Pastor William Heiges Reformation Sunday

St. Mark’s Lutheran Church November 5, 2000

Watertown, WI

WHAT’S SO AMAZING ABOUT GRACE?

If you are a veteran of World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam or the Gulf War, then I want to personally thank you for being willing to put your life on the line to protect and preserve our freedom. For those of us who wake up every day in a free country and never had to fight for it I see a grave danger in taking our freedom for granted. But you know the terrible price in lives that had to be paid in order for us to live free.

I see another danger for those of us who grew up in the Christian faith, who were born, baptized and raised in Christian homes (and don’t get me wrong - that is a tremendous blessing to be cherished). The danger is that we take our faith for granted. We grew up hearing words like salvation, redemption, justification, sanctification. They can lose their meaning and importance. Take the word “Grace.” We all know its definition: God’s undeserved love toward us sinners. We even call it amazing grace, but have you ever asked yourself the question:

WHAT’S SO AMAZING ABOUT GRACE?

1. GOD DOESN’T GIVE US WHAT WE DESERVE

The first thing we learn is that God doesn’t give us what we deserve. If you are like me (and I know you are) then you tend to look at yourself through rose colored glasses and think a little more highly of yourself that you ought. We tend not to see and sense the severity or seriousness of our sin. All we have to do is read the first few verses of this chapter to see that Paul doesn’t paint a pretty picture of what we are like by nature. He says, “Once you were spiritually dead in your sins, doomed forever because of your many sins.” Or, “We were by nature objects of wrath.” We want to ask, “Are we really that bad?”

Paul points out that at one time we followed the ways of the world. Do you know how easy it is to follow the ways of the world and how hard it is to follow the ways of God? We all feel the pressure. We can point the finger at young people who smoke and drink and cut other people down - all so that they look cool and are accepted by their peers, but do we see the ways we experience peer pressure and compomise our beliefs so that we “fit in” and are accepted. We catagorize sins like adultery as terrible, but fail to see the lust in our own thoughts as sin. We readily recognize violence and murder as gross violations of the 5th commandment, but at the same time harbor bitterness and maybe even hatred toward someone, and fail to see that as equally wrong.

Paul described how we spent our time “gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts.” You see, Satan know us better than we know ourselves. He knows our weak points - our inner cravings and desires. He also knows, as Paul said, “we were born with an evil nature.” In The Book of Revelation (12:9) we are told that Satan leads the whole world astray. We can see how others are deceived and fail to see deception in ourselves. But Satan doesn’t work on us in obvious, blatant ways. He leads us astray inch by inch, degree by degree. He is very subtle and patient. For example, no one sets out to commit adultery. But we find ourselves rationalizing, “my husband doesn’t listen to me like this man does;” “my wife doesn’t act interested in me like this woman.” You spend more and more time with a member of the opposite sex (which is a major danger) and wonder how you ended up with a broken marriage. No one sets out to become an alcoholic, but it happens drink by drink, night after night until you find yourself in bondage.

And when faced with the consequences of our sin, we wonder who switched the price tags. No one told us it would end up this bad. And yet, we should have known. We grew up hearing passages like (I’ll start it and you finish), “The wages of sin is ... death;” “the soul that sins, it will surely ... die.” We know that, but have we heard these words so often they’ve lost their impact and real meaning?

We find ourselves - like the unmerciful servant (in Matthew 18:21-35) - throwing ourselves on our face before God and crying out, “have mercy on me, a sinner!” And we wait for the blow - that never comes ... why? Because God doesn’t give us what we deserve. I remember one time lining my children (just the bad ones) up when they were naughty. I told them to bend over. They scrunched their faces waiting for the whack. Slowy they looked up when it didn’t come. I told them I was going to do the same thing for them that God did for me. I am going to let them off the hook, I was not going to punish them even though they deserved it. They were amazed. (Grace will do that to a person).

Why should we be amazed by God’s grace when we are told in Psalm 103: 8-10, “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities.” There is nothing fair about grace. If God were fair, he would have to pay us as our sins deserve. God did that, but not to us. We know that our sin brings down God’s curse, and that curse calls for punishment and that punishment is death. But what God did is make Jesus receive the curse for our sin. He bore our sins. He suffered our punishement on the cross and by his stripes are we healed. He died the death we deserve. And that is why God, in his grace, doesn’t give us what we deserve.

