Condemnation

Jeopardy fans were furious after the contestants on an episode failed to answer a “simple” question about the Lord's Prayer during the game. Players Joe, Laura, and Suresh were unable to give the correct answer to former host Mayim Bialik's question about filling in the blank: “Matthew 6:9 says, ‘Our Father, which art in heaven, ____ be thy name,’" Bialik said. The group made an error of biblical proportions by not even attempting to guess the correct answer as the stage remained silent until Bialik gave the answer.

But the saddest thing happened over the next day or two on X. Jeopardy fans and lots of former or current church-going people started piling on with anger and shock at the contestants' inability to answer the question. Here are some of the posts:

“That’s ‘hallowed,’ you heathens!”

“Hey, Jeopardy geniuses … It's HALLOWED. Sheesh, what a sad world we live in.”

“OOF. Watching @Jeopardy tonight, and none of the contestants knew the words 'hallowed be thy name' in the Lord's Prayer,” one user lamented.

“You gotta be kidding me no one knew ‘hallowed.’”

“Screaming Hallowed! They didn't know the ‘Our Father.’ #Jeopardy,” wrote another.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Condemnation; Mocking - Rather than mock and condemn, it would have been much more fruitful to gently instruct those who don’t know the content, context, or relevance of the Lord’s Prayer. 2) Bible; Morality; Knowledge - Is it any wonder that the world is in the moral state that it is? People are perishing and being misled because of an ignorance of God’s Word (Hos. 4:6).

According to Daniel Pink, writing in the Wall Street Journal, regret is the second most common emotion felt among human beings. Pink argues that regret isn’t just common, it’s actually beneficial:

For all its intuitive appeal, the “No Regrets” approach is an unsustainable blueprint for living. At a time like ours—when teenagers are battling unprecedented mental-health challenges, adults are gripped by doubt over their financial future, and the cloud of an enduring pandemic casts uncertainty over all of our decisions—it is especially counterproductive.

I have collected and analyzed more than 16,000 individual descriptions of regret from people in 105 countries. One of them was Abby Henderson, a 30-year-old, who wrote: “I regret not taking advantage of spending time with my grandparents as a child. I resented their presence in my home and their desire to connect with me, and now I’d do anything to get that time back.” Rather than shut out this regret or be hobbled by it, she altered her approach to her aging mother and father and began recording and compiling stories from their lives. “I don’t want to feel the way when my parents die that I felt about my grandparents of ‘What did I miss?’”

Regret feels awful. It is the stomach-churning sensation that the present would be better and the future brighter if only you hadn’t chosen so poorly, decided so wrongly or acted so stupidly in the past. Regret hurts.

Regret is not … abnormal. It is healthy and universal, an integral part of being human. Equally important, regret is valuable. It clarifies. It instructs. Done right, it needn’t drag us down; it can lift us up.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Pink observes that love and regret are the two most common human emotions. Addressing loves and regrets by preaching a cruciform sermon will hit the lived experience of every person in the room, even if their hearts haven’t yet been broken open to a regretless salvation. When regret brings us to repentance and salvation, it is part of being forgiving and being set free from our past through God’s grace.

The police in Oregon are looking for a man who they say stole a car with a child in the back seat only to return the four-year-old and reprimand the mom about her parenting. Local authorities said the theft took place outside a grocery store when the mom left the car running with the child in the back seat.

The mother left the car unlocked and went inside to buy a gallon of milk and some meat. The thief happened to walk by and hopped in the car. He soon realized the four-year-old was in the back seat and pulled back into the parking lot, returning the child to the mother—but not without scolding her.

Police spokesman, Matt Henderson said, “He actually lectured the mother for leaving the child in the car and threatened to call the police on her. Obviously, we're thankful he brought the little one back.” The thief ordered the mom to take the child before driving off in the car.

David Roseberry writes in a recent blog on LeaderWorks:

I went to see a doctor for a pain in my shoulder. My shoulder was just hurting all the time, whenever I moved it. The doctor examined me and he diagnosed the problem as “frozen shoulder.” It comes from just being my age, and from use.

The doctor said, “There are a couple of things we need to do. The first is physical therapy,” and he wrote me a prescription for that. “And I can give you a steroid shot, a cortisone shot, right into the joint of that shoulder.”

I said, “Go for it.”

As the doctor’s getting ready to do the injection, he says, “What do you do for a living?”

I say, “I’m a minister. I preach for a living. Do you have a church?”

