Your Mistakes Do Not Have the Final Word
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Everyone's got hidden things behind their highlight reel. We do. We all have it. Our mess-ups, our meltdowns, the moments we'd rather delete. And one of the greatest fears and panics is what if? What if our private goes public? Oh, what would happen if what things happen in private goes public? I can see some people squirming in their seats.
Oh, wives nudging husbands. The good news is God doesn't wait for perfection. And we talked, we... Yeah. We started this last week, this series. God doesn't wait for perpect- for, for, hello, for perfection. I like it. It's cold. He works through our imperfection, doesn't he? Yes, he does. Even the heroes of the faith that we, uh, that we read about in scripture, in the Old Testament.
The heroes of the faith, the ones that we learn about in Sunday school, and kids' church, and, and Pastor Kev kicked us off, as he mentioned last week, talking about Moses. Moses had an amazing highlight reel. The things that he did for God and the way God used him, and he humbly got used by God, and yet he had a little, uh...
Well, not a little, a major, a major anger issue. Killing someone, that's probably a bit of a major thing. So, so he wasn't perfect. All right? Moses wasn't perfect, and the thing is we live in an imperfect world. We live in an age of highlight reels, don't we? Every day we scroll through social media. What do they call it?
Doom scrolling? Is that what... The doom scrolling. We scroll through social media, and we see people's best moments, don't we? We see the best moments. We see the holiday pictures. We see the, you know, the engagement announcements. We see the perfect family photos, the fitness transformations, the success stories.
We see all those things, but there are some things that we don't see. We don't see the fights and the tears that went on right before that family photo was taken. You know how it goes. "Come on, kids. Just smile for one more photo." "Come on. Oh, you can have the iPad." "I'll buy you a pony. Anything. Whatever." "The world needs to see our perfect family."
But we don't see that. We don't see the failures, the disappointments, the bad decisions, and the regrets. We don't see it 'cause it's the show reels that we see. We just see the good stuff. But the truth is that every highlight reel has some not so good stuff behind it. But people don't see that because we are really good at hiding things.
It's one... It's something... You don't have to learn how to do that. As a kid, you notice when your k- those of us who had kids, your kids learn to do things that you don't remember ever teaching them how to do. We're experts. We're experts at hiding stuff. But what, the que- it begs the question, what if we couldn't hide it?
So what I thought this morning, I thought might have a little bit of fun. Let's, we'll try a little exercise. I want everyone to get your phone out, and I want you to unlock it, and I want you to give it to someone you don't know. And they get to look at all your emails, your text messages, your search history.
No one take, no takers? No one's doing it? They get to look at the language that you use when you're talking to others outside of this building. No takers? No? Nothing? How about we get a microphone and we pass it around, and you can stand up and you can tell everyone your deepest secret. Sounds good. No?
I'll, I'll get the ball rolling. I'll start. How does that sound? I, I have a confession. I, um, I have... I was guilty once of having, having some racist thoughts. I know that sounds terrible, doesn't it? Uh, but, but hear me out. I was... It was a racist thought towards a young, white female. That doesn't make sense.
I'll tell you the story. We were at Movie World, some friends of ours. We had another friends with another family, they had kids. And we went to Movie World, and we, uh, we, we got there, and the older kids all ran off and went on the, the big rides. And so the two dads, my friend and I, we said, "Oh, we'll take the little kids for a walk," which is code for we're gonna go buy an ice cream.
'Cause that's what the dads wanna do. So we went, we went to this ice cream shop. Busy dad move. We went in Movie World, went to the ice cream shop, and we're looking at the flavors. And my friend goes first, and behind the counter was this big, massive Maori guy. Like, big New Zealand Maori man. And he's like, "What can I get for you, bro?"
I was like, you know... That's, I'm not, not very good at New Zealand. And my friend's like, "I'll have two scoops of the chocolate, please." And this guy gets his big hand, gets in there, boom, boom. Ah, boom. There's these two boulders of ice cream in his bowl, and he hands it over, and I'm watching this thing go past.
I'm like, "This is the best day ever." And I turn, and he's gone. And instead, there's this little, white, female girl there. And I'm looking for the big guy. I'm like, "Where?" And I, and she goes, "What can I get for you?" I said, "I'll, I'll have two scoops of chocolate, please." And she gets in there, she's arched her back, and she's giving it all her gusto.
