Grace Happens - 7
December 23, 2012
VIDEO of Orphan Train from You tube.
Among the many stories of the children of the Orphan Train, is the story about a little boy named Lee. He was one of 3 sons, and his biological father decided he couldn’t care for his 3 sons. So, he took them to the orphan rescue center, where they would be loaded onto the orphan train. At 8 years old, Lee was the oldest. As the train approached them, his father said goodbye and placed a pink envelope in his pocket, containing the name and address of his father.
He instructed Lee that when he arrived at his new home, he should contact his father. The train came and the boys took off. They sat together on their long journey from New York City to Texas. They fell asleep and when Lee woke up the next morning, the pink envelope was gone. Lee had no idea what happened to it. He never found it. I’d love to tell you that Lee’s father found him and they had an amazing reunion, that he found all 3 boys and they went back to New Your City with their father. But, I can’t tell you that story, because it didn’t happen.
But, in your case, it did. At the heart of the story of the Bible is God’s pursuit of you. His determination to find you, claim you, to name you, and to bring you into His family, as His own. It’s not enough for God to call you forgiven, God wants to call you His ‘family.’
Listen to this great promise in Romans 8, 14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 15 So you should not be like cowering, fearful slaves. You should behave instead like God's very own children, adopted into his family -- calling him "Father, dear Father."
17 And since we are His children, we will share His treasures -- for everything God gives to His Son, Christ, is ours, too. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share His suffering.
You see, God didn’t just acquit us, He adopted us. He didn’t just declare us forgiven, He declared us part of His family, as His children. Although the forgiveness is no small matter. In fact, when you try to understand grace you realize there must be acquittal before adoption. God must deal with our sin before He can call us His children. He must take us into a courtroom before He can take us to the dinner table. And it is in the courtroom that God acquits us.
Have you ever been in a courtroom? May be you’ve received a traffic ticket and you were sure you could go before the judge and explain your extenuating circumstances. If you’ve ever tried to do that, you know the judge is not really concerned if you have been naughty or nice, but is more concerned at that moment if you broke the law. Were you speeding? Did you park in the no parking zone? Did you come to a complete stop at the stop sign? Answering “yes, but. . .” doesn’t get you anywhere. The judge will pound the gavel and proclaim GUILTY.
It’s the judges job to enforce the law. It’s his or her job to determine guilty or innocent. His job to promote justice, to interpret the law and apply it as consistently and clearly as possible.
Now, you and I have violated God’s law. We’ve broken the law. At the minimum, it’s the law of our conscience – the law of society, and ultimately, the law of God. We stand in His courtroom, before the judge of the universe. One of the characteristics of God is that He is a just God. He’s the Creator of the law and He can’t misinterpret the law. Our judge, Almighty God, also hates sin.
One prophet wrote this about God ~ Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong - Habakkuk 1:13. It’s absolutely impossible for God to look upon a sinner and have no response. A just judge must punish that wrong. When you stand before God, you become speechless. As Isaiah stood before God, he cried, Woe is me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips and I live among people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty. – Isaiah 6:5
He didn’t try to defend himself. He knew he was before THE judge. So, the just judge will judge each person according to what they have done. – Psalm 62:12
You see, God hates evil and He judges fairly. Wouldn’t you agree, you and I have committed evil. It’s like we’ve parked in the no parking zone because we simply missed the sign, but at other times we saw the sign and parked there anyway. We chose to deliberately disobey the teachings of God. Where does that leave us? Evildoers, standing in God’s courtroom.
So, here’s what God tells us to do as we stand in His courtroom. God sits on the bench, looks at us on the courtroom floor. He tells us ~ ~ Turn away from me and look to my Son, and we turn and look and standing there in the courtroom is our Advocate, the One who comes to stand with us. And God the judge invites us to ask our Advocate, “Is it true what they say?
Is it true you never violated your Father’s commands?
Is it true you fulfilled every expectation and commandment of the law? Is it true you always sought to please your Father? And you did!
Is it true you never, never sinned . . . not in thought or in actions?
Is it true you voluntarily chose NOT only to be my advocate, but you would be my substitute?
Is it true, You will do more than take on my case, but you will take my place and You will receive the guilty verdict I deserve, so I can be declared innocent and righteous, that only you deserve?
Is it true what they say?
I want to tell you something, folks, someday the person you’re looking at is going to stand before a holy God, the judge of the universe, I’m going to be standing in His courtroom. And I have no fear of that moment. I don’t dread that day. It doesn’t keep me awake at night. Instead of fear, I have hope, because God has told me what to do?
Because on that day when He declares me guilty – I will turn to His Son, my Advocate, my substitute, and I will claim on that day that Jesus led the perfect life, yet He died a sinners death for people like me, and I will declare that a long time ago I placed myself under the protective custody of the Savior, Jesus Christ.
And those who do so, will not be declared guilty, because He, Jesus, has already taken on our guilt, and the just judge who cannot stand sin, and must punish sin, or He would not be just, has satisfactorily and forensically punished sin in and through Jesus Christ, so that you and I can be declared righteous in the sight of God. All because of the grace of God and the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.
As a result, Paul declares to us, 8 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. – Romans 8:1 In other words, if you have Jesus in you, you will not be punished, period!!
We’re thinking, whew! I’m free, I’m free to go. But the judge, says, “woe, hold on, don’t leave the courtroom, yet!” It would be beyond our imaginations that we, the guilty, are not guilty. But our judge wants to do even more than that. Having acquitted us, God now wants to adopt us. It’s one thing to leave the courtroom with the penalty paid, but it’s another thing to have the judge stand up from behind the bench, take off His robe, walk out from behind the bench and stand on the floor, next to you, and say, “Not only have I acquitted you, even though you were and are guilty, but I’m adopting you and you’re going home with me. I’m giving you my name, you’re going to eat at my table, you’re going to sleep in my house, and all that is mine is now yours!”
