"Rock the Boat"

8-7-11

Heflin FUMC                                       “Rock the Boat”

Matthew 14: 22-33

There’s an old saying that goes something like this:  “If things are going well, don’t worry; it will change.  If things are going badly, don’t worry; it will change.”

We see this over and over again in our lives, and it shouldn’t surprise us. 

We like to think that life is just a nice, level plain – or even a gentle incline, getting higher and higher as we climb to heaven.  Where we got that idea, I’ll never know.  We certainly didn’t get it from the Bible!  Our lives, instead of being level, tend to follow the path of what has been called “undulation.”

That’s what we see in the lives of the disciples, particularly in the live of Simon Peter.  Today we start a new series called, “The School of Rock.”  In case you say the title of this series and thought I was talking about the movie starring Jack Black – that’s not what these sermons will be about.  They will be about the lessons we learn from the life of Peter – whom Jesus nicknamed “The Rock.”

Ok – back to the old saying… “If things are going well, don’t worry; it will change.”  Peter and the other disciples had just witnessed something amazing!  Jesus had just fed a multitude – 5,000 men, not counting the women and children – with 5 loaves and 2 fish.  After dinner was over, they gathered up 12 baskets full of leftovers.  I don’t know about you, but if I had just witnessed something miraculous like that, I would want to take some time to savor the moment…maybe sit around and snack on the leftovers, just chill and take a nap.

Last Sunday after the 5^th Sunday Feast, I got home and sat in the recliner, and a nap just snuck up on me.  It was a beautiful thing!

But listen to v. 22 again: “Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side…”

He “made” them get into the boat.  The KJV says he “constrained” them.  The NLT says he “insisted.” 

Now – why would Jesus compel them to get into the boat?  It’s like the old saying, “Why did the chicken cross the road?  To get to the other side.”  Jesus put the disciples into the boat to cross over to the other side of the lake.  The other side of the lake was the Gentile side.  They didn’t want to go to the other side where the Gentiles were.  The Gentiles were unclean!  Jesus is always compelling us to step outside our comfort zones and be in ministry for Him!

Just about the time we think we have things settled, Jesus comes along and rocks our boat.  Have you ever noticed that?  Jesus is always pushing us out of our comfort zone. 

Well – the disciples start across the lake, and Jesus goes up on the mountain by himself to pray.  And a storm comes up.  In v. 24 it says that they were being battered by the waves, they were far from land, and the wind was against them.

Sometimes Jesus comes and rocks our boat by getting us out of our comfort zone, and sometimes the storms of life rock our boat.  The disciples didn’t say, “Oh, why me?!”  Storms happen, and they knew that.  They were veteran sailors.

There’s an old English proverb that says, “A calm sea never made a skilled sailor.” 

Storms happen in our lives and they rock our boats.  It doesn’t mean that we’re doing something wrong.  It doesn’t mean that God is mad at us.  Struggles are part of life.

I have a quote to share with you, and I want you to guess who said it.

“If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters."

Know who said this?  He was born a slave in Maryland.  He was taken away from his mother when he was still an infant, and was raised by his grandmother.  He was taken away from his grandmother at the age of seven, and sent to work on a plantation.  The wife of his master taught him the alphabet when he was 12 years old, even though it was against the law for her to do so.  He taught himself to read by watching the white children on the plantation.

One day his master found him reading a newspaper, so he sent him off to another farmer who was famous for being what was called a “slave breaker.”  That farmer beat him mercilessly.  He almost lost him mind during all this, until one day, he actually fought back.  He eventually escaped slavery, and became the most famous abolitionist of his day.  His name is Frederick Douglass.

He is the one who said, “If there is no struggle there is no progress.”

Can you see that in your own life?  I can.  So we need not wonder why the storms of life rock our boats.  God has designed it this way because God loves us and wants us to grow!  Would you take a  moment and read with me the poem on the front of your bulletin?

May You Have
Unknown

May you have......

Enough happiness to keep you sweet,
Enough trials to keep you strong,
Enough sorrow to keep you human,
Enough hope to keep you happy;
Enough failure to keep you humble,
Enough success to keep you eager,
Enough friends to give you comfort,
Enough wealth to meet your needs;
Enough enthusiasm to look forward,
Enough faith to banish depression,
Enough determination to make each day better than yesterday.

That’s a pretty good prayer to pray for someone, isn’t it! 

Well – sometimes the Lord rocks our boats, and sometimes the storms of life rock our boats.  And then, sometimes we rock our own boats. 

This is the part of the story we like.  The disciples see Jesus walking on the water and they think he’s a ghost.  Jesus said, “Take heart, it’s me!  Don’t be afraid!”