And then she's trying. She... And she's hardly even making a scratch on the top of this ice cream. And she gives me these two little shavings of chocolate- ... in this little cup. "There you go. That's $127. Thanks." It was Movie World, all right. I was looking at it and looking at her, and I'm like, "Thanks." And I walked out and literally, I'd literally eaten all my ice cream before I even got out of the shop.
Oh. All gone. And I got out there, my friend, he's out, he's got chocolate all over his face and he's like, "Oh, man. Do you want some of this? I can't finish it all." I'm like, "Nah." And I turned, and I remember at that moment turning, looking back at that, that, that little white girl behind the counter- ... and thinking, "Man, why couldn't have you been a Maori guy?"
And then I stopped and went, "Oh, that's racist. Oh, God. I'm sorry. Lord, I'm sorry. Forgive me." So we all have things in our lives that we try to hide, don't we? We don't like the, to talk about them. So don't, don't tell anyone that, all right? The truth is, we all have things that we'd rather not show the world, or tell everyone about.
But scripture has a different view. Scripture has a different view, and we dig in deep. We talk about our SOAP devotions, doing those devotions, getting face-to-face with God ourselves. And we think about the heroes of the faith, and we often remember their greatest moments, don't we? The greatest moments. We hear about, you know, Moses parting the Red Sea, Noah building the ark, David killing Goliath, or slaying Goliath.
And it's all exciting. But we also, this is the, the key thing about the scripture, is we also see the failures, don't we? That's the interesting thing. It's not just the highlight reels. We also see what goes on behind the highlight reel. The Bible is remarkably honest. It shows us the failures. It shows us the victories, but it also shows us the mistakes.
We see the faith and we see the fear. We see the obedience and the rebellion. Why? Why has the Bible done that? I believe it's because God wants us to understand a powerful truth. That God doesn't wait for perfection. He works through imperfect people. He works through our mess-ups and our meltdowns and our moments that we'd rather delete.
And the perfect example, one of the greatest examples of this is King David. We're gonna talk about King David this morning. Always a great story, great to, to, um, to read about, we learn about as kids. Actually, I think there's a, there's a cartoon movie on Netflix at the moment. Yeah. David. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Pretty good one. If there was ever a greatest hits compilation of David's life, it would be very impressive. Like super impressive. David was the shepherd boy who became king. Literally, shepherd boy to king. While everyone else was overlooked, God saw potential. The prophet Samuel, he came, he had a word from God to come and anoint the next king of Israel.
David wasn't even invited to the party. He wasn't even there. He wasn't in the lineup. And Samuel's like, "Uh, not him, not him, not him. Not... Is... You got any more? Is there any others?" "Oh, I've got the younger fella down, he's out the back looking after the sheep." "That's the one. That's the one." You see, God said, "Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."
The Lord looks at the heart, what's going on. David became the giant slayer. Famous story that we hear about David and Goliath. Trained soldiers trembled before Goliath, the big giant of the Philistine army, army. But then a young teenage David, he stepped forward in faith with a slingshot and a rock, and he took him down.
He defeated the champion of the Philistine army and David became a mighty warrior. Became a mighty warrior. He led armies, he won battles, he protected Israel, he became the king. Then as king, he united the nation, he expanded the kingdom, he established Jerusalem as Israel's capital. And on top of all that, David was an incredible worshiper.
The, the Book of Psalms that we so cherish today, it actually flowed from David's heart. He wrote those things. He sang to God, he prayed to God, he cried out to God. In fact, scripture calls him a man after God's own heart. Whoa. What a highlight reel. Like what a resume. Imagine having that on your CV. I'm a man after God's own heart.
Incredible. David's highlight reel was just next level. You think, man, this, this guy's got it. But that's not the whole story, is it? It's not the whole story. There are some critical errors behind that highlight reel, some bloopers that we talk about Blooper. Blooper sounds like an interesting word when we talk about what we're just about to talk about.
The big blooper. The big blooper. See, one day, David experienced what many successful people experience, and it's comfort. Comfort. He got comfortable. He got comfortable, and comfort led to compromise. Comfort led to compromise. In those days, it was the king's duty to lead the army into battle. But David got comfortable and he decided, "You know what?
I'm gonna stay home. I'm gonna stay home this time." And he was out one evening on his rooftop, and he saw a woman called Bathsheba, and she was bathing naked. Oh. Don't know why I just made that noise. She... She was-
She was, she, she was bathing naked on the rooftop, all right? Oh. And instead of turning away... See, David, instead of turning away, he had a sneaky little glance, didn't he? Then he had another sneaky little glance, and he lingered a bit longer. And instead of resisting the temptation, he entertained it, and he had some thoughts about it.
