II Corinthians 8:9
9 – For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes, He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.
II Corinthians 5:14-15
14 – For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that One died for all, and therefore all died.
15 – And He died for all, that those who live-should no longer live for themselves but for Him Who died for them and was raised again.
I Peter 4:10
10 – …each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.
I don’t know if you’ve ever spent much mental effort reflecting on this fact or not, but our minds-our brains-are truly amazing things. I did some study on this subject this week and discovered that the human brain is approximately 78% water and on average weighs about three pounds. It contains one hundred billion neurons held together by two trillion packing cells which make it capable of storing six hundred memories per second for your entire lifetime. That come’s to one trillion, four hundred nineteen billion, twelve million memories per brain, per life, on the average, which means that this amazing lump of flesh that God has situated inside our skulls records virtually everything we ever do or think or say or hear or experience….everything! I can’t imagine the number of megs of ram the human brain contains, much less its CPU speed!
Now if you are like me, when it comes to your brain….your problem isn’t STORAGE. It’s RETRIEVAL! I remember an experience I had my last semester of seminary the week of final exams. I had three exams one day and had been cramming all night but when I got to campus for my first test, my brain locked up and I couldn’t remember where the class met! The information was up there. I’d been going to that class three days a week all semester. But I just couldn’t RETRIEVE the data. It took me about 15 seconds to clear my head so I could remember where to go to take the exam. Reminds me of the story of two elderly women who were discussing the problems of growing older. One commented, The worst thing is when your memory starts to go. I’ve known you all my life and I can’t think of your name at the moment. By the way, what is it? The second lady thought for a moment and said, Do you need an answer right now?
Well, all of us, no matter what our age, have memory retrieval problems from time to time. And for this reason, today as we begin a new year of ministry together, I felt it was important for us as a church to REMIND OURSELVES what we mean when we say that God has called us to be a, Grace-driven church for a grace-needing world. You may have FORGOTTEN, but about three and a half years ago-after a great deal of prayer-we came to understand that God had called us to be a church that is known for its grace. And this is a significant calling because we do not live in a grace-filled world. In our society you get pretty much what you pay for. You reap what you sow. I mean when was the last time you drove around the beltway at the height of rush hour and saw grace? How often do people roll down their windows and say, Grace to you. I forgive you for cutting me off. I turn the other bumper! When it comes time to pay all your Christmas bills and you discover that you charged more than you could afford, if you called VISA and explained, would you expect them to respond, Don’t worry about it. Just pay what you can and we’ll forget about the rest. No-things like that don’t happen in our world because Grace is such a RARE thing.
And unfortunately one of the places where grace is scarcest is in the church. Most believers are not very good at dispensing the grace they have received. We tend to dole out more legalism and judgment than we do grace. Philip Yancey writes, Christians have spent enormous energy over the years debating and decreeing truth; every church defends its own particular version. But what about grace? How rare it is to find a church competing to ‘out-grace’ its rivals.
Well, since God has given those of us who make up Redland Baptist Church this challenge to be driven by our experience of God’s grace, I think it is important for us at this point in our history to be sure we stimulate our brains a bit so we can REMEMBER exactly what that means. And that is the purpose of this morning’s message-to remind ourselves of the basics of grace. Then next week I want to take our sermon time to share with you some of the things I feel God’s grace is motivating us to do in 2002. We’ll take a close look at those ministry and mission projects God has invited us to join Him in accomplishing over the next twelve months.
Well, what exactly is GRACE? Let’s review. The Bible teaches that basically GRACE is God’s absolutely unmerited favor. It is His giving good to us that we could never hope to earn or deserve. The greatest example of God’s grace of course was when He sent His only Son to die for us. Do you recall those precious words from Romans 5:8 ? God demonstrates His own love for us-His ABSOLUTELY UNMERITED FAVOR-in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And God continues to bestow His grace on us each and every day, as He gives us other things we could never deserve or earn:
- His guidance in life-decisionsHis forgiveness when we disobey HimHis strength when we try to do His willHis healing power when we are sick
I could go on and on giving examples of ways that God regularly showers us with things we don’t deserve through His grace-His unmerited favor-because GRACE means that bound up in our Heavenly Father is an inclination to bestow benefits on undeserving people, like you and me.
Now, a GOOD human might want to bestow a benefit or two on a DESERVING person. For example: if you are known as a hardworking employee, your boss may give you the afternoon off after you have worked long hours to finish an unusually difficult contract. Or, if you are a GOOD student, your teacher may give you a couple extra days to finish a term paper. Or if your grandmom loves you she might buy you an ice-cream cone even if you didn’t clean your plate at supper just because she knows that all in all you’re a pretty good kid. There is nothing that unusual abut this type of behavior. We see this kind of grace all the time.
