Grace, Undeserved and Priceless

You have heard the expression, "God's grace, it's all you need."  Have you ever wondered just what that means?   I mean  really and honestly wondered just what is Grace?  This is a word that is easy to say, easy to share with someone as to what they need, yet sometimes so difficult to not only understand, but to accept for ourselves.  One thing for sure, I certainly do not understand it very well, but the more I look into it, the more it begins to affect how I see things in the world around me.  It has always amazed me how some people can have the world cave in around them and they are able to continue on with a smile on their face and a bounce in their step and not hold any anger or grudge for those who may have said something hurtful or done them some kind of harm.  I would like to share with you for a moment what I have been learning about Grace, the unconditional, forgiving, moving on kind of Grace.  This is the same Grace that God has shown to each and every one of us.

When one really stops and thinks about this subject and where grace came from you begin to see that God's grace has been around long before He created this world and placed mankind on it.  I would like to share a passage from Andy Stanley's book "The Grace of God."  He begins his book with the creation and how God chose to create this world not because He was obligated to but because He wanted to.

Why did God create anything?  Some argue that he was lonely, but I don't think so. Even if that were the case, an argument could be made that the act of creation was an extraordinary act of grace.  God created life, which created  the potential for you and me.  Creation gave you an opportunity to "be."  And God was under no obligation to give you or me that opportunity.  Why is there something rather than nothing?  Because God decided there should be something.  And part of that something is you!  In the beginning God created, and this was a marvelous act of grace.

Why did God after creating light, sun, moon, planets and stars to measure the passing of time, did He say "It was good?"  Read on what Andy Stanley says about this:

I think most people take that to mean that God looked at His handiwork and thought to Himself, Nice Job! You know, the kind of thing you would say to yourself after painting a room in your house or washing your car.  That's good.  Sounds a bit silly when you stop and think about it.....

Another option suggests that creation was good in a moral sense.  But that doesn't really work either.  Dry land isn't morally good or bad.  It's just dry land.  But God declared it good.  Strange, isn't it?  Good for what?  Good for whom?  Good for God?  Did God benefit from the division of the land from the sea or from the creation of birds and fish? Was all of that for His sole benefit and enjoyment?  Did it really matter that the seed-bearing plants would reproduce after their own kind?  Was it for God that certain plants were created for food and others just for their beauty?  Would God, who is spirit, benefit from either?  In other parts of the Scripture, we discover that all of creation declares God's glory (Ps. 19:1).  But who hears this declaration?  You; that's who.  And me.  God declared each phase of creation good because it was good for us.

"Then..." (Gen. 1:26)  as in, after everything was ready.  "Then"--as in, after the stage was set.  "Then"--as in, after God got everything the way He knew we would need it to be.  "Then God said, "Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us."...So God created human beings in His own image.  In the image of God He created them" (Gen. 1:26-27).

And what did God do with them?  He told them to enjoy themselves.  Everything He had painstakingly fashioned, He created for them.  Heres' how Moses described it.  
Pay attention to the words in red italics.

Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it.  They will be yours for food.  And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground--everything that has the breath of life in it---I give every green plant for food."  And it was so. (Gen. 1:29-30).  Andy Stanley says this;

God created all this not for Himself, but to give it away.  He handed the keys to us.  He created a world that would perfectly suit us and sustain the entire human race.  

This is the whole point of what I am trying to get across, we did nothing to deserve all this awesome creation and pristine abundance. Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  That's Grace.

I mean think about it, here is an all knowing God, the creator of everything, which would mean that He, God, knew that His grace was going to be needed even before He placed man on earth.  This is really quite awesome, an all loving God creates a great big earth for mankind which He knows is going to turn against Him, yet, He goes ahead and completes His plan.  That is Grace.  Why didn't God just abort His plan or start over or just change the outcome by not placing that one tree in the garden? Seems to me God wanted to give man the opportunity to not only receive His love but wanted man to give his love back without any restrictions.  The tree of knowledge of good and evil would be that opportunity for man to show their love for God by obeying God's one command to not touch the tree. God knew what was going to happen, he even warned the first humans what would happen if they did touch the tree. The real kicker is that God had already made a way for man to get back in good with Him.  That is Grace.  Why did He do this would be my next question.  In 2 Timothy 1:9  we are told that God planned to show us His love and grace before the world was formed.  Ephesians 1:3-6 also tells us that God had planned to show His love for us before the creation of the world.  That's Grace.  God knew mankind would fail, and that we did not deserve His love or grace, but yet He completed His plan anyway.  Mankind did not deserve God's grace and there was nothing man could do to earn it or deserve it, nothing at all.  God, knowing what man would do went ahead and made plans for His one and only Son to be the ultimate sacrifice for mankind to have a way back into God's presence.  That's Grace.  There would be no way for man to earn their way back to God, there was nothing man could do to pay the price for their rebellion/sin.

