What’s So Amazing About Grace
Before we open our Bibles this morning, I have a couple of questions for you. When does God love you the most? When does God love you the least? Please think about those questions.
Let’s open up our Bibles to Matthew chapter 20. I want to look at a parable. It is a parable that I didn’t like very much when I was young. Maybe you don’t like it much either. Maybe I didn’t like it because it didn’t make too much sense. It’s the parable of the Workers in the Vineyard. Mathew 20:1-16. I believe most of you are familiar with this parable. Let’s do a quick review. Who is the landowner? The landowner is God. What is this parable trying to teach us? The landowner’s dealing with the workers in his vineyard represents God’s dealing with the human family.
How many of you like this parable? There is a contemporary Jewish version of this story. You might like it better. It goes like this. The workers hired late in the afternoon work very, very hard. They work much harder. And they also have to work under a very hot sun. The employer is impressed with their hard work. So he decides to award them a full day’s wages. How do you like this contemporary Jewish version of the story? We like it better, don’t we? It seems fair. However, Jesus’ version is different. The last group had been idly standing around in the marketplace. This is something only lazy workers would do during the harvest season. The workers do nothing special to distinguish themselves. Eventually, the other workers are shocked by the pay they receive. What employer in his right mind would pay the same amount for one hour’s work as for twelve! This makes no economic sense!
We don’t like this parable. Why don’t we like it? I’ll tell you why. As Christians, when we read this parable we identify with the employees who put in a full day’s work. We like to think of ourselves as responsible workers. We don’t like 11th hour workers. We don’t really like people like the thief on the cross. He came in at the last minute. He walked in at about 11:59, with about 5 seconds left. He labors for 5 seconds. He says, “Lord, I believe.” And Scripture tells us that he was given a ticket into heaven. We don’t like such people who make confessions on their deathbed. Deep down in our hearts, we envy them. We think they were so lucky. We hate people who are luckier than we are. It is no wonder we don’t like this parable. The employer is right. Our hearts are evil, and that’s why we don’t like it.
What is Jesus trying to teach us through this parable which makes very little economic sense? I believe that what Jesus is trying to teach us is something that makes very little sense to us. Do you know what that is? It is grace. Jesus is trying to teach us about grace. Why does grace make very little sense to us? Why is it difficult for us to understand grace? I think it is because we rarely see it. On your way to church this morning, did you see grace?
We live in a very graceless world. Open the newspapers, or go to the internet, or turn on the t.v. and you’ll enter a world marked by wars, violence, economic oppression, religious strife, lawsuits, and family breakdown. Would you like to talk about family breakdown? The good news is this: There will be less family breakdown in the future. The reason is because there will be less families in the future. In The Korean Herald, which came out on March 22, 2002, I read an article about the marriage situation in Korea. The title of the article goes like this: Divorce rate rises to record high while marriages hit new low. There are more people divorcing than ever before. And more young people are planning to live as singles than ever before. Why is this? Could our homes be graceless? Well, it could be. But do you know what is really sad? Our churches are graceless.
Well known Christian author Phillip Yancey wrote a story he heard about in his book The Jesus I Never Knew. It goes like this: A homeless, sick prostitute who was unable to buy food for her 2 year old daughter came to me. Through sobs and tears, she told me that she had been renting out her two year old daughter, to men interested in kinky sex. She made more renting out her daughter for an hour than she could earn on her own in a night. She had to do it, she said, to support her own drug habit. I could hardly bear hearing her sordid story. For one thing, it made me legally liable—I’m required to report cases of child abuse. I had no idea what to say to this woman.
At last I asked if she had ever thought of going to a church for help. I will never forget the look of pure, naïve shock that crossed her face. “Church!” she cried. “Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They’d just make me feel worse.”
Put yourself in her shoes. If you were the prostitute, would you want to come to __________ S.D.A. Church? Now put yourself back in your own shoes. If a smelly, sick, homeless prostitute came into this church, what would you do? I know what I would do. I would send her away. I would tell her to go to the homeless shelter down the street. After all, church is for clean people. It’s for people who look good. And
smell good like you and me, right? I really would have to tell her to leave because you would all be so distracted by her presence you wouldn’t be listening to the sermon. If grace can’t be found in church, where can it be found?
It is no surprise that we don’t understand grace. We don’t see it. We don’t regularly experience it. On top of this, we have an image of God that is anti-grace. Our misconceptions are often fueled by our chronic habit of comparing God’s love to what we have experienced in life from others. We think, “God must be like Dad or Uncle Joe or the nice lady at the corner store.” If I’m correct, many of us have grown up with a very mathematical God. This God who is relentlessly weighing our good deeds and bad deeds on a set of scales. A God who always finds us wanting.