Peter says, “Lord, if it’s really you, command me to come to you on the water.”

And Jesus says, “Come.” And Peter got out of the boat, and started to walk to Jesus on the water.  And we know what happened – Peter took his eyes off of Jesus, and started looking at the size of the waves, and he started to sink.  He cried out to Jesus, and immediately Jesus caught him by the hand and saved him.  And Jesus said to Peter, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

It sounds like Jesus is fussing at Peter, doesn’t it?  But think about it this way – Peter had a little faith, right?  The other disciples had none.  And what can you do with just a little faith?  Rocking our own boat means taking a step of faith – taking a step and trusting that Jesus is going to be there to catch us.

It’s like what we did when we decided to build the Wesley Center, remember?  We did a lot of working planning and preparing and pledging, but in the end, it was a step of faith.  Would it have been safer not to do anything?  Yes.  Has it been a struggle?  Yes.  But if there is no struggle, there is no progress.

Maybe you have smooth sailing right now.  Well, don’t worry…that will change.  But maybe, you find yourself in the middle of a storm.  Don’t worry…that will change, too.  It is Jesus who tells us, “Take heart.  I’m here.  Don’t be afraid.”  When the boat gets too rocky – at just the right time – Jesus gets in the boat with us.  And did you notice what happened in v. 32 when Jesus got in the boat with them?  The wind ceased.

At the time that the Gospel of Matthew was written, Domitian was the Roman Emperor.  He was a cruel and nasty emperor, who persecuted Christians something awful.  To say that Domitian was drunk with power would be an understatement.  He insisted on being addressed as “master of earth and sea.”

But the disciples knew that day…they knew something that we know, but sometimes only in hindsight.  There is a Master of earth and sea – and it’s not Domitian…and it’s not us.  It is Jesus.  And He’s in our boat!

As we come to the Lord’s table today, let us remember His struggle…His blood, shed for us…His body, broken for us…and let us worship him like the disciples did when their boat was being rocked.

"Sanctifying Grace"

7-31-11

Heflin FUMC                                     “Sanctifying Grace”

Phil. 1: 3-6

I get asked questions all the time.  I can’t tell you how many of them I hear on a daily basis.  If you have kids, you know what I mean.  The other morning, before I had my first cup of coffee, Michael asks me, “Dad, why did you pack Twizzlers in my lunch yesterday?”  I don’t know.  It seemed like the thing to do at the time.

And then when I went through the drive thru window the other day, a voice came over the speaker and asked me if I wanted an apple pie with that.  Do I want an apple pie to go with my Diet Coke?  No, thank you.

Most of the questions I get asked are not that serious, but I have been asked some very serious questions.  For instance…

In June of 1970, when I was baptized, I was asked if I accepted Jesus as my Savior.  Then when I joined the church, I was asked if I would support the church with my prayers, my presence, my gifts and my service.  Very serious questions!

In February of 1993, I was asked by a preacher if I would have Tammy Rudow to be my lawfully wedded wife.  I said, “I will,” and I have never regretted it for the last 18 ½ years!

In October of 1998, when our first child was born, I was asked by the nurse: “Mr. Hayes, would you like to hold your daughter?”  I said, “Yes,” though I was a little scared I would break her.

Serious, soul-searching questions…  This morning, I want you to ask yourself a two serious, soul-searching questions that I was asked in June of 1990, when I stood before Bishop Lloyd Knox at Annual Conference about to be ordained.  He asked all of us preachers the questions that go all the way back to John Wesley, and have changed very little since he first asked them of his preachers.

First question:  “Have you faith in Christ?”

We have been talking about grace all this month.  We talked about what is so amazing about grace.  We talked about “prevenient” grace, the grace that is at work in our lives from the moment we are born to the time when we say “yes” to God’s offer of a relationship.

Last week we talked about “justifying grace.”  When we accept for ourselves the relationship God offers us in Christ, we are justified by grace – we receive Christ’s righteousness as a free gift, and we stand before God “just as if we’d never sinned.” 

So when I ask you this first question that John Wesley asked his preachers, and that Bishop Knox asked me, I am asking if you have received this free gift of justifying grace.  I’m not asking you how religious you are, or how many times a week you go to church…I’m asking if you have ever opened your life, and received that free gift that God offers in Christ Jesus.

When Bishop Knox asked us preachers that question, we all said, “Yes!” with a lot of gusto (as you would imagine a bunch of preachers would).

The second question, we answered with a little less gusto.  When I tell you what it is, you’ll see why.

