Love Is | Week 2 | Full Service

about a decade ago, I had finished my left sleeve and this arm I did more of like the traditional Japanese art that's like very colorful and my arm actually tells the Japanese tradition of life and afterlife. And I knew I wanted to start my right arm and I was gonna do more of like a traditional religious

Chicano kind of art. And so I needed a tattoo artist that did black and white stuff, but I just didn't know anybody. And I started to look for tattoo artists and literally one day I walked into church and one of my friend's wife had a bunch of new tattoos and it was almost exactly the type of style that I wanted. And so I asked Monica, I said, Hey, who does your tattoos? And she was like, Oh, it's a friend that I've known for most of my life.

His name's Lorenzo,

really awesome guy. She gives me his number and then at the very end she was like, Oh, by the way, he just got out of prison. And I was like, Oh, all right. So I reach out to Lorenzo, we started talking back and forth. I tell him, Hey, this is what I want to do. I'm going to do my whole arm. I have the whole thing basically designed. And if you don't know this, doing a full sleeve of tattoos, it's a bit of a commitment. You're going to sit in a tattoo chair for probably

thirty to forty hours, right? Like it's a decent level of commitment. It's a decent amount of a financial investment and truthfully, if I could have all my money and time back right now, I probably would, but we're here now. They're permanent. So it is what it is.

But so I reach out to him and I go, man, hey, want to do this thing. As

fast as you can do it, I'm in. And so it should be a pretty decent job for him. And so he says, yeah, I'll come to your house. And I'm like, my house? Like I usually go to a tattoo shop, but I didn't realize at the time that meant that he wasn't licensed. I would find that part out later, but we set up an appointment for my first tattoo Saturday at 01:00.

So I'm like, okay, awesome man, come to my house. And what walks in the door of my house is this really large Mexican dude who truly, if he walked into church, our security team would

alert to him. I've got a picture I want to show you. It's not the best picture ever, but this is Lorenzo right here, who's just an amazing dude. He would be mad if I was showing this picture because he does kickboxing now and has lost a bunch of weight. It's okay that kickboxing isn't that masculine, but I also had a lot less gray hair back then.

But he would set up in my kitchen and he would tattoo me. But here's the problem with Lorenzo.

The first appointment supposed to start at 01:00. Well, 01:00 rolls around, he's nowhere to be found. 02:00 rolls around, nowhere to be found. I'm texting him like, hey man, are we still doing this thing? And he's like, yeah, of course. It's the classic. I'm fifteen minutes out, right? Well, 03:00 rolls around, 04:00 rolls around. This man doesn't show up to my house until

05:00PM. Like who shows up for the first appointment four hours late? And so I'm sitting there frustrated.

I'm like, I had a certain amount of time that I was going to give to this thing and now I'm not gonna be able to do it for as long as I want to. And so I just am really frustrated because almost immediately when Lorenzo walked into my house, for whatever reason I was overwhelmed with what I now understand is the Holy Spirit's kind of nudging

to just be really kind and gracious to this guy for some reason. And part of it was because I was kind of scared of him and so I didn't want to tell him that I was mad, but there was this other part that I just couldn't knock that God was just telling me and nudging me to be really kind to this guy.

And what I got to hear over the next year and a half of getting my arm done that probably should have taken four weeks, but that's another story. What I got to learn over the period of time of sitting and getting tattooed by Lorenzo is I got to hear his story.

And on the exterior, what you would see is a man who just spent the last sixteen years in prison, but when you hear his story and you get just a little bit beyond the surface, you understand Lorenzo was like the biggest teddy bear you've ever met.

And he kind of looks a little bit scary on the outside, but you hear his story about how he grew up in a single parent home because his dad left and went back to Mexico before he was even one years old.

And by four or five Lorenzo's mom was addicted to drugs and she was out of the home and so by seven or eight, he was essentially raising his two siblings. By 10 or 11, his mom had become so disconnected that he was the one that had to begin to, provide for his siblings almost their every meal.

And at 17, he walked into Best Buy and he stole a speaker that was worth about a $100 because he was going to sell it to get food for his brother and sister and he walked out and he got arrested. And what he didn't realize

is when he got to jail, he was terrified and all he wanted do was to make sure he didn't go to jail. He was given a public defender and he only gave the public defender one set of instructions, just make it so I don't have to go to jail. So they put a plea deal in front of him. He signed it,

didn't have to go to jail, but what he did is he agreed to accept a felony on his record. So 17 years old, he gets his first felony. He gets out about six months later, he turns 18, he's driving with a friend.

Again, a lot of the friends he ended up turning to were not doing the greatest things around because most of them didn't have parents around to instruct them either.

