Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri

Morning Worship · August 27, 2006

Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost

Prayer of the Day

Lord, thank you for the gift of life, which we receive from your hand and by your grace.  Be with us this hour, we pray, as we learn more about your heart’s desire, and hold before you our own.  Amen.

Scripture

Romans 6:23; Isaiah 30:18

The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

The Lord longs to be gracious to you.

Message

But the Catch Is…

Rick Frost

As the old story goes, there was a professor at Yale who was invited to speak to the student body.  The assigned topic of the day was, “What It Means to Be a Student at Yale.”  Wanting to do a good job, and wanting to make sure the talk would be remembered, the professor put together this little word puzzle.

Y.A.L.E.

Youth, Attitude, Loyalty, Enthusiasm

It was a great idea.  The only problem was he spent 30 minutes on each letter.  After the talk, he went down to the front row to one of the students and asked, “What did you think of my lecture?”

The student said, “Well, sir, I’m just glad that I don’t go to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”

I’m going to talk to you today about something really, really important.  I want to talk to you about the defining character of God.

There is a lot going on in the name of God today in this world.  A lot of it is bad.  A lot of it is wrong.  You and I need to know what the defining character of God is.  We need to know what it is.  We need to know how to spell it, and we need to know how to talk about it.  We need to know how to share it.

That defining character of God, that I would like to make a case for today, is called “grace.”

G.R.A.C.E.

I promise I won’t spend 30 minutes on each letter today.

“Grace.”  It’s important for us to know what it is.  What is it?

Let’s start with “G.”  First, Grace is a Gift.

Remember that.  Grace is a gift from God.  It’s a gift to you, and it’s a gift to me.  As Martin Marty pointed out, the root to the word “grace,” biblically and theologically translates, “divine favor.”  Put that one in your brain.

Grace is divine – God’s divine favor.  In fact, move it from your head to your heart, if you would, because it goes to the very heart of everything you and I, as Christians, believe and everything we live as people of faith.  Divine favor!

You see… In the beginning, God had the freedom to remain unrelated.  God could be God all by God’s self.  There was no need to connect, to relate, to interact to anything or anyone else.  God could remain unrelated, separated, alone.  But instead, according to Scripture, God was moved, first of all, to create the universe in which you and I live.  Secondly, God was moved to situate human beings in that universe.  Thirdly, God was moved to move toward those human beings.

Now God intended, as you all know, for human beings to be good human beings.  And by “good,” what we mean is that they are to know and love their Creator, and to live joyful and meaningful lives all the days they live here on earth and beyond into eternity.

However, as you also know, that did not happen.  The humans, exercising their God-given freedom, removed themselves from a positive relationship with God.  Indeed, they were threatened by the very dangers and destructions they created themselves.

Now one might think God would be very content and justified in just letting the human predicament run its course that we have made as human beings.  But the Christian Scriptures, grasped by Christian faith, say that the Creator of all that is is not willing to just let things play themselves out.  The Creator of all that is is a God of love.  Wow!

We belong to a God of love.  That is good news, folks.  That’s good news for us and good news for people everywhere.  This God, moved by absolutely nothing other than love, seeks, finds, and visits human beings wherever they are.  God offers to bring them back, to redeem them, to restore them.  Not just to life, not just to newness of life, but to a relationship with the Creator, God’s Self.  Folks, that activity, that action is called the grace of God.  It is the central feature of God’s relationship to all of humanity, and it’s the best way we know of to express what goes on between the divine and the human – between God and the rest of us.

Grace.  That’s what I want us to grasp today.  It’s a gift to you and it is a gift to me.

Scripture says you can’t earn it.  You can’t work for it.  You can’t buy it.  You can’t deserve it.  That is pretty tough for most of us in this room, because you and I have been socialized in our culture to think and to believe that we can buy anything we want.  We’ve come to believe and have been socialized that we can get anything we are willing to work for and earn.  We’ve been socialized to believe that we can have anything we are willing to pay for.

