Amazed

Amazed
Sermon Notes – Ps. Jim White
Sunday 4th April 2010
• Listen to a few news headlines I came across just yesterday:
- Shark attack victim amazed by lucky escape.
- NRL player amazed with what his club has accomplished.
- Avatar star was amazed by how she looked on screen.
- Casey Affleck says he is amazed by racist Australia.
- Gympie football amazed crowd.
- Expert amazed at Ipswich growth.

• I also came across another very true news story that happened in Dec. 2000, about British Airways Flight 2069, which was travelling from London to Kenya – and it spoke about a young man who amazed the 398 passengers and crew with a heroic act that saved them all from certain death. This young Christian man was on a short term missionary trip. He was supposed to be on an earlier flight to Uganda, but the airline dumped him and his friend off because of bad weather – and so they put him on this particular flight via Kenya – but put him in first class as compensation for the inconvenience – which meant he was just a couple of seats back from the 747 cockpit.

• He shouldn’t have been on that flight, and he wouldn’t have normally been flying first class, right near the cockpit. It’s definitely not normal practice for a missionary to be flying first class!

• It’s a long story – but he prayed the prayer of Jabez before he took off – and after a few hours in – he was woken up as the plane did a sharp nose dive – and people started screaming, and sending their loved ones text messages on their phone, and writing goodbye message on bits of scrap paper. A mentally unstable, suicidal man, had entered the cockpit, knocked the controls out of auto pilot, and managed to beat off the pilots and other crew. During the scuffle, the plane plummeted 19,000 feet.

• The long and the short of it was that the missionary fellow, who was 6 foot 7 inches, and weighed nearly 100 kilos, was in the right place at the right time, and grabbed the man from the cockpit and pinned him to the ground as the flight crew grabbed a pair of handcuffs. The pilot immediately began to pull the plane back into a horizontal position. It is estimated that the plane had about 3 to 4 seconds before it would have been unable to be retrieved from its deathly course.

• The passengers were amazed how this young man saved their lives – and even more so as they discovered the amazing course of events that caused him to be right near the cockpit at that particular time and on that particular flight.

• Isn’t it interesting that people are amazed by all kinds of things?

• I looked up my Strong’s concordance and my dictionary to try and get a handle on what this word “amazed” really means. And the same kinds of expressions kept coming up. To be amazed means to be thrown into wonderment – to be struck with amazement – astonished – astounded – throwing the mind out of its normal state – wholly fixed on things divine – to render immovable – to be overwhelmed with wonder.

• I’d like to ask you a question on this Easter Sunday morning. Does Jesus still amaze you?

• Does He amaze you like you would be amazed by a football game? Does He amaze you like you would be amazed that Ipswich is growing?

• Is it getting closer to the truth that you are amazed like what happened in that story of BA flight 2069? There seems to something of the divine intervention of God – that a man of no reputation was positioned way out of his normal circumstances – so that he could save hundreds from death – including Himself?

• Or do we come to the cross on an Easter Sunday morning – an empty cross – and an empty tomb – and stand absolutely amazed that our own lives have been saved from certain destruction and death – by the Son of God?

• This is the same God who placed the stars and galaxies in the universe – and they just hang there, doing their own thing – all part of a divine order. The same God who spoke a word, and the earth came into being – and the plants and animals and a man and woman were created in His own image.

• Doesn’t that cause you to wonder at the greatness and majesty and awesomeness of God?

• We are impressed by a heroic act that saved a plane full of people... But Jesus – in all His humanity – saved not a few hundred people – but the whole world – throughout every generation. And He Himself died a painful and torturous death in the process. He took our place in death – to pay the penalty that was due for our own sin.

• Isn’t that amazing? Astonishing? Astounding? Full of overwhelming wonder?

• The love of God for you and I is amazing. His grace – His undeserved, unmerited favour toward us is amazing – this is what we are celebrating today.

• Doesn’t the truth and revelation that “it is for freedom that Christ has set us free”, crank up the wonder and amazement factor of your Christian faith?

• Christ didn’t suffer the crucifixion and then experience the resurrection 3 days later, for us to become religious. He died and rose again for our freedom – our life. Free to be able to come near to Him – to know Him and love Him in response to what He has given us.

• You are free to become everything you were ever destined to be. You are free to come running into the presence of God. You are free from the bondage of sin and death. You are free to choose life. It’s still a choice. You can choose death if you want to, by rejecting the amazing love of God that He has for you.

• But why would you do that when every morning God’s mercy is being graciously extended toward you by Jesus Himself?

• Jesus amazes us because of what we know this side of the cross. But listen to how the people responded to Him even before His death and resurrection.

• Even as a young boy, the bible says in a sub heading, that “The boy Jesus amazes the scholars”. This is where Jesus’ parents thought he was returning in the company of people with them after being in Jerusalem. But they realise after a day’s journey, that He’s nowhere to be seen. So they go back to Jerusalem to try and find Him. Luke 2:46-48 – “Now so it was that after three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard Him were astonished at His understanding and answers. 48 So when they [His parents] saw Him, they were amazed...”

• The scholars were amazed that a 12 year old boy had such an understanding and thirst for even more. The parents were amazed because Jesus was already showing signs of being very different to the other boys and girls His age.

