Law & Grace
CCCAG August 13th, 2017
Scripture- Romans 7:14-24
About 14 years ago, I was driving to work when I got a phone call that they had a critical care transport coming out of a local hospital that they needed me to handle as I was the only ventilator trained medic that was available, and I should “hurry up”.
I was going down a county hwy at the time, and started to exceed the speed limit to hurry up and get to the hospital in question. As I passed a line of trees, I saw a flash of a car parked behind the trees and immediately knew it was a Kenosha County Sherriff deputy with a radar gun.
Sure enough, I saw him pull out and flashing blue lights filled my rearview mirror. I figured, I’m in uniform, and on my way to a critical call so he’ll give me pass. The deputy that came to the window looked like he was about 14 years old, and had the training badge on his chest. I told him the situation and why I was driving faster than normal. He nodded and went back to the cruiser to run my information.
A few minutes later he came back and handed me a speeding ticket. I told him, “I’m a paramedic, responding to a call, and you are giving me a ticket?” The deputy said, “You are in your personal vehicle, with no light or siren, and I checked and it’s not registered as a private emergency vehicle, so you are not allowed to act as an emergency vehicle. That is what the law says. Have a nice day sir”
I looked back to his training officer- Jim, who I had known for years and who was standing behind him and threw my hands up like, “Really?”.
Jim said, “Sorry Johnny, but he is right and I can’t cancel a ticket he wrote. He is very black and white, and so is the law in this circumstance. I’d take it up with the DA and get it reduced to something else.”
Was the training deputy right in what he did according to the law?
Absolutely, I deserved a ticket for speeding.
Did I want the law in this circumstance?
No, I wanted this nebulous idea of “professional courtesy.”
In our context, we would call it grace.
Over the last several weeks we have focused on God’s law as found in the 10 Commandments. Today we are going to balance those scales a bit by talking about the law’s relationship with grace.
During the time of the early church, the greatest authority of Old Testament Law was the Apostle Paul. Paul studied under the greatest bible teacher of his time- a rabbi named Gamaliel. Gamaliel’s Torah school was like wrapping Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Oxford all into one academy. If you graduated from his school, you had your career ticket written and were guaranteed a seat on the ruling council. In fact, history records that Paul was one of the youngest men ever to be appointed to the Sanhedrin- which in his time was the congress and Supreme Court all rolled up into one body.
Paul was a fanatic when it came to the law. Paul, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, wrote to the church at Philippi that when it came to the legalistic following of the law he was faultless.
Imagine that- all 613 regulations broken up into 35 different subjects found in the Mosaic and Levitical law- Paul executed them perfectly.
But you know what he said about his following the law so perfectly?
He counted all of that as refuse, or the literal translation would be,
“None of what I did amounted to a pile of manure”
Because he discovered the better way.
Today we are going to read about the law versus grace, and we will start off in Romans chapter 7, starting in verse 14 (ESV) (Slowly)
Roman 7:(14) For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?
Prayer
Big idea-
I want to say this as gently as I can because I know it may step on some sensibilities. Historically within the Assemblies of God we have been more leaning toward the law side instead of the grace side. In our pursuit of holiness, we sometimes strain the gnat of the law and swallow the camel of religious pride.
The problem with that, is we can never ever live up to the expectations of the law, because the law not only judges our actions, but the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. That is why Paul, a person who followed the law perfectly, then was able to say that all of that religious observance and sacrifice he had placed his faith in was nothing but a pile of manure, because he finally understood that his heart wasn’t right before God.
That is because Paul, before he met Jesus, missed the point of the law.
Let’s look at what he the law does-
I. Law exposes
The law is like the answer key to a multiple choice test.
You remember in school when you took a multiple choice test, and turned it into the teacher, and they would take a template and put it over your test that had cut outs where the correct answers were, and quickly the red pen came out and they marked where ever you got a wrong answer?
They held up the standard, and used it to judge where you failed.
That’s what the law does.
