Life.Church with Craig Groeschel - Stop Being Offended | No Offense: Part 1

Episode Date: September 19, 2021

There are plenty of opportunities to be offended each day. But what if we decided to stop being offended and respond differently to those around us? In this message, we’ll learn how to live with No Offense.ABOUT THIS MESSAGEFrom the latest headline to social media comments, to the person who just cut you off in traffic—there are plenty of opportunities to be offended each day. But what if we decided to respond differently to those around us? Together, let’s learn how to live with No Offense.Learn more about No Offense: https://www.life.church/nooffenseWE’RE OPENWe’re continuing to monitor guidelines and best practices for gathering in a safe way. Learn more about everything we're doing to keep you safe and how you can help by using hand sanitizer, washing your hands often, and more: https://www.life.church/updatesFind a time and attend a service with us: http://www.life.church/locationsNEXT STEPSHave you made a decision to follow Jesus? You may be wondering what’s next on your journey. We want to help! Let us guide you to your next steps in your walk with Christ: https://www.life.church/nextABOUT LIFE.CHURCHWherever you are in life, you have a purpose. Life.Church wants to help you find your next step. Our hope is that your journey will include joining us at a Life.Church location throughout the United States or globally online at https://www.live.life.church. Find locations, videos, and more info about us at https://www.life.church or download the Life.Church app at https://www.life.church/app. FIND US ON SOCIAL MEDIAFacebook: http://www.facebook.com/life.churchInstagram: http://www.instagram.com/life.churchTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/lifechurchCONNECT WITH PASTOR CRAIGYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIIdiIO-Y20hRW9niR0CA8AFacebook: http://www.facebook.com/craiggroeschelInstagram: http://www.instagram.com/craiggroeschelTwitter: http://www.twitter.com/craiggroeschel#lifechurch #craiggroeschel #nooffense Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Well, I wonder how many of you have noticed that there are so many people today that are incredibly easily offended. Who would say you've noticed? People are really easily offended. I hate to even ask this follow-up question, but how many of you notice that oftentimes Christians can be some of the most easily offended people around? Have you noticed that? Why do you think that is? what do you think it is that Christians among so many people can be so easily offended? I'll answer that according to what I think. I think as disciples of Jesus that it's probably part of our jobs to be offended. That God calls us as followers of Jesus to point out sins,

to gripe about something in culture, to be angry and to stand up for truth. if you really love Jesus, aren't we called to be offended by and mad about sin and injustices in this world? Hashtag I'm being sarcastic. Just a little bit. But today what I want to do is I want to start a new message series called No Offense and talk about how in our culture today so many people are easily offended and incredibly angry. And what is our response as disciples of Jesus?

to all the division and all the hatred and all the anger in this world. And I want to give credit to an author and highlight the book called Unoffendable by Brant Hansen. Unoffendable was a book that I read this summer that was written several years ago, but in many ways speaks prophetically into the tension that we have in our culture today. And I'll be borrowing on some of his ideas and want to give him credit for his work. and if you want to read more about what it means to be unoffendable, if that's even possible, you can read his book, which did get on my nerves at times, I must say, in a rather good way.

In fact, at the beginning of his book, the author actually says, he has the audacity to say that you can be unoffendable. You can be unoffendable. To be honest, when I read that, it kind of offended me. Because I'm thinking, you don't know the crazy people in my life. I mean, they're everywhere and they're on and on and on, and they know everything, and they're loud, and they're opinionated, and they often criticizing me, and he's telling me I can be unoffendable.

Honestly, it's not easy to offend me. I have really tough skin. I'm not easily offended unless somebody hurts Amy or hurts my children or betrays one of my friends or criticizes the church or my ceremony on my outfit. I am easily offended, I don't know. But what I discovered as I read his book and even more so searched the scriptures, God started to search my heart and to do a real healing work and to show me where I was too easily offended.