He said, “No, I gave that up long ago. ... Now listen, just relax a little bit here, and we’ll get that joint all loosened up so you can continue to point your finger at people.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Wait a minute! Is that really the world’s perception of the God we represent? Shouldn’t people see the grace of God in our lives? “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever.” (Ps. 103:8-9)

When the Olympic Games of 1964 were held in Tokyo, Sri Lanka sent a contingent to the games, including a 10,000-meter runner by the name of Ranatunge Karunananda. The 10,000-meter race was won by Billy Mills of the USA and when Mills passed the finish line, Ranatunge was still 4 laps behind. (It is said that he was unwell that day). The spectators expected him to quit at some point but he kept running. As he kept running alone, people began to laugh at him and some even began to heckle him. But he still kept running.

When the spectators eventually realized that this unknown athlete was determined to finish the race, the jeers slowly turned to admiration and some applause slowly began to rise across the Stadium. As he started on the final lap, the applause grew louder as the crowd, now inspired by his perseverance, encouraged him to complete the race. Cheers and applause erupted as the exhausted athlete eventually finished the race.

Interviewed after the race, Ranatunge said, “The Olympic spirit is not to win, but to take part. So, I completed my rounds.” This story captured the imagination and the heart of the Japanese public so vividly that it eventually found its way into Japanese school textbooks!

Possible Preaching Angle:

Today, many Christians are giving up on their spiritual race due to hardships and challenges that come their way. Let's be inspired by the words of Paul who said, “…Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Phil 3:13-14).

Imagine you are twelve years old again, and you love baseball. All your heroes are baseball players, all your extracurricular time is spent either with a ball glove in hand or watching a game on television, and, regardless of the season, it's been that way as long as you can remember. It's not that you're particularly good or particularly bad at baseball, you just love the game—the smack of the bat after a line drive, the smell of the grass, the feel of sliding headlong into second base. You've never had to defend it or describe it that way, but that's what you feel. And you can imagine one day having a jersey with your name on the back.

Things have begun to feel a little different this season, though, because twelve-year-olds have to try out for JV teams at the end of the year, and you get the feeling that not everyone makes the cut. You suddenly find yourself comparing your fielding skills with the other infielders and with players from other teams, and you start to count the number of times you miss balls that are hit to you. You keep track of how many strikeouts you get in each game.

Your coach has a way of calling you out, too. In one particularly bad stretch of the season, your coach calls across the field after you make yet another missed fielding play, "That's four times this game! Keep your head down!" You don't keep your head down, though, and after the fifth ground ball makes its way between your legs, your coach demotes you to the outfield. You replay his voice in your head. At your next at-bat, you strike out quickly, and you wonder if baseball is your sport after all.

Possible Preaching Angles: The authors note: "The Law is shorthand here for an accusing standard of performance. As we have noted, whenever the Law is coming, condemnation follows close behind. Whenever an expectation stands before us—from our coach, from ourselves, from God himself—we are either condemned by our failure before it, or made to be condemners in our fulfillment of it. The Law is the unfeeling voice of The Coach—it tolerates no excuses, it accepts no shortcuts. The Law is good, in that it proffers good fundamentals ('Keep your head down when fielding a groundball,' 'You shouldn't smoke,' 'Spend only the money you have,' etc.), but the failure which pursues it always creates a reaction. When we are criticized, we must defend."

In 1975, suspected criminal Wendell Beard slipped out of his police handcuffs, jumped out of a police station window, and landed on the sidewalk 14 feet below. Officer Mike May followed Beard out the window, but shattered his right ankle and broke his left heel. After medical leave, May returned to work but the leg wasn't the same. He took a disability pension, went to law school, and he gave Beard no further thought.

But after 43 years May decided to track down the man who had changed his livelihood. After locating Beard at a prison near Cumberland, Maryland he wrote him a letter. "I suggested that, at his age, perhaps he might be able to exert a positive influence on the younger inmates," May says. "I spoke to him by phone shortly after that. He asked me if I knew about the Unger case."

That's a reference to a 2012 Court of Appeals ruling that found a serious flaw in the instructions that judges had been giving to Maryland juries for decades. The ruling opened the way for Beard and dozens of other inmates to ask for new trials. In August 2015 a judge in Baltimore resentenced Wendell Beard to time served. Mike May was there to support his release. While May could be said to have been a victim, having sustained a career-ending injury in that jump 40 years ago, he doesn't see it that way.

"After all," he says, "Wendell was trying to get away from me, not hurt me. I decided to jump out of the window. My leg still bothers me, but at least some of that has to do with my age." Wendell is forever grateful to Mike for letting him be a free man for the first time in 40 years.

