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Christianity
Explored – Week 5
Grace
Let’s do a
bit of revision on the course.
Week 1, we introduced
the course by saying “Christianity is Christ”. It’s not about buildings and services
and rituals, it’s not even about morals and doctrine. It’s about Jesus. Christianity is a relationship with Christ. That was week 1.
Then in week
2 we sought to introduce Him to you.
We looked through the early chapters of Mark and saw Jesus walking
around like He owns the place.
He heals the
sick, He drives out evil, He raises the dead, He commands nature, He even forgives sins – which only God can do. Who is this Man? Well He is the Christ the Son of God –
He’s the One who made us in the beginning with His Father and the Holy
Spirit. And He has come in the
middle of history.
In week 3 we
asked the question – why? Why did
Jesus come? Was heaven really so
boring that He would want to come down into our mess? Well two weeks ago we learnt that Jesus
is the Spiritual Doctor – and He has come to save us from a terrible
sickness. We are all sick at heart
with the disease known as sin. And
Jesus says He has come to save sinners from sin and the judgement our sins deserve.
How does He
save us? That was week 4 – the
cross. Shall we turn to Mark 15 to
remind us of the cross?
Verse 33:
33 At the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the
ninth hour.
There is
darkness, which is a sign of God’s anger.
God is angry, who is He angry with? The shock is v34:
34 And at the
ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi,
Eloi, lama sabachthani?"--which
means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"
We are the
ones who should be forsaken by God for our sin. He is the One who should be rewarded by
God for His goodness. But Jesus is
forsaken on the cross.
Why?
Look at verse
37 and 38:
37 With a loud cry, Jesus
breathed his last. 38 The curtain of the temple was torn in
two from top to bottom.
We learnt
last week that the curtain was a massive keep out sign at the heart of
the temple. If you imagine this
building as like the temple – and back there where it’s written ‘Holy,
Holy, Holy’ – that’s the dwelling place of
God. But in front is a gigantic
curtain that says ‘Keep out’.
Sinful humanity in God’s Holy presence is like a snowflake in a
furnace. There’s no hope. Except that. When Jesus died – the curtain is torn
in two from top to bottom.
Because Jesus
dies – now there’s access into the very presence of God. Jesus endured the furnace, so that we
get God’s presence.
I’ll never
forget doing this course with a friend a few years ago. And we got to week 4 and I was
explaining the cross to him. And
his jaw hit the floor, he said: “So He came down from heaven to suffer
hell, so that we who deserve hell can get heaven.” I said ‘Absolutely’. He said “He gets hell so we get
heaven. It’s like He loves us more
than He loves Himself.” I said
‘You could say that. You can
certainly say He loves us more than His own life. The King of the universe loves us more
than His own life. He endures hell
and we get heaven.’
That’s the
heart of the Christian life. It’s
why we put crosses all over our churches and hang them on our necks and
put them on our graves – we love the cross, because Jesus came to die IN
OUR PLACE, FOR OUR SINS. He took hell to win us heaven.
And this week
on Christianity Explored we’re just wanting to
think through what that means. And
the word that describes it all is the word Grace. Tonight we’re thinking about God’s
grace. Grace means God giving us
His friendship and forgiveness when we do not deserve it. In fact we deserve the opposite. We deserve rejection and judgement. But
instead Jesus takes the rejection and judgement
and we get friendship and forgiveness – for free and forever. That’s grace.
To help us
understand it, let me give you a mental test…
How sure are you that you’re
going to heaven?
If God asked you ‘Why should I
let you into heaven, what would you reply?
Well, we’ll
answer those questions as we go.
As I’ve said,
tonight we’re thinking about the word ‘Grace’ – God’s unconditional love
and forgiveness. And perhaps the
sentence to help us unpack what grace means is this: “You are more wicked
than you ever imagined, but more loved than you ever dreamed.”
When you
understand God’s grace, you will understand the truth of that statement: “You
are more wicked than you ever imagined, but more
loved than you ever dreamed.”
First let’s
take the first half of that statement: “You are more
wicked than you ever imagined.”
Now you may
disagree with that statement. But
the bible would say “Look at the cross.”