But the Bible says the exact opposite, folks.  The Bible says there is only one way that you are going to connect with God.  There is only one way you’ll ever be with God now.  There’s only one way you’ll ever spend eternity with God in heaven.  That way is God’s way.  That ball is in God’s court.  You do not have a snowball’s chance in hell of making that call yourself.  You are not going to be given that control, and the reason is you’re not good enough.  You and I stopped batting 1,000 a long time ago.  And I don’t care what Frank Sinatra says; you’re not going to do it your way.

Most importantly, what I want you to hear today is that you never have been, and you never will be God. 

Folks, I have people come to me in a variety of occasions and ask me questions about things.  They say things like, “What do I have to do to be saved?”  Or if they don’t use that language, they say, “What do I have to do to be healed?” or “What do I have to do to be made whole again?” or “What do I have to do to go to heaven?”  These are all ways of saying basically the same thing.  When I’m in a playful mood and have the presence of mind, I say something like, “Oh, I’m sorry.  You’re too late.”

They look at me with sort of a stunned look.  It’s not exactly what they expected their Christian pastor to offer.  They say, “What do you mean, too late?”

When I’m “on,” I say, “What needs to be done has already been done.  What needs to be done was done 2,000 years ago by Jesus.  All you need to do now is accept it.  It’s called grace.  And it’s God’s free gift to you.”

“All of us need to be made right with God,” said Paul.  “by God’s grace which is a free gift through Jesus Christ.”

Grace is what we are going to talk about today.

G.R.A.C.E.

G – Grace is a gift to you, and it is a gift to me.

R – stands for received by faith.

Grace is received by faith.  Grace is received by trusting.  Grace is received by trusting God.  It’s not a list of things you have to do or avoid doing.  It cannot be received by doing the Eight Keys of Discipleship, which we talk about around here all the time.  You will not be able to receive God’s gift because you pray or because you read the Bible.  You will not receive God’s gift because you go to church, or because you feed the hungry, or because you visit the sick, or because you give every penny away to some worthy cause, or because you spend your life with the abandoned elderly in Calcutta.

No!  Grace can only be received by faith, by simply trusting God.  That’s a hard thing to do.  Ephesians 2: “It is by grace that you have been saved by faith.”  Now here is the important part: “And this is not your doing.”

So what is it about this God of ours?  What is it about the Creator?  What is the big deal?  Why is this entire thing we have been talking about all one way?  Why is it always in God’s court?  Don’t we have anything to do with that?

Let me suggest something, folks.  Can you just imagine how miserable it would be in heaven – to be with God, wherever God is… (For that is what heaven is for us.  Wherever God is, that’s where heaven is.)  Can you imagine being in that place with all those folks who had paid their dues?  I mean… Can you just imagine?  It would sort of be just like being here.  Everybody would be there bragging.  You know.  There would be all these levels.  There would be all the cool people over there, and all the “Ooh-Aww” group over there.  There would be that gated section for the super saints right back there.  And, by definition, of  course, there would also be the spiritual peons who would be way down here.  They are the folks who were the lowest of the low who did the bare minimum to get in by the skin of their teeth.

No.  No.  No.  No way!

The Church, in her wisdom, led by the Holy Spirit of God, has insisted throughout the ages that grace is received.  The divine favor of God is received by faith and absolutely nothing more. 

Our Catholic brothers and sisters 1,000 years ago tried to do it differently.  They had all these things and all these ways you could get better and closer to God, and God would love you more, and you would have a better place.  That’s what the Protestant Reformation was all about 500 years ago.  We said, “No.  No.  No!”

People receive God’s promise by having faith, by trusting God, by accepting our acceptance.  “And that happens,” says Paul, “so that promise can always be a free gift” (Romans 4:16).

Salvation is not about your performance.  It’s not about my performance.  It’s about God’s promise.  I get to preach that at every funeral.  It’s amazing.  It’s not based on your merit.  It’s based on God’s mercy.  Do you know what mercy is?  Mercy is when God decides not to give you what you really deserve.  That is mercy.

