Transcript
I love this conference; I'll tell you why I love this conference. I love being part of a conference that has no topic. I'm serious. So many conferences, the big deal is to try to search for what will the topic be next year? You have to come up with something creative and real.
We Have One Thing to Talk About: Grace
Listen, we don't need a topic. We have one thing that we are going to talk about for the rest of eternity. It's called grace. And we can talk about this year, after year, after year, after year. It is so incredibly beautiful and so incredibly deep, we'll never exhaust this topic. We don't need a topic. We're here to celebrate grace...I'm done. Now, they assigned me the topic of failure because they know me, and they try to give topics to people that they're an expert in. Some of you will get that later. I'm very, very thankful for the topic I've been given because I'm still deeply persuaded that failure scares us too much still. Failure is still too terrifying to us, and it's terrifying to us because we want to believe we are something that we're not. And when we hold on to that delusional hope, we always devalue grace.
I was a very, very, very angry man. I didn't know I was an angry man; most angry men don't. My wife knew I was angry; my children knew I was angry, but I didn't know I was angry. I would've never thought of myself in those terms. If you had said that to me, I would've been hurt. I would have argued for the fact that I'm not an angry man. Luella, my dear wife, my functional hero sitting over there, came to me again, and again, and again, and held that anger in front of me and my failure to love my children as I should. And I would argue with her. I would wrap my robes of righteousness around me and tell her what a great man she had. I would tell her that I thought her problem was discontent, and I would pray for her. That helped her. That's a lie.
There was one moment where I got on a bit of a roll; I'm sort of a domestic man. I don't mind doing things around the house. I love to cook, and I was just laying the deeds of my righteousness in front of Luella. And I got excited, and I said these deeply humble words, "Ninety-five percent of the women in our church would love to be married to a man like me. Luella very quickly informed me she was in the five percent. I was a man headed for destruction in the midst of destroying my ministry, and I didn't see it. I didn't hear it. I wouldn't face it; I was terrified of what I actually was. I was denying the evidence, and some of you are doing that right now. You're skilled at it; you're very skilled self-swindlers. Stop it! Grace is better. Is that strong enough? It's sad; the evidence is in front of your face. It's there every day, and you won't look at it. You won't face it because you believe that you are something you will never be apart from Christ. It's a delusion; it's hurting you; it's hurting the people in your life; it's robbing you of your effectiveness. It's a mess.
There are a lot more people in the denying-the-reality-of-favor society, than there are in the flat-earth society. The flat-earth people are closer to being accurate. It's a mess. I was on a weekend much like this weekend with my brother, Tedd. Some of you know Tedd. That was my first mistake. And Tedd has got a pastor's heart, and on our way home, driving up the northeast extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Tedd said, "You know, Paul, we probably ought to make this weekend applicable to our own lives." The car was going 65 miles an hour; I couldn't jump out. And he said, "Why don't you start?" He's done this to me for years.
And it was an amazing moment; Tedd didn't make any statements. Tedd began to ask me questions, and it was like God was ripping down curtains, and I was seeing myself with accuracy for the first time. I was hearing myself with accuracy for the first time. I couldn't believe that that man that I was looking in on was me, but it was. It was so disjointing and disorienting, but it was me. It was a holy moment of zealous grace, the spirit of God giving sight to the eyes of a blind, stubborn, rebellious man. Praise God! Praise God! Praise God! I will thank God ten-million years into eternity for the moment in that car, because I began to get it.
I went home, now, really wanting to talk with Luella after years of self-righteous resistance, no longer wanting to be an evidence denier. And, I have a lively sense of humor; I often enter the house humorously, and I came in very serious this night. And I asked her if we could talk; it was rather late. She said, "Yes." And I said to her, "I think, for the first time in my life, I really want to hear what you have to say to me. I want to listen to you. Please talk to me."
Luella began to tear up. She told me that she loved me, and she talked for two hours. And in the two hours, God began a process of the radical undoing and rebuilding of the heart of this man.
