Sermon Title: Grace Upon Grace

Grace Upon Grace (4.17.16) 1

First Reading Ephesians 2:1-10

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins,2in which you used to livewhen you followed the ways of this worldand of the ruler of the kingdom of the air,the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.3All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh[a]and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.4But because of his great love for us,God, who is rich in mercy,5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.6And God raised us up with Christand seated us with himin the heavenly realmsin Christ Jesus,7in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindnessto us in Christ Jesus.8For it is by graceyou have been saved,through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—9not by works,so that no one can boast.10For we are God’s handiwork,createdin Christ Jesus to do good works,which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Gospel reading Matthew 22:34-40

34Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees,the Pharisees got together.35One of them, an expert in the law,tested him with this question:36“Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

37Jesus replied:“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’[c]38This is the first and greatest commandment.39And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’[d]40All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Who here has seen the classic "Forest Gump?"
After losing his legs in Viet Nam, Lieutenant Dan went on a downward cycle of alcoholism and depression because of his devastating injury. While Forrest and Lieutenant Dan were watching a Christmas special the Lieutenant asks Forrest, "Have you found Jesus yet Gump?" Shocked, Forrest says, "I didn't know I was supposed to be looking for Him Sir!" If we were to ask someone outside the church, and someone inside the church, if they have found Jesus or if they have been saved, I think we would get similar responses. Why do I need to be looking for Jesus and what do I need saved from, would be common responses.
But if we were to step back and look at our society, or even our own hearts, it is not long before we realize that we are a people who are searching constantly. Also, long waiting lists for therapists, skyrocketing anti depression and anxiety medicine sales, and the ever increasing 'self help' section at the book store, are just some clear indicators that we all know that something is wrong. We are all searching for something foundational to build our lives upon. Something to hang our hats on. I am reminded of a Youtube clip in which a person noted that there is not a religion in the world that doesn't recognize that there is something wrong with us. The question is what is it and how do we fix it?
This morning we are beginning our series on the book we use for our Exploring Membership class. The book is called "A Disciple's Path" and the first chapter is about a disciple's path being defined. In this path of discipleship to Christ, we find what's wrong with us and how to fix it. What is wrong with us, brokenness, and how do we fix it, love. In this path we grow in learning and living out the two commandments were made for. In our Gospel reading Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment is to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatestcommandment.And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." In the love of God and neighbor we find what we are looking for and the solution to our greatest problem.
In other words, that foundation we are all looking for, the cure for the heart disease we all feel is to hang our lives upon these commandments. But what does it mean and what does it take to build on this foundation?
The answer to both questions is grace upon grace. Fromrealizing our need to have sins forgiven to growing in this love, God's grace is there. God's grace is defined as His unmerited, unearned, favor. Favor that beckons, initiates, and grows our loving relationship with Him so we may more perfectly love others. As we read out of Ephesians,salvation is not just a future promise. Our faith is not just fire insurance for hell. Paul does not write by grace you will be saved but it is by grace that you have been saved. That's great news!
Even better is that it is not out of our own works that we have been, or are continuing to be, saved. Instead it is God's grace, motivated by His love for us and His desire to make us whole as well as holy, that we are saved and grow in His love. The founder of the Methodist movement, John Wesley, understood God's grace functioning in three different ways. God beckons us into relationship with Him through Prevenient grace. God initiates a relationship with us through Justifying Grace. Finally, He enables us to grow in this relationship through Sanctifying Grace. Through this we can see how the path of fulfilling the commandments of loving God and neighbor is, at every turn, marked by grace upon grace.
For the rest of our time this morning we are going to answer some questions about this path of grace. What are these different types of grace? What is God's role and our response to this grace? And How do they enable us to grow in love of God and neighbor? In doing this I want to give one disclaimer. Our relationship with God is like any other relationship, it is not linier or rigid. There is not always a smooth transition from one type of grace to another. But, through this process we can see genuine progress. Growing in loving God which informs, encourages, and enables us to love our neighbor.
