Jesus Bring Us Grace
--John 1:14 and Luke 1:50
Lynn Harold Hough was a Methodist pastor in the early part of the twentieth century and became the President of Northwestern University. In 1908 he became the first to write a “Pledge of Allegiance to the Christian Flag”. Once when he was speaking to a conference of pastors in Los Angeles he told this story: “A group of men, at work in a coal mine, were trapped deep in the earth because of a cave-in of a shaft. Their only hope lay in rescue from the outside.” [--W. T. Purkiser, ed. Exploring Our Christian Faith (Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill Press, 1966), 270.]
That, my brothers and sisters, is the message we have been proclaiming during the entire Season of Advent. Just like those coal mines who depended upon rescue from the outside, you and I as sinners needed Someone from the outside to redeem us from sin and death, and that is the reason Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem. As the trapped miners could do nothing to save themselves, so there was and there still is nothing you and I can ever possibly do to save ourselves from sin and death. This is a picture of grace.
God has blessed us with a Wonderful Advent and Christmas at Central United Methodist Church. I have especially been blessed and drawn closer to Jesus in preparing the messages for this Holy Season: “Jesus Brings Us Peace,” “Jesus Brings Us Love,” “Jesus Brings Us Joy”, and “Jesus Brings Us God.” In the time of preparation for each one of them I can honestly say, as we share in our Emmaus small groups called Reunion Groups; those were the times each week when I “felt closest to Christ.”
In preparing the final two messages for Advent, two verses from the greater context really grabbed my attention and seemed to keep saying to me, “That will preach.” The first were the words from Mary’s Song in Luke 1:50 from the message “Jesus Brings Us Joy.” Recall that verse one more time with me this morning:
“His mercy extends to those who fear Him;
From generation to generation.”
The word “mercy” was the attention grabber for me. Then go back one more time to John 1:14 from last Sunday’s message “Jesus Brings Us God”:
“The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We
have seen His glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from
the Father, full of grace and truth.”
The attention grabber for me in that verse, which recalled the one from Luke as well, was the word “grace.” Therefore, I want to share one more message of the Season on this Sunday after Christmas Day, “Jesus Brings Us Grace.”
When you look up the words grace and mercy in a thesaurus, you find they are indeed synonyms along with goodwill, which is another word that reminds me of the Gospel’s account of Christmas. That is the message of Luke 2:13-14, “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying:
‘Glory to God in the highest,
And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!’”
Jesus brings us grace, mercy, goodwill. Jesus if “full of grace,” and
Mary praises God whose “mercy extends to those who fear Him.” The
Baptist pastor from the early twentieth century Rolfe Barnard once said,
“Mercy is God’s favor that holds back from us what we deserve. Grace is
God’s favour that gives us what we do not deserve.” [--http://www.cfdevotionals.org/devpg98/de980610.htm].
Traditionally we define grace as “The unmerited favor of God.” If I merit something, I deserve it; it means that I have earned it. A student takes “The National Merit Scholarship Exam,” scores high, and wins a college scholarship as the result. That student has earned the scholarship; he or she deserves it.” When it comes to salvation, forgiveness of sins, eternal life, I can do absolutely nothing to earn it; and it is something I will never deserve.
Grace declares that God has always been the One to take the initiative in bringing us salvation. It was God in the Garden of Eden Who came seeking His lost children in Genesis 3:8-9, “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as He was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man, ‘Where are you?’” God came seeking His sinful children who were hiding from Him in fear and trembling, because He is a God of grace. As God came in the garden seeking Adam and Eve, so Jesus states this is His same ministry and mission and his promise to Zacchaeus in Luke 19:10, “For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”
God promised in that very garden that He would send Jesus to be their Saviour from sin when in 3:15 He spoke these words to the serpent:
“And I will put enmity
Between you and the woman,
And between your offspring and hers;
He will crush your head,
And you will strike His heel.”
God fulfilled that promise in the death of Jesus on Calvary when Jesus
”crushed Satan’s head” with His nail pierced feet.