And so what I want to do over the next few weeks, and I'm just going to lay out my cards, I will probably offend some of you. I will offend you with the goal of helping you get a lot of helping you get a lot of you. over your offenses, your anger, and maybe even your unforgiveness. And that's why the title of today's message is stop being offended. And with that, I want to go before our Heavenly Father in prayer. God, we thank you so much for your son, Jesus, for His grace for us. And we pray, God, that by the power of your word and the presence of your Holy Spirit, that you would do, a work in our church that when we live in a very divided world, we could be a united church,

united to share the goodness of Jesus and his love in a way that would change lives. We pray this in Jesus' name, and everybody who agrees said, amen and amen. What I'm going to do today is I'm going to introduce this series, and then in the next few weeks, we're going to unpack it in detail. And I want to introduce a big thought for us from the book of James, James chapter one, and we'll start in verse 19, and then we'll read more in a bit. And the half-brother of Jesus says this. He says, My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this. And then he gives us some instructions. He said, everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.

I want you to ask yourself, how are you doing with this assignment? We should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. I think we live in a culture where not very many people are listening, and they're very, very fast to speak their ability. opinions and people are incredibly easily offended and often quickly angry. We should be slow to speak, quick to listen. In fact, when you look at Jesus and the way he lived, this is exactly how he lived. You may never have looked at this, but I'm a nerd and I like to study things like this. How many questions do you think that Jesus was asked as recorded in the Gospels? I'll answer that. Jesus was asked directly 183 questions. Of those 183, how many did he respond to directly?

Jesus answered directly only three of the 183 questions asked of him. While he was asked 183 questions, he actually asked others 307 questions. Why? Because Jesus was incredibly others focused. He was slow to speak and he was quick to listen. As we think about this today, our assignment would be to be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. When we think about slow to become angry, I think that anger has kind of been evolving in our lifetime. For example, if you go back a few years, the things that used to annoy me and offend me and make me angry regularly. It was kind of the smaller stuff. Like someone would cut me off in traffic. You know, and I'd want to, you know, pray hemorrhoids and blessings in the name of Jesus for

them or whatever. Or they would, um, they, someone would not respond quickly to my text, and that would make me angry. Or worse yet, they would start to respond because I'd see the bubbles, and then they'd ghost me, okay? That would make me inferior. It was little things like that. Um, It was kind of like being offended in a movie that I had all my standards. Level one offense is when someone talks in a movie. Level two offense is when they talk to the movie. Level three is when they receive a phone call from someone outside and talk to someone during the movie. Level four, and this is up there with the unforgible sin, that's when they actually dial out and talk to someone from the middle of my movie, and they will answer to God, the Father, the Son, and

the Holy Spirit for that. Those were the normal offenses. But it seems like anger has kind of escalated in our culture today. It's all around. It's anger at the idiots on social media arguing about Vax, no Vax, mask, no mask, the visible leader who abused their power, whoever kneels at the national anthem or whoever doesn't kneel during the national anthem. It's getting angry about your issue, whatever. your issue is, because we all have our issue. That thing that we think everybody should be upset about and we should be fixing this. And if we're Christians, we're going to do this. And it's a very singular issue, one amongst hundreds of issues, but you get angry about your issue and then you take it to the

next level. You get angry at other people because they're not angry about the thing that angers you. Is that too real? It's that anger is kind of evolving. And I don't know about you. And I don't know about but I find myself easily agitated and more easily angered. And I don't think that's pleasing to God. And it's hard to admit, and this may not be true for everyone, but I actually think that there are some people that like being angry. I wouldn't say they like what angers them.

I don't think, I don't like the offense that angers them, but I think there's a part of some people that enjoy being angry, Because, like, we have life groups, if you're not in a life group. A life group is where we come together, and we build life and we encourage each other. I think there are some people almost have anger groups. It's their social media feed. You know, you got your 73 friends on Facebook, and you're all ticked about the same thing.

And you just repost the things that tick you off and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, true, true, true, true. And you're angry about things. It's your little group and, you know, your little soccer moms together, you're angry. about the same thing as your buddies at the gym. We're angry about the same thing. And when we're angry, it's kind of fun because we actually feel morally superior. Because we're in the right and everyone else is wrong.

