he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”14 And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” 15 He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” 16 Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” 17 And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. 18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

2 Cor 1: 8 For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. 10 He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. 11 You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.

2 Cor 4:7 But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. 8 We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed;10 always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. 11 For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 12 So death is at work in us, but life in you.

I think it might be safe to say that these three passages would rarely have been put together in a sermon, but I hope you will see there is some sort of method in my madness today. I want to talk about three things. Three facts.. Three things we know:

1. JESUS IS BUILDING HIS CHURCH
2. IT IS A CHURCH BUILT ON GRACE
3. THIS GRACE IS FOR SINNERS

These facts are so well known that we think we know them. I am suggesting that the Church at large has rarely known them, except in a superficial way, or if these things have been known, they have been rarely applied in the life of the Church.

Often when a person encounters Christ and begins his trek through this world as a follower of Him.. as he enters the Church, he is handed a mask, which he is expected to wear to each service.

If he forgets to wear it for the first few services, allowances are made. “He’s new, its ok” someone might say.. Quickly though he learns the rhetoric, the jargon, the lingo… when asked how he is doing, he learns to say “I’m blessed” “it is well with my soul…” “God is good, all the time…” and over time, he understands that talking like this is what will allow him to be accepted by the group…

How this must grieve the Lord.. Jesus is building His Church with real people who are often hurting and in pain… and His Church is supposed to be the one place where sinners can own their sin and still be loved, a place where we can be imperfect and flawed, while at the same time exalting in the perfect Savior.

The Apostle Paul wanted his readers to know that he had experienced such a hard time that he despaired he would even come out of the experience alive. He was

1. Afflicted
2. Perplexed
3. Persecuted
4. Struck down
5. Carrying in the body the death of Jesus
6. Given over to death
7. His outward self (body) wasting away

Can one of God’s children say this kind of thing? Not only a child of God, but an Apostle!

Of course, Paul did not stop there, but he started there! He was REAL! And in being real, He also had a real Savior.. and that is where the “but” comes in… afflicted in every way, BUT not crushed; perplexed, BUT not driven to despair; persecuted, BUT not forsaken; struck down, BUT not destroyed…

Faith does not ignore circumstances, not the fact that “I am hurting right now” but embraces that, acknowledges that, and looks to Christ to handle the pain, the trial, the loss, the burden…

If you have ever been given a mask to wear at Church, here’s what I want you to do. Take it off. You do not need it in the Church Jesus is building… Hand it back and embrace the Gospel that saves the real you and keeps on saving, the real you.

The cross did not purchase a mask for you to wear. It purchased you.. the real you …the YOU only you and God know fully.

Since Jesus paid it all and it is finished, if the judgment against us has been fully and finally taken care of, we do not need masks.

“When I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin; but when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I beat my breast to think I could ever have rebelled against One who loved me so and sought my good.” – C. H. Spurgeon

There is something called spiritual dyslexia and it is rampant in the Church – it gets everything the wrong way round… the idea that Christianity is first and foremost about the sacrifice we make for Jesus rather than the sacrifice Jesus made for us; our performance for him rather than his performance for us; our obedience for him rather than his obedience for us. The hub of Christianity is not “do something for Jesus.” The hub of Christianity is “Jesus has done everything for you.” I fear that too many people, both inside and outside the church, have heard this plea for intensified devotion and concluded that the focus of the Christian faith is our love for God instead of God’s love for us.

The good news of God’s grace has been tragically hijacked by an oppressive religious moralism that is all about rules, rules, and more rules; doing more, trying harder, self-help, getting better, and fixing, fixing, fixing–—ourselves, our kids, our spouse, our friends, our enemies, our culture, our world. Christianity is perceived as being a vehicle for good behavior and clean living and the judgments that result from them rather than the only recourse for those who have failed over and over again.

With all that in view, is it any wonder why we put on masks to hide?

Christianity is not about good people getting better. If anything, it is good news for bad people coping with their failure to be good.

Too many people have walked away from the church not because they’re walking away from Jesus, but because the church has walked away from Jesus.

Tullian Tchividjian – “Works righteousness” is the word that the Protestant Reformation used to describe spiritual performancism, and it has plagued the church—and the world—since the Garden of Eden. It might not be too much of an overstatement to say that if Jesus came to proclaim good news to the poor, release to the captives, freedom for the oppressed, sight to the blind, then Christianity has come to stand for, and in practice promulgate, the exact opposite of what its founder intended (Luke 4:18–19).” But Jesus is building His Church.. and the gates of hell will never stand up against it!

Tullian Tchividjian – “When I was 25, I believed I could change the world. At 40, I have come to the realization that I cannot change my wife, my church, or my kids, to say nothing of the world. Try as I might, I have not been able to manufacture outcomes the way I thought I could, either in my own life or other people’s. Unfulfilled dreams, ongoing relational tension, the loss of friendships, a hard marriage, rebellious teenagers, the death of loved ones, remaining sinful patterns—whatever it is for you—live long enough, lose enough, suffer enough, and the idealism of youth fades, leaving behind the reality of life in a broken world as a broken person. Life has had a way of proving to me that I’m not on the constantly-moving-forward escalator of progress I thought I was on when I was twenty-five.

Instead, my life has looked more like this: Try and fail. Fail then try. Try and succeed. Succeed then fail. Two steps forward. One step back. One step forward. Three steps back. Every year, I get better at some things, worse at others. Some areas remain stubbornly static. To complicate matters even more, when I honestly acknowledge the ways I’ve gotten worse, it’s actually a sign that I may be getting better. And when I become proud of the ways I’ve gotten better, it’s actually a sign that I’ve gotten worse. And ’round and ’round we go.

If this sounds like a depressing sentiment, it isn’t meant to be one. Quite the opposite. If I am grateful for anything about these past 15 years, it’s for the way God has wrecked my idealism about myself and the world and replaced it with a realism about the extent of His grace and love, which is much bigger than I had ever imagined. Indeed, the smaller you get—the smaller life makes you—the easier it is to see the grandeur of grace. While I am far more incapable than I may have initially thought, God is infinitely more capable than I ever hoped.

As Walter Marshall says, “By nature, you are completely addicted to a legal method of salvation. Even after you become a Christian by believing the Gospel, your heart is still addicted to salvation by works…You find it hard to believe that you should get any blessing before you work for it.”

But while I’m not surprised when I hear venomous rejoinders to grace (the flesh is always resistant to “It is finished”), I am saddened when the very pack of people that God has unconditionally saved and continues to sustain by his free grace are the very ones who push back most violently against it.

It is high time for the church to honor its Founder by embracing sola gratia anew, to reignite the beacon of hope for the hopeless and point all of us bedraggled performancists back to the freedom and rest of the Cross. To leave our “if’s,” “and’s,” or “but’s” behind and get back to proclaiming the only message that matters—and the only message we have—the Word about God’s one-way love for sinners. It is time for us to abandon once and for all our play-it-safe religion, and, as Robert Farrar Capon so memorably put it, get drunk on grace. Two- hundred-proof, unflinching grace. It’s shocking and scary, unnatural and undomesticated…but it is also the only thing that can set us free and light the church, and the world, on fire.”

It’s the Church Jesus is building around the world and here at King’s Church: Christianity without a mask! We are not the message. Christ and His gospel is: 2 Cor 4:5 For what we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.

Christ offers us not a mask to hide behind, but a throne to sit on, with Him, in heavenly places… not because of anything we have done but because of what has been done for us by Him. We are trophies of His grace.

“Although my memory’s fading, I remember two things very clearly: I am a great sinner and Christ is a great Savior.” ? John Newton, Amazing Grace