Do you remember standing around the teachers desk waiting for your quiz, and you see that guy or girl you don’t like turn in their test right before you, and the teacher wears out the red pen on their test…that little bit of a grin you’d get watching that?
There is something within our fallen human nature that loves when other people fail to measure up.
Friday, I looked at Foxnews, Drudge report, and CNN and these were some of the headlines- (Not the political stuff and I’m not naming the people involved)
Female teacher seduces boys in school
Famous star fights to prevent release of sex tape
Another famous Hollywood couple are divorcing
Politician caught accepting illegal campaign contributions.
Walking through the store the other day, I counted 7 different publications on the shelves dealing with exposing famous people’s failures and scandles.
Part of our fallen condition is to be fascinated by other people’s failures.
When I worked at my first paramedic job, and before I became one of the senior medics who could decide what we watched on TV, one of the programs that was a must watch program was the “Jerry Springer Show”. I watched 2 episodes of it before I was repulsed to the point of going into the ambulance and cleaning something rather than sit through that show.
If you don’t know, the Jerry Springer shows finds people…how shall we say- people on the lower end of the educational, social, or economic levels of our society with the strangest social problems and puts them on TV and lets them scream and fight with each other.
The show exposes the worst of people, all for our amusement.
And it’s not just a recent phenomenon. In fact, the bible records a similar event very early in the historical record.
Genesis chapter 9.
Noah lives through the flood has left the ark and starts rebuilding society, and begins with planting his own farm, which includes a vineyard. Noah harvests some grapes, makes wine, has a bit too much and ends up drunk in his tent naked.
If Jerry Springer had been born 4400 years ago, Noah would have been a guest.
His son Ham comes in, and sees Noah snoring on the floor. Ham said, “well that’s not Kosher”, and has a chuckle at his dad’s expense, even telling his brothers about it.
IF it were today, he would have snapped a picture of it and posted it to social media- it would have gone viral and we would see it on the news this evening.
Why was that funny or embarrassing? Because Noah did something that was not socially acceptable at that time- in other words, he broke a law- being drunk and being naked.
Ham used the law to expose his father’s sin for his own enjoyment.
We don’t really know why Ham disrespected his father like this-
Maybe he felt as the 2nd son, he was not loved as much by his father. Maybe he had a bad job on the ark. Maybe he felt this was his chance to get one up on his dad for being so strict with them.
Either way, he felt justified in what he was doing in using the law to expose his father’s sin.
Noah woke up and discovered what Ham did and pronounced a curse upon Ham and his son. I have no doubt, Ham was filled with regret after everything was said and done thinking, “Why was I such an idiot? Why did I have to curse my father? If it wasn’t for him, I’d be fish food right now…and now my whole family has to live under a curse”
This fits in with the scripture we read at the beginning of the message- To paraphrase the scripture from Roman’s we just read-
“I did not want to do what I did, but I still felt compelled to do so”.
How many of you have been there? I have, and probably will be again…and again…and again.
But that is the law’s job- to show us where we failed. Just like the police officer- it’s black and white, yes or no, pass or fail. No grading on the curve, and definitely no comparison to others.
You live up to it, or you fail. The bible says if you fail at any point in the law, you are guilty of breaking all of the law because the consequence is the same- eternal separation from God in hell.
But what the law exposes,
II. Grace Covers
In the story we are talking about in Genesis 9 there were two other sons of Noah named Shem and Japheth.
I imagine they were working in the fields and here comes Ham with a big grin on his face.
“Hey bros! You know where Mr. Holy Roller- I’m God’s man is right now? Come take a look at how God’s chosen prophet acts”
Shem might have walked up to the tent, smells the wine, hears the snoring, and began to understand what happened. He immediately turns from seeing inside the tent and drew Japheth aside and said, “Go to my tent and grab my best robe, and come back.” Japheth comes back and together they walk backwards into the tent and cover their father, all while looking away.
That’s grace. Grace covers what the law exposes.