There are many instances in the scriptures that show God's marvelous grace.  In every instance God did not have to show His love or shed His grace on any of these individuals or groups of people.  They did not deserve anything but punishment.  Yet, God chose to give His grace in every instance.  Let's look at two of these stories that relate to God's grace.  One of them would be Jonah.  You know the story so I am not going to tell the whole story here, you can look at it in Jonah 1:1-5:11.  There is so much more to this story than a man who refused to do what God wanted him to do.  You have to understand what God was calling Jonah to do.  First we need to look at the people of Nineveh.  Again from Andy Stanley's book "The Grace of God;"

Nineveh was the capital city of the Assyrian Empire, one of Israel's most vicious enemies. The Assyrians had turned cruelty into an art.  They had perfected torture.  They dismembered and disfigured people, skinned then alive, boiled them in oil, and impaled them on stakes.  From Jonah's point of view, these people weren't worth saving.  The last thing he wanted to do was be God's emissary of grace.  They didn't deserve grace.  They deserved judgment. 

So one can see why Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh to preach a salvation type message.  But God had other plans for such a degenerate, cruel and lost people.  Jonah 1:1-2 tell us that the sins of the people of Nineveh had come up before Him and God wanted to give them a chance to repent.  Jonah didn't think they deserved grace.  But Jonah didn't stop to think that he did not deserve grace either. No one deserved God's Grace, no one.  So Jonah ran, he ran as far as he could to escape the mission God had placed before Him.  Now to make the story short, Jonah could not outrun God and ended up in a great fish's belly and was placed back on the beach.  God called out to Jonah again and told him to go to Nineveh and preach the message God would tell him to preach.  So Jonah did that. Nineveh was a large city, the scripture says it was three days journey to cross it.  It is estimated that it was about 120,000 in population and that was just inside the city walls that were seven miles in length around the city.  After Jonah preached to the city, the whole city had repented, including the king. Did any of these people deserve God's grace, NO.  But God loved His creation so much that He would extend His grace to the evil people of Nineveh so they could experience God's love also.

The one thing we can learn about Jonah's distress, is that Jonah created this distress all by himself. From the belly of the fish Jonah cried out to God in his distress and God heard him.  God answered Jonah's prayer even though he did not deserve it, Jonah 2:2.  Through a process of lessons God brought before Jonah, Jonah learned some valuable lessons about himself.  There was the lesson about a vine that God caused to grow over Jonah to protect him from the scorching heat.  Jonah was pleased that the vine grew over him to protect him.  During the night God caused a worm to attack the vine, which caused the vine to die and Jonah was not happy.  Now look at what God said to Jonah about the vine.  Jonah 4:10-11, But the Lord  said, "You have been concerned about this vine, though you did not tend it or make it grow.  It sprang up overnight and died overnight.  But Nineveh has more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left, and many cattle as well.  Should I not be concerned about that great city?

The only thing that saved Nineveh was the only thing that saved Jonah, God's Grace.  None of them could do anything to deserve this grace and there was no way for them to earn it.  It was God's love for His creation that caused Him to shed His Grace on the entire area.

After Jonah, the people of Israel, the nation that was to be the light to the rest of the world fall further and further away from God.  Unlike Nineveh, Israel failed to repent of their wayward ways until finally God had to do something to set them back on course.  That discipline came in the form of exile. For 70 years Israel was held captive by another nation.  Then sometime after that the prophets went silent.  There was not another word from God for 400 years.  Not in the sense they had experienced in the past would they hear from their God.  Then after this long period of darkness and silence God makes an announcement.  Andy Stanley says it this way:

Then, with perfect timing and the grandeur of an act 3 overture, the grace of God shook the world.  A piercing pinpoint of light attracted the attention of mystics on the far side of the Arabian Desert (Matt. 2:1-12).  Somewhere in the pastures surrounding the backwater town of Bethlehem, an angelic host ripped the veil between heaven and earth to bring a stunning announcement: the Messiah is born (Luke 2:8-20)!...  In time, He would prove to all that in the birth of the Redeemer, God had not only come to rescue humanity from the death grip of sin; He had become one of us.