So what is this prevenient grace and how does it work in our lives?
This is the grace that God gives every human being in the face of this planet. This is the grace in which God invites us into relationship with Him. Literally it is the grace that goes before us. This gracemakes the question "have you found Jesus" the wrong one. We do not chase after God but He is chasing after us! He is the great hound of heaven that Francis Thomson wrote about. Or as we sang this morning "He left His Father’s throne above, So free, so infinite His grace—Emptied Himself of all but love,And bled for Adam’s helpless race:’Tis mercy all, immense and free,For O my God, it found out me!"
For this reason whenever we interact with someone we should not only ask "What would Jesus do," but "What is Jesus doing?" He is actively pursuing every person. That pursuit takes on many different forms. One is a deep longing to discover an answer for the foundational questions of life. All people ask questions of origin, meaning, morality, and destiny. At one time or another we have all wondered where do I come from, what is the meaning of my life, what do good and evil really mean, and where is my ultimate destiny?Why do these questions nag at us so much? Why can't we seem to shake them? It is because in them God is pursuing us by His Holy Spirit.
It is also Prevenient grace that brings about the conviction of sin.
Those words may not be used, but there are times in everyone's life when we realize that we are not right. We sense who we ought to be, look in the mirror and have the startling realization that this is not the person looking back at us. There is a time in everyone's life when we look at our pursuits of pleasure, power, control or the approval of others and realize how hollow they are. It is this grace that wakes us from being asleep in our sins, or "dead in our trespasses" as Paul writes in Ephesians.
This waking process can be painful. John Wesley describes it like this "By some awful providence, or by His word applied with the demonstration of the Sprit, God touches the heart of him that lay asleep in darkness and in the shadow of death. He is terribly shaken out of his sleep, and awakes into a consciousness of his danger."His brother Charles wrote "I have long withstood His grace,Long provoked Him to His face,Would not hearken to His calls,Grieved Him by a thousand falls."
When we feel this we may be apt to think, how is this an expression of God's love? It is an expression of God's love because the conviction of sin is to our souls as pain is to our bodies. We ought to thank God for pain. Otherwise how would we know when something is wrong in our bodies? We could walk on and destroy a broken leg when all we needed to do is cast it and stay off of it for a while and it would be as good as new.
The question Prevenient grace callsus to ask is, what will I do with this conviction?
There are really three options. First, we can bury it. We can bury it by simply ignoring or, rationalizing our sin. I don't like to brag but I am a champion rationalize-r of sin. Are there any other champion rationalize-rs here today? If you are a champion rationalize-r or if you have the miss fortune of being married to, or very close to, one you will appreciate the title of a book I saw. It is "Yes Lord I have sinned, but I have several excellent excuses!" Even as we ignore and rationalize we still know it is there. If you inject Novocain into an athlete's leg they can play on it without pain but damage will still be done. In the same way, when we inject this spiritual Novocain into our souls we may not feel it but it is still doing damage!
Second, we can try to earn it. We can try to make ourselves good enough! This can be observed in the church through what we call "works righteousness." Outside of the church, this takes many interesting forms. One of the most common are all of these self help books and blogs. Allowing other people to tell you how to live your life. This can also take the form of becoming a workaholic, I'm going to earn my self-worth through excelling at my job. Or perhaps we think we have to be the perfect parent, sibling, child or friend to win other people's approval. The list, of course could go on.
The problem is that this can only lead to pride or despair. In pride we work and work, look back and think, I'm pretty awesome, definitely better than those other people. Not exactly the kind of person we want to become. It can also lead to despair by looking back and realizing, I'm still not good enough. Both of these results have one thing in common. They cause us to move self more and more to the center of our universe. In doing this we focus, more and more on, if we are good enough, if we have enough, and begin to think of everything based on how it affects me. That's why having an inflated ego and self loathing come from the same root issue, self referenced righteousness!