And instead of honoring God, he followed his desires. And David went on and committed adultery with Bathsheba. She was a married woman, and he committed adultery with her, and then she became pregnant. Oh, whoa. So David tried to cover it up, and so suddenly the lies are hop- are, are piling on top of the other lies.
He tried to cover that up, and the cover-up didn't work. And so then he organized her husband, Uriah, to be placed on the front battle- front lines of the battle that was going on, and Uriah got killed in battle. So David's sin had escalated. It had escalated from lust to deception, then finally to murder. So this wasn't a blooper.
This wasn't a mistake. This was a major lapse in judgment Awesome highlight reel. Something else going on over here. This was a devastating moral failure that David had. Imagine if this sort of thing happened today. It would be all over the headlines. Social media would be rife with it. Oh, how could a man of God do such a thing?
Oh, the king, the leader of this. We see it actually in, in life today. But he's meant to be the, a God after man- a man after God's own heart. And honestly, you know, a lot of us would probably jump on that bandwagon ourselves. Yet the Bible doesn't hide it. Doesn't hide it. It's out there in plain view. We read about it.
Why? I believe God included that painful chapter, that painful part, because He wanted future generations to learn something, that the greatest heroes still need grace. Like every single one of us, every single day of our lives, we need grace Kev shared a scripture last week, like an underlying scripture for this whole series.
"My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness." We need grace. That's why I believe that's in there. I mean, God is God. His power, we all agree. Well, he's a pretty powerful guy, right? So he, he could have, like, gotten rid of the Old Testament centuries ago and said, "Look, we don't need that anymore."
But it's still there. It's still part of it. Because I believe he wants us to learn something. That here's a crucial point. David's story is not remarkable because he never failed. David's story is remarkable because of what he did after he failed That's where the rubber hits the road. That's where the nitty-gritty comes into it.
You see, 'cause the prophet, there's another prophet comes along, Nathan. The prophet Nathan comes along, he's been, he's hearing from God. He's hearing the whole story. He knows exactly what's going on. He knows exactly all the little secrets about David. And so he comes and he confronts David about it, and he calls him out on his action.
And right at that moment, David had a choice. He had a choice
He could deny it and say, "No, I don't know what you're talking about. And it's, it's... No, these are lies. No one knows anything about this." He could have blamed others. He could justify himself. He could make excuses. He could have done all those things, trying to rub it all out and get rid of it. But instead, David repented.
He repented. Psalm 51 gives a window into David's heart in this. It says, "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me." Many moons ago, we used to sing a song in church that were those words. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Straight from the heart of David, a repentant heart saying, "God, I have messed up.
Please, change me." He didn't say, "God, you know, you gotta see my side of the story." He didn't try and find someone worse than him and say, "Oh, what about that guy? Look what he's done." No, he owned it. David owned it, and he said, "Lord, change me. Oh, Lord, I'm sorry. Please change me." That is genuine repentance.
Repentance is not feeling... is not just merely feeling bad, okay? 'Cause you can do something, feel bad, and then you keep going on. Repentance is turning around. It's agreeing with God about our sin. "God, I have sinned. I've let you down, and I'm sorry." And it's allowing Him to transform you. Allow God to make some changes in your life, as painful as they might be.
But allowing Him to do that, that's repentance. The difference between David and many others wasn't the absence of failure, it was the presence of repentance. He failed. We all fail, but David was willing to repent. God's grace is bigger than our worst moments. I believe we need to hear that and remember that.
God's grace is bigger than your worst moment. One of the most beautiful truths in David's story is that his failure was not the end of his story. It wasn't the end of his story. So often we can write people off when they make big mistakes. Think about it. God disciplined David, yes. There was some restructure and change in his life, and some pain.
There was consequences for, for the stuff that he had done, the wrong things he had done. Relationships were affected. There was pain on both sides, yet God's grace remained. God's grace. It's a grace, "My grace is sufficient for you." David was forgiven, David was restored, and David was continually used by God.
This doesn't mean that sin doesn't matter, all right? Don't think it's a get out of jail free card. All right? Sin does matter. Sin is huge. Sin is disobeying God. But it does mean that our failures do not have the final word. Your failure does not have the final word. And as I was preparing this over these last days, I just really felt that that is something that there's people here this morning and even online that need to hear that and grasp that, that your failures do not have the final word God does.
