Menlo Church
950 Santa Cruz Avenue, Menlo Park, CA 94025 650-323-8600
Series: The Confidence Paradox
May 8, 2016
“The Truth Will Set You Free”
John Ortberg
I am so glad to be here, to get to be a part of honoring and thanking moms. Seventy years of motherhood.
Unbelievable! I want to let you know what's coming next week. We're starting a new series. It's called
Intimacy. We live in a world where social media and just being electronically tethered all the time is
changing relationships, changing how our brains work, changing all kinds of stuff.
Especially living in the Bay Area as we do, we want to devote a whole series to looking at, in that kind of
world, how we stay connected to God and stay connected with ourselves. That's the series. Next week is
called All by My Selfie, because a lot of people are feeling disconnected even though we're trying to be
connected. I'm super excited about this series. I wanted you to know about that.
Now today we're coming to the end of this series The Confidence Paradox. We're called to be always
confident, not in ourselves, not self-confidence, but confident because God is here and God is at work. So
I don't have to depend on myself or worry about myself. We've seen this wonderful little grid by Andy
Crouch where he talks about how we're meant to live with great authority because we're image bearers of
God, but we're also meant to actually live with a lot of vulnerability. We're dependent on God. We're
mortal. We have to navigate living with authority but also with vulnerability.
We've been looking at this guy Jacob and how especially when he feels vulnerable, he doesn't like that.
He wants to have authority but not to be vulnerable. Then he'll end up down in this quadrant, a lot of
vulnerability where you're suffering or withdrawing. We've walked through that week by week by week.
Now this week we're bringing it all to a close because there's one dynamic, there's one problem, in Jacob's
life that's persistent the whole way through, and it will wreck a life. It's a problem for me and for you too,
so it all kind of comes down to this one.
I'll start this by asking a question…Who taught you how to lie? Who would you say? It's kind of an odd
thing. Most of us would be able to say who taught us how to drive a car or who taught us how to ride a
bike or who taught us to play an instrument or play a game or something. But actually no one needed to
teach us how to lie.
I was reading some research this week. A 6-month-old baby is able to fake cry to lure its mom or dad to
come in and pay attention. Six months old! The baby is lying there in the crib, thinking, "You sucker. I
can make you come in here any time." Then when we get older we start to learn to use words, but we don't
grow out of lying. We immediately learn how to use words to deceive other people.
When one of our kids was 2 years old, I was tucking her in bed at night, and there were a bunch of
boogers on the headboard of her bed. It was disgusting! I asked her, "Where did these come from?" She
looked up at me and said, "Birdies!" There's a video that's going kind of crazy on the Internet. Some of
you may have seen it about a mom in Scotland who has a little kid (2-year-old, really cute, big Scottish
© Menlo Church, All Rights Reserved
For personal or small group use only. For other uses, please contact [email protected].
-1-
accent), but he is caught with her lipstick. The mirror is covered with lipstick, and he is caught redhanded. She asks him to see if he'll fess up honestly. Take a look.
[Video]
Laura: Noel, who drew on Mummy's mirror?
Noel: I don't know.
Laura: Was it you?
Noel: No.
Laura: Who was it?
Noel: It's Batman. It's Batman!
Laura: Batman did it?
Noel: Batman did it.
[End of video]
That's Batman. That's Scottish for Batman. Then as we get older, we don't grow out of lying. We get
better at doing it. There's a guy named Robert Feldman. He is a researcher at the University of
Massachusetts, and he found the average adult lies three times in 10 minutes of casual conversation.
That's the world we live in.
I was thinking that means for this sermon, every time I do a 30-minute sermon, I will lie on average nine
times. I thought if I just shrink the sermon down to 10 minutes that will mean six fewer lies. Multiply that
by four times I have to give the sermon every weekend. That would eliminate 24 lies from my guilty
ledger before God. So this week, I'm doing a 10-minute sermon! I'm not quite sure how to interpret that
applause. (That's a lie.)
Then we just get smoother at it, and we find ways to get offended if other people catch us lying, but we
don't want to be caught. When our kids got older, one time we were driving in the car, and one of the kids
clearly had done something wrong. I didn't have a smoking gun, but the circumstantial evidence was
overwhelming. I was about to put the hammer down, and this kid was protesting her innocence.