Somehow we have missed the God of the Gospels. A God of mercy and generosity. A God of grace. By the way, what exactly is grace? What does is mean to give grace? Well known Christian pastor Chuck Swindoll puts it this way: “To show grace is to extend favor or kindness to one who doesn’t deserve it and can never earn it.” One Christian author by the name of Ellen White puts it this way: “Grace is an attribute of God exercised toward undeserving human beings.” What is grace? Grace is an attribute or quality of God. Who is it given to? It is given to undeserving human beings. By definition, you receive grace because you are undeserving. I have a quiz question for you. I want to see if you really understand grace. Are you ready? Do angels receive grace? Yes or no? Do unfallen angels receive grace from God? Nope! They cannot experience God’s grace. Only you and I, because we are sinful. Go back to the definition. By definition, we receive grace because we are undeserving.
Have you tried hard to be really good? Have you believed that God will love you more if you are really good? It may work with your parents. Be a really good child, and you will receive more attention. Bring home better grades, and you will get bigger birthday presents. Maybe you’ll eat better food at home. I’m sure it would motivate your parents to work harder. I hear young Korean children all the time telling me the lies that their parents say to them. They say, “If I get all straight A’s, my parents are going to buy me a corvette when I turn sixteen. Is it any wonder our children are so worldly? After a few years, I see them again. Do you know what they are driving? Honda Civics. Parents, when they are young. Instead of promising them a corvette, what if you promise to send them on an incredible mission trip when they get older. And as they are growing up, you read them exciting stories about missionaries who are out in the jungles of Africa. They will love those stories. I loved hearing mission stories. Don’t you love hearing them? And when your child is older, you send him out on a mission trip that is full of adventure and service. And it will change their life. That is if you want to prepare your child for a life of service and for heaven. Anyways, let me get back to my sermon. You may be able to win your parents love, but you cannot win God’s love. You cannot earn God’s love. You cannot earn grace. Because grace by definition cannot be earned.
Look carefully at the parable. God does not dispense wages. Wages are what you earn. God dispenses gifts. Isn’t that good news? Ephesians 2:8 says, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.” It’s a good thing we don’t get paid according to merit. Because we would all be lost if we received what we deserved. Do you know why that is? Do you know what God’s requirement is for eternal life? God requires a perfect life. None of us comes close to satisfying God’s requirements for a perfect life. If we were all paid on the basis of fairness, we would all end up in hell. Aren’t you glad God dispenses gifts and not wages.
Isn’t this parable in Matthew 20 starting to look very, very beautiful? This parable makes it clear that we receive grace as a gift from God, not as something we toil to earn. Jesus made this point very clearly through the employer’s response in verses 13-15. Let’s read it again: “Friend, I am doing you no wrong. Did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what is yours and go your way. I wish to give to this last man the same as to you. Is it not lawful for me to do what I wish with my own things? Or is your eye evil because I am good?”
Isn’t God good? Aren’t you thankful for grace? In 2 Corinthians 8:9 it says, “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.” It’s not so easy for us to comprehend grace, is it? It is mind boggling. In a book on the life of Jesus called the Desire of Ages, it says, “He had been the commander of heaven, and angels had delighted to fulfill His word; now He was a willing servant…” Why did Jesus do this? It’s the “grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.” To the human mind, grace is not easy to understand. To the Korean mind, grace is even more difficult to understand.
My wife would go to a prison twice a week and volunteer her time as an English teacher. I went with her a couple of times. The students wanted to know about America. So one day I decided to answer all their questions. One student asked me if I ever experienced discrimination in America. I said that black people experience a lot of discrimination. But I’ve never experienced it in America. The first place I’ve ever experienced discrimination was here in Korea. And I told them about where I lived. I live on a university campus. In this academic environment, the most important thing are degrees and position. Where did professor so and so graduate from? What degrees does he or she have? What position does he hold? Is he a director of a department? If you have nice big degrees, and you have a good position, life is good. You are constantly reminded about it. If you don’t have nice big degrees, and you don’t have a good position, life is not so good. And you are constantly reminded about it.
You are all Korean. You all know about the graceless world that I’m talking about. It’s all a part of our lives. So it may require a struggle for us to understand this concept of grace. We find it too good to be true. Our cynical nature rebels against a concept this clean and absolute. There has to be a catch somewhere. There has to be something we do to earn salvation.