Because there Jesus has come down to take your place. If you like, He is taking a bullet for
you. He is substituting Himself in
for you – He says, ‘Glen I have come to suffer your punishment in your
place, step aside.’ Now as I step
aside, I look to the cross and I see exactly what it is that Jesus
suffers. And it’s hell. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.” He is
suffering Godforsakenness. That’s hell. And it’s the hell that I deserve. I deserve to be Godforsaken.
You see I
have forsaken God all throughout my life.
I spend most of my life without giving Him a second thought. I don’t thank Him for the good things,
I blame Him for the bad things, and I lead a basically prayerless, faithless, thankless life – I forsake Him
all the time. Well eventually God
will say to us “Ok, I get the hint, if you don’t want me, you don’t get
me”, and He will forsake us. But
that’s only fair. Because we do
lead lives that forsake Him. Turn
with me to Mark 7 verses 20-23:
20 He went on:
"What comes out of a man is what makes him`unclean'.
21 For from within, out of men's hearts, come evil thoughts,
sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 greed, malice,
deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. 23 All
these evils come from inside and make a man`unclean'."
If you are
‘unclean’ it just means you’re unfit for God’s presence. And the religious types in Jesus’ day
thought – I know how I’m going to be clean for God’s presence, I’m going
to keep all the evil out. I’m
going to watch what I eat, who I mix with, where I go, who I listen to,
and that way I’ll keep evil out.
And Jesus says – that won’t fix the real problem. The real problem is what comes out –
all that evil.
But you know
the scary thing is that we can’t do anything about this. If evil was just OUT THERE, well we’d
just erect the barriers and try to keep it out. But if evil is IN HERE,
we have a problem that we cannot
solve.
Do you
recognize that you’re more wicked than you ever
realized?
Let’s think
about that question I asked you “Why should God
let you into heaven?”
We’ll do the
wrong answer first. The wrong answer is if I place my confidence in what
I have done. This is called salvation by works. You work your way towards
God. This applies to you if you
have written down, ‘God, you should let me into heaven because I ...’ and
listed lots of different things that you hope might get you right with
God; things that will help you climb the ladder and get you into heaven.
So you may have written: ‘Let me in, God, because:
• I have been
good enough; I’m a good person.
• I don’t
steal.
• I don’t lie
- well, only when I have to.
• I give to
charity.
• I’m not a
murderer or a rapist or a dentist. Actually, there are lots of people
much worse than I am.
• I’ve kept
the Ten Commandments.
• I pay my
taxes.
• Other
people like having me around and so should you, God.’
So, for all
those reasons, you think you’ve been good enough.
Secondly, you
may have religious reasons. You may be relying on your religious practice
to get you in. So you say, ‘God, you should let me in because:
• I go to
church;
• I’ve been baptised;
• I’ve been
confirmed;
• I even go
to communion;
• I pray and
I read the Bible; many don’t, but I do.
God, you
should let me in because I do all those religious things.’
Can I say to
you categorically that doing these religious things will not get you into
heaven. Saying, ‘Let me in because I do these
things’, is absolutely useless when it comes to getting right with God.
[rip them up.]
If you are
putting your confidence here, then please don’t, for you’ve been misled.
Because think
about it. Think about the cross. Jesus
came to suffer hell for us. Because
nothing less than hell was demanded for our sins. Put it this way - If Jesus thought that
our problem was so slight that all He needed to do was come and teach us
a few home truths and give us a moral pep talk to get us heading in the
right direction – He would never have gone to the cross. But no – look at the cross. My sin is so bad Jesus had to die. And your sin is so bad Jesus had to
die.
Now don’t get
me wrong – I’m not saying we’re all as bad as Hitler. Maybe Hitler’s in the gutter, and by
comparison you are on the top of Mount Everest. But you’re both a long way short of the
sun. We only think in human
terms. If someone is nice to other
humans, we call them a good person.
If someone is nasty to humans then they are a bad person. But God views good and evil, right and
wrong on a canvas far larger than that.
The central question is What have we done with the God who loves
us, made us, came to us, bled and died for us and offers us every good
thing? What have we done to this
God? All we’ve done is cause His death.