The operative word there is 'process'. I'm not a finished man. I'm not a finished man. I'm not a finished man. I'm not a man, now, that's incapable of anger. Anybody who lives near me knows I'm still a bit of a mess, but I got something. And the next few months, honestly, were very, very painful. I saw that anger everywhere, but what was painful is--I had to let go of that delusion that I was something that I'm not; that had become precious and important to me. It was a treasure to me. There was an identity I wanted to hold on to. I thought no one had a more accurate view of me than I did, and I didn't want to let go of it, but I had to. It was gone; it was devastated by grace. And that pain was, in fact, a pathway to wonderful freedom, because I don't have to be something because I have everything in Christ. Now I want to say something to you, right now, that's going to be counterintuitive. Maybe it won't be after this conference; I get to speak at the end, and you've all been tenderized. But, hear what I am about to say, "Everyone in this room, including this man, is a massive failure. Own it! Any other view of you is a delusion. Reject it! Stop what you're doing right now; don't activate your inner lawyer. I'm not concerned about your inner child; I think your inner lawyer is actually more active. Don't run to..."But, Paul, you don't know me. But, Paul, you haven't seen what I've done. But, Paul, if you knew whatever evidence you would mount, you wouldn't say this about me." The fact of the matter is there's not a day where we don't give empirical evidence of our failure. It's all of us.
And the thing that I would ask you this morning is, when you're confronted with the evidence--that you're less than righteous, that you're less than what you thought you are, what do you do with that evidence? What do you do in the face of the evidence of your failure? What? What do you do?
Turn, if you would, in your Bibles to 2 Peter 1. This is a diagnostic passage, amazing diagnosis, amazing cure. You will notice that always effective cure is always attached to accuracy of diagnosis--inaccurate diagnosis, no cure. 2 Peter 1, verse 3:
His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire. For this very reason, make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with steadfastness, and steadfastness with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love. For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins. (2 Peter 1:3-9, ESV) Now, this is one of those passages in the New Testament that has inverted logic in it. I don't mean by that that it doesn't make sense; it's in the Word of God; it makes perfect sense. But, you actually have to start at the bottom of the passage that I read to get the full import of the top of the passage. And, at the bottom of the passage is this stinging diagnostic. Here it is: "For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they will keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge Lord Jesus Christ." Peter is actually arguing that it's possible to be God's child; it's possible to be saved by His grace; it's possible to have the Holy Spirit living inside of you and be ineffective and unproductive in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Your life is not demonstrating the full range of the full harvest of the fruit of faith. It's ineffective and unproductive, and when you see that kind of diagnostic in Scripture, you ought to ask yourself the question, "Who are these people? Who are these ineffective and unfruitful ones?"
As you're sitting there in your pew, answer that question. You should read the Bible interactively. You should force yourself to answer the questions that the Bible posits to you. Don't read the Bible with some saccharine, spiritual monotone. Who are these people? Maybe you'd like to think that there are these loser classes of Christians who never get it right. You're not one of those; you're one of the good Christians. You're one of the people where Christianity has taken; it's stuck. And you demonstrate it all the time. You have particular Christian nobility. You're one of them. And maybe there is just this loser class of Christians, and what we ought to do is you just ought to put black T-shirts on them, so we would know who they are. Stay away from them; they're trouble.
Well, think about this for a moment. Who, here, would be so arrogant as to stand in this moment and say this past week, "In every way possible, I demonstrated the full harvest of the full fruit of faith?" Please stand. Look around. No one can do that. This is a diagnostic that embraces all of us; we're the unfruitful ones. We're the ineffective ones. We fall short of God's standard all the time. Why?--because the power of sin has been broken, but the presence of the sin still remains. There's not a grace graduate in this room. Why? Why do you chafe against that? Why does your heart struggle against that? Why is that hard for you to admit? Why do the very people, who on Sunday morning sing songs that celebrate grace, work so hard to deny their need of it during the week? Why? It's us. This is us. This is every one of us. This passage diagnosis us; we're all this kind of people.
I Wish I Could Say I Have It Licked
I wish I could say, "I've got marriage licked; I wrote the marriage book, What did you Expect?" But I don't. I wish I could say, "There's never a day when I'm full of myself," but I am.
I have those moments when I am rushing to get something at the store, and I happen to be stuck behind the woman who has 150 grocery items, and they're slowly being checked out, and she's got a purse that's the size of luggage for a family of six. And she acts like she doesn't know that, at the end, she's going to have to pay. It's bad enough that the piece of beef I got is now dry-aged beef because I've been waiting so long, but when they get done checking her out, she goes, "Oh!" like she's never payed before. And she starts doing this...she not only puts makeup on the counter, she puts small children.
And I want to scream, "Are you an idiot? Maybe you don't have a life, but I do. I'm Paul Tripp. Have you never heard of a wallet?" How ugly is that? Who do I think I am? Who do I think I am? There it is; that's the self-selfishness, the me-ism of sin. I don't give a rip who I represent; I don't give a rip what I've been given; I want my way, thank you!
