Ann J. Musico, New York - My son, Matthew, was 7 when the school sent home his standardized test scores. When I saw that he had scored a 99% in math, I praised him and said, "You must have inherited Daddy's math genes." The look on my husband's face was priceless when Matthew ran up to him and said, "Daddy, look what I got on my math test. I guess I do have your math pants!"
It doesn’t surprise us when we see what parents have poured into their children being lived out by their children. The principle works:
Do you want to see your children be honest? Be honest with them. Keep your promises to them.
Do you want to see your children be kind? Treat them with kindness.
Do you want to see your children be unselfish? Place their needs before your own.
Do you want to see your children be forgiving? Forgive them when they mess up.
Should it surprise us, then, that God expects His children to be people who show grace to one another, and to others too? Have you received God’s grace? By this time, are you grateful that God made another way, a way apart from Law, that we can stand clean before Him?
God has poured out His grace on us. The outcome of receiving grace, is to extend grace to others. Verse 10 gives us an order for how that’s supposed to happen. First, in the Church, 2nd, to everyone. Let’s look in first…
I. Extend Grace in the Lord’s Household (vv1-6)
There are different people in the Church. There always should be. I see 3 kinds here in these first verses: v1 is a person who has stumbled. Vv2-5 involves a person who is burdened. V6 involves a person who teaches. All of them are people in the Church who need us to extend grace to them.
1. To Those Who Stumble
Joke – a sheriff deputy was on the road when he came across a one-car accident. A man driving a pickup truck with a horse trailer had blown a Firestone tire and wrecked into a ditch on a lonely road. He was thrown from his truck, the horse was thrown from the trailer, and his dog in the back of the pickup also was thrown. The deputy first came across the horse. It was badly injured, and there was no chance it could recover. Being a humane man, and hating to see an animal suffer, he drew out his service pistol and put it out of its misery. Then, he saw the dog. It was badly hurt, and whimpering. There was no chance it would live either, so he put it down with a single shot. Finally, he located the driver of the truck. He was lying over in the ditch. He had several broken bones and was unable to get up. The deputy ran over to him and said, “Are you OK?” The man said, “Never felt better!!!”
- Regrettably it has sometimes been true that “The Church is the only army In history that shoots its own wounded.”
-*v1 – notice: This is a person in the Church. Sin happens. Even a godly person is capable of choosing wrong. Otherwise, why would Paul say, “Watch out yourself, or you’ll have the same kind of problem!”
This person is guilty. “Caught” could mean “caught up in a sin” or it could mean “got caught” by someone. Either way, it’s speaking about someone who is guilty, and others know about it.
So what do we do? Extend grace. What did God do while we were still powerless, while we were still sinners, while we were without hope, without God, alone in the world; while you were a prodigal son, a runaway who turned his back on the Father? Extended grace. He extended grace. So should you.
I’m tired, along with a lot of you, at the overuse of the word “tolerance” in our current culture. We’re supposed to have ‘tolerance’ of people who look different, who think different, who live different, even if we find their choices to be immoral.
Well, that’s wrong. We’re supposed to do better than just be “tolerant.” We’re supposed to extend grace.
-Tolerance looks at the person with egg on his face and just puts up with him. Grace looks at that person and says, “Here, let me help you. You have a spot there.”
-Tolerance looks at the Hispanic person who’s having trouble communicating in the store and waits until he’s gone without complaining. Grace approaches that person as someone who needs help and tries to meet his need.
-Tolerance says to the unmarried pregnant teenager, “Well, I won’t say you did anything wrong. Go ahead and choose what you want to do. It’s all about you having the freedom to choose what you want.” Grace says to her, “Yes, you’ve made a wrong choice, but I care about you and I realize you could use some help making better choices in the future. Let me tell you, there’s hope, and I’d like to help you see it.”
The goal in extending grace to the person who has stumbled isn’t toleration; it’s “restoration.”
(Heb 12:11-13) No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees. "Make level paths for your feet," so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.
-Amputation of a badly injured limb takes less time, but in the long run the loss is greater. Stumbled Christians can be difficult to restore, but we should prefer that that lame limb be healed instead of amputated. As those who have received grace, we must extend grace to the person who stumbles.
2. To Those Who are Overburdened
-some people here today are “burdened.” Some are single moms. Some are struggling financially; some are widows; someone is a young person, faced with pressure and about to cave; someone else is having job trouble. Paul says, “Bear one another’s burdens.”
-The word here isn’t the kind of “load” we all have. Let’s face it, just getting out of bed can be a load some mornings! No, there’s a different word in V5. No one can get out of bed for me! That’s a load I’ll have to carry. You have a load like that and you need to carry it. (v5)
-But the load Paul speaks of here that we’re to help with is the one that’s too much.