In His book, Cure for the Common Life, Max Lucado talks about the time the bank sent him an overdraft notice on the checking account of one of his daughters. He says, “I encourage my college-age girls to monitor their accounts. Even so, they sometimes overspend.
“What should I do?” he asks. “Send her an angry letter? Admonition might help her later, but it won’t satisfy the bank. Phone and tell her to make a deposit? Might as well tell a fish to fly. I know her liquidity,” Lucado says. “Zero.”
“What should I do?” Lucado asks. “Transfer the money from my account to hers? Seemed to be the best option.” Lucado says, “I could replenish her account and pay the overdraft fee as well. Since she calls me Dad,” Lucado said, “I did what dads do. I covered my daughter’s mistake.”
When he told her she was overdrawn, she said she was sorry. Still, she offered no deposit. She was broke. She had one option, “Dad, could you…”
“Honey,” Lucado interrupted, “I already have.” He met her need before she knew she had one.
If you are a parent here, you have probably done that, more than once, to help your child.
That is what grace does- covers our failures. It’s exactly what God did through Jesus Christ. Long before we knew we needed grace, He made an ample deposit. Before we knew we needed a Savior, we had one. And when we ask him for mercy, he answers, “Dear child. I’ve already given it.”
(Max Lucado, Cure for the Common Life, Thomas Nelson, 2008, pp. 69-70; www.PreachingToday.com)
That’s what the cross is all about. It was God paying our sin-debt even before we knew we were in trouble.
You see, Law and Grace are not two opposite sides of God. What Law and Grace show us is the complete revelation of who God is to us- A Father that made sure his children’s debt was paid before they even needed it.
The law exposes, grace covers, but Jesus-
III. Jesus transforms
The original struggle Paul talked about in Romans- that the good he wanted to do he couldn’t, and instead did the evil he didn’t want to do is the struggle we all face.
The law exposes that struggle to us every day, and grace covers the sin that it produces, but God doesn’t want to leave you there in a constant cycle of sin and failure. God wants you to be transformed.
When I was in the army I was a squad leader for a time, and I got a call from my platoon sergeant to go and pick up one of my guys at the provost marshal’s office. Apparently, he had gotten picked up at the PX for something and he was sitting in a jail cell.
This was a farm kid from Iowa, who had just graduated basic training and AIT and was assigned to me. He had never been off the farm, nor even left his county prior to joining the military.
I grabbed a Humvee and drove down to see what is going on. I talked to the MP’s and they said he was caught writing bad checks at the PX, and now owed over 1000 dollars in bounced checks and fees. They were going to release him to me as long as he was kept on barracks restriction.
I picked him up and asked him, “You are facing criminal charges, and will definitely end up with a field grade article 15 if not a court martial. What were you thinking?”
He said, “But Sergeant Oscar, I still had checks in my checkbook, so I should have been ok. I don’t understand why the bank issued me this many checks if there was not enough money to cover them.”
Yes, he was that immature, and that ignorant of how finances work.
A lot of us treat God like that- a being who has a check book that never runs out to pay for our mistakes.
Even thought God’s graces covers us, and the blood of Jesus never runs dry, God doesn’t want to keep writing checks, He wants to change you from the inside out, so Jesus came to do just that.
How does Jesus transform us?
In John chapter 6 Jesus is getting into one of his famous arguments with the religious leaders of his time, and makes an incredible statement
Joh 6:51-58 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” (52) The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” (53) So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. (54) Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. (55) For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. (56) Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. (57) As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. (58) This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.”
Think about what Jesus is saying here-
I want to enter into you
I want to change you
I want your every moment of every day to be focused on me
I want you to be intimate with me that you actually draw from my power, my love, and my grace so that you can live a life that matters for the Kingdom of God.
Not a person so focused on the law that they forget to how to love
Not a person so enamored with grace that they forget to pursue holiness through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit
But a person who is so lost in Jesus, that when people look at you, all they see is HIM!
Jesus- The perfect balance between law and grace.
Jesus said whoever eats his flesh and drinks his blood has life, and we are going to end this morning by celebrating communion as a church family.