I wish I could say I sit in traffic, and I say, "Lord, thank you for this moment where I can meditate on Your glory, because whenever I have a free moment, that's what I do. I think of Jesus because He is so near and dear to my heart, maybe not to yours, but to my heart because I'm a Christian."
I'm dreaming that there will be a day where I can drive on roads paid for by other citizens who choose not to use them. I had a thought once, it actually entered my head; it actually entered my head, "Don't they know I have somewhere to go? Part like the waters of the Red Sea; I'll go through. I'll say, 'I'll be through here tomorrow; part again, please. I'm surely as important as Moses.'"
I wish I could say, "People don't irritate me." I wish I could say, "I don't want to be the center of attention in moments." I wish I could say, "I don't want to think of a better story that will trump your story because I want to be the best story teller in the group." I wish I could say, "I cook a meal, and I don't fish for compliments." I wish I could say, "I'm incapable of lust, or anger, all of those things," but I can't. This is us. Own it! I wish I could say..., but I can't.
Notice what it says next, "For whoever lacks these qualities is (nearsighted) so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten he was cleansed from his past sins." Now connect that to what it says before, "For if these qualities are yours and are increasing, they keep you from being ineffective or unfruitful in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ."
Now, here is what he is saying, he's saying that this unfruitfulness is attached to the fact that you've lacked these qualities of Christian character. If these qualities of Christian character were ruling your heart and the situations and relationships of everyday life, your responses would be affective and fruitful, but they're not.
I wish I could say that that my heart is always ruled by love, but it's not. When that person swoops into the parking spot that I've been waiting for, I want to share something with them, but it wouldn't be Jesus.
I wish I could say as a parent, when I'm at the end of a long parenting day, and my kids were fighting in their beds, I wouldn't stomp down the hallway rehearsing how I was going to get in their face and tell them 'what for'. I wish I could say that I always took that as a wonderful, redemptive moment, "'Redeemed--how I love to proclaim it! Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb.' Thank you, Lord, for this redemptive moment, even though it is 12 o'clock at night." But I haven't done that.
You see, the question is, "How active are you in denying the regular, empirical evidence of your need for grace. How good are you at denying the failure that marks your existence? How afraid are you to open the failure door? Own your answer. How much does failure yet terrify you? How much will you look at anything, no matter how illogical, to somehow hold on to the fact that you're not that? How much do you want to grab hold of everything that somehow says, "I'm okay. I'm something. I'm a success." How much are you monkeying with the evidence and reality? How much are you in the midst of evangelical delusion?
There are thousands, and thousands, and thousands of evangelicals who live every day, in downright heretical delusion. There it is! Because they are terrified of actually confessing, "I am in massive need of grace. There is no hope for me, but grace. Bottom line! None! I have nothing to bring, nothing in my hands I bring." I want to reach for something; I want to say, "There's something that I bring. There's something that I am." You see, here's what happens--when you're confronted with your failure, and you will be, if you're all able to be a bit humble, if you're all able to look accurately at your own thoughts, desires, words, and actions, if you're all able to look at those things with any level of honesty, you will be confronted with your failure. And when you are confronted with your failure, you only have one or two options: You work very hard in the face of that failure to convince yourself you're actually something; or, you confess that you're nothing, and you're in desperate need of help. There literally isn't any middle ground.
So what do you do? You don't want to face the reality of the desperate condition that is actually your existence, and so you look for ways of proving that you're something, and you'll grab a hold of everything. You see, if you're not getting your identity, and meaning, and security vertically, you'll shop for it horizontally someplace. And so to prove to yourself that you are something, you always have to be right; you always have to win the day. You don't want to live with that person. That's a person you can't talk to. They always have to have the final word. They always have to have the smartest comment. They always have to have the winning argument. It's creepy and weird; it's strange and antisocial. It not only harms your soul, it destroys your relationships because you have to be something.
Monuments to Being Something
You'll mount up ridiculous, expensive possessions because your possessions, they're a monument to the fact that you're something, and you work yourself into hopeless debt, and you have a house way bigger than you need, and cars way more expensive than you need, and a wardrobe that would clothe the Third World, and it's still not enough for you because it's all a monument to the fact that you're something.