And he didn't realize that his friend was addicted to drugs and had been casing a home and decided that he was going to break into it. And so Lorenzo was sitting in the passenger seat of his car. He said it felt like it was in slow motion. He watched his friend get out, go and try to kick this door and he said it felt like two minutes later, the cops were swarming the place, arrest his friend, they look at him and they say, you're the getaway driver and he already has a felony on his record.

At 18 years old, Lorenzo gets sentenced to twenty six years in prison. He then will spend the next sixteen or seventeen years behind bars and the world moves on without him. He's never seen a cell phone.

He's never used a computer. The concept of the internet he's heard of but he's never actually used it and so he finds himself sitting in my kitchen at 36 years old, having no real marketable skills with two felonies on his record, terrified of the world.

And what began to happen is I started to understand why God was so nudging me to be really patient and kind with a guy who truthfully, his actions didn't deserve it.

There was a lot of times when I would be getting tattooed by Lorenzo. I would go to the bathroom and I would come back in my kitchen and I would find Lorenzo standing like this at my counter. Like, man, what are you doing?

He's like, don't wanna I don't wanna be rude, man, but you're white, I'm brown. If something's missing in your house and you call the police, they're not going to believe me. It'll be my third strike. And so he would stand there still until I got back so I knew that he didn't move.

And eventually as he got more comfortable with us, it began to open up the possibility to have bigger conversations with him. One of them I had to have with him, I said, Lorenzo, look man, I get it. Like you spent sixteen years in prison, but like my son is two years old. He's kind of a parrot right now. So he just like repeats everything. If you could just use the f word a little bit less around him, that would be helpful. To which he responded, he was like, oh, f man, my bad. You know, like, I was like, we'll get there, bro. No worries.

And I ended up having this really bizarre conversation with him because he at some point obviously understood that I was a pastor and the whole concept of a pastor sitting down and getting tattooed, he was thinking the same thing that a lot of you were thinking. You're like, it's not possible. Pastors can't get tattoos. You're not going to heaven. Right? And so we have this conversation. I walk him through what the bible says and why I think tattoos are okay. And I basically, I swear to you this next part of the story is true. I said, Lorenzo, as long as you're not getting like a porn scene on your back, I don't think God really cares what you do with your body and tattoos.

And this man's eyes get as big as I've ever seen. He's like, how'd you know? And he turns around and I kid you not. I kid you not. I have a picture to show you. No. I'm just kidding. I don't have a picture, but that would be amazing. Right? We're never coming back. This man pulls up his shirt and his entire

back is a porn scene. And I'm like, Lorenzo,

what? You know? He's like, dude, it's prison. You know? It's not much to do. Right? So I just I was he's like, does that mean I can't go to heaven? And I was like, man, I was throwing out the most outlandish example I thought I could make up like, no, man, you're good. You can still get into heaven. And what developed over the next few years and now has been close to a decade is a really beautiful friendship between two people who truthfully based on our exterior, based on our lives, there's no reason our paths should have ever crossed, but God

had a bigger plan for Lorenzo and He had a bigger plan for me. The reason that I start there is we started a series last week talking about this thing that Jesus said is supposed to be the defining characteristic that is almost unique to you and I as the followers of Christ that we are supposed to be as the world looks at us and go, man, those people,

there's just something different about them. The way that they love is supernatural. They are not like this world and friends, this is not a love that we get to define. It's a love that's been defined for us that has an incredibly high bar that you and I have to begin to try to live up to. It's a love that's been defined

for us. If you missed last week, I'm telling you go back and listen to it. The guy that preached it was amazing. So but if you miss it, let me catch you up quickly. Here's the definition

of what this love is. We find it in first Corinthians chapter 13. Here's what this love is that's supposed to define you and I as the followers of Christ. It says that our love,

it's patient and it's kind. It's not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It's not irritable. It keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice, but it rejoices whenever the truth wins out.

Love never gives up. It never loses faith. It's always hopeful and endures through every circumstance. The first two words that Paul uses to describe the supernatural love that Jesus said would be the defining characteristic of you and I as his followers is we are supposed to be people who are incredibly patient

and that we're supposed to be people who are incredibly kind. What I got to learn with my friend Lorenzo was the power of kindness. The doors that kindness will open to the hearts of people who might be far from God. Here's what hope we

can see this morning as we spend the next few moments together, our big idea that we're going to work from. Here's what kindness does, Kindness allows you and I to stand firm in our faith while being gentle

with people. The reason that Paul starts, I believe with going this love before we get into all the technical parts of it, you've got to start with having patience and kindness. He's talking about the wrapping that is around the gift, right? And my challenge to us this morning is to go, look, I don't believe

that the culture is pushing the church out of the conversations that are happening in society because of our beliefs and our convictions. Nobody is surprised that we believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. Nobody is surprised to hear that we don't believe that abortion

is a good thing, right? People know what we believe. They know our convictions and I would say that it's not our convictions and our beliefs that are getting us pushed out of the conversation and culture.

