Incomprehensible Grace

Incomprehensible Grace
Sermon Notes – Ps. Jim White
Sunday 6th June 2010
• Last week at Mullumbimby, as I watched everyone walk up to the communion table, I had a strange and compelling feeling. You just know sometimes when God is getting your attention – and the things you feel and sense on the inside are not your own. I know it was the Father heart of God for someone in particular, who was reaching out to the healing, restoring love of God, through the broken body and shed blood of Christ.

• When you sense the heart of God for other people, you can’t help but be changed yourself. The Father heart of God brings revelation. Not simply revelation as in knowledge or understanding – but revelation at a heart level.

• I felt God was saying to me, that this was a truly special thing in His eyes that this particular person was actually there – that they were reaching out the best way they knew how – and that His love for them overshadowed, and was greater, than any obstacle, any judgement, any rationalisation of my natural mind regarding their life or circumstances. And if you are wondering if it was you – it wasn’t.

• As I thought about it later, I began to get a glimpse of how great God’s love is toward all of us – but particularly how He really goes out of His way to reveal Himself to those who are searching for the truth and trying their best to respond to His gift of grace and life.

• We’ve been talking a lot lately about persistence, strength, character, integrity and sacrifice. We need all these qualities to fulfil our destiny – including the call to be witnesses to the lost. But none of that would ever be part of our journey if God hadn’t first reached out to us with His Incomprehensible Grace.

• 1John 4:19 – “We love Him because He first loved us.”

• And as I look at the ones God is connecting in to our church through Seacoast Pantry, our outreach to Mullumbimby, and simply the relationships that we are building every day in our community, the thought that comes to me is this: Perhaps they will also come to a place of loving God – if we first love them with the love of God too.

• If it’s good enough for God, then it’s good enough for us. God first of all sees the man, the woman, the child – He looks beyond the outer – He looks beyond their circumstances – and He sees their heart.

• I believe God is wanting us to free ourselves up a bit – and take the pressure off ourselves to be everyone’s saviour – in the sense that we have to have it all worked out – we have to fix everyone’s issues – we alone have all the answers. Because the truth is, we don’t and we can’t. There’s only One Saviour. There’s only One who can truly change a person’s heart.

• The paradox is that the truth of that statement actually brings more liberty and freedom to lead people to Christ – and there’s the key – we lead them to Christ, the Saviour. When the pressure’s off to perform or convince – that’s when the genuineness of who we are and the presence of the Holy Spirit is free to come forth.

• Isa 61:1 is a prophetic description of Jesus Christ which was spoken seven or eight hundred years before He was even born – “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to preach good tidings to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound.”

• We have the same anointing – there is an anointing to preach the good news of Jesus Christ. And don’t think the only place you get to preach is on a church platform. You preach every day with your words of life and hope; with your actions, with the example of your lifestyle.

• You are anointed to bring liberty – to heal the broken hearted, to release the bound from their places of bondage.

• We are not their Saviour – but we carry an anointing – a Holy Spirit empowering – that is released through love.

• Venese and a couple of other ladies in our church have been reaching out to a lady who lives alone in our community. She has a broken heart – and she is locked in a prison... But when Venese and the others carry the anointing of God into her home – and release the compassion and love of God, this lady is touched in ways that she can’t understand or make sense of. There’s a greater work going on in her life that is gently releasing her.

• We could easily find opportunity to tell her all the things she should or shouldn’t be doing – and reasons why she finds herself imprisoned in her home and in her life. But do you know what that would bring? Condemnation and shame – and it would only cause her to build up walls to protect herself. In time those things will be revealed – but it will be by the Spirit of God – and He may or may not use people in the process.

• The bible doesn’t say anything about casting a judgemental eye across people, and trying to make them become like us.

• Let the Holy Spirit do what only He can do. John 16:8 says that the Holy Spirit... “will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgement...”

• Conviction is the Holy Spirit’s job. Our job is to make room for people to come to Christ by loving them – accepting them as people first. Afterall, we were also once lost and broken and slaves to sin ourselves.

• Titus 3:3-6 – “For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. But when the kindness and the love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour...”

• The hope of the people of Ballina and the Seacoast region has got to be in the kindness and the love of God their Saviour – and His mercy – and the abundant pouring out of the Holy Spirit... We couldn’t save a flea in our own goodness or works of righteousness.

• When we talk about things like mercy and love and grace – these are aspects of God’s nature. They are triumphant – and victorious – and they abound towards us – and towards those who don’t yet know Him. Let the love, mercy and grace of the Saviour abound through your life.

• Just to clarify the difference between mercy and grace – I once heard a very simply definition, that mercy is God not giving us what we deserve – and grace is God giving us what we don’t deserve. His mercy saves us from hell, His grace releases us into eternal life with Him.

• In a couple of months, the 4her team are putting on another Northern Rivers Women’s Conference – and the theme this year, is “Grace That Abounds”.

• If you read on in Rom 5, where we left off last week, talking about strength of character, you will find at the end of the chapter that it says that where sin abounds, grace abounds much more.

• And there are scriptures that tell us that not only does grace abound toward us – but so does God’s goodness and truth abound (Exod 34:6), and mercy abounds (Ps. 103:8), and blessings abound (Prov 28:20), and hope, and the power of the Holy Spirit abounds (Rom 15:13), thanksgiving, to the glory of God abounds(2Cor 4:15), the riches of liberality abound (2Cor 8:2), faith, speech, knowledge, diligence all abound (2Cor 8:7), wisdom abounds(Eph 1:8), all discernment abounds (Phil 1:9), fruit abounds (Phil 4:17), love for one another abounds (2Thes 1:3)...