Ill - You’re going to go on a one-week pack trip into the mountains of Colorado with a church camp group. Everything you need for a whole week you’re going to carry in on your backs. The morning of the 20-mile hike in, everyone loads up their backpacks with the provisions for the trip. You drive to the trail head, and everyone puts on their pack. 10 miles into the trek, you’re still doing OK. Looking around you, there are some who are really struggling. They can’t seem to “hack it” What’s their problem? But that’s OK. The more the other guy struggles, the better it makes you look. What you don’t realize is that your pack is full of potato chips while his is loaded with the cast iron skillets.
Some of us pride ourselves in the way we carry our “pack,” don’t we? We don’t realize what the other guy is carrying. As long as we look good, we’re content to let him struggle along. So, we begin to think, maybe even to say, “Aren’t I something?” when in fact we’re nothing. If we would just take some of the load that the other guy is carrying and add it to ours, we wouldn’t have quite the same air about us.
What would prevent me from restoring or from having a gentle spirit? The desire to be one up on the other guy so I look good.
Our reason for joy and satisfaction in serving Jesus needs to be in our own faithfulness, not in the failures or weakness of others.
Ill - Spring of 94 Mr. Alter's fifth-grade class at Lake Elementary School in Oceanside, California, included 14 boys who had no hair. Only one of them had no choice in the matter. Ian O'Gorman, undergoing chemotherapy for lymphoma, faced the prospect of having his hair fall out, so he had his head shaved. But then 13 of his classmates shaved their heads, so Ian wouldn't feel out of place.
10-yr-old Kyle Hanslik started it all. He talked to some other boys, and before long they all agreed and trekked to the barber shop with their parents’ permission.
Kyle said, "The last thing he would want is to not fit in. We just wanted to make him feel better." Ian's father, Shawn, choked back tears as he talked about what the boys had done. He said simply, "It's hard to put words to."
The teacher, Mr. Alter, was so moved by the spirit of his class that he also shaved his head.
We need to extend grace to those who are overburdened. We need to come alongside those who struggle and say, “Hey, I was helped when I needed it. Let me help you.”
3. To Those Who Teach *v6
I can’t say I see for sure why Paul included this verse here, except that God’s grace should be extended to everyone in the Church – from those who are in the pits of failure to those who seem to be on top of things.
Remember that those who lead need God’s grace extended to them too! They’ll disappoint you sometimes. Still, Paul says to share all good things with those who teach. Often that may mean your time, your hospitality, your friendship and your love.
-Extend God’s grace to those who teach.
Now, vv7-8 Paul refers to all this grace extending as “sowing to please the Spirit.”
There’s a law at play here – the law of harvest.
(Gal 6:7-8) Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his flesh, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. That’s the law of harvest.
Story – In OH, Jenni had a science fair project. We had to go buy some plants for it, so, at the nursery, we bought some plants labeled mild banana peppers, figuring I liked those on sandwiches and we could put them in our garden after the science fair. The fair ended, we put 12 pepper plants out in the garden. They did OK. Mid-summer, after we had been gone for 2 weeks, I was going through the garden. Andy’s friend Ryan was visiting, and it was lunch time. Maybe we could have some fresh banana peppers on our sub sandwiches. There were beautiful orange peppers growing on the plants. I had never seen an orange banana pepper before, but we picked a couple and took them in. The prospect of eating something he had just seen picked really excited 5 yr old Ryan. So, I would slice the peppers as Carrie fixed the sandwiches. Ryan watched eagerly as the slices rolled off the knife. “Here,” I said, “you want a bite?” “Sure!” and I handed him one. Then I turned to eat one myself. As I chewed the slice, I could tell something wasn’t right. A sudden rush of fire engulfed my mouth. I looked back at Ryan. He was fanning his extended tongue. After we both stopped jumping around, we drank ½ gal of milk between us, and 15 minutes later or so the burning finally stopped. My local pepper expert identified the peppers for me. What had been labeled “mild banana peppers” were actually scotch bonnet peppers – 20X hotter than jalapenos - one of the 2 hottest in the world! Ryan didn’t come over for lunch for a long time after that!
Whenever you plant something, a law’s at play – the law of harvest. Whatever you plant, that’s what you’ll get. No matter how much I thought it or wanted mild banana peppers, that’s not what I planted, so that’s not what I got. The same law applies when it comes to extending God’s grace to other people. Sow seeds of life – extend God’s grace to people who need it – and the result will be life. Or, withhold God’s grace, the same grace that has been extended to you, put your effort and treasure in life into things just for your self, and you’ll get corruption. That’s the way it works.
II. Extend Grace to All People (vv7-10)
Now, up to this point, this has been all about in-house grace extending. We’re pretty good at that in the Church. After all, these folks here deserve it – Oops! No, it’s not about deserving it. In fact, grace by definition means you don’t deserve it. That’s part of what ought to make it easier for us to extend God’s grace outside these doors.