Salvation is not based on your goodness.  It’s based on God’s grace.  Grace is when God decides to give you something that is really wonderful even though you don’t deserve it.  According to the Scriptures: “From the fullness of God’s grace we have all received blessing after blessing after blessing.”

Folks, if you haven’t figured it out yet, you need to know that Broadway is a grace-based church.  We are filled with imperfect people, who have messed up, taken the wrong path on occasion, found ourselves up to our eyeballs in the bad stuff, and yet somewhere along the line, like the Prodigal Son in the Bible, we came to ourselves – most of us.  We said, “What am I doing here?”  We said, “This is ridiculous.  I know what.  I am going to go back home.  I am going to go back to God, and I’m going to ask God to take me in.”

The Bible says that when the father saw his son coming home from a long way off, he ran out to meet him.  He gave him a huge bear hug, kissed him, and put the best robe that was in the house on his back.  He gave him the family ring, and said, “Get the grill going!”  (Well, that is a translation, but it was something like that.)  “Because we’re going to party.  We’re going to have a party, because my son was lost and now he’s found.”

Grace!  Folks, the only way to receive the grace of God is by faith.  People who have received the grace of God have more reason to party in this world than anybody else that I know of.  And the reasons are three:

1.      All of our past sins are forgiven.

2.     We are given a purpose, a reason, a good reason to be living and doing life today.

3.     We are promised an eternal home in heaven, that wherever God is, that’s where eternal life is.

Those are the big three.  Those are the three biggest issues I know after being a pastor for nearly 40 years.  You get those three things resolved… You get those thee things settled in your life and everything else is minor.

You and I know people, and we have people in our families, who are still hung up on their past.  They just can’t get passed it.  You and I know people who are feeling intense pressure about the present.  They are just running like absolute crazy people.  And you and I know people who are worried sick about the future.  We wonder why people aren’t happy?  We wonder why people aren’t living full and joyful and meaningful lives that make a difference for good in this world?  But when those issues get settled by the grace of God, our experiences have been that lives are transformed.  Folks, grace is a gift, and it is received by faith.

G – It’s a gift

R  - Received by faith

A – It’s available

God’s grace is available to everyone.  It means that regardless of your background, regardless of your culture, regardless of your upbringing, regardless of anything that you’ve ever done, regardless of the things you’ve left undone, the Creator of the universe love you and wants you to come home.

Some of us, I know, are here for the first time today.  Summer’s over, and perhaps you’re checking us out.  Congratulations!  You picked a good day to come to church, because the grace of God, folks, is as available to you today as it is to our charter members who have been here in this congregation for almost all their lives.  God’s grace is not based on your church attendance.  God’s grace is based on God’s love.  It is available to absolutely everyone.  Most importantly, today it is available to you.

                                                            G – Grace is a gift

                                                            R – Received by faith

                                                            A – Available to everyone

                                                            C – God’s grace comes through Christ

God’s grace comes to us through Christ.  No, folks.  I admit I do not know a lot about other religions and other faiths.  I read some stuff.  I’ve talked to some people.  But I’ve not lived other faiths and other religions.  Those folks can speak for themselves.  But I think we need to speak for ourselves.  I do know that while grace is free, it ain’t cheap.  It is not cheap at all!

What we do know is that, for us, the coming of Jesus, and him giving himself in his birth, in his life, in his death, and in his resurrection makes possible, somehow, this experience we’ve been talking about today.

God’s grace is not just some great idea that somebody dreamed up.  God’s grace becomes a fact.  It becomes real through our encounter with the Spirit of the Living Christ.  As you get to know more about Jesus… As you invite him deeper and deeper into your life… (That’s when you pick up the Eight Keys to Discipleship.)  When you start following him and growing in him, then the grace of God really starts to become real for you.  See… That’s the thing.  We get things backward sometimes.  Peter put it this way in his second letter when he says, “Jesus has the power of God.  His power has given us everything we need to live and serve God and to have all these things, not because we deserve it or we have earned it, but because we know him” (2 Peter 1).