But God’s grace is far above this weaker human version. God’s grace is as EXTRAORDINARY as human grace is ORDINARY. You see, He gives good things even to UNDESERVING people. It is His nature to do so. Now, we could talk for hours about the many facets of God’s extraordinary grace but this morning as I said a moment ago, I want us to remind ourselves of the basics and the first is this…
1. …God’s grace is OLD.
In other words, GRACE was not something God thought up when mankind failed to obey His laws. I say this because some people think God tried the ten commandments and the rest of the law and when that didn’t work, He came up with PLAN B: The Grace Plan. But this is not true. Grace was God’s original plan, set into motion long before the law was revealed to Moses. The purpose of the law was to show how much we were dependent on God’s grace. Grace was offered BEFORE man was created. I Peter 1:18-20 says, You were redeemed from your empty way of life with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. He was chosen before the creation of the world.
In fact, even before sin entered the world, Adam and Eve EXPERIENCED God’s grace. Think about it. They didn’t deserve to be put into a lavish garden where all their needs were met by a loving Creator. They had done nothing to earn God’s intimate fellowship in that heavenly place. Even before they sinned…before the fall…Adam and Eve lived on grace.
So, the first thing we must remember is that GRACE IS OLD-older than all creation-but it is more than that we need to remember that…
2. …Grace is also BIG.
By this I mean that God’s grace is BIG enough to wipe out the sins of the entire world. Romans 3:23-24 says, For ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. And, as I John 2:2 says Jesus is, …the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins for the whole world. So, God’s grace is big…big enough to cover the sins of every human that has ever been born or ever will be born.
And it is also so big that it is limitless in supply. God never runs out of grace. God doesn’t give us a portion of grace when we become Christians and say, This is all you get. Make it last. Ration it out day by day. Don’t run out because when you do, there is no more! No, He gives grace after grace after grace in unending supply. As it says in John 1:16, From the FULLNESS of His grace we have all received one blessing after another. God’s grace is BIG.
Understand, this principle also means God’s grace is big enough to wipe our the biggest sinful act. When I was in college, I remember seeing a film about the life of DAVE BOYER. Most of you have never heard of him, but in his day he was a very popular night club entertainer. Many compared him to the members of what was known as, the rat pack…Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr….Dean Martin….those guys. BOYER grew up in a Christian home part of a very musical family that sang in churches across the United States but as a teen he rebelled against his parents, abandoned their teachings, and decided to make his fortune on the night club circuit. And, as I said, he was very successful at this. He became very wealthy and had pretty much all the world could give. But after years at the top he became involved in all kinds of sin and vice: drugs, alcohol, gambling. His marriage fell apart. All this drove him to despair and one night he decided to kill himself but was unsuccessful. In agony he prayed to God for help and forgiveness, which God graciously gave him. Boyer gave His life to Jesus that night and from that moment on gave God his talent as well. He sang and shared the testimony of his experience of God’s grace in Billy Graham crusades around the world. His theme song became Calvary Covers it all. The words go like this.
Far dearer than all that the world can impart was the message that came to my heart;How that Jesus alone for my sin did atone, and Calvary covers it all.How matchless the grace when I looked on the face of this Jesus my crucified Lord;My redemption complete I then found at His feet and Calvary covers it all. Calvary covered it ALL…my past with its sin and its shameMy guilt and despair, Jesus took on Him there…and Calvary covers it all.
Now, you and I tend to classify sin and we think that there are certain people so sinful that God would not forgive them. I mean, we believe that God’s grace is sufficient for average sinners but not BIG enough for others. But this is not true. God’s grace shown on the cross of calvary is BIG enough to provide forgiveness for any sin, no matter how heinous.
I was moved by Lloyd Linn’s devotional in last week’s advent devotional guide in which he challenged us to love and pray for Osama bin Laden, believing that if this infamous terrorist would repent and ask Jesus’ forgiveness, he would get it and would spend eternity in heaven with the rest of us who have asked for and received God’s grace. Lloyd is one member of this church who has not forgotten how BIG God’s grace is. He knows that Calvary does indeed cover it all. Grace-driven Christians understand the SIZE of God’s grace because of their own experience of and dependence on that grace. As C. S. Lewis once said, To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable, because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you.
This leads us to a third basic truth about grace that we must never forget…
3. …It is not FAIR.
