Merritt, Ashcroft Song: 108 Amazing Grace
Scripture: Hebrews 12:15, See to it that no one fails to obtain the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up and causes you trouble, or many of you will become defiled.
When I was in self-supporting work, the leader taught from Child Guidance that he hit his 4 year old son with a willow switch until his son never disobeyed him again. I had a very wrong picture of God. One day George and I were watching Grace channel. We turned to each other and said, “Can it really be true? Can God’s grace really be like that?” I’m thankful that I learned the true meaning of grace. Otherwise when I had a stroke February, 2013, I would have thought that God was out to get me. Instead I know that there is nothing that could hurt me that didn’t first touch Jesus. When I woke paralyzed in the hospital, Jesus took me through the hardest time in my life. He gave me peace to bear the pins and needles pain in the left side of my body.
After I learned to walk, experts told me my arm would not return, and released me from hospital. My left hand lacked circulation so pain in my arm kept me awake every night. Faith is a gift from God and it’s our privilege to exercise that faith. Can I claim any credit for return of my arm that comes to me through life-giving sacrifice of Jesus? If my husband gives me gift of a new washing machine, am I going to use it or just leave it in the box? Let’s not be foolish to think using God’s gift gives us any of the credit.
Accepting God’s grace has given me assurance of Jesus’ salvation that I never had before! For many years I was in denial that I was a sinner in need of grace. I had to be hero of my family as I grew up, take care of everybody including parents, and people leaned on me. I was a strong person with deep convictions who strived to always do what’s right. Yet a blood clot so tiny that doctors couldn’t find it on a cat scan robbed me of all my strength. For eternity, I get to praise God that I am a sinner saved by grace.
A young girl has a beautiful room with a pink bedspread. But she is not content! In fact, she runs away to a far city. When she arrives in the bus station, a man in a big limo is waiting for someone just like her, sweet and pretty. He offers to take her in his stretch limo, buy her lunch and place to stay. Then he gives her pills that make her FEEL great. How her parents kept fun from her! But, of course, there is a catch. Since she’s underage, men pay premium for her. She gets to live in a penthouse, order room service, enjoy pills. After a year, signs of illness appear on her body, and she’s shocked how quickly Boss turns mean and cruel. He kicks her out on the streets. Harsh winds blow. She can never really sleep or relax, not a young girl alone on the streets. She no longer feels like a woman of the world, only lost, starving, cold, exhausted, unsafe. One day it hits her, “My dog back home eats better than I do now.” She sobs and knows more than anything else in the world, she just wants to go home. So she phones and leaves a message on the answering machine when she knows her parents are at church, “Hi, Mom and Dad, I want to come home. If I catch the Greyhound, I will arrive in four days.”
She begs on the street corner for price of a bus ticket. When the bus arrives at her destination, she’s shocked how quickly Mom and Dad appear. She starts to say, “Can you forgive me?” but they hug her so tightly she can’t speak. At home, there are over 40 people, aunts, uncles, cousins, even her old friends. Over their heads is a huge banner that reads “Welcome Home.” When prodigal returns home, she finds Grace! What’s so amazing about Grace? To be Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in me. If we care to listen to GRACE, we hear we did not get what we deserved. We deserved punishment, not forgiveness. We deserved rejection and got love. We deserved debtor's prison; instead got a clean credit history. We deserved to crawl on knees under stern lectures; instead got a welcome home banquet.
SONG: SINNER SAVED BY GRACE
God asked Hosea to marry Gomer who abandons her family to live with another man. Gomer’s lover sold her into slavery, and opportunity for self-fulfillment ends in bondage and despair so she has to work as a harlot. As she hits bottom, God gives this shocking command to Hosea, "Go show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another. Love her as God loves his bride Israel, though she turns to other gods." Hosea became joke of the community, when he brought his wife back home. Gomer did not get fairness, or even justice. She got GRACE. How can God allow Himself to endure such humiliation from His bride only to come back for more? "How can I give you up, my Israel? How can I hand you over?" cried God. Hosea could have walked away from Gomer, but God could not walk away from His bride, so Jesus gave His life for His bride.
In the movie The Last Emperor, a young boy anointed as last emperor of China lives a magical life of luxury with 1000 servants at his command. "What happens when you do wrong?" asked an observer. "When I do wrong, someone else is punished," said the boy emperor. To demonstrate, he deliberately breaks a jar, and one of his servants is beaten. But with Jesus, when the servant sins, the King is punished. Grace is free to us only because the King Himself carried the cost. I grew up with an illusion of a mathematical God who weighed my good and bad deeds on a scale and always found me wanting.
Amnesty International against torture has photos of people who have been beaten, cattle prodded, jabbed, spit on, and electrocuted. I ask myself, "What kind of human being could do that to another human being?" Then I read book of Acts about the kind of person who could do such a thing all in the name of God. Saul, the Pharisee of all Pharisees, thanked God he was not a Gentile, a slave or a woman. But grace found a way to Saul's heart. Saul became Paul, servant of Jesus and greatest missionary ever known. If God can love that kind of person, maybe just maybe, God can love Isabelle. The world runs by UNgrace. All depends on what I do, my performance. I am a human doing, not a human being. Jesus’ GRACE is so radical it depends not on my performance but on His! We don’t have to achieve but follow. We never earn His performance! Because of Jesus, I’m totally forgiven, perfectly pleasing, completely accepted by God.
This is a parable. Out on the fishing boat, Wally said, "When you catch a fish but throw it back in the water, you are practicing GRACE for that fish."
"Yes," said Doug, "when we give the fish another chance at life, we are practicing Grace. It's like Jesus giving me another chance to accept eternal life. Because let's face it, we all get hooked by lures of sin."