2. GOD GIVES US WHAT WE DON’T DESERVE

The next amazing thing about God’s grace we learn is that God gives us what we don’t deserve: pardon and peace, life and salvation, kindness and mercy - all wrapped in forgiveness. You see, God deals with us in grace. Just look at Jesus. Everywhere he went, everyone he met, he gave grace. Remember the woman caught in adultery?

The Law said she should be stoned to death. After all the Pharisees left her and Jesus alone, he asked her where her accusers were. She said they all left. Then Jesus gave his verdict. He said, “Neither do I condemn you. Go and leave your life of sin. (Jn 8:11)” He didn’t judge. He didn’t condemn her. Instead, he gave her grace and a chance to rebuild her life. Did she deserve it? No. She received what she didn’t deserve - grace and forgiveness.

The father of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32) had every right to turn his back on his son. The son returned with empty sin-stained hands and threw himself on his father’s mercy confessing, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired men.” And how did the Father respond? He embrace his son with open arms, forgave his past and restored him fully and unconditionally as his son. God rejoices when we approach him with empty hands and accepts us because of his Son’s blood-stained hands. Do we deserve it? No. But when we read Titus 3:3-5a we learn why God gives us what we don’t deserve, “At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another. But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.”

Salvation is free to you and me, no strings attached. And that wars against every human instinct within us. “That too simple,” we cry. “It can’t be that easy.” Luther used to feel that way. He heard the phrase, “the righteousness of God.” and thought it meant that God is righteous and demands that same kind of righteousness from us. And no matter what Luther did and how hard he tried, he constantly felt like a failure. And he was! It wasn’t until the Holy Spirit broke through to reform the great reformer’s thinking, that Luther discovered the most amazing truth about God’s grace. He learned that the term “righterousness of God” was really talking about the righteousness Christ earned for us and God GIVES to us through faith. Read Romans 1:17; & 3:21-24.

There is an old legend about a time Luther was working hard in his study when he heard a knock on his door. He opened it only to find the devil standing there with a long sheet on paper in his hands. On that paper was a long list of sins Luther was guilty of. He thrust the list in Luther’s face and mockingly asked how God could possibly let Luther into heaven with such a list of sins. Luther took the list from Satan and examined it. He nodded here and there, then told the devil that he had missed a few sins. Satan just sneered. Before Luther handed the list back to Satan, he said he had to add one more thing. He took some red ink and wrote in big letters over the list, “The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleanses us of every sin” (1 Jn 1:7). He handed the list back to Satan and Satan disappeared.

We learn that there is nothing we can do ( no amount of good works) to make God love us more. And there is nothing we can do ( no amount of sin and failure in our lives) to make God love us less. God loves us fully, completely and unconditionally in Jesus. Grace is God’s gift to us - unearned, unmerited and undeserved. We can’t repay God for it. I remember walking into a store in a very exclusive area of the country. I noticed that there were no price tags on anything. I found this rather awesome shirt and asked the salesman how much it cost. With his nose stuck in the air, he condesendingly told me, “if you have to ask the price, you can’t afford it.”

The cost of our salvation? Don’t ask. It’s too high for you and me to pay. But not for God. I recall something Paul wrote about the Jews that still applies to us today (Ro 11:6), “And if they [we] are saved by God’s grace and kindness then it is not by their good works. For in that case God’s wonderful grace and kindness would not be what it really is - free and undeserved.” We are saved by grace. It is all God’s doing. Christ did it with his perfect life of obedience, his death on the cross and his resurrection to life.

You want to know what else is so amazing? Even faith to believe the truth of this message is a gift of God. It is the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts through the gospel. It is not of ourselves. We do nothing. God’s grace does it all, so we cannot boast about our human efforts. The only boasting we do is in what Christ has done for us. We can boast only in the cross of Christ.

3. GOD GIFTS US WITH GRACE TO SERVE

One more amazing truth about grace we learn is that God gifts us to serve. I like the way Paul describes it, (vs.10) “we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” Because of Grace, we now look at ourselves differently - not as we once were, but as we now are IN CHRIST. We know what God in his grace has made of us. We are his workmanship. Anyone who is an artist or craftsman, who has made beautiful things out of wood, designed and created lovely quilts, etc. steps back from their workmanship and takes pride in it. You are God’s special work of art. Like snowflakes and fingerprints there are no two alike. You are uniquely you just the way God planned you to be. You are his special creation and re-creation spiritually (for even though we were once dead in transgressions and sins, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive in Christ).