You see, thanks to GRACE, repentant sinners do not get what fairness would say they deserve. In his book, The God You Are Looking For, Bill Hybels says that to understand this aspect of grace we must compare it to JUSTICE and MERCY. He sets up a very interesting scenario to help us do this. Here it is:
Let’s say you wake up one morning and, as is your custom, you throw on your robe and go outside to get the morning paper. As you do, you hear the screech of rubber and look up to see the teen who lives down the street from you driving his father’s car. You know he is only 14….not old enough to have a driver’s license. He is barely tall enough to see over the steering wheel and he is driving the car literally all over the street. He careens from side to side, out of control and finally he crashes into your yard…barely missing you…and totally destroying your mail box, part of he hedge you put in last year, and your brand new picket fence. You run to the car, discover that the boy is okay and his car undamaged, and at this point you have three choices.
A. Your first choice is to treat this errant teen with JUSTICE.
This means you give him exactly what he deserves. You call the police knowing that he will be given a ticket for driving without a license. You call his parents to tell them what happened-knowing he will be grounded until he is 39 years old. And you force the boy to get a job to pay for your mailbox, fence, and hedge. Now exercising this option does not make you a bad person. You are simply giving the boy exactly what he deserves, no more, no less. You are being fair or just.
B. Your second option would be to treat this wayward adolescent with MERCY.
Mercy is giving someone a little bit LESS than he or she deserves…adding a little compassion to your judgement of his behavior. If you choose this option you might say, I’m not going to call the police, but I am going to call your parents, and we are going to sit down and agree on the cost of the mailbox, hedge, and fence, and you will have to work out some way to re-pay me.
This should make the teen very happy and thankful because he is getting LESS than he deserves. You are being MERCIFUL to him.
But there is a third option. It doesn’t square with human common sense. It is risky. It could blow up in your face. Some might even call it scandalous. Your third option is this. Instead of treating the boy with justice or mercy…
C. …you choose to treat him with GRACE.
And here is what that would look like. You help the boy out of the car and say something like, You messed up young man. You destroyed my mailbox and flattened my fence. I saved TWO YEARS for this fence and it was installed just a week ago. You also took out my hedge. I just trimmed that hedge and take great pride in keeping it looking sharp. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get it to match up again. You also nearly killed me but I’m not going to call the police. I’m not even sure I want to get you in a whole lot of trouble with your family. I can fix the mailbox and the fence and even the hedge-and I will. Why don’t you and I get in my car and go find a place where we can get a burger and sit down and talk. Then I can find out a little bit more about who you are and what’s going on in your life. There’s only one condition….I’ll drive!
Now, what is your reaction to that choice? You might say, Mark…that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard in my life! All this delinquent is going to do is take another joyride tomorrow and plow into someone else’s mailbox. And you know, he might just do that. That is the RISK and SCANDAL of grace. But it is also possible that your graceful choice will touch that boy at the deepest part of his soul. Your interest in his welfare and future might be the one thing that will unlock potential that he has long since forgotten. Your action may lead to the transformation of his life. This might be the turning point for this young man.
THIS IS GRACE, an absolutely undeserved, totally UNFAIR gift. And this is so hard for us to comprehend. IN fact, it may be the most difficult spiritual truth for any Christian to embrace. I mean, JUSTICE is so much easier for us to understand than grace. When we are incensed by the crimes of others, horrified by the evil that stalks our world, we all want a GOD OF JUSTICE.
- After WWII our grandparents heard the horror stories of the concentration camp survivors. They were sickened and demanded JUSTICE.After watching peaceful civil rights demonstrations in the ’60’s being broken up by water cannons and vicious police dogs, we were ashamed and demanded JUSTICE.Years ago, after we saw Susan Smith weep crocodile tears for her kidnaped children and then learn that she herself had drowned her two young boys, we were enraged and demanded JUSTICE.Three months ago when terrorists commandeered planes and killed thousands of innocent people in New York and at the Pentagon and in a plane that crashed in Pennsylvania we were terrified and demanded JUSTICE.
But if any of us were to die tonight, which would we want to prevail? God’s justice or His grace? You see, if God is truly a God of only perfect justice and NOT loving grace, then there is nothing that will protect us from His divine judgement. If this were true then we would all be in a lot of trouble because as it says in the third chapter of Romans, There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and the wages of sin…the JUST and FAIR thing that we ALL deserve…is DEATH. We DEMAND a God of justice but we all NEED and are totally dependent on a God of mercy and grace. This brings us to a fourth basic truth about grace that I want us to remember…
4. Thanks to God’s grace our salvation doesn’t COST us anything.
In other words grace means we don’t contribute anything to our redemption. Even that first nudging of faith that lead’s a person to God is His gracious gift to us. This is what Jesus taught in John 6:44 when He said, No one can come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me draws him. The only thing WE contribute to our salvation is our SIN. As it says in Romans 3:24, we are, …justified FREELY by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.