I believe the reason that nobody's asking the church for their opinion any longer is because we just aren't seen as people who are kind. What I am not saying is that what we need to do is to change what we believe, to make the Bible say something that it doesn't say,

to begin to tell culture that what they're doing and how they feel, yes, somehow we can do some gymnastics with the Bible and get it to say what you want it to say. That's not at all my submission to us. But what I am going to challenge us to do is to think about how we talk about what we talk about,

When we talk about what we talk about. We have to think about the gift wrapping because we are a people who are firm in what we believe. We stand in our convictions. Yes and amen. But we do it in a way that is gentle with people. And I think maybe just maybe kindness is this word that I think we have kind of misunderstood.

Because here's the challenge with even a message on kindness is everybody in this room would go, yeah, for sure. We should be more kind like the world needs more kindness. The question is, is what is kindness?

For some of you, you lean to one end of the spectrum and for others, you lean to the other side. For my mom, my mom who again, I love to death, she's an incredibly loving woman. She's just not the most kind lady you've ever met, right? Like my mom is that lady that she, if there is truth that needs to be spoken, she is not going to hesitate. She's going to say it right now. She smells the blood in the water. Like let's sit down, let's have the hard conversation. And there's sometimes my mom can be so right,

it makes her wrong. And I've told my mom, I said, mom, sometimes you've got to seek to be understood or you have to seek to understand not just to be understood. Some of us in this room are bent as we just say things so harshly, we lean and end up being more on the spectrum of meanness instead of kindness.

What we'll see this morning is that kindness, it's not mean. It doesn't lean to the far outside of meanness, but it also doesn't go to the other end of the spectrum that is more like my wife. That is more like the person that says, as long as there's no conflict, I'm willing to deal with anything.

As long as there's never tension, there's nobody's going to be upset. I'll just kind of tiptoe around everybody. If I need to be kind of walked over and I don't have to have a backbone and ever stand for anything, that friends would be called niceness.

Paul does not say that you and I as his followers are supposed to be nice, he says we're supposed to be kind. So the question is what is kindness? Before I give you the definition, there's a guy who literally wrote the book called Kindness that I read this week and it's

mind blowing with some of the stuff that he talks about. But before I get that, I want to kind of prove my point. There's a couple of journalists that have talked about Christians and how we are no longer seen as people who are kind. There's a guy named Herb Kane who writes for the San Francisco Chronicle and he says this about Christians. He says, The trouble with born again Christians is that they're an even bigger pain the second time around.

There's a British journalist that said it this way. It says, Why do born again people so often make you wish they'd never been born the first time? Friends, I think the world doesn't look at us and see kindness. They know what we stand for, they know our convictions

and those are all great things that we should hold true and dear. But what I do want to challenge us with is to consider how we present those things. Here's what Barry Corey says about this thing called kindness in his book Kindness. He says, You and I as Christians are increasingly shrill sounds in the public square.

They're not strengthening our witness. They're actually weakening it. The bullhorns, the fish shaking, the mustering armies and using war waging rhetoric, they're far less effective than the way of kindness. Here's his definition. Kindness is treating those with whom we disagree with charity and civility.

He says that doesn't mean we don't stand courageously for what we deem right, true and just, but don't miss this, but kindness is not incompatible with courage. Kindness embodies courage although courage does not always embody kindness. You can be courageous and not kind and miss

the heart of God friends. He says too often our sinners, they're firm on conviction but our edges are also hard in their tactics. This way is characterized by aggression or meanness. He says on the other hand, there's the way of niceness. Whereas aggression has a firm center and hard edges, niceness

has soft edges and a spongy center. Niceness may be pleasant, but it lacks conviction. It has no soul. Every one of us in this room, we probably lean more to one end of the spectrum or the other. But my submission to you today is that kindness maybe just maybe is the third option that we haven't considered.

I read a thing this week that illustrated so clearly the difference between being kind and being nice. It says if you're from the East Coast, most people from the East Coast are incredibly kind people.

They're just not very nice people, right? The proof is that if you blow out your tire on the side of the road, the guy from the East Coast is gonna stop and he's gonna get out and he's gonna help you change your tire. But while he does it, he's gonna berate you for being dumb and not missing the pothole and what's wrong with you? How do you not have the right tools in your car? But he's changing your tire the whole time while he's berating you. He's kind, he's just not very nice. And then you have people from the West Coast, we're nice,

we're just not very kind. Same thing happens, somebody's tire blows, we pull up behind them, we're like, oh man, this is the worst thing ever. This has happened to me before. I am so sorry that this happened to you. I hope somebody comes and helps you figure out how to change your tire. Right? Nice, but not kind.