There is a cure for people who doubt God’s love and question God’s grace. Turn to the Bible and examine the kind of people God loves. The Bible tells of a murderer and an adulterer who gained a reputation as the greatest king of the Old Testament. A man after God’s own heart. It tells of a church being led by a disciple who cursed and swore that he had never known Jesus. And it tells of a missionary getting recruited from the ranks of the Christian-torturers. I watch the news, and I hear about Middle Eastern men, who hi-jack airplanes in the name of God, and turn them into suicide missiles, and I wonder, “What kind of human being can to that to another human being?” Then I read the book of Acts and meet the kind of person who could do such a thing. Paul, now an apostle of grace, a servant of Jesus Christ, the greatest missionary history has ever known. If God can love that kind of person, maybe, just maybe, he can love the likes of me.
I like the way Phillip Yancey describes grace in his book What’s So Amazing About Grace. He writes, “Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more—no amount of spiritual calisthenics and renunciations, no amount of knowledge gained from seminaries, no amount of crusading on behalf of righteous causes. And grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less—no amount of racism or pride or pornography or adultery or even murder. Grace means that God already loves us as much an infinite God can possibly love.” Can you say “amen.” Isn’t that beautiful?
No one loves you as much as God loves you. No one cares for you the way God cares for you. No one understands you the way God understands you. I know that your parents love you very much. Your parents would die for you. They would give everything they have for you. No one loves you as much as your parents. And yet it is so little in comparison to God’s love for you. Kim Allan Johnson, in his book The Gift says this: If you could collect all the parental love in this world, it would amount to just a thimble full in comparison to God’s love. Are you grateful for such love?
There was a man by the name of John Newton. He was a coarse, cruel slave trader. This man made a living by trashing the lives of others. But while he was busy trading slaves, he gradually discovered God’s love. And do you know what the love of God does? It changes people. It changed John Newton And he wrote a song about it. It is called Amazing Grace. Friends, I want you to know that the grace that I have been speaking about today is amazing grace. I have to insert this into the sermon. I am speaking about amazing grace. I am not speaking about the counterfeit. The counterfeit is called cheap grace. Do you know the difference between “amazing grace” and “cheap grace?” Allow me to paraphrase the words of a man named Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Amazing grace ... is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble, it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.
John Newton experienced amazing grace. He renounced his profession as a slave trader. He became a minister of the gospel. And he joined the fight against slavery.
How do you think John Newton felt about discovering God’s grace? Do you think he regretted his new discovery? Man, I wish I were still lost? Is that how he felt? Man, I wish I were still blind? Is that how he felt? I don’t think so. How does his song go? “Amazing grace! how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found; Was blind, but now I see.” Mr. Newton never lost sight of the depths from which he had been lifted. He never lost sight of grace. When he wrote “...That saved a wretch like me,” he meant those words with all his heart.
Do you think he wanted to tell others about God’s grace? Do you think he wanted to enter into the Lord’s vineyard? Do you think he wanted to be a laborer for the Lord? Absolutely! If John Newton had his choice, do you think he would have wanted to be a 3rd hour laborer, a 9th hour laborer, or an 11th hour laborer? He would have wanted to be a third hour laborer. How about you friends? Isn’t the sooner the better? Why wait to experience grace? Are you glad to be here today? Has it been a joy to know Jesus? Has it been a joy to work as a co-laborer with Jesus?
I have a question. Why would we envy the 11th hour workers? If we envy the 11th hour workers, it is because we have forgotten that we are saved by grace. And when you forget about grace, you fall into legalism. Legalism is where a person tries to earn heaven by your good works. And therefore, you can’t help but envy those who receive the same reward for doing less. But when we remember that we are saved by grace, there is joy for the 11th hour workers.
Friends, do you understand grace? It is one thing to know about it intellectually. It is Are you experiencing the freedom from fear and insecurity that comes from knowing that God loves you no matter what? It’s so important for us Christians to know about our God of grace. If you don’t understand God’s grace, you will be motivated by fear instead of love as you serve Him. There are so many miserable Christians who serve God out of fear. They serve God because they are afraid of being punished in hell fire. Oops, I made a mistake. God must be very upset. He is going to send me to hell. Oh, I have to be better. I have to make Him happy. I have to pay more money to the church. I have to do more good works. I have to make Him smile. Can you really love such a God? You can serve Him and change your behaviour and do things to please Him. But you can never truly love such a God. Unless you are motivated by love, you cannot truly love. In 1 John 4:19 it says, “We love Him because He first loved us.” The only reason we really loved Him is because He first loved us. Love awakens love. And the only reason we can continue to really love Him is because He continues to give us His unchanging, unconditional love. It’s simply “grace.” It is my prayer that you are abiding in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