God has the final word in your life. Now, you might feel defined by your worst mistake. Maybe it was a failed marriage, maybe it was an addiction, a financial disaster. Maybe it was a, a moral failure. Maybe it was something that nobody else knows about That doesn't define you. Your mistakes don't have the final say 'Cause let me tell you, we have an enemy.
We have an enemy, his name's Satan, and he wants you to believe that your story is over. That's what he wants you to believe. He wants to take you out of the race
But that does not have to determine your future. So let's bring it home. Let's give us... What do we do with this in our everyday lives? Number one, stop comparing your behind the scenes to someone else's highlight reel. One of the greatest traps today is comparison. Comparison. Comparing yourselves to others.
We compare our real life with all of its grubs and all of its, you know, faults and warts and all the rest of it. We compare that to someone else's carefully edited life, one that's been photoshopped and cropped and added and, oh, it looks perfect, and then we, we start comparing ourselves to that. "Oh, why don't I have that?"
You know, ladies, don't compare yourself to that other mum or those other mums that always look great in activewear. You know? And they're involved in every committee at school. And they make, you know, healthy treats for their kids. Ugh. Ugh. Or guys, you know, d- don't compare yourself to that other guy, you know, the one that's got the nice car, that always looks good.
He dresses nice, his kids, you know, are obedient. He, he renovates his house and gets it finished on time. Ugh, I hate those guys. Don't compare. Don't compare. I remember when I was, I was a youth pastor here for about 10 years in the '90s at our church here. And, uh, we used to go to different youth events, different combined youth events from different youth groups around the Gold Coast and Brisbane.
And, and, uh, we'd, we'd be there and you'd see these other youth groups turn up, you know, and they had, like, three or four busloads of kids coming, and they've got, like, a whole team of leaders, and they got the cool musos. And, and you'd be like, "Oh." And I remember there was times when I, I got down a little bit about it.
I was like, "Man, why can't we have that? Why can't we have what those guys have?" And then God, literally, God would just slap me. Snap out of it, Simon. He'd say, "Look at what you've got. Look at these ones that you have here. You are exactly where you need to be, and you do what I tell you to do, and how you need to move with these young people."
And you know, it's like, "Yeah, God, you're right. Oh, God, I'm sorry." Once again, another of the faults that we have. And you know the exciting thing, and I look back, I was thinking about it, I was... Right, I was thinking about that. You know, there is, there is a bunch of those young people that we had back in the '90s that are still in our church today.
Amen. And they're serving God. They're loving God. They got families. And leading. And you look at that and you go, "Man, that... God, you were right. We didn't need that." Compare yourselves. We compare. Compa- comp- comparitation. Compar- comparison.
I'm just gonna go with it. Comparitation. Comparitation is dangerous, right?
Everybody has struggles. Everybody has weaknesses. Everybody has regrets. The people you admire most, think about those. People you admire most, they have stories that you don't know about. The family that looks perfect, they have challenges. The successful entrepreneur, they have scars. The confident leader, they have insecurities all the time.
Everyone has bloopers behind their highlight reel. So instead of comparing yourself to others, focus on becoming who God wants you to be, what God has called you to do right here and now. Because you don't know. You don't know where it leads. You don't know what the outcome is gonna be. I just think back to the '90s.
The nine- man, '90s feels like 100 years ago, doesn't it? Yep. Some good music in the '90s, but You just don't know. You don't know what God's gonna do with what you have. So don't compare, all right? That's dangerous. Comparitation is bad. Bring... Next one is bring your brokenness to God. Your brokenness. Bring your brokenness to God.
You see, many people think that we need to be clean before we come to God. We need to have things together before we come to God, but that is backwards thinking. We don't get healthy before we go to the doctor. Yeah. We don't get rescued before we call out for help Bring it to God. We don't get perfect before coming to God.
God doesn't work with perfect people, He works with the imperfect. We come as we are. Come as you are. David was broken, David came guilty, but he also came humbled. "God, create in me a clean heart. I am so sorry. Man, how did I get to th- how did I get to this? I'm so sorry, God." And God met him right there. God met him.