We go from one courtroom, traffic court to family court, as God walks us down the hallway. This was God’s plan from the beginning. Listen to what Paul said, 4 Even before He made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in His eyes.
5 God decided in advance to adopt us into His own family by bringing us to Himself through Jesus Christ. This is what He wanted to do, and it gave Him great pleasure. – Ephesians 1:4-5
So, because we’ve been acquitted and adopted, we also know that we’ve been accepted by God. Paul reminds us that God did all of this for one very simple yet super profound reason . . . He loves us. Someone here needs to hear this today, GOD LOVES YOU! Yup, God loves you! Too many of us live with the assumption God is mad at us, but that’s not the case, when He sees you, He gets a big smile on His heavenly face. He loves you!
Not only does God love us, but He chose us. Most of us at some point in our lives have not been chosen for something we wanted. Maybe it was a sports team, maybe it was a job, maybe it was a certain boy or girl. It doesn’t matter what it was, we’ve been to a point where we felt unchosen - not wanted, not selected.
In our world, there’s a lot of people who want us to believe that we weren’t chosen. They want to tell us that we evolved. That’s right you weren’t chosen, but instead we came from some microbe out of the sea, and one of our great . . . great . . . great grandparent somehow made it out of the water and began to walk and eventually evolved into a monkey, which evolved into a human being, and here we are today.
Ultimately, we die and go back into the ground and that’s it. There’s no beginning and no end. We’re just evolving with no purpose and no plan. So, if you think you came from a monkey, you’re going to act like a monkey. You will, because there’s futility, there’s no purpose behind life. If you think you came from nothing and you’re worth nothing and there’s nothing of a plan, so you’re hope is in nothing.
Now contrast that with this ~ the truth is this ~ you were thought of long before the earth was created. You were named and claimed by God, you were placed on this earth at a specific time because God has a particularly plan for you and I, knowing there are blessings and struggles which will come, yet His hope is to shape us to be the people He wants us to be, so we can ultimately dwell as children of God, and make a difference in the lives of others, for His glory, because He called us His children. You were chosen, you’re not an accident. No way. It was God’s grace which changed us.
Let me put it to you this way, if you were adopted in this life, you were chosen by your parents. Now, if you were born and placed into the hands of your biological parents they couldn’t look at you and say, “oh, we wanted a boy.” Or “I don’t like his nose.” When I was born and handed to my parents they couldn’t look at the doctor and say, “Nope, we don’t want this kid, can we see another one?” They didn’t get that option. When Joshua and Zachary were born, I didn’t get an option to give them back.
But if you were adopted it means some parents somewhere looked at you and said, “yes, he’s the one, she’s the one. We choose this child.” You may be thinking, ‘oh, if they only knew what I would be like the rest of my life, they wouldn’t have wanted me.’ And that’s my point, God did know what you would be like, and He still chose you.
Folks, that should change your life. It’s a simple truth that should change the way you look at yourself and the way you look at life. It should define how we act and treat other people. A similar truth changed that 8 year old boy.
Remember, Lee had been placed on that orphan train, had his father’s name and address taken, went all the way to Texas. The train stopped and his younger brother was adopted in one city, then they boarded the train again, a few cities later, his other brother was adopted. And back on the train, Lee was all alone.
In a small community in central Texas a farming family took him in and he was so homesick and afraid that he thought of running away. He didn’t know how to act on a farm. He woke up the next morning and went where the chickens were and opened up all their cages and they all got out. The farmer said, “I can’t have a city boy on my farm and he took him back to the train, which hadn’t left, and Lee was placed on the train.
So, Lee traveled again on the train until it stopped in another city and another family took a chance on Lee. At dinner that night, Lee said nothing. He went to bed making plans to run away. The next morning they seated him at a breakfast of biscuits and gravy. When he reached for one, this is how he described what happened,
Mrs. Nailling stopped me. She said, “Not until we’ve said grace.” I watched as they bowed their heads. Mrs. Nailling began to speak softly to “our Father” thanking Him for the food and the beautiful day. I knew enough about God to know that the woman’s “our Father” was the same one who was in the “Our Father who art in heaven” prayer that visiting preachers had recited over us at the orphanage.
But I couldn’t understand why she was talking to Him as though He were sitting here with us waiting for His share of the biscuits. I began to squirm in my chair. Then Mrs. Nailling thanked God “for the privilege of raising a son.” I stared as she began to smile. She was calling me a privilege. And Mr. Nailling must have agreed with her, because he was beginning to smile too. For the first time since I boarded the train, I began to relax. A strange warm feeling began to fill my aloneness and I looked at the empty chair next to me. Maybe, in some mysterious way, “our Father” was seated there, and was listening to the softly spoken words. “Help us make the right choices as we guide him, and help him make the right choices, too.”
As I heaped my plate I thought about that. Hate, anger and running away seemed to be my only choices, but maybe there were others. This Mr. Nailling didn’t seem so bad and this thing about having an “our Father” to talk to shook me up a little.
After breakfast, as they walked me to the barbershop for a haircut, we stopped at each of the 6 houses on the way. Each time the Naillings introduced me as “our new son.” As we left the last house I knew that I wouldn’t be running away the next day. There was a homeyness here that I’d never known before. At least I could choose to give it a try.
And there was something else. Although I didn’t know where Papa was, or how I could write to him, I had the strong feeling that I had found not one, but two new fathers, and I could talk to them both. And that’s the way it turned out.
It can turn out the same for you. Having been acquitted by God, the judge steps out from behind the bench and places His hands on your shoulders and He says, I now adopt you. Would you accept His grace today, would you know that Jesus loves you, He came for you . . . He chose you.