Covenant Eyes, a Christian company that sells internet accountability software, receives thousands of emails from people struggling with viewing online pornography. Here are some examples of heartfelt cries for deliverance and help:

A teenager wrote: "I really need help breaking my porn addiction and I don't want to waste my teen years and the rest of my life with the gigantic secret. Please keep me in your prayers."

"Eddy88" wrote: "Please pray for me … My porn addiction is killing me. I just can't give up. I try to stop but then I keep failing all the time. I wish I would just die because I hate myself so much. Only Jesus can save me but I feel so alone and depressed."

Phillip wrote: "Please pray for me. I've been struggling for too long with this addiction to porn. I want it out of my life for good!"

Aaron wrote: "I have been battling with porn addiction for years now … I feel so incredibly distant from God. Often I sit and I try to focus on him when I'm tempted but it's almost like I can actually hear my inner heart saying reject him. I hate this; it's the most horrible feeling ever and it's effecting my whole life with God. I lead an evangelism ministry at university and I fear it's affecting that, too."

Sean says, "I don't want to live with this dirty secret anymore. It is ruining my relationships with people and life. I just want to break free."

Mark Twain held a wide range of views on Christianity and the Bible at different times in his life. His theological beliefs changed many times as he dealt with the tragic deaths of family and friends, as well as considerations of his own mortality. His misconceptions of sin and guilt may have contributed to his rejection of the gospel. In his book, Huck Finn's America: Mark Twain and the Era that Shaped His Masterpiece, Butler University's Andrew Levy wrote about Twain's faith:

He spent his Sundays in a church where the preachers were very clear about hell and the odds of a wayward child going there. He wept to his mother that he had "ceased to be a Christian," but his "trained Presbyterian conscience," as he later called it, swallowed guilt like air. There was no death in his family or among his friends he did not blame himself for: "I took all the tragedies to myself, and tallied them off in turn as they happened, saying to myself in each case, with a sigh, 'Another one gone—and on my account.'" Later there would be no economic or social injustice in which he regarded his hands as clean.

Pastor Steve Brown writes:

Early in my ministry I counseled a woman who, some twenty years before, had been unfaithful to her husband. For years that sin had haunted her. I was the first person she had ever told about it. After we talked and prayed for a long time, I recommended she tell her husband. (That, by the way, isn't always the advice I give. In this case, I knew the woman's husband and knew that her revelation, after the initial shock, would probably strengthen their marriage.) It wasn't easy for her, but she promised she would tell him. "Pastor," she said, "I trust you enough to do what you ask, but if my marriage falls apart as a result, I want you to know I'm going to blame you." She didn't smile when she said that, either.

That's when I commenced to pray with a high degree of seriousness. (I pray best when I'm scared.) "Father," I prayed, "if I gave her dumb advice, forgive me and clean up my mess." I saw her the next day, and she looked fifteen years younger. "What happened?" I asked. "When I told him," she exclaimed, "he replied that he had known about the incident for twenty years and was just waiting for me to tell him so he could tell me how much he loved me!" And then she started to laugh. "He forgave me twenty years ago, and I've been needlessly carrying all this guilt for all these years!" Perhaps you are like this woman: you've already been forgiven years ago, but you don't know God's forgiveness. Instead, you've been haunted by a load of guilt for years.

While aggression and racist remarks are vicious and foolish at the best of times, a Chicago man recently learned that some people are particularly unwise to pick on. Angry that a 79-year-old woman was smoking near him, David Nicosia started an argument with her, before allegedly slapping the woman in the face and spitting at her, calling her "Rosa Parks" (intended as a derogatory reference to her skin color).

But unbeknownst to Nicosia, the victim of his rage was Judge Arnette Hubbard, a longtime community icon in Chicago who has "long been a voice on civil rights and women's issues." Deputies came to Hubbard's defense, and now Nicosia is looking at four charges of aggravated battery and a hate crime, besides the unenviable prospect of having to explain his actions to another judge—likely one of Hubbard's co-workers.

Possible Preaching Angle:

There is another Judge who is the victim of many of our crimes. While he was among us in the flesh, we even slapped and spit upon him. But consider the supreme folly of our sins committed against God and his Son—the victim of so many of our crimes is also our Judge. Consider this, but praise God—that same victim has become an advocate on our behalf, guilty and foolish though we may be.