• All these things abound toward us.

• But here is the crux of what I am saying this morning. We cannot look at the lost and the broken and allow ourselves to even question how God could redeem them or heal them – because where all the negative and sinful and evil stuff has abounded in their lives – God’s love, grace and mercy, and all the other things that I have just mentioned – all abound toward them even more.

• And do you know what “abound” means? It means to abound beyond measure – to abound exceedingly, to overflow.

• I believe God is saying to us that when we connect with people, and as we make room for them – we simply need a revelation of the Father heart of God for them – that His love and grace and mercy toward them is beyond measure. It overflows toward them – and it exceeds anything else. When hearts are opened up through love – it would be like trying to hold back a bursting dam to prevent the Saviour from overflowing into their life.

• Is anything too hard for God?

• Is anyone beyond redemption?

• The answer has to be NO!

• But do you know what one of the blockages to God’s redeeming grace can be? It’s called partiality.

• I was actually surprised when I looked up how many scriptures there are that speak about partiality. God does not show partiality – or judge differently – between one person and the next. And James (James 2:9) even tells us that if we show partiality with people, it is a sin.

• James 2: 1-4 – “My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality. 2 For if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel, and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, 3 and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him, “You sit here in a good place,” and say to the poor man, “You stand there,” or, “Sit here at my footstool,” 4 have you not shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts?”

• We may or may not be as blatant as that, and yet we can all have a tendency to make comparisons, to make assumptions, to put people in a box.

• As James says, partiality happens not only when we perceive a person to be less worthy. It happens when we do the opposite, and lift them up above others in our own estimation. When our cultural and worldly values get into the mix, we can have a tendency to think that because this one is more successful, more wealthy, more physically strong, more educated, more attractive, more popular, that they are in some way more deserving.

• But God doesn’t see it that way. In fact, like many things in the kingdom of God – He turns all that upside down.

• Jesus Christ did that by specifically reaching out to the prostitutes and the lepers, and then working His way down from there.... And it wasn’t because they needed Him more. It’s because many others were washed with partiality and judged themselves more righteous.

• The kind of revelation we need may be similar to the one that the crowd of men had when they brought the adulterous woman to Jesus – in John 8. The men of the city wanted to stone this woman to death because of her sin – but when Jesus made one statement: “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” – then one by one they all walked away.

• Can I ask you this morning – to search out your own heart – and ask the Holy Spirit to reveal to you any obstacles to the free flowing gift of His grace and love in your life – not only for yourself – but toward others.

• I’m not trying to address any particular issues that I am aware of. I speak to myself as much as I speak to you. But if this is where I believe God is leading us this morning – then let’s all be open to His continual work of redemption and healing and wholeness in our lives.

• It’s part of our calling – in our own lives – to allow grace to abound. To allow the love of God to abound. To allow mercy to abound.

• And we could think – well people get themselves into trouble – they bring it on themselves – they don’t deserve to be helped – they might even take advantage of us. Well, you know what? They might.

• But can I just read that scripture once more from Titus 3:3-6 – “For we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another. But when the kindness and the love of God our Saviour toward man appeared, not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit whom He poured out on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour...”

• Have we never got ourselves into trouble? Have we never taken advantage of someone? Have we never been in need of the mercy of God?

• The practical outworking of mercy and love is not always the same – and love is not without healthy boundaries – but what I am talking about more than anything this morning is our heart attitude... If our true desire is to show the love, grace and mercy of God – then how that outworks will become clear in every situation and every person.

• But it won’t be shown through partiality – by thinking that one is more deserving than another.

• When we get caught up in judgement – it does something that taints and distorts our own heart. We start to get attitudes – we can get cynical – hard hearted – critical of people – opinionated...

• There’s a better way.

• James 2:13 – James says, “Mercy triumphs over judgement.”

• In other words, this is saying that there is a much more joyful and effective way to deal with people than to judge them. Let the supernatural power of mercy grab your heart – and theirs.

• I love the scripture in Ps. 85:10 – “Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed.”

• Mercy does not deny truth – they actually go together. But you don’t have to bring judgement to show people the truth. Mercy is a much more powerful approach.

• Let righteousness and peace kiss. What is that saying to us this morning? True peace – the peace of God – will come as we walk in righteousness. But not only will it bring peace to ourselves, it will bring peace to others as well. Righteousness does not include judgement or partiality on our part.

• There are a lot of other things we can do in reaching the lost – practical things like providing food - and spiritual things like spiritual warfare and prayer. Through faith and patience – persistence – strength of character – integrity – sacrifice... all the things we’ve been talking about.

• Extending mercy and grace and love to our world requires much patience – or longsuffering as the bible calls it.

• But remember how much God has been longsuffering and patient with us.

• 2Pet 3:9 – “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”

• It’s the kindness and goodness of God that leads people to repentance.

• Pray – for a revelation of the love, grace and mercy of God – for ourselves and for others. That it abounds beyond measure. That we are not called to judgement or partiality – but mercy triumphs over judgement. We are anointed to carry the love of God – but it is the Holy Spirit that convicts men and women of sin and righteousness.

• Maybe you haven’t experienced that from God yourself. No one is here to judge you this morning. God’s arms out outstretched toward you in love and mercy.