So friends, the question becomes how do you and I as the people of God search for the third option, kindness. The middle that says, I don't have to change what I believe to engage with a world that doesn't know God, but I do have to be cognizant of how, when and where we have these conversations.

The question is, how do we do that? This is what lays the groundwork for the story we're going to look at of one of the most incredible

examples of kindness in all of the Bible. It's a story of David that we don't often talk about, right? Everybody knows the story of David and Goliath. This is a story that I think should almost be more famous than the story of David and Goliath because of the incredible nature of God that it shows us in two Samuel

chapter nine. Here's how the story begins. It says, One day David asked, is anyone in Saul's family still alive? Anyone to whom I can show, highlight underline circle, kindness for Jonathan's

sake. Let me catch us up a little bit to where we are because there's a lot of historical context you need to understand for this story in two Samuel nine to make any sense.

God's people in the old testament were called the nation of Israel. I just did a whole story about what God did after they didn't listen to him for four hundred years. The nation of Israel, God had told them from the very beginning, you guys don't need a king.

I will be your king. But the nation of Israel began to do what you and I do and they go, no, no, we just want to have what everybody else has, right? We just want it because they have it. And God goes, it's not a good thing. They go, yeah, but we still want it because we just wanna be like everybody else. And God sends a prophet and he tells him, you realize this king, he's gonna do what kings do.

He's gonna take your kids. He's gonna enslave them. He's gonna overtax you. He's gonna gonna take your land. He's going to abuse you. He's not gonna be a good king to you. Are you sure you want a king? And they go, yep, we just wanna look like everybody else. So God gives him a man named Saul.

And the Bible tells us that Saul was tall, dark and handsome. He stood head and shoulders above everybody else. He was brilliant. He was intellectual. He was good looking. He had every attribute to be one of the greatest leaders the world has ever seen, but Saul

was unwilling to deal with this thing that he had deep in his heart called pride. And eventually God removed his favor and he removed his blessing from Saul. And what should have happened

is that Saul's son named Jonathan would eventually become the next king, but because Saul was unwilling to be the king that God had asked him to be,

he needed to find a new king. And there's this really incredible story where God takes the prophet named Samuel and he tells him to go to the house of David and he tells him at this house will be the future king of Israel.

And David's dad brings all of his sons in the house and Samuel goes one by one by one and he goes, no, it's none of these guys. He like checks the GPS and he's like, yeah, I'm at the right address. Like this is 2213.

Like this is the house. And David's like, yeah, man, you're here. He goes, but it's none of these. Do you have another son?

He goes, oh yeah, there's this little runt of a kid that's out back named David but he's 13 years old and he goes, I don't know, grab him. Let's see. He brings in David and Samuel goes, this is the one. This is the future king of Israel.

And this powerful ceremony takes place where the prophet pours oil over his head and David is anointed the future king of Israel. The problem is there's twenty years between that day and the date that he'll actually assume the throne. And it's a tumultuous twenty years because Saul begins to understand

that God has removed his blessing from him and the throne is not going to pass to his son Jonathan, but it's going to go to this kid named David. So what does Saul do? He does the logical thing and he tries to kill David and he pursues David and most of David's life before taking the throne is running and trying to hide from this guy named Saul. And in the middle of all of this, this unlikely friendship forms between Saul's son, Jonathan

and David. It's a bit like me and my buddy Lorenzo. It's a friendship that makes no sense on paper because his dad is trying to kill him yet Jonathan understood what God was doing and so Jonathan would actually work against his dad to protect David. And at some point, Jonathan and David make a pact

and they sign a covenant with each other and they say, look, we don't know how this is going to play out. We don't know where this is going to end. I don't know if my dad's going to kill you or not, But either way, I promise I'll take care of your kids. And he makes David sign the same promise to him. He says, David, will you promise to take care of all of my future kids as well? And these two unlikely friends

sign a pack and they say, yes, we'll take care of each other. Well, a few years later, Saul and Jonathan are killed in battle

and this is now where David is going to assume the throne. In two Samuel nine, David has been king for about ten years and again it has been an intense ten years. He's had to defend his kingdom, he's had to defend his throne against multiple people who tried to come and take it from him and in two Samuel nine, know it's the longest introduction ever,

but he's finally at a time of peace. He's finally at a time where there's a little bit of calm in the kingdom. And what is his first act as king? He says, is there anybody left in Saul's line to which I can show kindness remembering the thing that he said to Jonathan? Now again, it's not an unusual request

for a king to ask for anybody that's still alive in the previous king's lineage. Why? Because most kings would bring in all the people connected to the previous king and they would kill him to make sure that there was no threat to his kingdom. But David's motivation is not death. David's motivation is not threat. It is

kindness. And it's not the way that you and I define kindness. Again, the old testament is written in Hebrew. The word that is used for kindness is a word that talks about the way that God loves you and I. It's his kindness towards us. The word in Hebrew is actually called Hesed, H E S E D and it means the covenantal

love of God. David says, is there anyone left in the house of Saul that I can show the supernatural, illogical, irrational love that God has for us? It's a love that is not contingent, that is not based on the other person's reciprocal value.