All we’ve done is nail Him up, kill Him off so we don’t have to
deal with Him. Our fundamental problem
is a vertical problem between us and our Maker. And on this scale we are all a long way
short of the sun.
Or put it
another way. Imagine we went down
to the seafront and I gave everyone a challenge. I said: Ok everyone,
here’s the challenge, you have to swim to America. Now some people might swim 5m, some
50m, some even 50 miles, but at the end of the day we’re all dead in the
water. And swimming instructions
aren’t going to help us!
But you see
that’s the dangerous thing about all those good things that we put our
trust in. It’s like trusting in
swimming instructions to get you to America. We don’t need swimming instructions, we
need rescue.
And the good
news of the cross is – the rescue rope is dangling right there and anyone
can take it. So really the
comparison to be making is not between bad swimmers and slightly better
swimmers. The comparison to make
is between those who take the rescue, and those who don’t. You see there are those who know
they’re bad swimmers and they take the rescue, and there are those who
think they’re good swimmer and they refuse the rescue. But that’s the fundamental issue. Not are you better than most people! The question is – do you realize you
fall gigantically far short of God’s standard. And will you take the rescue?
Do you know
that you are more wicked than you ever realized.
Because actually
acknowledging this is the path to true freedom, happiness and peace. It sounds mad I know – but if you admit
that you’re this bad, it’s actually the way to a wonderful
revelation. There’s a second half
to the sentence: You are more
wicked than you ever realized but more loved than you ever dreamed.
Because think
again about the cross. What do you
see on the cross? Yes you see that
your sin is so bad it needed
Jesus to die for you – but you also see that HE is so GOOD He wanted to die for you.
Your sin is
so bad He needed to die for
you. But He loves you so much He wanted to die for you.
This is the
good news of God’s grace. You and
I could never earn God’s love.
NEVER. But Jesus dies to
simply give us eternal life if we’ll trust Him.
Turn to your
study guides and p31, there you’ll see a very
important verse from the bible.
It’s in the New Testament book of Ephesians and it says this:
"For it
is by grace that you have been saved, through faith- and this not from
yourselves it is the gift of God- not by works so that no-one can
boast."
Jesus Christ
offers us salvation as a gift. It
cannot be paid for, it cannot be earned- God cannot be in our debt. But because He is so gracious - He
freely gives to us what we could never earn. The minute you say to Jesus “I am more
wicked than I ever realized” – the minute you come to Him for the rescue,
because of the cross Jesus says to you “But you’re more loved than you
ever dreamed.” That’s grace.
So let’s
think about our two questions – I asked how sure you were of heaven. Well if heaven was down to your
efforts, we could never be sure, because we’d never know if we’d done
enough. Last week two members of a
cult knocked on my door and I welcomed them in and they told me what they
believed about Jesus. And I said
‘How do you get saved?’ They said
‘Well you trust in Jesus.’ I
thought great. But they hadn’t
finished the sentence yet. They went
on. ‘You trust in Jesus… and you put
right everything you’ve done wrong and you get baptized into their church
and you obey Christ’s teaching in everything and you keep persisting to
the very end.’ I thought
‘Yikes!’ I asked them ‘Are you
sure you’re going to heaven?’ They
said ‘I hope so.’ I hope so! That’s a terribly depressing answer –
eternity is in the balance and they only hope so. And these guys were doing more
religious things than anyone in this room. But they could never be sure of heaven,
because if salvation is about what I do, then I can never know if I’ve
done enough.
But – salvation is
actually about what Christ has done.
And He HAS DONE ENOUGH. He
has paid for heaven in full and He gives Himself to me freely as a gift–
all I do is receive Him and say thank You. If you’ve really understood grace
you’ll be able to say I am sure of heaven.
But why? Why am I sure of heaven? Well that’s the second question. If God
asks, ‘Why should I let you into my heaven?’, we
can say, ‘Well I don’t deserve heaven, but Christ died for me – He paid
the price. I am trusting in what Jesus
did on the cross to pay for my sin.’
Do you see
what complete freedom and joy is on offer here? Friendship with God, forgiveness for
all your sins, eternal life – for free and forever. None of it is earned. It’s all a gift, it’s all grace.