They're evil. They're either evil or they're an idiot or they're an evil idiot. We're easily angered. And I don't think that's pleasing to God. So I want to ask you the question, how effective is your anger? Like, how's it going for you?

If you're easily angered, is it working? Is it making you more like Jesus? Is your anger pointing others to the intimacy and the life and the freedom and the joy that's found in Christ? How effective is your anger? Is it making you more love? loving? Is it drawing other people into a more joyful life? And I'll give you a little spoiler alert.

The answer is going to be negative. It's not working according to Scripture. In fact, James 1, verse 19. We'll look at our verse again and then we'll add one more verse to it in verse 20. Scripture says this, everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry. Why? Because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. Your human anger, whatever it is. Your anger at the small offense, or your anger at the major betrayal.

Your anger at the opposing political view or the guy that gave you the middle finger in the parking lot, whatever it is. Your human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. If you're like, me, you may want to push back a little bit. But Pastor Craig, you don't understand.

My anger is a righteous anger. My anger is a righteous anger, because I'm angry over sin. And you might be, there probably is such a thing as a righteous hatred against something that breaks the heart of God. But I don't know if you've noticed this about righteous anger. Whenever we're angry about someone's sin, it's always someone else's sin. Have you noticed that? So if we're really honest, it might not be just like a righteous anger.

In some ways, it could be a self-righteous anger. Because as Christians, it's real easy to criticize their foul language, but ignore our own spiritual pride. It's easy to judge their sexual sin and ignore our gluttony. Have I offended you yet? Because I'm coming for everybody. That's my goal. I'm coming for you.

We tend to think that our anger is justified. Why? Because it's our anger. Because it's our anger. How effective is your anger? Are you drawing people to the grace and the goodness and the love of Jesus because of your anger? Is your anger bringing you more joy?

Is it blessing and enhancing your marriage? is it giving your children a life that they want to emulate, one that's blessing others or always criticizing others? What we have to do eventually is this. As followers of Jesus, we need to make a decision. And we need to decide when we get angry, do you want to make a point or do you want to make a difference? Because too many people simply want to make a point.

And if we want to make a difference, I would submit to you, we need a different attitude and a different philosophy with dealing with the wrongs of this world. And rather than letting our flesh and our feelings and our emotion direct our action, we need to let the Spirit of God direct our action. So we're not just making a point, but we're making a difference. We're not just trying to win an argument. We're trying to win people to the grace and the goodness of Jesus. And there is a very, very... Big difference. And so there was this really, really smart guy.

He was an expert in the law, and he was asking Jesus a question. And this is a question that Jesus answered. He said, so tell me, what's the most important thing? What's the most important thing? What's the most important thing? And Jesus, who had listened to this guy and knew the stature of his heart, responded with this answer. You want to tell you what's most important?

He said in Matthew 22, verse 37, Jesus replied, here's what it is. The most important thing is to love the Lord. your God, with all of your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And you know what? You want to know the second one is? The second one's just like it. The second one is love your neighbor as yourself. You want to know what's important is to love God with everything in you, with every bit of fiber in your body, to worship him, to live for him, to glorify him, to love him and all that you do. And the way that you love him

is by loving his people and showing them grace and having some empathy and some compassion and showing his goodness and love for other people. And when I was thinking about it, I realized you don't have to be angry to do that. You don't have to be ticked to be loving. In fact, I have to ask myself, can I be angry and show consistent love and grace to people? When you think about it, Jesus never, ever, ever told us, you have to be right. But what he did do is say, I want you to be loving. Do you want to make a point or do you want to make a difference? Now, there's a part of me, and again, I told you that God's been doing it.

to work in me because there's a part of me that doesn't like preaching this way. There's a part of me that wants to say, you got to get rightously angry. I mean, to make a difference in this world. You got to be angry to fight against the injustices in the world. And that feels good to me until I started doing jiu-jitsu and some MMA fighting, which I am now good enough to get beat up by most people, just so you'll know. And so what I've learned in about a year's worth of training, is that the best fighters are never the angry fighters.