• If we stick with Luke for a moment, and go to Luke 4. Firstly, in verse 32 it says the people were “astonished at His teaching, for His word was with authority.” But then, after a man with an unclean demon confronted Him, Jesus said in verse 35-36, “...Be quiet and come out of him! And when the demon had thrown him in their midst, it came out of him and did not hurt him. Then they were all amazed and spoke among themselves, saying, What a word this is! For with authority and power He commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.”

• Again, in Luke 5, it talks about the paralytic man who had to be lowered to Jesus through the roof of a house, because there was such a crowd of people around. In verse 24-26 Jesus says to the man, “I say to you, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house.” 25 Immediately he rose up before them, took up what he had been lying on, and departed to his own house, glorifying God. 26 And they were all amazed, and they glorified God and were filled with fear, saying, “We have seen strange things today!”

• There was the time when a father brought his epileptic son to Jesus to be healed, and in Luke 9:42-43, it says, “And as he was still coming, the demon threw him down and convulsed him. Then Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the child, and gave him back to his father. 43 And they were all amazed at the majesty of God.”

• I could quote you at least forty times just in the gospels, where the bible says, “...the multitudes were amazed...”, “...all were amazed and glorified God...”, “...they were overcome with great amazement...”, “they trembled and were amazed...”.

• Even in the book of Acts, when the disciples spoke in tongues, the people were amazed and marvelled. It says they were amazed and perplexed. When the cripple was healed at the Gate Beautiful, they were filled with wonder and amazement.

• Church, does Jesus still amaze you?

• That first love that you had for Him – that willingness to lay down everything, including your own life, for Him – is it still there?

• As those people in the bible experienced the presence of Jesus in their lives – they marvelled, they trembled, they saw true authority and power, they stood in wonder, they were often perplexed because they did not understand, they glorified God, they heard astounding teaching, they asked lots of questions, they saw the healings and miracles, they experienced freedom, they ran to Him... I can show you scriptures of all these responses.

• What about you? Does Jesus still amaze you?

• Don’t you think it’s amazing that the bible says that you have been made holy – through faith – by the Blood of Jesus Christ?

• Paul wrote in Col 1:19-23 – “For it pleased the Father that in Him [that is, Jesus] all the fullness should dwell, 20 and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.
21 And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now He has reconciled 22 in the body of His flesh through death, to present you holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight— 23 if indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister.”

• Holy, blameless, and above reproach. I am absolutely amazed and astounded that this is how God sees me – because I know my life is far from that description. And yet by faith, I receive the washing of the Blood of Jesus. By faith, I receive salvation through the cross – in Jesus name. By faith, I have been adopted into the family of God – I am a son of God.

• I am able to confidently and boldly stand here today and say to you, that whatever failure, sin, mistake, shortcoming... whatever issue might be keeping you distant from God – His grace is bigger, it’s wider, it’s deeper, it’s higher, it’s longer...

• Nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

• And don’t you think that’s just amazing?

• We are free – the gift of grace is free – it is amazing grace.

• It might be free, but it didn’t come cheap.

• Our salvation didn’t come through some scuffle in some 747 cockpit. Our salvation came at the cost of someone’s life. Not just anyone’s life – but the life of the Son of God. It is by the grace of God that we are here today to celebrate Easter.

• In a moment, we are going to finish with a song you have probably heard before, with a chorus that says – “Your grace still amazes me, your love is still a mystery...”

• It’s the same grace that John Newton discovered at the age of 23. He had been at sea with his father since the age of 11 – his mother had already died – and when his father retired, and John was 19, he joined a war ship, but the conditions were so intolerable that he deserted, was captured and publically flogged, and demoted. He then transferred to service on a slave ship, and again endured brutal abuse. He was rescued by a friend of his fathers’ – and eventually became captain of his own slave ship.

• However, on one voyage home, he had to steer the ship through a violent storm. Even though he had left behind all childhood convictions of a faith in God, He recorded in his journal that when all seemed lost and the ship would surely sink, he exclaimed, “Lord have mercy upon us.”

• He came through the storm and wrote in his journal that he had experienced a “great deliverance.” As he reflected on what had happened later in his cabin, he said he began to believe that God had addressed him through the storm and that grace had begun to work for him.

• The words he wrote later in the great hymn, “Amazing Grace”, included these: “Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; tis grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home.”

• Grace led him home the night of the storm, and grace led him home to His Heavenly Father.

• Later on, John Newton met up with George Whitefield and Charles Wesley, and he became a minister himself. It is believed that John Newton, with Whitefield and Wesley wrote a new song for every church service and every prayer meeting – and “Amazing Grace” was just one of those many many songs.

• Newton knew the amazing love and grace of God. And that grace was still as amazing when he went to be with Jesus at 82 years of age.

• I want to ask you one more time this morning. Does Jesus still amaze you?

• Do you still look at the cross and see from where you have come. A wretched sinner saved by grace – rescued by the love and mercy of God – your penalty of sin paid for through the death of Jesus Christ – your eternal life assured through His resurrection, which we celebrate today – and every day.

• Pray....

• I want to declare before God this morning - “Your love still amazes me...”