AMAZING GRACE
Text: Ephesians 1:6,7b,8a
I want to think with you this morning about the grace of God.
The text is from Ephesians, the first chapter, verses 6, 7, and 8:
"Let us praise God for his glorious grace, for the free gift he gave us in his dear son. How great is the grace of God which he gave to us in such large measure."
I was treated some time ago to an amazing example of grace. My wife and I took most of our family to Disney World when the grandchildren were little. There were nine of us in the party, including three grandchildren, and we spent five days doing the Magic Kingdom, Epcot Center, and the new MGM Studio Tour. Let me tell you, when you have nine people living together, standing together in the hot sun trying to decide which ride to go on next, you need a lot of grace!
We left early in the morning, and flew to Orlando. On the previous evening, our grandson, five-year-old Robbie, had fallen over the dog and hurt his foot. His parents took him to the hospital where they x-rayed his foot, pronounced it OK, wrapped it in an Ace bandage, and told him to go enjoy Disney World.
We got to Florida the next day, arrived at the Magic Kingdom at about 4:00 p.m., and spent the next seven hours riding on Space Mountain and doing everything else you do there, with Robbie running around on his taped foot. We arrived back at the motel at midnight to find a call waiting for us. The hospital had called back and the message was relayed to us: They had looked at the x-ray again and had discovered that his foot was broken.
So, Robbie and his parents spent all the next morning at the hospital getting a cast put on his foot. We waited for them by swimming in the motel pool with the other two grandkids. Not exactly how we had expected to spend our time in Florida. When they got back about 1:00 p.m. we ate a quick lunch and went to Epcot. The first thing we did was to rent a wheelchair for Robbie, to avoid carrying him and to keep from tiring him out by walking. They had fitted his cast with a shoe and he could walk on it, but it was a lot easier on everyone to push him around in a wheel chair. It saved his energy, and extended the day. Even so, as we entered the park we thought; pushing him around in this thing for four days is going to be a drag.
Well, we were wrong! That wheel chair was the open sesame to an experience of grace that I have never seen before. The very first thing we did was to get in the line for Spaceship Earth, the ride inside the huge geodesic dome which is the symbol for EPCOT. But no sooner had we gotten in the line than a man with a walky-talky and a uniform and his name on a little tag came along and said, "There’s a wheelchair line inside if you want to go in there." So we went inside and, although we didn’t save any time, we were able to sit down inside instead of standing outside in the sun. Then they took us all through a back door and right onto the ride with scarcely any walking at all. We just looked at each other in amazement.
That sort of thing happened to us at most of the attractions. At the building called Motion which deals with transportation, we stood in the line outside. As soon as we got inside the building and started for the second line a man came up, took us immediately to a ramp where we had a 30-second walk right into the car instead of another 30-minute wait.
On Sunday, we got in the line for the Jungle Cruise at the Magic Kingdom. The last time we were there, we tried three times to get on this ride, but never could because of the tremendously long lines. As soon as we got in the line a man came along with a walky-talky and a uniform and a name tag and said, "The wheelchair line is around there." We went "around there" and immediately got onto a boat which was filled exclusively with wheelchair parties. Again, thirty seconds instead of thirty minutes.
Sunday night, we headed for Main Street to get a spot for the Light Parade. You had to be there an hour ahead of time if you wanted to be able to see this spectacular 9:00 p.m. show. I have never seen more than a sliver of it before over the heads of ten rows of people in front of me. Having to stand for an hour waiting and then for another half hour for the show did not thrill me. We picked ourselves a spot and settled in for a long standing-wait, but immediately a man in a uniform with a walky-talky and a name tag came along and said, "We have a wheel chair section right up there." They not only put us right in front of the Castle, they put us right on the curb with no one in front of us, and there were benches along the wall that we could sit on! We thought we were in heaven: the best of all places to see the parade, and benches to sit on. We saw the parade like we have never seen it before, and all because Robbie fell over the dog,.
We spent some time on the trip home debating whose foot we would break next time we went to Disney World.
Now, I have to admit that I hate it when people jump the line ahead of me and get special privileges which I am not allowed to share. But it feels entirely different when you are the one receiving the special privilege! Not once did we ask for special treatment. In every case, they came to us and asked if we wanted to make use of their wheelchair facilities. I should point out that in most cases we had to wait for as long as we would have been standing in line. I think they have to do this so that people don’t use wheelchairs as a scam to jump lines everywhere. I hate to think of going to Disney World some day and finding everyone in wheelchairs!