You want to see someone I get beat? You just watch them lose. They're cool. Same is true. If there's an effective police officer, the police officer is not angry. It's in their anger that they're often ineffective. The best soldiers aren't angry in battle

is they're doing what they've been trained to do. So as disciples of Jesus, how do we do battle against the forces of darkness? The way we do battle is we lead with love. We don't lead with anger. We're not just trying to make a point. This is how we do it. You're doing it wrong.

No, we want to make a difference. And hearts are rarely changed by anger and accusations and judgment. As much as they are changed by empathy and compassion and discussion and love. We want to lead with love and not with anger. So, if you find yourself a little bit like me, I just kind of getting annoyed at all this going on out there. And all that, he said, and she said, and I've got really strong opinions. Don't you think for a moment that I don't have strong opinions? But I don't want my opinions to overrule my calling to share the love of Jesus and get sidetracked by little things that are not nearly as

important as sharing the gospel of Jesus. So how do we learn to let go of that anger that we might be carrying in your life group? Are you guys like full of love or you ticked all the time? How do we let go of the anger and how do we overcome offenses? I want to give you two thoughts that can be incredibly helpful and then an assignment. How do we learn to let go of anger? The first thing I want to encourage you to do is to lower your expectation of others. Just lower your expectations of what you expect from people. What will happen a lot of times is someone's going to lie to you or they're going to let you down or they're going to betray you or they're not going to show up and they're not going to say thank you for that thing you did or they're not going to call you back

or they're not going to be there for you. They're going to forget your birthday or they're not going to be there for your shower and you're not going to come to your thing and you're going to be incredibly disappointed. And I'm going to say to you like what do you expect? Have you never let somebody down? They're people. Instead of saying I can't believe she would and I'm just shocked that they would and I never thought a Christian would. We have to remember that sinners do sinful things. And if you start always elevating your expectations and thinking everyone's going to live up and you're always going to be hurt.

And if you want to know what people are like, the Apostle Paul told Timothy what people are like. Some people would say that we might be living toward the end of times. And the Apostle Paul said in the end times, let me tell you what people are like. If you want to know what you can expect from people, this is the word of God. He said, people will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous,

without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rast, conceded, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God. And you're shocked when they don't call you back. Sinful people do sinful things. If you're not Jesus, you're not perfect. People will let you down. I hate to tell you, but I'll let you down. Meaning eventually, if you follow me around and listen to everything I say,

I'm going to do something to let you down because I'm not perfect. And when I do let you down, promise me this. Promise me you won't say God's not real. And promise me you won't say the church betrayed you. because the church didn't betray you and God is still real. What happened is a sinful person wasn't perfect just like you're not perfect.

Lower your expectations of people. When you think about Jesus, he was never ever shot by self-centeredness. Oh, I can't believe they're being sinful. He knew they were. He was never scandalized by a moral behavior. You just watch as you go through story after story when Jesus walked up on the woman at the well.

and realized that she had been married five different times. And the man that she was with, she wasn't married to, she's shacking it up doing the thing with this guy. And what does Jesus do? I can't be close to you. And you're one of those types. And, oh, I'm not even around here. You know, I've got to get away from you.

And, oh, I can't wait to tell Peter and John. This is not gossip. This is prayer. We're going to pray for her because she's looking for love in all the wrong places. Jesus didn't do that. He didn't judge her. he wasn't shocked, he offered her living water. The thing that would satisfy, it would help meet the need that she was looking for. He wasn't shocked by scandalous behavior whenever the disciples were

like posturing themselves. Like, who's Jesus' favorite? And who gets to sit by his side? Who's going to be the top-ranking disciple? Who's going to be the R-H-M and the K-O-G? The right-hand man to the kingdom of God? Who's going to be that God? Who's going to be that God? You know, I'm thinking at some point, Jesus is just going to lose it on these idiots. Like, I had enough. You kidding me? You're freaking kidding me. Do you remember who you were?

You're nothing but a tax collector. And I'm the savor. I'm the son of God. I'm righteous. I'm sinless. You're sinful. I'm sick of your attitude. Get out of my faith.