Finally she said to me with big tears in her eyes, "Daddy, you don't think I would lie to you, do you?" Just
reflexively, immediately, I started to say, "Well no, honey, I would never…" Then all of a sudden I
realized what I was saying. I thought, "Well, who doesn't lie? How innocent do you think I think you are?
Everybody I know lies. Your mother lies. That's for sure. I tell lies. All people tell lies. Mostly I think you
tell the truth, but do I think you would lie to me to get out of trouble? Absolutely I do!"
© Menlo Church, All Rights Reserved
For personal or small group use only. For other uses, please contact [email protected].
-2-
This is so pervasive to us. Even our most famous stories get tainted with this. A lot of you will know the
most famous story in American history about the nobility of truth-telling and the baseness of lying. It's a
story that involves a little boy, George Washington. One day his dad came home, and his prize cherry tree
had been chopped down. He asked, "Who chopped down my cherry tree?" Little George, with his little ax,
famously said, "I cannot tell a lie. It was me."
Now in the book where that story was first written, his father responds to him, "Oh George, I'm glad you
cut down that tree, for by telling me the truth, you have repaid me more than a thousand trees, though they
had leaves of silver and fruit of gold." Who talks to their kid like that? Nobody talks to their kid like that.
As it turns out, the story was just made up. It was in a book over 200 years ago written by Parson Weems.
He was an Episcopal clergyman, and he just made the whole story up! The most famous story about not
lying in American history is a lie told by a pastor about a politician.
So I don't know why you're applauding for that. What if we were just to say, "Deception is so woven in
everything and messes so much up, causes so much pain, so much heartbreak, we're just going to agree
together we're going to cut lying out of our repertoires. No more exaggeration. No more evasion. No more
spin. No more hiding"? It would be kind of scary to tell you the truth if you're just naked with the truth.
Mark Twain mashed up a couple of Bible verses one time. It's from the Bible but actually put together by
Mark Twain. "A lie is an abomination unto the Lord and a very present help in time of trouble." That's
actually not a bad definition of it, because here's the thing. The reason we lie, the reason I lie, is I am not
confident God will take care of me if I just tell the truth.
I'm afraid, because I know if I tell the truth I'm not going to get what I want or I'm going to get what I
don't want or I'm going to face pain or you're going to think badly of me or we're going to have to go into
conflict or it's going to be embarrassing or I'm going to be shut out or I'm going to feel enormous shame.
That's why this comes at the end of this series The Confidence Paradox. See, to live in confidence with
God would be to actually be able to live in the truth. I can't actually live in the truth unless I'm confident
in something greater than how my circumstances are going to turn out. This is how John put it. His friend
Jesus had said, "The truth will set you free. Lying will not. It will bind you. The Evil One, Satan, is the
father of lies."
John said, "If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live
out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and
the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin." That's the great invitation we'll come to to live in
confidence in the grace and mercy and love of God. But first we have to walk through, "What does it look
like to be in the darkness? What's the anatomy of deception? Why and how do we do it?"
We go into the story of Jacob, because it's there from the beginning to the end. At the beginning of Jacob's
story we find it. His dad is Isaac, and his dad Isaac has a favorite son, Esau. Jacob is the non-favorite of
his dad. His dad is old. He is blind. His senses are failing. This is what he says. "I am now an old man
and don't know the day of my death." He says to his favorite son, Esau, "Go hunt wild game. Prepare for
me the tasty food I like (the stew I like) so I may give you, Esau, my blessing before I die."
Now there's deception going on here. We would miss it, but ancient readers would see it immediately. It
was actually kind of a stock scene in ancient literature. When the head of the family, the patriarch, was
© Menlo Church, All Rights Reserved
For personal or small group use only. For other uses, please contact [email protected].
-3-
dying, there would be a deathbed scene. He would call his children, particularly his sons, to him (all of
them) and give them each their blessing, the best to the firstborn.
Isaac doesn't want to do that, because he wants to play favorites. He wants to give big blessing to Esau.
He doesn't want Jacob to know about it, doesn't want to give something to Jacob, so he finesses this deal.
He says to his son, Esau, "Now I don't know. I might not be dying. I'm not sure. So we don't need to call
all the boys in, but I might be dying, so I have to give the blessing to you."