It is not based on their worthiness of love. It is a covenant that has been made with this person. Therefore, I will love them often in spite of them. What he's saying is that this is what God has done for you and I,

and this is what David is going to do for the people in Saul's family. Here's the part that's really crazy. If you study and look at the life of Saul and David. David goes down in history as a man after God's own heart. That's what the bible refers to him as. And Saul goes down in history as one of the worst kings ever.

But the part that's crazy is if you look at their life, David does way worse stuff than Saul does. If we stack rank sin, David is like light years ahead of what Saul does. But what did David always get right? David understood the heart of the father. He understood the ultimate goal of this whole thing.

David understood I'm not just king because I'm here to build a bigger castle and a bigger home and get more cars and get more stuff. He understood there was a greater mission at play that David was supposed to be a representation of God

to the world. Here's why all of this matters to you and I. Here's why we should pay attention. If we're going to even make any attempt to be people who are more kind, what we cannot do is just try to will and force ourselves to do it. It has to start with an understanding to go, there's a bigger goal at play.

For you and I, the reason that we're kind with the world that can be incredibly difficult to love is because there's a greater goal at play here. There's a greater purpose to our existence.

There's a reason that we weren't taken to heaven the moment we gave our lives to Jesus. So the question is, what is the goal? Good question. I'm glad you asked. Romans chapter two, it tells us. Here's the goal. Romans chapter two verse four, don't you see people sitting in church today how wonderfully kind, tolerant,

impatient God is with you? Does it mean nothing to you? Can't you see that it's his kindness that's intended to turn you from your sin? Don't you get it? The reason that God is kind and patient with us is not because he's approving of what we're doing.

That's the greatest mistake that you and I as humans will make. We'll go, well, God's not striking me with lightning. He must be okay with it. Friends, he's not okay with it. But he's incredibly patient and loving and kind with us because he's hoping that it's that kindness that will turn us away from our sin.

Here's the beautiful part, the part of God that I still truly don't really have my heart completely wrapped around. That God not only loved me back into reconciliation with him through kindness, but he then will also begin to create opportunities for me to interact with people like my friend Lorenzo

and I will get to show them the same supernatural kindness and patience and grace and love that God had for me. And somehow in all of this, God's plan is at work to begin to rescue Lorenzo. Friends, that's why we exist. That is why we are here.

That is the whole purpose of this thing. The bigger goal is to help people turn from their sin and be restored back into the eyes of the God that made them. That's the mission. That is the point. The opportunity is disguised as kindness. So David starts and says, is there anybody left

in Saul's family that's alive that I can show kindness? Here's where the story gets good. It says he summoned a man named Ziba who had been one of Saul's servants. So he gets a guy that used to work for the previous king and he asks him, is anybody still alive? He says, are you Zebes? He says, yes, sir, am. Then the king asked him, is anyone still alive from Saul's family?

If so, I want to show God's Hasid, God's kindness to them, right? This is not David's kindness, it's God's kindness that he's showing to them. Ziba replied, yes, there's one of Jonathan's sons that's still alive. But notice the description. Notice the very first thing about the son. He's crippled in both feet.

This is our introduction to the person that is left in Saul's line. Ziba goes, yeah, there's one guy left, but I want you to know he's crippled in both of his feet. He's in a wheelchair. Why does this matter? Because this culture didn't understand

physical ailment. They believed that if somebody had a physical ailment that it was either a direct result of sin that was in their life or sin that was in their parents' life. And what this was, was God's curse that was upon them. If you remember famously, Jesus was walking with his disciples.

They see a man that's paralyzed and they go, Peter, ask him that question we were talking about, man. We can't figure this out. We've been having a theological debate. Like, is it this guy's sin that you punished him for or was it his parents' sin? And Jesus is like, what are you crazy people talking about? Like it has nothing to do with either of those things. But what the story sets up is a picture of a guy that the world goes, this dude has no value.