But I was overwhelmed by the caring that was expressed for people who were having trouble. On the Jungle Cruise boat were people who were suffering from far more that a broken foot: a woman with two false legs, a retarded child, an elderly stroke victim, people who have known a great deal of suffering in their lives. And the management came to them and said in effect, "We know that your life has been hard. We know that you have come here trying to forget your troubles and have a little fun. We don’t want your incapacities to spoil our fun, so let us help you. Let us make it a little easier for you." That was grace, pure and simple.
Grace is a concept which is at the very center and heart of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Without grace there is no faith and no salvation. One writer explained grace this way. "Human beings are born broken. They live by being mended. The grace of God is the glue."
Another writer has said, "What is grace? Well, many learned people have thought about grace for centuries. Most of them think it has to do with forgiveness and mercy. But I’m inclined to disagree with them. I rather think grace means just the constant presence of God." The basic definition of grace means "the undeserved love of God" which saves us from sin and grants us salvation.
This idea of grace is suggested in our text. Verse 5 says "God had already decided that through Jesus Christ he would make us his children; this was his pleasure and purpose."
That means we didn’t do anything to make it happen. God decided to make us his own even before we were born, and then he sent Jesus to make it all possible. We couldn’t earn it but we can receive it as a free gift. That’s the meaning of grace. Undeserved love.
Nearly a century ago, a famous English preacher described in vivid detail the practice of one particular lord of the manor. Every year on Christmas day, this lord gave all the poor people who were his subjects a generous basket of food. Every person brought a basket with him and the lord’s custom was to fill the basket completely. Each time they came, year after year, the baskets got bigger and bigger, until the lord wondered how they could stagger away under the weight of all that food on the way home. But no matter how large the basket was, he filled it every time. They came because they knew about his wealth and because they trusted in his free-flowing generosity.
That’s a very small picture of the grace of God. We are poor servants who are starving to death spiritually, but God has promised to fill our baskets, no matter how large our need.
From the very beginning of God’s dealing with mankind, the primary effect of God’s grace has been to save us from sin and to make us presentable in the presence of God. Because of his tender heart, and his overflowing divine love and mercy, God wants to include everyone in his saving act. He wants all to be forgiven and to come into his presence. What a disaster it would have been if God, after the creation, had simply walked away and left us there in our sin and our isolation! But he didn’t. He loves us into his kingdom. That is what grace is all about.
What it means to live under grace is illustrated by the life of John Newton. Newton was born in London, half a century before the American Revolution, to a mother of superb spiritual qualities and a nondescript father. His mother died when he was six. Five years later he went to sea with his father who was a ship’s captain. He became a midshipman and for a time led a wild existence, living in utter disgrace. He rejected the God of his mother, he renounced any need of religion and he lived an irresponsible and sinful life. Eventually he became a slave trader, crossing the ocean several times as captain of slave ship, responsible for terrible human degradation among the captives he had crowded on board. But grace was always a factor in his life. He survived a deadly fever in Africa, and his ship survived a terrible storm which almost killed him.
Finally, dissatisfied with his life, he began reading the writings of Thomas a Kempis. Somehow, the Holy Spirit began stirring inside his soul, awakening him from sin, urging him toward salvation until he finally gave his heart to Christ. He was so thoroughly converted, in fact, that he felt a call from God to enter the ministry. He was eventually ordained in 1781 and accepted a pastorate in Olney, England.
But Newton’s disgraceful past never left his memory and he was completely dumbfounded over the privilege of living joyously free under the divine grace of God. In an intense moment of inspiration, when he was thinking of the wonder of the grace of God which had saved even a wretch like him, he wrote the hymn, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound."
One person has written this about grace. "The grace of God is only discovered by experiencing it in life, not by hearing about it or talking about it, but by feeling it in your own life. The less a man knows from his own experience about the saving work of God, the more he emphasizes the human element, how much he has to do, how much he has earned his own salvation. But the more he knows about the grace of God, the more he experiences it in his own life, the more he knows that it is a free gift."
As I stood in front of Cinderella’s Castle and marveled at our good fortune in being invited to have the best seats for the parade, I looked at Robbie. He was five years old, sitting on the edge of his wheelchair, his foot in a cast, his face covered with wonder and excitement as he watched the floats going by five feet away from him. At that moment, I knew I was going to preach this sermon.
The image of that five-year old child in a wheelchair with a broken foot being given this gift of joy without asking for it is a wonderful example of grace. It is our brokenness, our need, our weakness which brings the gifts of God to us. When we are strong, tough, filled with a sense of our own strength, convinced that we have made everything happen by our own wisdom, we miss out on true life. Only when we become like children, only when we take our brokenness to God, only when we realize our littleness and our helplessness, can God take us into his magic kingdom.
May your brokenness open you also to an experience of God’s grace.