He didn't do that. He just kept on loving them. Think about Peter. I mean, we're talking inner circle, Peter. And Peter is like bragging, I'm your guy. You, me, that we're, all these other loser guys, hey, they may not show up for you. They don't got your back.

I got your back. I'm on your team. I'm always with you. You need anything. I'll never deny you. I'll always be there. If everyone else lets you down, you know I love you the most,

and I'll never disappoint you. And then what did Peter do? Well, he obviously lied. he betrayed Jesus. He denied him. He stabbed him in the back, and he abandoned Jesus. And what did Jesus not do?

Jesus didn't quit his life group. He didn't go on a Facebook rant. Oh, people suck. Right? He didn't do that, right? He just forgave Peter, kept on loving Peter, gave Peter a new assignment

to go out and take care of the sheep. How do you get over being so easily offended? Lower your expectation. We're all sinners. We all mess up. People are going to let you down. Don't be shocked by it. Pastor Craig,

how do you deal with all the criticism? I just kind of know that's what people are going to do. I don't expect anything different. Lower your expectations. The second thing I would encourage you to do is raise your gratitude for God's grace. Lower your expectations of other people, but raise your gratitude for God's grace. I would love to see a show of hands at all of our campuses of all of you who have never, ever,

ever sinned. You've never done anything wrong. You've never, you know, you deserve God's love. You've never lied. You've never cheated. You've never looked lustfully. You've never envied. You've never gossiped by a friend.

You never farted in an elevator or whatever. I don't know. So we're like, that's not a sin. Like, if you've been an elevator, I'd say it's a sin. Whatever. You know, you've never done anything wrong. How is it? How is it that we're made right with God?

Paul tells us in Ephesians chapter 2, the verse that brought me to faith in Christ when Paul said this, for it is by grace. It's by grace. It's by the grace of God that you've been saved through faith. And this is not from yourselves. In other words, it's not because you were good, not because you were holy, not because you had it all together,

not because you did everything right at church and never did anything wrong. It's not because of you. It is the gift of God, not by works so that no one can boast. It's by grace. It's by grace. It's by the grace of God. It's by the goodness of God. It's by the mercy of God.

It's because of what Jesus did on the cross. for us. It's because of his perfection. It's because of his righteousness. It's all his goodness. It's his grace that makes us right with God. It's not our goodness. It's not our works. It's all by his grace. But you may say, but they lied about me. I've lied too. But he's so arrogant. I can be arrogant too. Well, they stole for me. Well, I've stole for me. you. Well, I've stolen to. And I'm going to quit listing all my sins before you leave the church, but you know what I'm talking about, right? I need the grace of God. I need the grace of God. Joy, where's Joy? Can I have my stone? Thank you. My baby? That's my daughter, Jojo.

makes me feel comfortable to have my stone. And I don't want to minimize whatever hurt some of you might be enduring right now because I know we've talked about politics and we've talked about friends being rude, but I know a lot of you are facing some really deep and significant pain. Maybe someone abused one of your children

or maybe a spouse you trusted for years was living a double life. And you might be facing a horrible, horrible betrayal right now. No matter what I'd say is a level of offense, whenever we've been hurt, whenever we're angry, there tends to be a thought that I'm right and they're wrong. I'm right, they're wrong. And I'm justified in my anger. And if you're not careful, your anger then will justify your right to hold the stone. It's not that you're going to throw it, but you just like to hold it just in case you ever need to throw it. You hurt my child, and I may hurt you. You let me down.

I like to hold my stone. And then before long, it's like you're spreading false information, or you voted for the wrong candidate, or that's what you believe about mask, or that's what you believe about vaccine? Because I'm right and you're wrong. And my anger gives me the right to hold the sin. And in John chapter 8, there was a woman that was caught in a sinful act. She and another guy were caught in the act of adultery. And there was an anger group of men gathered around holding their stones saying she deserves death. She sinned. Let's stone. Let's stone. her for her sin. And Jesus wasn't shocked and he wasn't angry and he wasn't offended. But instead, he knelt down and started scribbling something in the sand. And we don't know from the