He's actually probably cursed because he's crippled in both of his feet. What is being set up here is a scene of massive

tension and it gets even better. It says his feet are both crippled. Verse four, David says, where is he? The king asked. He's in Lo Debar, Zeba told him, at the home of Machir son of Ammiel. Verse five says, so David sent for him and brought him from Machir's home. His name was the hardest name in the Bible to pronounce Mephibosheth.

He was Jonathan's son and Saul's grandson. When he came to David, he bowed low to the ground in deep respect. David said, greetings Mephibosheth. Mephibosheth replied, I am your servant. Don't be afraid. David said, I intend to show kindness to you because of my promise to your father, Jonathan.

I'm actually going to give you all the property that once belonged to your grandfather, Saul, and you will eat with me at the king's table. David asked, is anybody alive that I can show the kindness of God to? Understanding that there's a bigger goal that's at play. I'm not just here to build a bigger kingdom.

I'm here to expand God's kingdom. And they go, yeah, there's this one guy that's left, Mephibosheth, and he's living in a place called Lodovar.

You know Lodovar translated to English, it literally means no man's land. It means land of no pasture. It was one of the few cities that was still left that was friendly towards Saul. It was one of the few places that Mephibosheth knew he could hide out and not be killed. And this is where this man

is found. He's living in the middle of nowhere and the craziest part is Mephibosheth's name actually means shame bearer. The Bible is going through incredible detail to set up a picture of somebody who has literally nothing to offer the king. He's physically broken.

His name is shame bearer and he is literally living in no man's land. And David goes, that's the one I want. And when Mephibosheth gets the call to go to the castle and meet the king, he knew this day would come. And I assume in his hearts, there was a combination of anxiety and fear, but almost an assumption of like,

I knew this day would happen. It took almost ten years for him to find me, but David's finally gonna do what all kings before him have done and he's going to kill off any living members of the previous king. And so he walks in and he throws himself at the king's feet

and he just begins to say, I'm your servant. And what is the first words out of David's mouth to him? He says, don't be afraid. Understanding that he was deeply afraid. He tells him there's nothing for you to be afraid of. I know you think I brought you here to kill you, but I didn't.

I brought you here to show you the incredible kindness that God has had with me. I want to show you the same love that I've received because I made a pact with your dad. I want to show you kindness. And here's the crazy part. When you really look at Mephibosheth's

story, the connections between his story and my friend Lorenzo's story this week, man, it's just been incredible to see. Mephibosheth was a guy a lot like Lorenzo who just was dealt a really difficult hand. If you go back and read the story of how he was crippled,

it's a really sad and tragic story that he had no control over. The lady who was taking care of him, she got news that his dad, Jonathan and his grandfather, the king Saul had been killed. And so she understands this little boy is in grave danger.

I've got to get him out of here. I've got to get him somewhere where I can protect him. And so she tries to run and in her running and fleeing to protect him, she trips and she falls and in the falling, she breaks both of his legs

And Mephibosheth for the rest of his life will be a man marked by shame. Who's literally called shame anytime he's spoken to, who's been crippled and everybody around him looks and goes, what's wrong with this guy?

And David has an opportunity to do something for this young man that I believe you and I have an opportunity to do with the world around us as well. Here's why kindness matters. Why should we pay attention? Why should we care how the culture receives us? Don't we just get a stand and go, well, I told them the truth. They didn't receive it. It's on them.

Why do we care about kindness at all? Because friends, kindness, simple gestures of love towards a world that is hostile to God. It is the thing that slowly over time begins to restore dignity back to people who have lost all dignity, whether in their own efforts or by things that have just happened to them in life.

Kindness is how you and I over an extended period of time begin to restore what is in every human being no matter how flawed and broken they are, no matter how much of a process they are in right now, inside of all of them, the Bible says is the Imago Dei. It is the very image and nature of God that is put in them. Even the people that look different than you, that believe different than you, that vote different than you, that do all the things that you would never do,

inside of every one of them is the image of God. And friends, we as the hands and feet of God, we get to be the people that go, you know what? I can be kind to you. I can be gracious towards you. And what's wild is over a period of time, what begins to happen is those people begin to remember

who they were always supposed to be and that this world has convinced them of different lies than we believe, but it's the same inherent lie. You don't need God. You can be your own God. You can get health and satisfaction and meaning out of this life on your own. You don't really need God.

And maybe just maybe what God wants to do through you and I is to do exactly what David did and to begin to do irrational things that show this world the value that's in them, not because of anything that they've done, but because of who God made them to be.

Imagine that first dinner because the king's table, I mean, it's one thing for him to give him back all of his grandfather's land and to give him a bunch of money again. That's one thing. It is a whole another level of scandal to have him eat at the king's table.