Max Lucado tells the following story:

A Chinese man named Li Fuyan had tried every treatment imaginable to ease his throbbing headaches. Nothing helped. An X-ray finally revealed the culprit. A rusty four-inch knife blade had been lodged in his skull for four years. In an attack by a robber, Fuyan had suffered lacerations on the right side of his jaw. He didn't know the blade had broken off inside his head. No wonder he suffered from such stabbing pain.

Lucado comments:

We can't live with foreign objects buried in our bodies. Or our souls. What would an X-ray of your interior reveal? Regrets over an [earlier] relationship? Remorse over a poor choice? Shame about the marriage that didn't work, the habit you couldn't quit, the temptation you didn't resist, or the courage you couldn't find? Guilt lies hidden beneath the surface, festering, irritating. Sometimes so deeply embedded you don't know the cause.

Treadmills are fun if you want to get a little exercise. Unfortunately, for many people, religion feels like running on a treadmill: they're working hard but getting nowhere. That's a good image for one way to approach the Christian life, especially if you consider the history behind the treadmill. Elyse Fitzpatrick writes:

In Victorian England, treadmills weren't found in air-conditioned health clubs—they were found in prisons. Treadmills, or treadwheels, as they were called, were used in penal servitude as a form of punishment. Some treadwheels were productive, grinding wheat or transporting water, but others were purely punitive in nature. Prisoners were punished by spending the bulk of their day walking up an inclined plane, knowing that all their hard labor was for nothing. The only hope the prisoner had was that, at some day in the future, he would have "paid his debt" to society and would be set free. He couldn't even look on his labor at the end of the day and know that, if nothing else, he'd been productive.

As you struggle with [sin in your life], remember that [Christ] has set you free indeed and that you're no longer sentenced to be chained to the treadmill of sin and failure. He has paid the ransom demanded for your release from sin, and you're now walking in the freedom of the glory of the sons and daughters of God.

Matt Chandler tells the following story about what happened after speaking at a conference near his hometown:

When I was done preaching, I decided to hop in my car, drive twenty minutes to the town in which I grew up, and look at the houses that I remembered from back then. As I drove into town, I passed a field where I once got into a fistfight with a kid named Sean. It was not a fair fight, and I did some shady, dark things in that fight. I completely humiliated him in front of a large crowd of people …. Then I drove past my first house, and I thought of all the wicked things I had done in that house. I passed a friend's house where once, at a party, I did some of the most shameful, horrific things that I have ever done.

Afterward, on the drive back to the conference, I was overwhelmed with the guilt and shame of the wickedness that I had done in that city prior to knowing Jesus Christ …. I could hear the whispers in my heart: "You call yourself a man of God? Are you going to stand in front of these guys and tell them to be men of God? After all you've done?"

In the middle of all that guilt and shame, I began to be reminded by the Scriptures that the old Matt Chandler is dead. The Matt Chandler who did those things, the Matt Chandler who sinned in those ways, was nailed to that cross with Jesus Christ, and all of his sins—past, present, and future—were paid for in full on the cross of Jesus Christ. I have been sanctified "once and for all" …. He remembers my sins no more …. And I no longer need to feel shame for those things, because those things have been completely atoned for.

There is a great story about a little boy who killed his grandmother's pet duck. He accidentally hit the duck with a rock from his sling-shot. The boy didn't think anybody saw the foul (sorry!) deed, so he buried the duck in the backyard and didn't tell a soul.

Later, the boy found out that his sister had seen it all. And she now had the leverage of his secret and used it. Whenever it was the sister's turn to wash the dishes, take out the garbage, or wash the car, she would whisper in his ear, "Remember the duck." And then the little boy would do whatever his sister should have done.

There is always a limit to that sort of thing. Finally he'd had it. The boy went to his grandmother and, with great fear, confessed what he had done. To his surprise, she hugged him and thanked him. She said, "I was standing at the kitchen sink and saw the whole thing. I forgave you then. I was just wondering when you were going to get tired of your sister's blackmail and come to me."

Bonnie Ware, an Australian nurse, has spent several years working in palliative care, caring for patients in the last 12 weeks of their lives. As Ware walked with her patients through the final stages of their lives, she witnessed how many of her patients gained "phenomenal clarity of vision" as they approached death. Ware claims, "When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again." According to Ware, these are the top five regrets of the dying:

1. I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. Bonnie Ware added, "Health brings a freedom few realize, until they no longer have it."
2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard. Ware observed, "This [regret] came from every male patient that I nursed."
3. I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings. "Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others …. Many [patients] developed illnesses related to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result."
4. I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends. "There are many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying."
5. I wish I'd let myself be happier. "Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits."