Rebounding from a Loss

Pastor Burcham’s Sermon
Sunday, October 30, 2011

[Video] “Amazing! Romo holds. 19 yard field goal attempt. Oh, and it’s fumbled by Romo and then Romo’s going to run to the end zone and he’s going to get tackled by Jordan Babineaux! Amazing!”

“They have no time outs remaining. Oh, he called too many time outs. That’s a technical foul. He called a time out. Michigan doesn’t have any. He got by with a walk and Jimmy calls a technical. . . He calls a time out. He doesn’t realize that Michigan has too many and so the technical foul. . .”

“The winner of the first. . . Junior college. The futbol goallllll! Goalllllllllllll! Goalllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll! Goallllllllllllllllllllllllllllll!”

How do they come back from that? How do they come back the next game, the next season and take the field? After they bobbled the snap, after they call an illegal time out, after they’ve scored for the opposing team and they end up winning? How do they come back? How do they get back out onto the field and start playing again?

Maybe a better question, how do you come back? How do you come back from those game-changing decisions you’ve made that you regret? How do you come back from the affair? How do you come back from the embezzlement charge? How do you come back from getting caught in the lie? How do you come back from cheating? How do you come back when you’ve lost your friend, when the relationship is over and the job has ended and it’s your fault? How do you come back, because of your sinful action, others have been hurt and so have you? That’s the question for today. How do we come back from that and get in the game? The moment we think everything is lost, that we’ve completely blown it and yet, we wake up the next morning and we have to press on.

We can actually look to the pages of Scripture, of someone who had to come back from a game-changing decision, game-changing behavior. We know him as the apostle, Paul, and for the most part, we know him as missionary extraordinaire. He started countless churches. God used him to bring thousands of people to Christ and yet, he has a shady past. He has some things that he deeply regrets. Before he was Paul, his name was Saul.

He sort of eludes to it in 1 Corinthians 15. He talks about how Jesus appeared to all these people, 500, then to James and the rest of the apostles. And then he says, “And last of all, He appeared to me, to one abnormally born. For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” Well, that’s putting it mildly, to say that he persecuted the church of God.

Early on, when people started following Christ, it wasn’t received very well. In Acts 7, the recordings of the early church, we find that a man named Stephen stood and he gave an incredible testimony to Jesus Christ and the saving power of His name. In return for his powerful testimony, the crowd turned on him and they killed him. We call it the stoning of Stephen but somehow, I think that’s lost effect. We sort of become numb to those terms as we start reading the Bible over and over again.

Think about it for a moment. He’s given a powerful testimony. He’s been inspired by God. The crowd doesn’t receive it well. Instead, they pick up stones and rocks and they pummel him, a gruesome death, dying probably from internal bleeding as he slowly died.

But here, back to my point, Chapter 8:1, “And Saul was there, giving approval to his death.” It gets worse. “On that day, a great persecution broke out against the church at Jerusalem.” Then it says, “Godly men buried Stephen. But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off men and women and put them in prison.” House to house, dragging people out of their houses, putting them in prison because they are a follower of Christ. Now how does he come back from that? How does he rebound and get back in the game when he was trying to destroy God’s church?

He comes back the same way that you and I can come back. I’m convinced that every one of us have made game-changing decisions, things we regret, life-altering choices. How do we come back and get into the game?

The first thing we do is we have to own it. We have to own up to what we’ve done and we have to take responsibility for our actions. Excuses simply don’t cut it. Circumstances, series of events, it doesn’t matter. Ask yourself this: Who do you have more respect for? The player who bobbles the ball and then gets up in the press conference and starts blaming everybody else or blaming the circumstances or someone like Tony La Russa. If I understand the story correctly, after game five of the World Series, there was some mix up at the bull pen and the wrong relief pitcher was warming up for innings on end. So it gets near the end of the game, he goes out to the mound, he calls for the relief pitcher and the wrong guy comes out, completely unqualified to go up against the batter. They lose the game. In the press conference, again if I read it right, before they even asked him about it, he said, “That’s my fault.” He talked about crowd noise. He talked about the telephone and all the refs but he said, in the end, “It’s my responsibility.”

How about the apostle Paul? Talk about a guy who could make a case. He thought he was working for God. When he was persecuting the church, he thought he was being godly. He thought these followers of Jesus were some sect that threatened his religion, so he was going after them. But never once in his letters does he defend himself that way. He always says, “I’m lest. I persecuted the church.” He owned it.

So often, you and I, we like to make excuses. We think it will make us feel better. If there were circumstances around the decision or there was a series of events that happened and we want to convince others and convince ourselves that, in reality, we had no choice. You may convince others, but you’ll never convince yourself, not completely.

We’ll never move on from the past if we don’t own the mistakes and the sins that we’ve done. That’s why God calls us to repentance, God calls us to confession. He says, “Own it.”

1 John 1, it was in our liturgy just a few moments ago. Verse 8, he says, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” But, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” God says to own it. Make a confession to Him. If you have something from your past, some gamechanging decision or choice that you’ve made, whatever it is, own it and specifically confess it to God. Verbalize to Him. Lay it at the foot of the cross so you can receive His grace and forgiveness.

James gives us a little bit more insight. In Chapter 5, he says this, “Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you might be healed.” So James is suggesting that beyond just making this private confession to God, we should find a trusted fellow believer and make confession to them, to verbalize what it is that we’ve done, to confess to them so we can hear those words of forgiveness.

Now to be sure, this is not an easy thing. If we verbalize it, if we confess it out loud, it becomes much more real and, to be honest, it becomes more painful. But I think it becomes more liberating. There’s something about saying the words, admitting your mistakes, confessing your sin that’s freeing and liberating about them. But you need to find a trusted Christian friend, a Christian counselor or a Christian pastor and I put “Christian” before each one of those because only a fellow believer can assure you of the grace and the love and the forgiveness that was won for you by Jesus.

If we want to get back in the game, if we want to rebound from a gamechanging decision, we need to own it, to confess it but understand, Jesus paid for it. Whatever “it” is, whatever it is that you’ve done, Jesus has paid for it. He’s paid the ultimate price, the ultimate sacrifice for your sin because He laid down His life for you. He did what you couldn’t do. He did what I couldn’t do.

So often, we want to convince ourselves that somehow we can sort of make up for things as we go along the way, so we can sort of rebound, we can redeem ourselves. It drives me nuts when commentators say that about a player. A player really messes up on one play. He comes back in and they say, “Well, maybe he can redeem himself in this quarter.” How? You can’t. If you’ve messed up so bad that they put points on the board, no matter how good you might play, you can’t take those points down. They don’t go away. You might be able to score more points for your team, but you can’t take away the ones that you allowed. You can’t redeem yourself. You and I, we can’t redeem ourselves.

Even Paul recognized that. I don’t know if this is true or not, but it’s almost like he catches himself here. He talks about the fact how he persecuted the church and he was lest of the apostles, but he says, “But by God’s grace, I am what I am.” He says, “In His grace, it was not without effect because I worked harder than all of them.” “Yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.” It’s almost like he caught himself, trying to justify himself, trying to say, “Yeah, I persecuted the church but look at all the great things I’ve done. Look at all the churches I started.” But, “No, not I but by the grace of God.”

It’s impossible for us to make up for the things we’ve done. Maybe we can fool ourselves on the smaller infractions, the little white lies, the little tidbits of gossip that we do and then we say, “Yeah, but I made up for it because I went back and I told the truth,” or “I went back to the friends and I kind of corrected the story a little bit.” Maybe on the smaller stuff, we can convince ourselves that we have a little bit better good karma than bad karma so we’re okay, but not for the big stuff, not for the game changers, not for those life-altering decisions, not for those relationship-crushing choices that we make because how can you ever make up for that? How can you ever do enough? How can you ever rectify the situation and make it right again? You can’t, but God can. And God did. Jesus paid for it.

We may own it, confess it but we confess it only so we can hear the fact that Jesus has paid for it. Paul starts this section of his letter this way, “For what I receive, I passed on to you as of first importance.” Everything else falls in line after this, of first importance. “That Christ died for our sins, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day according to the scriptures.” Everything else falls underneath that fact that Christ Jesus died for your sins, that He was dead and buried but He rose on the third day.

Jesus has made the payment for us. There’s nothing we can do that deserves it because our sins, our disobedience, our errors are serious business and they’re costly. In fact, they cost something that you and I cannot pay. Scripture says that the cost of our disobedience, of our sin is eternal death, eternal separation from our Father in heaven and you can’t come back from that and neither can I. But Jesus can and Jesus did. Christ Jesus died for our sins. He was buried but then raised to life.

It was Jesus who, on the cross, cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” At that moment, the Father turns His back on His Son and He is separated from His Father in heaven. That’s what you and I deserve. “But then on the third day, He was raised back to life again. He declared victory over sin and death itself.” And that victory, by God’s grace, is given to you and it is by grace and grace alone. Grace, by definition, means it’s something which is undeserved. It is unearned by us, but God just simply loves us. So no matter what you have done from the smallest infraction to the big game-changing decisions and choices, Jesus has already paid for it. And, my friends, in faith in Christ, the sin is forgiven and it is wiped clean. His death and His resurrection is complete. It’s been taken away.

So don’t reclaim it. If you want to get back in the game, don’t reclaim what Jesus has already paid for. I don’t know about you, but I like to reclaim my sins. What I mean by that is I understand that God has forgiven me and everything is good and then I walk away and I still feel guilty and I still keep replaying it in my mind, saying, “How could I do that, man? How could I get so caught up, how could I ever be. . .” I reclaim it. I take it back from Him. Don’t reclaim it. It’s like the player who messes up and he can’t get past it. He’s no good to himself and he’s no good to the team if he can’t leave it in the past and move on into the future. Don’t reclaim it.

I’m not sure how many times I’ve heard somebody say, “Yes, I know that God has forgiven me but. . .” I have a little axiom that I kind of live by and that is nothing really matters before the but, because it’s really after the but the person is saying what they want to say. So it’s like when you take your car in for repair, “Well, Mr. Burcham, everything looks pretty good but. . .” Okay, really, the first part doesn’t matter. It’s the second part that matters.

So when we say to God, “I know that you’ve forgiven me, God, but. . .” But what? Are we saying, “I know that you died for me, Jesus, but. . . that’s not enough?” “I know that you went through hell for me, Christ, but. . . that’s not good enough?” There are no buts about it. There are no ifs about it. Don’t reclaim what Jesus has paid for.

Maybe this will help. Forgiving is not forgetting. In other words, if Christ has forgiven you and then through that power, you can forgive yourself, that doesn’t mean that you forget. Being forgiven by God and forgiving yourself is saying, “I’m not going to be held hostage to the past.” Forgiving yourself says, “I have been washed clean by the blood of Jesus Christ and He wants me back in the game, but I’m going to learn from my mistakes. I’m going to learn from my sin.” If there were certain circumstances that led up to your fall, avoid those circumstances. If there was a series of events that sort of took you down the wrong path and you start going down that series of events, you can stop. You see somebody else heading in the wrong direction, you can intervene and help them out. We don’t forget, but we learn because we want to get back in the game. And God wants you in the game.

No matter what you have done in your past, from the smallest infractions to the game-changing decisions and choices, God says you can rebound. God says that you can come back from that. We start by owning it and confessing it to God only so we can hear the fact that Jesus has paid for it and we’ve been washed clean. We learn from our mistakes and then we move on, because God still has plans for you. God still has plays for you to be involved in. Until He gives you the final victory or until Christ returns, He wants you to get in the game. Amen.