Then Esau doesn't say, "Oh, Dad, if this might be the big death scene moment, we have to call in my
brother. We have to bring Jacob here too." He just says, "Okay. I'll go hunt the game. I'll bring you the
stew." He colludes with his dad. Deception almost always involves collusion, and we're generally willing
to do that because we want in. Esau wants in, and then that means Jacob is out.
Now Rebekah (the mom, Isaac's wife) hears this. She could bring it all into the light. She could say, "Hey,
as a family, we have to talk about this," but she doesn't. She decides there's deception going on there, so
she is going to use deception. We often feel justified in it. She calls Jacob her son (her favorite) and tells
him what's going on and says, "You put on your brother's clothes. Your dad is old and blind. His senses
are failing. He'll think you're Esau. I'll fix some stew. You can tell him you're Esau, you went out and
hunted it down, and you fixed the stew. Then you get the blessing."
Now Jacob has a chance to bring stuff into the light. He could say to his mom, "We can't do that. It
wouldn't be right. We have to tell the truth," but he doesn't. He colludes with her. "All right. I'll do that.
I'll put on Esau's clothes. I'll go to the old man." He does. It's a heartbreaking, tragic scene. "[Jacob] went
to his father and said, 'My father.'"
Now that's so interesting. These words are true. Isaac is his father, but they're also a lie, because he knows
Isaac is going to think he is Esau. His words strictly literally are true. We do that. "'Yes, my son,' [Isaac]
answered." He is skeptical, as often happens when there is deceit. "Who is it?" "Which son are you?"
Now Jacob is going to have to actually use words to lie.
He could come clean if he wanted to. He could say, "Dad, this is wrong. I'm all wrong." Or he could go to
the place where he actually lies with words, and he goes there. "Jacob said to his father, 'I am Esau your
firstborn.'" Isaac is still skeptical. He asked his son, "How did you find it so quickly, my son?" "How
did you shoot the game and then bring me this stew?" Again, Jacob could come into the light. "Dad, this is
all a lie." But he doesn't.
Look what he says. "The reason I was able to capture that beast so quickly and fix this stew is…" "'The
LORD your God gave me success,' he replied." Not just "the Lord." "The Lord your God." "Dad, you're a
guy of such great faith. I admire your faith so much, and that God you love and serve was with me." He
uses his spirituality to deceive somebody else. We do this. We do this!
I grew up in a church where one of the marks of spirituality was to have a Bible that was all scribbled in
and underlined and marked up. It's a good thing to bring your Bible to church, follow along in it. I hope
you do that. When I was in church, if they were reading a passage and I had it all marked up in my Bible,
I would make sure I offered to share my Bible with the less spiritual person next to me who had not
brought their Bible, because I could use a marked-up Bible for spiritual image management.
© Menlo Church, All Rights Reserved
For personal or small group use only. For other uses, please contact [email protected].
-4-
That happens in churches. Here's what we see in this Jacob story. It's very hard to stop with just one lie.
Lies are kind of like potatoes chips. Did you ever notice that with potato chips? It's really hard to stop
with just one. There's something about the situation. Once you're in, man, you just keep going down that
road.
I'll tell you how sensitive our souls are to being deceptive. In one research project, the researchers gave
300 people very expensive sunglasses, multi-hundred dollar designer sunglasses, but they told half of
them they were knock-offs, that they were cheap, counterfeit, imitation sunglasses. They were wearing
these sunglasses, and then they gave everybody tests. They allowed them all to score their own tests. They
would give them money based on how many answers they got right.
The people who believed they were wearing fake sunglasses were three times more likely to lie about how
many answers they got right and take money under false pretenses. Just because they were wearing
fraudulent sunglasses! When we feel like frauds, we are more likely to commit fraud. That's how sensitive
our soul is to living a fake life.
Now I have to explain this quite carefully, because otherwise people are apt to think the point of this is,
"God wants me to buy really expensive sunglasses," and that's not the point. The point is deceit destroys
trust, and that destroys relationships. That's what happens in this family. It's just a shipwreck. Esau comes
in from the hunt, and he brings his stew to his dad. His dad, Isaac, says, "'Your brother [Jacob] came
deceitfully and took your blessing.' Esau said, 'Isn't he rightly named Jacob?'"