Even as He expelled them from the garden, God’s initiative was at work in Genesis 3:21 when “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.” “Garments of skin” required an animal sacrifice, a prelude to the sacrifice of Jesus, to Whom John the Baptist would point and say, “Look, the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world!’” [--John 1:29]. The initiative has always been God’s, not ours. Although we try to hide from Him, God in His infinite grace has always come seeking us, and He did it once and for all in the birth, death, and resurrection of His Son Jesus.
Paul affirms that “Jesus Brings Us Grace” in Titus 2:11, 13-14: “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. . . .while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, Who gave Himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for Himself a people that are His very own, eager to do what is good.” Jesus “appeared to all men and gave Himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness” and “to purify us as His very own people, eager to do what is good,” and He did it all as an act of His grace, not by our own merit.
While grace and mercy are basically one and the same characteristic of God, we can “split hairs” and see a distinction. Vaughan Durston, Founder of “U. B. David and I’ll B. Jonathan Inc.,” shares two stories that make this clear. Remember Rolfe Barnard’s definition: “Grace is God’s favour that gives us what we do not deserve.” “Twin brothers had the chore of filling the wood box for their mother’s cook stove in the kitchen. If her wood box wasn’t full by supper time, there would be no supper for those who were supposed to fill it. A number of times the twins would be sitting at the table, hoping that mother would say it was time for supper. Instead she would walk over to the wood box, lift up the lid, and say, ‘I see my wood box isn’t full.’ She could have called out, ‘Supper time!’ but, instead, she would say, ‘I’m going to give you five minutes grace.’ The twins would quickly scramble out to the wood pile and get that wood in the wood box before supper.”
That’s grace; the twins did not deserve their supper according to Mom’s rule. [--http://www.ubdavid.org/telstory/telstory_pages/telcab5.html]. We don’t deserve eternal life, forgiveness of sins, or fellowship with God because of sin, but Jesus came to “redeem us from all wickedness” and “to purify us as His very own people.”
Durston’s second story illustrates that “while grace is getting what we don’t deserve, mercy is not getting what we do deserve-judgment, condemnation, punishment, death. Durston tells the story of Ted, a horse that received mercy. Ted was “a difficult horse.” “He was always getting into things. If the gate was open he would be out into the crops. If he could find a spot in the fence, he would be pushing his way through it.” If Ted were a human, we would call him, ‘A real sinner!’”
“One day Ted was in dire circumstances because he did something he shouldn’t have done. He was stuck in the mud, up to his neck in water and mud. Only a small strip down his back was left showing. He couldn’t move and was sinking lower and lower every minute.
“Ted’s master and some neighbors got a long, heavy rope and the tractor. They threw one end of the rope around Ted’s neck and tied the other end to the tractor. By then Ted surely wanted to be saved, but it was just about too late. Slowly, the tractor inched forward and, amazingly Ted was pulled out of the mud! There he was, plastered with mud, but standing safely on solid ground. After they washed him off, he looked as good as new. Ted was saved from drowning in mud that day, even though he deserved to drown. That was mercy.” [--http://www.ubdavid.org/telstory/telstory_pages/telcab5.html].
Jesus came to “seek and to save the lost,” to save us from judgment, condemnation, punishment, and eternal death. These are things we all deserve, “for the wages of sin is death. . .” and we “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 6:23 and Romans 3:23), but the Good News of the Gospel is “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men” and “whoever calls on the Name of the Lord shall be saved” (Romans 10:13).
Ted, just like the coal miners in our opening story, needed someone from the outside to save Him, to “pull him out of the mud.” Jesus is the Someone from the outside to save us by His grace. Perhaps you find yourself today in the predicament of Ted, “stuck in the mud of sin.” Simply ask Jesus to come into your heart and “pull you out of the mud.” Ask Him to forgive you your sins. He gives us the sure promise of I John 1:9, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Accept Jesus as your Saviour, and by His mercy He will save you from the penalty of sin—judgment, condemnation, punishment, and eternal death, and by His grace He will give you what you cannot earn and do not deserve—forgiveness, fellowship with him now and eternal life with Him forever. We would love to pray with you and help you do that right now. Jesus is here to “Bring You His Grace.”