I don’t know how to say it any clearer.  There is nothing you will ever do that’s going to make God love you more than God does this very moment.  There is absolutely nothing you can ever do that will ever make God love you any less than God does right now.  If you ever grasp that, folks…  If that ever gets in your head and your heart… If you ever get it, it will change your life forever. 

Which brings me to E.

G – Grace is a gift

                                                            R – Received by faith

                                                            A – Available to everyone

                                                            C – Comes through Christ

                                                            E  - Grace is extended to us throughout eternity

Throughout eternity!  The Bible says the way of sin is death.  That’s the bad news.  We are going to spend some time in the weeks ahead talking a little bit more about the bad news, because we need to.  “The wages of sin is death.”  The good news comes in the second part, and that’s the part we forget.  But Paul goes on to say, “The free gift from God is eternal life through Christ our Lord” (Romans 6).

God’s grace is a gift that keeps on giving.  It’s a free gift that lasts forever.  When you get to know Jesus, and through him learn about the depth of his love, you experience the breadth of God’s love and grace.  Ask people who have been there.  It just gets better and better and better.  Indeed, the Bible says God saves the best for last.  The best is yet to come.  God’s grace, God’s divine favor, extends throughout eternity.  I’m talking about a deal here.  What a deal! 

But there’s a catch.  You know what the catch is.  Don’t you?  I mean, it’s critical.  The catch is you have to personally accept it.

Paul Tillich preached the greatest sermon of his life one day at Union Theological Seminary.  He is one of the greatest Christian theologians of the past 100 years.  His sermon has become a classic.  The title of this sermon tells it all: “Accepting Our Acceptance.” 

That’s the rub, you see.  Isaiah 30 said it back in the Hebrew days: “The Lord longs to be gracious to you.”

God is waiting, folks.  God is waiting for you to accept God’s gift.  The reason God is waiting is because that gift is absolutely worthless until you do.  It’s just like any gift that any of us get.  If you don’t unwrap it, if you don’t open it, if you don’t take it, what good is it?  It doesn’t matter until we claim it.  I think God is waiting for his people to unwrap the gift and to accept it. 

Quite frankly, I think, and it’s just my opinion, but if you don’t accept the gift you are dumber than dumb.  I’m sorry.  I cannot fathom why, when everything basic that you and I need for life along with all of the big stuff is offered to us free, we don’t accept it.  When you say, “Augh, no.  No thanks.  I think I’ll just hold on to my guilt, and my sin, and my shame, and just live like hell.”

I don’t get it.  I don’t get that.  But, be that as it may, the fact is that the invitation remains.  “Come home.  I’ll forgive your past.  I’ll give a purpose for living today.  I will promise you a home for the future.”

Now, if you can find a better deal than that, I think you ought to take it.

What a gift!  The question today is: Are you willing to receive it?  Are you willing to unwrap it?  It’s right here – right here today waiting for you.

Let’s pray for just a minute.

Lord, I don’t understand it all.  I don’t know about how you did it.  But I accept your free gift, your grace today.  Please, just please guide my life from this day forward.  We thank you.  We really, really thank you.

And we all say together… “Amen.”

A Prayer for the Nation

Almighty God,

            you have given us this good land as our heritage.

Make us always remember your generosity

            and constantly do your will.

Bless our land with honest industry,

            truthful education,

            and an honorable way of life.

Save us from violence, discord, and confusion;

            from pride and arrogance

            and from every evil course of action.

Make us who came from many nations

            with many different languages

            a united people.

Defend our liberties and give those

            whom we have entrusted with the authority of government

            the spirit of wisdom,

            that there might be justice and peace in our land.

When times are prosperous, let our hearts be thankful;

            and, in troubled times, do not let our trust in you fail.

We ask all this through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

© 1978 Lutheran Book of Worship, used by permission of Augsburg Fortress