Paul writes here, let us do good to all men – that’s pretty inclusive. Can we do it? Can we extend grace to the person who doesn’t treat us nicely? Can we extend grace to someone who’s a total stranger? Can we extend grace to the neighbor who never says Hi? Can we do that? Well, yes…
1. We Have Opportunity
What? Are you having trouble finding someone who has stumbled? Someone who’s overburdened? How about the “successful” person who’s without Jesus? Are you actually thinking that there aren’t enough people like that around for you to find someone who needs you to extend God’s grace to him?
V9 says at the right season we’ll reap a harvest. V10 uses that same word: “while it’s the right season, let us do good to all men…”
Open your eyes to the opportunity!
Jn 4, the disciples are coming back out of town after getting lunch, and Jesus has been extending His grace to another stranger who didn’t deserve it. The people of the city are headed out to meet Jesus, and He says, (John 4:35) Do you not say, 'Four months more and then the harvest'? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest.
• Over 1000 different young people spent time at The Bridge on north Rangeline last year. There’s a lot of good that can happen there.
• Next month, our missions fair is also an outreach opportunity – a chance to invite your friends to something non-threatening. ½ the people of our county aren’t in church services this morning!
• Here in Joplin there are so many different ministries where a person can help. Unless you work at one of them, there’s probably someone at your job who you have an opportunity to share the love of Jesus with
• You young people are about to head back to school (sorry!) You have a chance to have people there see what Jesus really means to you.
• A number of our church family have been overseas to help on mission fields. Most missionaries would welcome your visit.
• Right now, in different pockets around the world, there are new places where the gospel can be freely taken. Ask Jim and Reggie about the openness in Cuba right now!
The point is we have opportunity. Now is the time of opportunity!
Ill - In Zaire, there was a government medical station close to many of the natives. So it surprised some medical missionaries when several of the natives went well out of their way to receive care at the missionaries’ compound. After the natives received treatment, the missionaries asked why they had traveled so much farther. The natives replied, "The medicine is the same at the other station, but the hands are different here."
Remember the last part of our vision statement:
-To demonstrate God’s love by service to others.
Can you imagine what would happen if the people of this congregation were suddenly noticed around the city of Joplin, committing acts of kindness just as a practical way to demonstrate the love of God?
In Mt 10:42 Jesus spoke of the significance of even just giving a cup of cold water as His follower. It’s not insignificant. It’s doing good to people while we have the chance, because ultimately some of those people are going to contact the love of God through it. We have opportunity. Let’s consider how we can better tap that in the future.
2. We Will Have a Reward
-Remember the law of harvest! If you’ll pour yourself into this thing of doing good, there will be a harvest.
-Paul says there will be from the Spirit a harvest of eternal life. What would be the harvest of extending God’s grace to the people around us – not because we’re after something, but because we’ve had kindness extended to us when we don’t deserve it? What would happen?
Paul was writing here to people who were struggling with the whole concept of God’s grace and what it means to be people living under grace. Is it a coincidence that here at the end of the letter he speaks about the way we care for people? Not at all! The outcome of receiving God’s grace is that we extend it to others.
Let me suggest to you that if you struggle with being kind, if you struggle with caring about Christians who stumble and need to be restored, if you struggle with offering help where it’s not deserved, maybe it’s because you haven’t learned how to receive that yourself. Maybe you haven’t grasped what it means to be a person who has received God’s grace in your life. “Carry his burden? I carry my own weight! Let him carry his. After all, ‘God helps those who help themselves.’ It says that in there somewhere, doesn’t it?”
No, it doesn’t. It says, “Let us do good to all men, especially to those who are of God’s household.”
Conclusion:
Philip Yancey notes that toward the end of his life, Albert Einstein removed the portraits of 2 scientists--Newton and Maxwell--from his wall. He replaced those with portraits of Gandhi and Schweitzer. Einstein explained that it was time to replace the image of success with the image of service.
The people of God ought to be noted as the people who extend grace, because they’ve received grace.
Ill – The happiest and most content 5 dogs I ever met belonged to Steve and Alberta Kelly in OH. They weren’t jumpy or mean. They were kind to each other. They were all hard-luck cases from Dr. Sharp, their veterinarian friend. Each one had a story. One had been shot by an angry neighbor. One had been hit by a car. One had been abandoned and nearly died from exposure. Dr. Sharp would call up Steve, see if they wanted another, and they’d take him in. I was amazed at what their collective experience had done to those dogs. They were great to have around because they were just happy to be alive.
Has God shown His love to you? Has God shown extended His grace to you?
Jesus said, as He sent out the 12 to serve, “Freely you have received. Freely give.”
The person who has received grace is the one who’s able to give it to others
Have you received God’s grace?