Now Jacob is a Hebrew word that meant to grab the heel, he who grabs a heel. That was an idiom in
Hebrew to deceive, kind of like in English we might say, "You're pulling my leg." "You're grabbing my
heel. You're not telling me the truth." Is that not rightly his name? That's who he is. See, I tell a lie and
then another one, and then I become a liar. None of us thinks we are. We get caught, and we think, "Well,
that's not me. That's not what I stand for." I'm Jacob.
Rebekah hears about what's going on. Esau now wants to kill his brother, so Rebekah says to Jacob, "You
have to go see your Uncle Laban. You have to move far away from this family, or Esau will kill you."
Now Rebekah has to tell her husband, Isaac, why their son, Jacob, is moving far away. She doesn't want
to tell him the whole truth. She doesn't want to tell him she was eavesdropping and she set up the
deception. Notice what she does. Deception runs all through the story.
"Then Rebekah said to Isaac, 'I'm disgusted with living because of these Hittite women. If Jacob takes
a wife from among the women of this land, from Hittite women like these, my life will not be worth
living.'" "I want to die. You have to send Jacob away or else he'll marry one of these Hittite women." By
the way, Esau married a couple of Hittite women, and they were thought to be women who would lead
toward idolatry. Rebekah says, "I don't want Jacob to marry one of them. I want him to marry somebody
who will keep him strong in the faith. Let's send him away to Uncle Laban."
That may well be true. She didn't want him to marry a Hittite woman, but that's not why she was sending
him away. But she was not going to tell her husband why she really was sending him away, because then
she'd have to admit she is a liar. This is all going on. Every one of these characters isn't a pagan. These are
not idolaters. These are the people God is going to create his community through. This is us, guys. This is
just the truth about us.
© Menlo Church, All Rights Reserved
For personal or small group use only. For other uses, please contact [email protected].
-5-
There's a wonderful book by a guy named Eugene Peterson. He is the author of The Message translation
of the Bible. Some of you will know him. He wrote a book a couple of years ago, his memoir. It's called
The Pastor. He is in his eighties now. He tells about when he was starting a church. It was a Presbyterian
church, and he had to write reports to the denominational headquarters every month about how the church
was doing.
He never heard back from headquarters, and after a while he started thinking, "I don't think anybody is
actually reading these reports." He is Eugene Peterson. He has the most brilliant imagination in the world.
He is a fabulously gifted writer. He started making up wild stories about what was going on in his
ministry just to see if anybody at headquarters was actually reading this stuff. He was really good at it, so
he started this story about how he had developed a drinking problem and had started drinking before
giving his sermons on Sunday morning.
He wrote, "Last weekend I was so soused that I could not finish my sermon. They had to bring an elder in
from the bullpen to finish my talk." He never heard back from headquarters. This is Eugene Peterson, who
wrote the Bible! He made up that he was having an affair with a woman at the church and they got caught
carrying on in the sanctuary by somebody. He thought, "I knew I was going to get fired now!" He wrote,
"It turns out the church is filled with swingers, and the next weekend attendance had doubled."
He didn't hear back from anybody at headquarters, so he kept going with another story about how he used
hallucinogenic mushrooms for Communion, and it was the greatest worship they had ever had. Nothing
from headquarters! He did this for three years. Finally the church graduated. It wasn't a plant anymore, so
he didn't have to send the reports anymore. Guys from headquarters met with him to have a little party and
congratulate him.
He said, "By the way, did you guys ever read those reports I sent in?" "Oh yes! I read every word, took
them really seriously." He said, "Well, that's kind of surprising." Then he told them about the stories about
the drinking and the affair and the hallucinogenic mushrooms. They were not amused. But here's what's
interesting.
None of them said… It was all just buck-passing. "Well, you know, I didn't read them all personally, but
somebody always did." It's so hard for somebody to say, "I lied. I'm embarrassed that I didn't do my job.
I'm embarrassed to be caught right now. It would be just humiliating for me, but I didn't read them. I told
you a lie, because I didn't want you to think badly of me because I didn't want to look inefficient or
untrustworthy. That's why I lied." It's so hard. It's so hard!
See, Jesus' community is not a community of people who are just these perfect truth-tellers, wonderful
characters. You know, we do this. We're all Jacob. I have a really good friendship, and it got started… I
had told a story in a circle of people about my hometown. One of the guys in that circle said, "Oh yeah, I
remember that story. I was there for that."