In none of those instances do we grow in love of God or others. Instead, we simply continue to bend inward on ourselves. I think this is why every time Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment is, or how to inherit eternal life, He always says love the Lord your God with all you heart soul and mind first then love your neighbor. Not because one is more important, but love of God is logically prior to love of neighbor. The more we remove our self from the center of our universe, and allow God to be the center, the less we have to worry about ourselves, because we are dependent on Him. The less self centered our righteous is, or the less self righteous we are, the more we are Christ centered it becomes.
The shift from self centered to Christ centered righteousness is not a shift we do on our own. Only through God's Justifying grace, His love that makes things right that is this shift made.
Again Paul tells us in Ephesians that it is "by graceyou have been saved,through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God." So how is this gift experienced? Charles Wesley captured the two aspects of Justifying Grace in writing "There for me the Savior stands,shows his wounds and spreads his hands.God is love! I know, I feel;Jesus weeps and loves me still.Now incline me to repent,let me now my sins lament,now my foul revolt deplore,weep, believe, and sin no more."
The first thing Justifying grace does is enables us to trust that, through Christ, our past sins are forgiven! This is what God does for us in Justifying Grace. That word trust is very important. We can trust this to be true even when we do not feel like it is true. When I was young I fell over a bicycle and smacked my head against a concrete poll. It gave me a huge gash where my eyebrow is, I ended up needing five stitches. Anyone who has had or seen a head wound knows that they bleed impressively. Because of that I was freaking out, I did not feel like it was going to be ok. But I can still remember my dad's calm voice reassuring me as I got the stitches telling me it was going to be ok. I did not feel like it was going to be ok but I trusted my dad so I trusted that it was going to be ok. Even if we do not feel that our past sins are forgiven, we can trust in God's justifying grace that, in Christ, they are.
The second thing Justifying Grace does is break the power of sin. This is what God's grace does in us. His justifying grace breaks the chains of those things that keep us from loving God and loving neighbor. Our hearts are transformed. C.S. Lewis puts it this way, God says "Give me all of you!!! I don’t want so much of your time, so much of your talents and money, and so much of your work. I want YOU!!! ALL OF YOU!! I have not come to torment or frustrate the natural man or woman, but to KILL IT! No half measures will do. I don’t want to only prune a branch here and a branch there; rather I want the whole tree out! Hand it over to me, the whole outfit, all of your desires, all of your wants and wishes and dreams. All the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked--the whole outfit.Turn them ALL over to me, give yourself to me and I will make of you a new self---in my image. Give me yourself and in exchange I will give you Myself. My will, shall become your will. My heart, shall become your heart.”
It is through God's justifying Grace that we are born again! The amazing thing is that God's grace doesn't stop there, not by a long shot! This is when the glorious work of Sanctifying grace begins.
Raise your hand if you have ever birthed a baby. Raise your hand if you have ever seen a baby born. Raise your hand if you have ever been a baby that was born. Ok so we are all familiar with the concept of birth, or being born. When one is born, is the work over? Far from it, the work is just beginning! In the same way it is God's sanctifying grace mediated through the Holy Spirit that enables us to go from being babies in Christ to growing into a maturing disciple of Jesus Christ. A disciple continually growing in love of God and love of neighbor.
In this way, not only are we saved by grace through faith but the image of God is restored within us by grace through faith. Just as watching the growth and maturing of a child is anything but boring and monotonous, growth in Christ is an exciting adventure. I think this is part of what Ravi Zacharias was getting at when talking about living a lifestyle of worship, a lifestyle of turning our minds, hearts, and souls to the Lord. He noted that all other pursuits become boring, monotones, and dry. Pleasure becomes meaningless, financial riches never seem to be enough, and praise and adulation from others becomes fickle and empty. But worship, and worship alone "is the perpetual novelty."
God's sanctifying grace works through the means of grace like reading the scripture, praying, acts of mercy, corporate worship, and small group study and accountability. In talking about these means of grace I like to use the analogy of a cell phone. In our exploring membership class I talked about the fact that when we are separated from someone we love, our cell phones become very important to us. They are not important for their own sake. Instead, they are important because they are our means of connecting to our loved one. Likewise, these means of grace are vital in our lives, not for their own sake, but in enabling us to connect, and grow in connection with love of God and neighbor.