gospels exactly what he said in the sand, but tradition tells us that perhaps he was scribbling the sins of the men who wanted to stoner because scripture says one by one from the oldest to the youngest, they all started walking away. And Jesus looked on and said, essentially, you angry? You want to do something to right the wrongs? Then whoever of you has never ever sinned, you can throw the first stone. There are so many injustices in this world. and they break the heart of God. And it's easy for us to want to be righteously angry. But I would submit to you that really angry people

have a hard time making a really big difference. If we deal with enough anger at some point, Jesus may say, lower your expectations of others, raise your gratitude for grace, and because of the goodness of God, because of what you've been forgiven, it's time to drop your stone.

It's time to drop your stone. Because Jesus didn't just call us to be right, but he called us to be loving. And our goal, I'll tell you, my goal is not to make a point. My goal is to make a difference. And my goal is not to convert you to my view on some peripheral issue, my goal is to help you see the love of the one who changed my life.

And his name is Jesus. And Jesus was quick to listen. And he was slow to speak. And he was slow to become angry. And if that's the way Jesus lived in love, that's the way I want to live in love. Why? Because human anger.

my human anger and your human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires. So come on, church. Let's rise above it. Let's lead with love. And let's make a difference in this point in swam. Because God can use you. Let's lead with love. Father, we ask and pray that your Holy Spirit would do a work in our heart.

God, I'll start with me. Would you forgive me when I'm easily angered and lead me on a path of healing, of compassion, of grace, and of love? At all of our churches today, if you would say, yeah, I don't want to be wrongly and easily offended. I don't want to make just a point, but I want God to use me to make a difference. If that's you today, would you lift up your hands right now. Just lift them up. Those of you watching online say, yes, God, help me make a difference. Father, I pray that as our little part of your body, a small part of the body of Christ, you would help us to be faithful, to lead with love in all that we do. God, wherever we've been wronged and wherever we're offended, God, help us to trust you to bring about justice.

if you call us to act, God empower us to act with love, to respond with grace. And when we speak words of truth, God, maybe they be words of truth spoken in love. God help us to heal. Help us to get over the little offenses and God to forgive even the big ones. Help us to love God, even as you've loved us. as you keep praying today at all of our different churches, I want you to think about the grace of God. There are some of you, guess what,

it's time for you to experience God's grace. I know there are so many of you that you may be really hard on yourselves and you wonder, where do you stand with God right now? You might battle with feelings of guilt as I did for so much of my life. I'm guilty because I sinned, because I hurt people, because I lied, because I did things that were wrong. And Scripture is very clear about how.

how we're made right with God. And I want to tell you again, it is not by our human effort. It's never by our own good works. The only way we're made right with God is by grace, the grace of God through faith in Jesus. Who is Jesus? He's the perfect son of God who loved those who are breaking the heart of God, seeing against God.

He loved them exactly where they were. And Jesus died in our place. the righteous one for the unrighteous. He died and God raised him from the dead. So anybody, and this includes you, it doesn't matter what you've done, it doesn't matter how dark your life is, anyone who calls on the name of Jesus,

the name that is above every name. God will hear your prayers and he'll forgive your sins and he'll make you brand new. In fact, there are those of you, you're in a church building or you're watching today because this is your moment. God is reaching out to you, he's loving you. Those who say, yes, I need his forgiveness,

I need his grace. Today I'm stepping away from my soul, sin and I'm giving my life to Jesus. When you call on him and hears your prayer, he forgives your sins. Those who say yes, today by faith, I give my life to Jesus. That's your prayer. Lift your hands hide now, all over the place. Say yes, lift them high.

We've got hands going up here and over here as well. Hands all over the place. Church online or just type in the chat. I'm giving my life to Jesus. Just type that in the chat. And as we have people all over the world, would you pray with those around you? Nobody prays alone, just pray Heavenly Father, forgive my sins. Jesus saved me, make me brand new.

Fill me with your spirit so I could follow you. My life is not my own. I give it to you. Thank you for new life. Now you have mine. In Jesus' name I pray. Could somebody celebrate big welcome those born into God's family?