A couple of days later he came back to me, and he said, "John, I just have to tell you, when I said I
remember that story, that I was there when it happened, I wasn't. I wanted to connect with you, and I
thought if I said I was there that would kind of connect us. It's just so stupid, and I feel so sheepish. I
made that up. I lied, and I wanted you to know."
I admired his courage so much that that moment actually was kind of the beginning of our friendship
together, just for us to be a community where we can just tell the truth and admit when we deceive and
© Menlo Church, All Rights Reserved
For personal or small group use only. For other uses, please contact [email protected].
-6-
when we spin and, "That's in me. I'm Jacob. You're Jacob. We're all Jacob." See, that's where people get
healed.
Jacob left home, went to Uncle Laban. If you know the story, it's fabulous because Uncle Laban turned
out to be an even bigger con man than Jacob is. This is part of Jacob's moral and spiritual education, to
find out how it feels. He met Laban's two girls, Leah (the older) and Rachel (the younger, who was
lovely). He fell head over heels for Rachel. Uncle Laban said, "Well, work for me seven years, and you
can have Rachel as your wife." Jacob did, and they seemed to him like only a couple of days because of
his great love for her.
Then it's the wedding, and there's a lot of drinking. It's dark. The bride is brought into the wedding tent.
Then the text says, "When morning came, there was Leah!" Jacob thought he had gotten married to
Rachel, but when morning came, there was Leah. Imagine that moment! Jacob said to Uncle Laban,
"What is this you have done to me? I served you for Rachel, didn't I? Why have you deceived me? This is
unbelievable!"
This is Jacob who is saying this. Remember? "Why have you 'Jacobed' me?" he says to Uncle Laban.
Uncle Laban just turned out to be better at deceiving than Jacob was. We're this way. See, if you deceive
me, I'm about a thousand times more likely to remember that than when I deceived you. If I deceive you, I
may not even notice it. I rationalize it. I justify it. I forget it really fast. But if somebody deceives me, I
carry that around with me. That's why we're in messes like this. We all think about the person we wish
was here to hear it, because of course, "I don't need it, but there are people who really do."
This just bounces right off of Laban. Uncle Laban could've said, "Jacob, I'm so sorry. Of course, you'd be
devastated. You'd be deeply wounded. What was I doing?" He doesn't. What he says is, "It's not our
custom here to give the younger daughter in marriage before the older one. What were you thinking? You
should've known. Don't come whining to me!" It's just how we think. "Everybody does it."
We have this series coming up on social media and the electronic world. It's going to be so fascinating. I
was reading, getting ready for it. People who use online dating services routinely present themselves as
richer, smarter, more attractive, and younger than they actually are. They will post pictures of themselves
that were taken 5 or 10 or 15 years earlier than they actually were, like that's going to fool somebody.
People will go to their boss at work and say, "That was a great decision," when they know that's a lie.
They'll come up to a pastor after a service and say, "That was a great sermon," when they know that was a
lie. I've had a number of people this weekend come up to me and say, "That was a great sermon" and then
say to me, "That was a lie." It's really funny, but it's been done, so you don't need to do that anymore. We
live in a world where this gets so deeply inside of us.
At one point, Jacob is led by God to go back home. Look at what happens. This is so fascinating. This is
just how deeply deception gets into the human spirit. This is you and I. I'm Jacob. You're Jacob. "Then
the LORD said to Jacob, 'Go back to the land of your fathers and to your relatives…'" Now notice
exactly what God says. "Go back to the land of your fathers and to your relatives, and I will be with
you."
In the next chapter, Jacob is praying to God, and he is going to repeat back to God what it is God told him
as he was going back home. But there's a tiny little difference in what Jacob claims God says than what
© Menlo Church, All Rights Reserved
For personal or small group use only. For other uses, please contact [email protected].
-7-
God actually said. Look at what Jacob says. "Oh God, you said to me, 'Go back to your country and your
relatives, and I will make you prosper.'"
God says, "Well, you know, being God means I have a really good memory. I didn't actually say, 'I will
make you prosper.' I said, 'I will be with you.'" Jacob is so addicted, he is so captured by deceit, it's in him
so much, he is doing it when he prays, like God wouldn't know. Oh by the way, God knows all truth.