The   Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us.  We have seen the glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth, John 1:14.  John gives the account of Jesus extending grace and truth to some of the more undesirable people of the nation.  Jesus called a tax collector named Levi.  A tax collector, which derives from the word telones.  Telones could use Roman authority to extort as much tax as he wanted.  The actual tax went into Rome's coffers; the surplus made the tax collector very rich. The tax collector had to instill fear in the people to extort enough money to not only pay the Roman coffers, but to maximize his profit.  The people hated the tax collector and had no use for them.  Then along came Jesus, full of compassion and grace.  He called Levi and renamed him Matthew. Jesus simply said to him, come, follow me.  Matthew was torn between his heritage as a Jewish descendant and his role as a telone.  Levi was ridden with guilt.  Levi had stooped to the lowest level of a Jewish person. Levi came from the lineage of the levites which were the guardians of the temple.  They were very religious and were to be the guiding light to the rest of the nation of Israel.  It was bad enough to become a Roman tax collector, but to be from the lineage of the levites besides, was considered traitorous.  Then one day Levi encountered Jesus and experienced the grace that God had for the worst of the worst.

There are many more stories that we could look at but there just isn't enough time and space on this blog post.  Levi, now called Matthew wrote the Gospel of Matthew, in the beginning of this gospel Matthew listed the genealogy of Jesus and in it you will find several that would not be considered proper for such a King that Jesus was.  You find Rehab a prostitute, King David, an adulterer and murderer, etc.

The list can go on, but I need to bring this to a close.  Nicodemus was a religious man during the time of Jesus, he came to Jesus at night to ask Him if He was the Messiah.  Jesus after talking with Nicodemus for awhile told Nicodemus that he needed to be born again.  In other words Nicodemus, you need to be reconnected with the Father.  Nicodemus lived by the law and he was a devout, religious man.  Yet, Christ told him that he needed to experience The Father's Grace.  It is the same grace that Jonah experienced, the same grace that the people of Nineveh experienced and the same grace that Matthew experienced.  It is the same grace that is offered to every individual on this earth, even you and me.

Every soul thirst's after the grace of God.  The problem is, is that we all try to quench that thirst with things that do not satisfy it.  Many have tried drugs, alcohol, sex, money, work, relationships, anything to satisfy a thirst that cannot be satisfied except with the grace that God offers to each and every one. As Andy Stanley states; "The Grace of God is the life of the Savior coursing through the souls of believers to sustain us through those things that will not or cannot change."  There is one thing that we all must understand, no matter what religion you adhere to or chose to follow, you need to know that "Christ's death and resurrection signaled to the world that the Kingdom of God is not reserved for good people.  It is reserved for forgiven people." (Andy Stanley, "The Grace of God). Forgiveness only comes through Jesus Christ, God's only begotten Son.  It was God the Father's plan from before man was placed on this earth.  There is no other plan that will bring the forgiveness of your sins.

This my friends is Gods plan for your life, that you all might be found forgiven through His Son who bled and died for you and me.  It was His sacrifice and the Grace of a loving Father that made a way back for you.  If you have not experienced God's grace as of yet, don't you think it is time?  Why keep running from God like Jonah did.  Jonah couldn't run far enough because he could not outrun God. Neither can you.  His Grace is available to you just by asking.  God offered the most fair way for everyone to come back to Him.  Not through some religion or false god, but through the living God. His way is fair because 1.  Everybody is invited.  2.  Everybody gets in the same way.  3.  Everybody can meet the requirement.

In the story of the prodigal son, we find the younger son left home, lived hard and spent all of his inheritance.  He came to his senses and decided to return home.  Upon arrival at his home, the father seen him coming and told his servants to kill the fatted calf and lets celebrate.  It's an amazing story. The father did not ask what he had done, he just welcomed him home and celebrated the fact that he had returned.  That my friend is grace.  And that is how our heavenly Father welcomes us back when we put our trust in His one and only Son, Jesus Christ.  Isn't it time you returned home, a great celebration awaits you.  Your sins are forgiven once you ask for it.  Pray this simple prayer from the heart; Heavenly Father, I am a sinner and I want to come home.  Forgive me of my sins and rebellious nature.  I put my trust and faith in your Son Jesus Christ.  Thank you for your forgiveness Father.  Guide me now in the new life you have for me and help me to live according to your will.  In the name of Jesus your Son, amen.  

Now it's up to you, you aren't going to get a better offer than the offer of God's grace.  He is waiting for you to respond to His love and grace.

I know this is lengthy, but I needed to share what is on my heart.  I hope you will listen to what God is saying to you right now.  Also, I want to give full credit to Andy Stanley for the quotations I used from his book, "The Grace of God."  I would recommend getting a copy and reading the full length version, it will be time well spent.  There is so much more I would like to share on this subject so I may in the next post continue on with this subject.  It is difficult to get the true feeling of God's Grace in a short message, so I hope you will stick with me for future posts on this subject.  It truly is AMAZING GRACE.  Thank you for taking the extra time in reading this blog post.