And that same invitation exists for you and for me to this day. That same invitation. God wants to meet you where you are at, no matter what position you're in. So He's saying, "Bring your anxiety, bring your shame, bring your doubts, bring your failures. Give them to me. I will meet you there." Because the thing is, God knows everything about you already.
Sorry to burst that bubble, but it... God knows everything. You cannot hide one thing from God. He knows what's on your phone . He knows what's going on in your mind. He knows the thoughts that you've had, like the ice cream shop thoughts. You know, there's... God knows that And in all that he says, "You know what?
My grace, my grace is sufficient for you." And he says, "My power is made perfect in weakness." Scriptures is- scriptures all over and it's all through the Bible. When, when we are weak, He is strong. He is the one that we rest in. He is the one that we, we rely on. See, David's story ultimately points us to someone greater, and this for me is exciting when I was...
'Cause when I'm standing and coming to church and gonna be preaching and you sort of, you got all the stuff going around, jumbling around in your head and then the musos, I'll go... And that was awesome this morning. You guys were cranking, I loved it. The music was so good. Yeah. The musos just tapped right into exactly the point that I'm about to talk about
And I went, "God, how does He do it?" David's story ultimately points us to someone greater, and that greater one is... Can everyone say it? Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus. Jesus is the greater king. David was a king, but he had flaws. David was courageous, but he was imperfect. David was faithful, but he sometimes failed.
Jesus is the greater king. He's the GOAT, greatest of all time. See, where David sinned, Jesus remained sinless. Where David fell, Jesus stood firm. Where David needed forgiveness, Jesus became the source of forgiveness. Every- all the answers are in Jesus. The good news of the gospel is not that we become perfect, the good news is that Christ is perfect for us.
And we hear words bounced around church. Growing up, you hear words about justified and being redeemed. We are made right with God through Jesus. He's the one. He's done all the work. He is the greatest Sinless, flawless. And in all his power and all his might, he looks down at us and says, "Hey, come on. I've got you."
Picks us up, carries us, renews us, makes us a new person. Those guys that are going through the waters of baptism this afternoon, it's so exciting. So exciting. We are a new creation in Christ. That's how it works We are made right. We are saved by his grace. We have to do some things. We've got to acknowledge him as our Lord and Savior.
We've got to repent and say, "God, I'm sorry. I've... Man, I've walked so far away from you. I need to turn and I need to come back, acknowledge that I've made mistakes." And God will meet you right there and he'll change your life forever. We are saved by his grace. We're res- we're restored through his mercy.
We're transformed by his Spirit. Our hope is not in our performance. Our hope is in his finished work. All right So let's land this sucker. Here's a take home. All right, some take home for us. Take away, take out. We like take out, take out Fridays.
God still uses imperfect people to this very day. Just look around. Okay, everyone has bloopers behind their highlight reel. Everyone. The people in scripture, the people around you in your world, and the person looking back at you in the mirror. Yeah. That's you, by the way, okay? We all have bloopers. The enemy, he's gonna say...
He's gonna point his bony little finger and say, "Yeah, you failed. Yeah, look at you. Can't even get anything right." But God says, "Hey, I can restore you. I can fix that. I can fix that." The enemy says, "Oh, you've ruined everything." But God says, "I make all things new. I will restore. I will rebuild." The enemy says, "You're disqualified," but God says, "My grace, my grace is sufficient."
David's greatest testimony wasn't that he killed a giant. It wasn't that he became king. It wasn't that he won all these battles. His greatest testimony may have been that one of the darkest failures, failures imaginable. During one of those darkest failures, he discovered that God's mercy was greater than his sin.
And the same God who restored David is still restoring people today. No matter what chapter you're in, God is not finished writing your story, and I know there's people that need to hear that. Your bloopers are not bigger than His grace. Your failures are no stronger than His mercy. And finally, your past is not greater than God's purpose for your future.
Let's just pray together. Let's bow our heads. Father, we just thank you. We thank you, Lord That you highlight to us through all the way through Scripture, Lord. Through everything that we, we read and follow, Lord, that your grace is sufficient, Lord, that you love us, that you want the best for us. And Lord, we just stand before you.
We come before you this morning, Lord, with open hearts. And Lord, we ask for your forgiveness. We confess that we are sinners, and Lord, we ask for your forgiveness. Pray, Lord, that you'll restore us, Lord, and rebuild us, Lord. Lord, we thank you for your love. We thank you for your guiding. We thank you, Lord, that you can use, you can use any part of our lives Lord, we just thank you for that