Everything is light to God.
This is so deeply in Jacob, he goes back home, and he meets his brother Esau. There's this beautiful scene
of reconciliation. He says to Esau, "For to see your face is like seeing the face of God…" Scotty talked
last week about he leads with his limp now. He has become deeply vulnerable. They're reconciled
together, and you think, "Oh man, now surely Jacob has learned his lesson." Not so much.
In that very conversation, Esau says to him, "All right, my brother. Come on. We'll take our flocks and
our herds and our families, and we'll go back home together." Jacob says to him, "Now mine are going to
take a little longer to move. I have to go a little slower, so you go ahead. Then I'll come along after you
and catch up." He doesn't. He moves to another place altogether, and he does not see his brother Esau
again until their father, Isaac, dies.
Why would he tell a lie there? The text doesn't say. Maybe he just wants to avoid his brother but doesn't
want to say it. Maybe he wants to avoid conflict. "I want to smooth things out. I want to get something I'm
afraid I might not get. I'm afraid of pain. I'm afraid of embarrassment. I want to get my way." We need a
community of truth-tellers.
I had finished preaching some time ago, and I was wearing these black shoes that were kind of scuffed up
on the toes. After I was done, a woman came up to my wife, Nancy, and said, "I know why your
husband's shoes are scuffed on the toes. It's because he spends so much time on his knees in prayer." My
wife immediately said, "No, it's because my husband is too lazy to polish his own shoes." I said to her,
"Honey, I'm so grateful to have such a bold truth-teller for a wife." (That's a lie.)
Jacob goes on. You know, when he has his own son, it's so interesting. It's so interesting in this story. This
is what happens. He was so wounded because his father, Isaac, played favorites with Esau. He used his
brother's clothes to deceive his father. Then when he becomes a father, Jacob has a favorite son, Joseph.
He gives him a coat of many colors. Some of you know this story. His brothers used their brother Joseph's
clothes, which they smeared with blood to deceive their father, Jacob.
It just keeps going and going and going. Part of what the text is teaching us without ever saying it in these
words is how different this story would have been if Jacob just could have said to his father, Isaac, "Dad,
I'm so wounded and hurt. Do you have a blessing for me, Dad?" or if he could have said to his brother,
"Esau, my brother, I'm scared of missing out. Would you share with me?" or if Rebekah could have said
to her husband, Isaac, "Isaac, I'm worried about our boy, Jacob," or if Uncle Laban could have said to
Jacob, "Jacob, I'm worried about my girl, Leah," and then just trust.
See, the reason we lie is it just gets way deep in our mouths and our brains, in our neurons. We don't even
see it. We don't know it. It's a habit. It's a strategy. It's a skill. It's an art form. It's a way of life. I don't trust
that if I tell the truth, God will take care of me. John says, "If we claim to have fellowship with him and
yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the
light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin."
© Menlo Church, All Rights Reserved
For personal or small group use only. For other uses, please contact [email protected].
-8-
This is the great invitation. I want to ask you now…Where is God calling you to step into the light?
Maybe there's financial deception in your life. That makes such a train wreck and creates so much shame.
God is saying, "Come on. Trust me. Bring it into the light." Maybe you're in a relationship where you've
been crossing lines. It's an affair. It's a relationship that dishonors God. Your heart is pounding when you
hear these words, because God is prompting you right now, "Will you bring it into the light? Will you
come out of the darkness?"
Maybe it's an addiction, a substance or porn online or gambling or whatever, and you've been living such
a double life, a secret life, a hidden life. God is saying, "Will you bring it into the light? Will you stop
trying to hide it and manage it?" Maybe it's the way you've been trying to manage your reputation. Where
is God calling you to come into the light? Will you stop living in deceit? If you're wondering, "Can I
really trust him? What does it mean the blood of Jesus purifies me?" I want to tell you one story.