Jesus offers
Himself to you for free. It
doesn’t matter what you’ve done.
It doesn’t matter what you will do – at the cross He pays all your
debts and in return He gives you ALL His blessings – forgiveness, new
life, eternity, His very own Spirit – it’s all yours for free. That’s grace.
Do you know
what this means? It means that if
today I get up and help 15 grannies across the road, give blood twice in
the afternoon, serve my wife in incredible ways and am generally a lovely
chap, my head hits the pillow tonight and I know I am loved – because of Jesus. And tomorrow if
I ignore 15 grannies who clearly need help, am
rude to everyone, yell at my wife and am generally a nasty piece of work,
my head will hit the pillow and I can know that I am loved – because of Jesus. You see what grace means? It’s not about me any
more, it’s about Him.
Because I am more wicked than I ever realized but more loved than
I ever dream.
There’s a
little picture of all this in Mark’s gospel. Chapter 1:40 we have an unclean man
coming to Jesus. His leprosy was a
physical picture of the spiritual uncleanness that you and I have. Let’s read what happens when he comes
to Jesus.
40 A man with
leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, "If you are
willing, you can make me clean." 41 Filled with
compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am
willing," he said. "Be clean!" 42 Immediately
the leprosy left him and he was cured.
Everyone
would have expected the man’s uncleanness to transfer to Jesus. But here we see actually Jesus’
cleanness transfers to the man.
Jesus is willing to cleanse anyone who comes and says ‘I’m unclean.’ Anyone.
How does He do it? Well
Jesus asks this man to go and perform a sacrifice from the OT. The man doesn’t do it. In fact there are no sacrifices in
Mark’s gospel – except one. Jesus
dies on the cross as the ultimate sacrifice. Because on the cross – He DOES get
infected by all our uncleanness.
He was made unclean by our sin.
But because of the cross, we can run to Him in all our uncleanness
and ask to be cleansed. What will
be His reaction? Filled with
compassion, He will say to us ‘I am willing – be clean.’’
All our
uncleanness goes to Him, all His cleanness comes to us!
It’s quite
like a marriage where a king marries a pauper. The King has all the riches, the pauper
has only debts. But what happens
when they marry? Instantly, all
the debts get taken by the King and all his riches become the property of
the pauper.
We’ve been
saying throughout the course that Christianity is a relationship with
Christ. Well it’s just like a
marriage – He takes all our debts, and we get all of His riches. He takes all our uncleanness, we get
all His cleanness. He takes our sins, we get His forgiveness, cleansing and a new
status – child of God. And we
haven’t paid a penny for it. It’s
free. It’s all of grace.
Can you
imagine living in the freedom of this grace? Nothing to lose, nothing to hide,
nothing to prove. Nothing to lose
– He will always love you, He will never divorce you. Nothing to hide – He knows it all and
loves you anyway. And nothing to
prove – you don’t have to work your way into His good books,
you already have the love of the King of heaven. Nothing to lose, nothing to hide,
nothing to prove.
And if you’re
worried that this just sounds like a blank cheque
to sin, not true at all. If you’re worried that I’ll take Jesus’ grace
and go away and be nasty – you haven’t understood what’s on offer. Jesus doesn’t offer us a free licence to go and sin. He offers us a free relationship of
unconditional love. And you’ll
know yourself – those people who love you unconditionally, they have won
your heart. Do you take their
unconditional love as a license to go off and sin against them? Maybe often you have. But that’s not generally our
response. Generally if someone loves
you unconditionally, your heart belongs to them and you’ll do anything
for them.
Well Jesus
loves you unconditionally. You
might go off and sin against Him – but He is steadfast. He is resolved to win your heart by His
unconditional love. He is filled with compassion for you. He went to the
cross for you. And that means you can come to Him now and say “Jesus, if
you are willing, you can make me clean.”
If you want to say that to Jesus, here’s His reply – “I am
willing, be clean.”
The cross
guarantees it. Unconditional love,
for free and forever. That’s what
grace means. And it means no more
masks, nothing to hide, nothing to prove, nothing to lose. You are more wicked than you ever
realized but more loved than you ever dreamed.
Why don’t you
discuss that on your table groups?
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