We also see life differently. Before Christ, life held little promise or meaning. We saw no great purpose. But after Grace, we see life full of meaning and purpose. Life holds endless possibilities and options, because God created them for us and us for them. God saved us for good works, not by good works. Doing good works is not an option for the believer; it is the very nature of the believer. The reason we exist is to do what Jesus said we were called to do: bear much good fruit (good works) that will abound to our Father’s glory (Jn 15:8). Again, Paul reminds us, “our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.(Titus 2:14)”

Because of Christ, not only do we now live in a state of grace, but we also receive grace upon grace as a power at work within us to help us do things we are incapable of doing on our own. Take our giving for example. Giving is a good work, a fruit of faith, a response to God’s love for us in Christ. Paul calls giving a grace. He told the Corinthians (8:7) that just as they excelled in such things as faith, knowledge and love, they should also seek to excel in the grace of giving. Now we learn that not only does God create endless opportunities for us to do good works (like giving), but he even creates the desire within our hearts to respond and do the good works he created us for and prepared for us. Isn’t that amazing! Again, God does it all from start to finish.

Did you ever read the book (or watch the movie - I recommend the one with Liam Neeson in it) by Victor Hugo, Les Miserables? In it we are introduced to the main character, Jean Valjean, who as a young man is sentenced to prison for 19 years for stealing bread. In prison he never lost a fight. No one ever broke his will. When he finally won his release, no one give him, a convicted criminal, refuge, save for one kindly old bishop. In the middle of the night Jean rummaged through the bishop’s cubboards and stole what silver he could find. The next day, captured by the gendarmes (police), he was brought before the bishop. To the amazement of the gendarmes and Jean Valjean, the bishop responded in a way no one expected, “So there you are! I’m delighted to see you. Have you forgotten that I gave you the candlesticks as well? They’re silver like the rest and worth a good 200 francs.” To the police he said, “This man is no thief. This silver was my gift to him.”

After the gendarmes left, the bishop gave the candlesticks to a trembling and speechless Valjean. He said to Jean, “Do not forget, do not ever forget that you have promised me to use the money to make yourself an honest man. Transformed by the bishop’s grace and forgiveness, Jean Valjean became a wealthy man and dedicated the rest of his life to helping others in need, even saving the life of the policeman who hunted him for years and extending him grace.

That’s how Zaccheus naturally responded when “salvation” came to his house in the form of Jesus. Without prompting he responded by giving large portions of his wealth to the poor and needy. He was eager to do good. Grace will do that to a person. Totally change and tranform him or her from the inside out. Now we are motivated to live a life totally transfomed by God’s grace.

And now we see those around us differently, even those who are our enemies and hard to live with. We give them grace just as God, in Christ, gave us grace. We die to self and now live for others - to be a source of grace and blessing to them. The grace of God has been poured into our lives in such measure that it overflows into the lives of others. I wonder if I would have responded the way Gordon Wilson did. He and his daughter happened to be in the wrong place and the wrong time in 1987 when an IRA bomb exploded, killing 11 and wounding 63. As they lay under 5 feet oof rubble, Gordon Wilson heard his daughter whisper, “Daddy, I love you,” shortly before she died. How would we respond? What would that do to our heart? On public TV Gordon Wilson said, “I have lost my daughter, but I bear no grudge. Bitter talk is not going to bring Marie Wilson back to life. I shall pray tonight and every night that God will forgive them.” He then dedicated his life to spreading grace and forgiveness.

Behind every act of forgiveness lies a wound of betrayal and the pain of being betrayed does not easily fade away. We are faced with a choice: extend grace and forgiveness (like God did to us in Christ) or judge and condemn to the full letter of the law, which is our legal right. We know what Christ would do. We know what God did. He gave us grace. I believe that God’s grace is at work in your hearts right now. I believe that God wants the members of St. Mark to be people of grace, people totally overwhelmed and transformed by the saving grace of God, to leave such an impact on our community and those around us that they will be utterly amazed - at God’s grace. Amen.