your pardon, sir” we confess, but what do we confess but 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 go to confession? I have never done anything wrong!

Is not that the way you think? You wait until, you hear behind your back what that nice friend of yours tells about you! Never thought it of the blighter to tell so much nonsense! 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 that we do no real wrong. It is all somebody else’s fault, parents maybe, or our environment where we grew up (underprivileged they call that,) – Poor devil, can’t help it.

Criminals ought not to be punished, not even ‘the friends’ 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 dollars 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 from his responsibility. He is made into a mere product of his environment – a log washed along on a swift stream – and 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, to pray: forgive me MY sins …I have sinned O God, I have done this… I, I..!

For Jesus teaches us that a man made in the image of God should not give up the privilege to say “I” and especially not when it comes to beg 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 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 be small enough to become a beggar before the face of the most high, then he cannot be forgiven. Pray for the grace God has offered. That comes with seeing what I did to the Holy One when I turned to 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. (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 3rd one is humility!”

That sounds like a somewhat sick joke but it is more profound than you think.

OK…, you see you need humility when you COME to Christ as a sinner needing forgiveness. But once you become a church member and other Christians are getting impressed with you, then to see you still need grace every day 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. 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 gotten off a lot worse with 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 out of 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 forgive us for the sake of the blood of Jesus somewhere on a back burner.

God’s forgiveness is not obsolete stock found somewhere on a back shelf. 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 in which we see if we can reach heaven with that towering goodness of ours. God’s justice was the justice which was hurt most on earth. That’s why human rights were violated because God’s rights were violated.

And that’s when human rights will always get violated, if 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 from works when he offered Isaac! And that is 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 none 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 if 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 had 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 when protecting its citizens.

Then I forgive… that communist warder (did you read how Pastor Wurmbrand forgave his torturers?)

It does not mean that now he can say communism is all right. 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 under his fellow man does not lick wounds. He is like a king towards his persecutors, because he is like a beggar to God. If I am 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 that makes me forgive?

Let us humbly pray to God:

I beg your pardon for all my sin;
I accept your reconciliation in your Son;
I have pardoned those who have sinned against me.

Amen.