All of the best and the brightest, the strongest warriors, that's who sat at the king's table. The king's table was a representation, an external representation of the power and the dignity and the worth that the king had. And these warriors

are going to come back from battle the first night. They're going to take off their armor, set down their swords, go to sit down at the table. They're going look over and they're going, what? Is that Saul's grandson in a wheelchair sitting at the king's table?

And David goes, yeah, let me tell you about the kindness of God. Let me tell you about the God who saw me in the middle of my mess, who loved me in spite of me, who loved me because he had a covenant with me, not because I deserved it. And he goes, I made a covenant with his dad

and now I'm going to love him and show him kindness even though on paper he doesn't deserve it. But I understand

there's a greater goal. There's a greater purpose and I want to restore in him dignity. I don't know if you guys remember. There was a few years ago where there was a huge spat between the LGBTQ community and Chick fil A, right? I mean, that's like the ultimate battle right there, right? Like Chick fil A versus the LGBTQ

community. And they got really hostile there for a little bit.

My friend in San Diego owns a couple of the Chick fil A's and I remember we were getting phone calls at the church of like, hey, is the church going to come out and support and Christians in the church were asking us, hey, are we going to go and like protest against the protesters because the LGBTQ

community was outside of Chick fil A's and they were protesting them and they were asking, should we go do counter protests and like stand up and say, no, we're for Chick fil A. And it became this really weird moment for the church to go, where do we land in this?

And more importantly, if Jesus was walking here, where would he be? And truly, I don't know, I would more ask you to ask the question, where would Jesus be? But what I got to see this week is after all of the craziness died down,

the guy who put together the rights, the guy that ran the group that did all of the protesting against Chick fil A, he wrote an article talking about his experience with the CEO of Chick fil A guy named Dan Cathy. And he talks about the kindness that Dan showed him. I want to read you part of this article

to show you what I'm talking about. He says on 08/10/2012, in the heat of the controversy, I got a surprise call from Dan Cathy.

He'd gotten my cell phone number from a mutual business contact serving campus groups. He says, I took the call with great caution. Was he going to tear me apart? Was he going to give me a piece of his mind? Tell me that he was turning his lawyers on me? He says, surprisingly never once Dan

or anyone from Chick fil A asked for campus pride to stop protesting Chick fil A. He said, even when I continue to directly question his public actions and the funding decisions that he was making with his money, Dan embraced the opportunity to have dialogue and to hear my perspective.

He and I were committed to a better understanding of one another. Our mutual hope was to find common ground if possible to build respect no matter what. This next sentence, I'm telling you this is the goal. We learned about each other as people with opposing views. We understood we were not opposing people.

He said throughout the conversations, Dan expressed a sincere interest in my life, wanting to get to know me on a personal level. He wanted to know about where I grew up, my faith, my family, even my husband, Tommy. He said in return, I learned about his wife and his kids and I gained an appreciation for his devout belief in Jesus Christ and his commitment to being a follower of Christ, not just a Christian.

He said, Dan expressed regrets and genuine sadness when he heard of people that were being treated unkindly in the name of Chick fil A, but he never once offered any apologies for his genuine beliefs about marriage. Friends, I'm telling you, the world has convinced us that we need to pick a side.

We need to either be to the left, we need to be to the right, we need to pick a side in this debate. And what I'm saying is maybe just maybe it is not as binary as we think. Maybe there is a third option that we haven't considered an option that gives us the ability to stand firm in what we believe, to not change what the Bible says, to not move on what the word of God says is truth because truth is true whether or not we feel like it is, but

we can do it in a way that is still gentle with people. The path is called

kindness.

The part that's crazy about Mephibosheth's story is again, wish I had more time to go through all of it, but David almost immediately after having a time of peace in the kingdom, his son Absalom tries to throw a coup and overthrow his dad. He tries to forcibly take the kingdom from his dad.

And David at one point has to flee the castle. He has to leave and run for his life. And Ziba, Saul's servant that introduced him to Mephibosheth, he finds David while he's on the run and he goes, Hey man, you know that guy back there, Mephibosheth, that you showed all that kind ness to?

He's actually been hoping and praying that you die out here so that he can finally be freed from his relationship with you. And it literally breaks David's heart

And it takes a period of time, but David eventually survives the coup and he comes back into the castle one day and who does he see sitting there at the king's table? He sees Mephibosheth.

And it says in one Samuel 20 that Mephibosheth has this long beard. He looks emaciated. It looks like he hasn't eaten in weeks and he looks at him and he goes, Man, what are you doing here? And Mephibosheth goes, Man, I haven't been able to eat since you left. I've been fasting and praying for you this whole time.

David realizes that Ziba lied to him. That what developed inside of Mephibosheth because of the kindness that David showed him was this incredible loyalty to David despite everything on the surface that would have made them enemies. And David realized, oh, this dude is a completely different human.