Year’s ago there was a TV show called The Millionaire. The plot of the show centered around an anonymous millionaire (whose face we never saw) who would give a one million dollar gift to a different person each week, no strings attached. But, in every episode the people selected to receive this money had a hard time believing that it was a gift with no hidden catch. They were SUSPICIOUS of any free gift THAT BIG. And we are the same way. We think anything worth anything must be deserved or earned. But because of GRACE, when it comes to eternal salvation, this principle does not apply. God offers His priceless gift of forgiveness absolutely free. It is not a trick. It is not a lure. It is a FREE GIFT. As it says in Romans 3:23, …the FREE gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Now, understand, salvation is free to US, but it was NOT free. It cost God the life of His only Son. An old acronym of the word grace is, G.od’s R.iches A.t C.hrist’s E.xpense. This should help us never forget that since Jesus was willing to pay the cost of our salvation, it is offered to us free of charge. If any person wants to be forgiven, to have an intimate relationship with God, they can. We can stand before God absolutely clean, knowing our sins have been completely erased forever. We can spend eternity as residents of heaven, never separated from God’s presence. And this free gift is available to anyone. The only requirement is to ask for it. But if you do ask for this FREE gift, there are two things you should be aware of.
A. Asking for God’s free gift of forgiveness is an admission of GUILT.
A pastor was once speaking to a children’s Sunday School class and he asked the question, What must one do to be forgiven of sin? One little boy answered, Well, first of all, you have to sin. Well, asking for God’s gift of grace is an admission that you have already taken that first step; you are saying, I have sinned. I need your forgiveness, God. In fact, the admission of guilt goes a step further. You are not just admitting that you have made some bad choices in the past. You are confessing, I am a sinner…I live in a state of sin separated from God’s holiness. Also….
B. Asking for God’s FREE gift of forgiveness is an admission of HELPLESSNESS.
You are saying, There is nothing I can do to earn or deserve the mercy I am asking for. It is only God’s goodness that makes this possible. So, here is no room for personal pride anywhere in the salvation process. When we come to God we admit that there is no chance that we can ever be able to do anything to deserve the gift that we are asking for. Do you remember the words God gave Paul in Ephesians 2:8-9 ?
“For, it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-and this is NOT from yourselves. It is the gift of God-not by works so that no one can boast.”
We can never deserve God’s gift of eternal life. We can never make ourselves good enough for God’s love. I like what John Oman said on this subject: Grace is grace precisely because, though wholly concerned with moral goodness, it does not at all depend on how moral we are. You and I will never be able to do anything to deserve God’s forgiving grace but we can receive it. All we have to do is ask.
God’s grace is OLD. It is BIG. Praise the Lord, it is not FAIR..and this gift we could never afford is FREE. And then, there is one final thing we must remember when it comes to the grace of God…
5. …accepting God’s grace should change the way we LIVE.
I mean, we know we can never earn or deserve God’s grace…but once we experience it and truly understand it we should live differently than we did before. You see, a mature understanding of grace compels us-motivates us-to live graciously. It makes us WANT to obey God’s laws, to do all we can to live in ways that please Him. It makes us want to do all we can to act and think in ways that show we understand God’s grace. I like how Cyndi Word put it in her contribution to our Advent devotionals. She said,
I LOVE, because I have been WONDROUSLY LOVED. I try to FORGIVE, because I have been FORGIVEN SO MUCH. I try to ACCEPT people as they are, because I have BEEN ACCEPTED as I am. I try to show MERCY and COMPASSION, because mercy and compassion has been SHOWERED upon me.
I think Cyndi understands that, as Paul put it in our text for today from 2 Corinthians, once we experience God’s grace through Jesus Christ, …we no longer live for ourselves but for Him Who died for us all. In short, Christians who really understand the basics of grace, become grace-driven people, which brings us back to our purpose statement here at Redland-this challenge God has given to you and me.
Now, maybe you are here today and are a Christian, looking for a church home and all this sounds pretty good to you. You want to be a part of a GRACE-DRIVEN church. Well, if God is driving you, compelling you, to join us for that reason then we invite you to come forward and make this commitment today. Or maybe this basic knowledge of grace motivates you to do other things. Perhaps it drives you to ask God’s forgiveness for some sin that you thought was too big for Him to forgive. Maybe it compels you to change the way you are responding to the sins of someone in your life, a friend or family member. You’ve tried justice and mercy and feel today that God wants you to try grace. Or maybe you are here today and God has used this study to draw you to Him. This has become a moment of truth as He graciously offers you the gift of salvation. Won’t you admit your guilt and need and accept it today? As God’s grace motivates you, won’t you respond as we sing by coming forward and sharing your decision with me?