You'll be driven, and anxious, and achievement oriented--work, work, work, work, work, work, work because I need the buzz of the next achievement to prove to me that I'm something. It's all a massive system of evidence denial that only leaves you fat, addicted, and in debt. It's bondage. It's bondage. It doesn't work, because it's a denial of reality. It's a denial of reality.
Where does this operate in your life? Maybe you're a wife, and in ways you don't realize it, you need to be something, so you've turned your home into a museum to your domestic dexterity. The beauty, and order, and cleanliness of your home are way more important than it should be.
Now, you're just going to be a creepy person to live with. It's true, because you'll notice a dent in a pillow from 100 paces that wasn't there, and that will be a personal affront to you. You'll look at crumbs on the counter table, 32 bits of edible matter, and you'll say, "I can't believe it. I can't believe they would do this to me after all I do. I do and do, and this is the thanks I get. They ought to all live with messy moms." You'll follow people into rooms, making sure that they don't actually make that room look like somebody lives there. You'll be walking around thinking that God has singled you out for the particular suffering of living with a community of slobs. You don't have a slob problem; you have an evidence denial problem.
You'll attach your identity to your car. How weird is that? You'll feel special because you're driving this vehicle. You'll sit at a light, and you'll rev the engine; it's almost orgasmic to you. You want to park it in places where it will be noticed. You're weird. It's a car.
You'll actually ask your lawn to announce that you're something. You'll out-lawn your neighbor. For some reason, our culture is lawn-freaked-out; I don't get it. Just grow it long enough so you could bale it; at least, you could feed the horses with it. You'll spend masses, a massive amount of money, making sure that nobody will ever find a weed in your lawn because your lawn says something. It says, "You're somebody. I'm somebody. I'm my lawn." If you're your lawn, you're weird.
It's all this evidence denial system. I've got to find something that will prove to me that I'm something. Oh, in a church, it means you'll be a theo-geek. You'll give yourself to what I call 'theological always rightism'. It has nothing to do with loving the truth; it has nothing to do with loving the Gospel. You have to be right; you have to be precise; you have to know more about theology than anybody's ever known because you have to tell yourself that you're something, and you've turned gorgeous theology of Scripture into a means of establishing false identity. What a mess!
You don't love Jesus, and you don't love truth; you love your delusion. And the most glorious, liberating message ever has been stolen to prop up your delusion. It's a massive system of evidence denial.
Sadly, if you're a parent, you'll lay the burden of being something on your children. It's a sad, sad thing. You will turn your children into your trophies, and they will carry the burden of you feeling like something, and you will lay law down on them and expectation down on them that they're never ever able to fulfill. You'll lay guilt and shame on them because those children are forced into this system to prop up the delusion that you are something.
And they'll break under the burden of that. These are little sinners; they'll never pull it off; they'll never be as perfect; they'll never be as smart; they'll never have enough achievements; they'll never do it. Your children will never be your savior. It won't happen. It won't happen.
And home, for them, isn't a place of rest, and healing, and grace. It's a place of pressure, and expectation, and achievement. And the minute I reach one level, another level is put before me, and I meet that level, and another level is put before me. It doesn't work; it doesn't work; it doesn't work. It doesn't work.
Nothing is more freeing than biblical faith because, hear what I am about to say, biblical faith never requires you to deny reality in order to find peace. Biblical faith never requires that you have to deny reality in order to find peace and rest, because biblical faith asks you to do one thing--confess who you actually are. Confess it. Own it. Open the door to what is actually the truth about you. Enough fronting. Enough of carrying the burden of proving that I'm something that I'm not...enough of asking people to treat me as if I'm as perfect as I think I am. Enough. It's a mess of heartache, and brokenness, and failure, and frustration, and anger, and disappointment. At some point, you say, "I don't want to do this anymore. It's too painful."
Now, notice what it says there in verse 9: "For whoever lacks these qualities (these gifts of grace) is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins." Peter actually says, "The root of this thing really is identity." You see, when you accept and acknowledge who you actually are, who you really are, what not only the biblical diagnosis tells you, but the empirical evidence of everyday life tells you--when you, now, are ready to say, "This is who I actually am," then, you begin to rest in the grace that has been offered people like you. Because the only way, ever, to get to the Good News, the only way, ever, that that Good News would be remotely interesting to you, would not be theologically boring to you, would be exciting and motivating and worth celebrating, the only way you will esteem the Good News is if you're willing to accept the bad, devastating news that is the reality of all of our lives. We're a mess. We all fail every day in a myriad of ways. I'm capable, in a flash of a moment, to think shocking things, horrible things. I'm not okay on my own. I'm not something on my own. I'm not righteous on my own. I don't have good thoughts, and good intentions, and all of that stuff on my own. And for that, I've been given the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm done measuring up. I'm done putting on a front. I don't need to do it.