I'm going to ask the team to come on out now because we're going to just get ready for a time of
invitation. This is the gospel. This is from a guy who actually teaches preachers. It was written by a guy
who teaches preaching. This is his own experience. His name is Mike Graves. We emailed after he wrote
this story. It's so well-written, I just want to read it to you. Mike writes…
"When a colleague and I were invited to be part of a former student's installation service, we agreed
enthusiastically and traveled together to his town. Joe had many family members coming to the service, so
we were surprised when he told us that we were all going to eat out that evening. I wondered how 19 of us
were going to get in and out of a restaurant in time for church. I suggested that my colleague and I go
ahead to the restaurant and put our name on the waiting list.
The restaurant was packed. I wiggled through the crowd to the front of the line and found an Amish man
standing behind an old pulpit. Next to him was a hand-carved sign: 'Please do not give your name until
everyone in your party is present.'" Does anybody have any idea where this story is headed? "I understood
the reason for the restaurant's policy, but I also knew that it would take a long time for a table for 19 to be
ready.
I said, 'Yes, the name is Graves, party of 19.' The Amish man with his beard and hat looked at me and
said, 'And is your whole party present?' Haltingly I said, 'Yes.' Okay, I lied. But it wasn't as if I were
trying to beat the system. After all, even the smaller parties were waiting for 30 minutes, so we'd be
putting in our waiting time too. No big deal. But my colleague disagreed. 'You lied to the Amish?' he said.
'You shouldn't lie to the Amish.'" Like lying to a Presbyterian is no big deal, but the Amish? No way!
"'By the time they call our name,' I said, 'Joe and his family will be here.' Two minutes later came the
announcement: 'Graves, party of 19.' I went back to the Amish man and said, 'Yes, the Graves party—
well, uh, we're not all here yet.' I was nervous now, and I may have giggled a little. The man looked me in
the eyes and asked, 'Did you lie?'" This was a restaurant. This was the lobby of a restaurant. "Dead
silence. It was as if we were in church. The people immediately around us waited, wide-eyed and
wondering." Everybody was watching him and the Amish guy.
"I replied softly, 'Yes, I lied.'" This is a guy who teaches preaching! "Yes, I lied." "'Come with me,' he
said. I couldn't imagine what he was going to do. What kind of punishment do the Amish hand out to
liars? I pictured stocks or caning. We followed him through the restaurant to the back, where he opened
© Menlo Church, All Rights Reserved
For personal or small group use only. For other uses, please contact [email protected].
-9-
the door to a banquet room. A huge table was set with bread and jams. He offered a gentle smile. 'Have
some bread. You are forgiven.'"
That's the gospel. That's the gospel! On the night in which he was betrayed, deceived, about to be killed,
he calls his friends into a banquet room. "This is my body, broken for you." We'll celebrate this next
week. "Have some bread. You are forgiven." I want to tell you guys, because this is the invitation. You've
maybe never done this before, never come into the light. God already knows.
Whatever you and I think we're keeping hidden, keeping a secret, God already knows, and he already
loves you. He gave his Son to die and be risen for you. But even God will not force you to step into the
light. You have to do that. "Have some bread. You are forgiven." Would you bow your heads and close
your eyes?
You know, if you've never done this before, you have shame. You have guilt. You have regret. You want
to stop hiding and come on home. You can do it right now. Just pray to God, "God, I want to confess my
secret inner shame and my guilt, my sin, stuff I've been living in fear that somebody would find out about.
I don't want to live in fear anymore. I want to be clean. I want to be free. Through the death of your Son
Jesus, through the blood that was shed for me on the cross, through your sacrificial love, God, would you
make me clean? Let Jesus be my friend and my guide, my nurturer, my Savior."
God will do that for you right now. Everybody who is here, this is the invitation to come into the light.
Whatever has been going on, whatever you have been keeping hidden, whatever needs to be confessed,
whatever you need to let go of, whatever is required for your heart to be clean before God and for you to
walk in fellowship and in lightness, man, don't let this moment go. It's not about anybody else. This is just
you. God is calling you right now to come out of the darkness and into the light.
God, our confession to you is we're Jacob. I'm Jacob. Our hope from you is you're Jesus. You're the
forgiver. God, help us to live in the light, and we praise you. We thank you. We give you all the honor and
the glory you so richly deserve because of how great and good you are, how great and good you are to us.
We pray this together. We pray this in the name of our friend and our forgiver and our cleanser, Jesus. In
Jesus' name we pray, amen.
© Menlo Church, All Rights Reserved
For personal or small group use only. For other uses, please contact [email protected].
- 10 -