Here's why that matters. Kindness is the thing that ultimately is what leads to change in people. What was it that changed Mephibosheth's life? One act of kindness from somebody who truthfully didn't need to show this guy kindness.

My challenge to you and I is that maybe, just maybe, we can reconsider and think about how we talk about the convictions and beliefs that we hold so true to our heart. I am not asking you to become some lukewarm,

watered down version of yourself. Friends, the gospel message is hostile. It says that you and I are the problem, right? It's why it's a difficult message. But what I am saying is that maybe just maybe kindness will open the doors to have the conversations that we really want to have. With Lorenzo, what developed

over a year and a half, again, a process that should have taken probably four or five weeks, I literally told him at one point, I said, I will pay you disproportionate

to how inconvenient you make my appointment with you. If you hear close to the time we're supposed to start, I'll pay you more. He would show up to my house sometimes and sit on my porch and literally because he was going through a really gnarly divorce at one point too,

he would show up and he would just start crying on my porch. And I'm like, okay, let's sit down. And I just would talk to him and I would pastor this guy for a few hours on my porch. I'm like, okay, let's go inside and start the tattoo. And he's like, can't tattoo. I'm too emotional, man. Let's do it next week.

I'm like, I know next week's gonna be next month. You're gonna be five hours late for that appointment. But I get it. I began to understand that what God was doing is he was creating a friendship with this guy who on paper, there was no reason for him and I to be friends.

And the awesome part is that friendship out of trust, out of relational equity, it began to give me a platform to have hard conversations with Lorenzo. And I told him, I said, Lorenzo, you know I love you, right? He said, yeah, man, I do. And I said, hey man, look,

you don't have any marketable skills. You've been in prison for sixteen years. You have two felonies. Nobody's even going to look at your application. But you have an incredible gift in being a tattoo artist that you can make a $101,150 an hour. But at some point you need to figure out how to show up relatively

close to the time you said you're going to be there. Otherwise, it doesn't matter how good you are. And what I was able to do through a friend of a friend as I got him an apprenticeship at an actual tattoo shop and they taught him how to become a really incredible tattoo artist. And then what that did

is it began to open the door where Lorenzo would ask me questions going, I just don't get why you give me your car and let me borrow stuff from you and you don't really ask for anything in return. It opened up the door for me to tell Lorenzo why it was really easy for me to be kind with him.

Said Lorenzo, your story, man, it's my story. The only difference is I had a dad that had resources. I had a dad that was a lawyer that could get me out of the dumb decisions that I made. But outside of the grace of God, your story is my story.

I would have been exactly where you were. Man, God met me when I was 20 years old and I had made a complete mess of my life. And you know what he should have done? He should have written me off. He should have thrown me out. He should have locked away he should have locked the door and thrown away the keys, but he didn't. He was kind with me. And I got to share the gospel of Jesus with my friend Lorenzo and I got to lead him into his life, giving his life to Jesus as well. But it was done out of relational equity,

not in spite of it. It was the kindness that I showed him that opened the doors to have those conversations. Do I have stories where people have taken advantage of my kindness, abused it? A 100% yes and amen. But it is the stories like Lorenzo that I begin to understand, God, I see what you're doing here.

I see that maybe just maybe as the world pushes us further and further and further and further apart that you and I fight hard to find the center that says we don't have to change what we believe

but maybe we can be more gentle with how we do it. And maybe what it will do is it will open the door for us to have conversations about the king of the universe that wants to rescue his lost children. Friends, that's my challenge and my hope to us as the people of Rock Point. So father, I ask

God with everybody's eyes closed and heads bowed that you would right now in this moment, God, you would bring to our minds a specific person that's in our life. That God, you would show us somebody right now through the Holy Spirit. You would literally bring a person, a friend, a family member, a coworker,

a spouse, somebody that right now based on what they're doing, God, there's no reason for us to be kind to them, to be loving towards them. And God, I pray that you would begin to soften our hearts towards them. You would begin to allow us to remember how gentle and kind you are with us.

And that God from that place, would reengage in relationship with him. God, we wouldn't let him walk all over us. You're not asking us to just be nice and have no backbone. God, you want us to be able to stand firm in the truth of what scripture says, But God, maybe just maybe this holiday season as these elections,

continue to wrap up that God, that we can be the people that pave the way with kindness and love. It is in the mighty name of Jesus that all God's people said, amen and amen. Hey, you guys are amazing.

Thanks for joining us online this weekend. Let us know if we can help you in any way. Make sure to follow us on social media and connect with us on the We Are Rock Point app for prayer and everything happening here at Rock Point.