The Conscience That Argues Against Us
You see, but there's something that argues against that in us. There's something that's still uncomfortable with that in us. Look, when you do something wrong, your conscience bothers you because the heart of stone has been taken out of you, and it has been replaced with a heart of flesh. And in the face of that, you only have one of two choices--you confess it as being wrong, and you place yourself, once again, under the justifying mercies of Christ, and you rest in His grace; or, you erect some system of selfjustification that makes that wrong acceptable to your conscience. We're so good at doing that.
Now, if you're at the mall, and you see a beautiful woman, and you're lusting, your conscience bothers you, you say, "It's not lust. It was worship of the Creator. I'm just a man who enjoys beauty, this kind of beauty." There it is. There it is. It's a massive system of evidence denial that is you working to say, "You're something other than what Scripture describes you to be." How sad. And, it's only when you let go of all of that, you let go of your need to be somebody, your need to prove yourself, your need to erect monuments to your success, whatever those monuments will be, whether academic, or business, or relational, or physical, whatever they are, it's only when you let go of that--that you begin to get excited about, and celebrate, and reach out for the grace that is yours in Christ Jesus.
Now you're ready for the top of the passage. Look what he says; I could not possibly, I'm serious about this, read words more thunderously glorious than what I am about to read to you. I don't think there are words that have been penned in human language that are more stunningly beautiful, and comforting, and wholesome, and good, and glorious, and transforming, and restorative than these words.
These words say it all; these words get me up in the morning; these words are my dearest friends. I could not cope with my knowledge of who I am without these words; these words say it all. Here it is. "His divine power has granted to us," (What does it say next? Say it! Say it! I feel like Jesse Jackson. Say it!) "all things that pertain to life and godliness."
All things; all things; all things; all things; all things; all things; all things; all things. Put it on your refrigerator. All things! Everything! I don't have to be something because Jesus is everything. There it is. There's the Gospel; it's the Gospel with this economy of words that blows my mind. I wish I could say things this succinctly with this level of glory; I'll maybe get there someday, but I'm far from it right now.
His divine power - hear this - Almighty God, Lord, King Creator, the One who put this world together, the one who holds it together by His mighty power has unleashed that power so that you and I, massive messes that we are, would have everything that we need. That's the Gospel.
"All things that pertain to life and godliness." Why does He use two words? I think he uses two words because he knows His audience. If He would have said, "He's given us everything we need for life," we would sort of stick in the word 'eternal'. And He has done that, but that just doesn't happen to be Peter's topic at this point. I think that very often, and those of you who know me, know that this is a theme for me, we have a kind of clear understanding of salvation past, and a bit of a clear understanding of salvation future, but we don't really understand salvation right now, the present benefits of the work of Christ, the now-ism of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, the rest that is mine, right here, right now, because of what I've been given in Christ. That's what He's talking about--His divine power has given us everything that pertains to life and godliness. What is godliness? Godliness is that life between the time you come to Christ, and the time you go home to be with Him. Everything we need, right here, right now, it's all ours in Christ--Everything! Everything! Everything! Everything!
Do you believe that? No, No, No, I wasn't asking for theological confession. If I watched the video of your last six weeks with you, would I conclude that you believe that? Or, are you still living under the heavy burden of using the situations, and locations, and relationships, and possessions, and experiences of everyday life to marshal evidence that you're something? How sad.
I wish I could end this morning by saying, "I've arrived. I don't do that anymore," but I do. And even there, I don't have to run away in fear; I don't have to wallow in shame; I don't have to hide in guilt; I don't have to be something because my rest is not in the fact that I'm something; my rest is in fact that Jesus is everything. Do you know that rest? Or do you sadly load on your shoulders, again each morning, the burden of proving to yourself and to others that you are something that you are not? How sad.
If you say, "Yes, Paul, that's me," don't run away from the Savior; run toward Him because Jesus not only lived the life you couldn't live, and died the death you should have died, but He bore your rejection so that, in your most self-driven, delusional moment, in your most self-driven, delusional moment, you will never see the back of God's head. You will never see the back of God's head. There and there alone is where rest is to be found. There is no rest to be found anywhere else. Enter into that rest.