Wally added, "But Jesus goes one step more. He doesn't just put us back in the water, He provides for all our needs along the way."
Doug remarked, "I saw some fish that have been hooked many times because their jaws get all distorted. And by God's Grace, they still get to go back in the water." Wally agreed, "You betcha."
The Pharisees spelled out precise rules for staying clean: never enter home of a Gentile, never dine with sinners, wash your hands and elbows seven times before eating. When rumor spread that Jesus, Who Jesus? was long awaited Messiah, Pharisees were scandalized! Why Jesus touched unclean persons suffering from filthy leprosy! He let a woman of ill repute touch His feet and wash it with her hair. He had friends that were of despised profession, tax collectors Matthew and Zacchaeus. Jesus was notoriously lax about ritual cleansing and THEIR Sabbath rules. Jesus knowingly, deliberately crossed into Gentile territory. He healed a Roman soldier’s servant. Talk about forbidden behavior! It was proven He talked to a Samaritan woman that Jews rejected because of her serial marriages that all failed in divorce. How could Jesus appoint such a woman as His missionary?! She was first person to whom He OPENLY revealed His identity as Messiah.
Jesus’ approach to unclean people made Pharisees want to crucify Him more! How DARE Jesus insist unclean sinners had a right to approach God? Pharisees preached, “NO oddballs allowed!” But Jesus’ rule of grace says that we are ALL oddballs. That is the scandal of grace.
SONG: UNDER INFLUENCE OF MERCY
What is so amazing about grace? Jesus loved sinners, harlots, tax bullies, ruffians like Peter, demon possessed and those with running sores. Jesus saw each of His children through eyes of love. He saw through surface layer of grime to the child He created. Jesus does not identify the sin as the person, for the sin was only chains that bound His children, chains which Jesus broke and brought people back to the real self Jesus created them to be.
Jesus’ grace was able to reach right through the layer of mud. People divide into two types. Not the righteous and guilty as Pharisees taught, and even Pharisees of today believe. There are only two types, sinners who admit their wrongs and sinners who do not.
Suppose on his wedding night, the groom says, “Isabelle, I love you so much, but I need to work out a few details. How far can I go with other women? Can I sleep with them, kiss them, have affairs with them over the internet, look at their naked photos? Just think of the opportunities you’ll have to forgive me after I hurt you!” To such a Don Juan, what would you answer? Obviously, he doesn’t know first thing about love. Obviously, he doesn’t understand or appreciate love given him.
We don’t appreciate or understand grace if we approach God with “How much can I get away with?” We don’t grasp meaning of Grace. If you truly love God, you can do as you incline, because a person who truly loves God will be inclined to PLEASE God. 2Corinthians 5:14, For the love of Christ constrains us, compels us, guides us. Constrain means to hold us together, press, urge, impel, motivate us. Love of Jesus brings into our life love that filled Jesus, so we do not rebel against Him. If we truly grasp wonder of Grace, “What can I get away with?” wouldn’t even occur to us. We’d spend our days trying to understand, not exploit grace.
There are people who do not see their need of grace. They see grace as nice, helpful, even necessary, but not amazing. The better you believe yourself to be, the less grace you think you need. More self-assured you are, more convinced that you could get by, even if God were stingy with grace. All you need is a little help from God and personal willpower. You can make yourself good enough for God to accept you. You just need to get desperate enough to clean up your act. Sinners do not have power to change their lifestyles, even if they were really serious. To the person who says, “I want to do something about my broken relationship with God,” GRACE says, “God already did something about your broken relationship with Him; only thing YOU can do is accept it!” When we come to Christ, we do not come to give, we come to receive. We do not come to try our best, we come to trust. We do not come to be made better, we come to be made alive!
SONG: GRACE ALONE
Take away grace or add some form of human works to merit God’s favor and you don’t have bible Christianity. Moment anyone seeks to EARN God’s favor, they nullify or reject God’s grace. I have been taught all my life if I want good things in life, I have to earn them. Problem is, I never felt good enough, and I’ve beaten myself up performing to earn goodness. No matter what so-called good thing I do, I am a sinner destined for hell. Yes, I am a sinner. If you know you are a sinner, then congratulations, you are now able to receive His grace. Grace is testament to God’s love for you.
From our limited point of view, we can’t always see what is best for us. So what seems to be total disaster could actually be Grace. Maybe our biggest problem is an act of Grace. What seems like tragedy or really bad luck is what we needed to recognize our wounds, step into God’s healing, then use our experience to show others that Jesus loves them! Grace can feel like soft wool and sometimes Grace can be a kick in the teeth as we spiral to hit bottom. But over time and enough experience, we begin to see reality of life on a planet taken hostage by sin and know even in worst of it, purpose of all this darkness is to see we NEED God.
Every blessing you ever receive is an act of grace. Every breath you draw. 2Corinthians 9:8, God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all you need, you will abound in every good work. Spiritual gifts are provided by God's grace. Romans 12:6, In His grace, God has given us different gifts for doing certain things well. So if God has given you ability to prophesy, speak out with as much faith as God has given you. Paul says, “I am least of the apostles, unworthy to be called apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am,” 1Corinthians 15:9-10.
Will the prodigal daughter ever want to waste her life again, rebel against her parents’ love or run back to the cruel boss? What do YOU think? I believe her response to Grace is love which changes her heart. Grace takes a defiled young woman and makes her a pure virgin again, covered by Jesus’ righteousness. In God’s eyes, as if we NEVER sinned. We can’t do anything to earn this, deserve this or buy this. It is God’s free gift. That is what’s so amazing about grace!
SONG: THAT’S WHY THEY CALL IT GRACE