The second question:  “Are you going on to perfection?” 

This question makes us squirm a bit, doesn’t it?  It makes me squirm, because I know good and well that I’m not perfect.  (At this point, I expect Tammy and the kids to say, “Amen!)  That’s because when we think about perfection, we think about being without flaws.  And we are just not there, are we?

But what John Wesley meant, and what Jesus meant when he said, “Be perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect” in Matthew 5…is to be complete – to be mature.  The word here for “perfect” in Matthew 5 is the word that was used for a mechanism that had all its parts.

Bishop Knox was asking us – and today I want you to ask yourself this – “Are you maturing in your faith?”

Have you ever gone to a cemetery and looked at the tombstones?  There is always the date that the person was born, and then there’s a dash, followed by the date the person died.  I heard someone at a funeral one time say that the most important thing in a person’s life is what is represented by that dash.

Well – if you took the date of your conversion – when you first said “yes” to Christ and made your profession of faith – and if you wrote that date down and then put a dash there…the dash would represent what we’re talking about today – sanctifying grace.

Again, let us remember that we are not talking about different graces here.  It’s all one grace – it’s all the free gift of God to us that we don’t deserve and didn’t earn.  We just experience it in different ways throughout our lives.

Sanctifying grace is the process of opening our lives to the work of the Holy Spirit in and through us.  It is God working in our lives with a divine energy, transforming our heart and life, like the sunshine and the sap ripens the fruit as the branch abides in the vine.

As we grown older in years, as Christians, we are supposed to ripen – mature spiritually – or as John Wesley put it in his question to his preachers – go on to perfection.  We are meant to keep growing until the day we see Jesus face-to-face.

Paul says it this way in his letter to the Philippians: 

Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.

I call this the “He Who” verse…He who has begun a good work in you will complete it.

God will do his work to ripen the Fruit of the Spirit in your life.  What’s our part?  Our part is to abide in Christ.

John 15: 4 says,

Abide in Me, and I in you.  As a branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you, unless you abide in Me.

Our job is to abide in Christ – through prayer, study, worship, and good works, we stay connected to the vine.  And growth happens.  It just takes time, but by God’s sanctifying grace, we actually can say “yes” to the question, “Are you going on to perfection?”  We can say yes, and mean it.

Now…one last question in closing… This question didn’t come from John Wesley.  It came from my 3 children in the back of our minivan as we were traveling to the beach this summer.  “Are we there yet?”

And if we asked that question to the Heavenly Father, His answer might be the same as my answer was to my children:

“No, children.  We’re not there yet, but we’re getting closer all the time!”

"Justifying Grace"

7-24-11

Heflin FUMC                                       “Justifying Grace”

Romans 3: 20-26

I have always loved baseball.  It’s probably a gene that I inherited from my dad, but for whatever reason, I’ve always loved it.  When I was a kid, I probably drove my parents a little crazy with it.  I grew up out in the country, and there weren’t any other kids around to actually play a game of baseball, so I had to improvise.

I got a rubber baseball, and I would throw it against the side of the house.  The wooden cover to the crawl space was the strike zone.  If I hit it, I got a strike, and if I missed it, it was a hit, and I had to field the ball.  The big red oak tree to my left was first base.  So if I fielded the ball and threw it and it the red oak tree, the runner was out.  Second base was the outhouse.  So to get a double play, I had to hit the outhouse, and then relay the ball to the red oak tree.  Well – you get the idea.

When I wanted to bat, I would take an old bat and go to the gravel road by our house, and hit rocks out into the woods.  I’d throw a rock up, and SMACK!, there was a single.  SMACK!, there was a homerun.  I never struck out, because I was not only the batter, but also the pitcher and the umpire.

I was the MVP of my backyard baseball league!  I had a perfect record!  Of course, I got to make up all the rules…and change them anytime I wanted to. 

It wasn’t that way when I actually started playing little league baseball.  You see, they had a rule book.  They also had umpires, and coaches.

When I pitched, I didn’t always throw strikes.  Sometimes, the batter got a hit, or even a homerun!  When I batted, I didn’t always get a hit.  Sometimes I struck out!  And when I played other positions, I didn’t always make the play.  I remember one game in particular, when I was playing right field (they put me in right field to take advantage of my blazing speed).  Whoever was batting hit a single to right, and the ball was coming right to me and I got myself ready, and it went right through my legs, and they guy made it all the way to third base.

The other team was laughing and celebrating, my own teammates were giving me the evil eye, the coach yelled at me, and I could feel my face turning red.  I didn’t feel at all like the MVP.  I felt…well, I felt like a failure.

Do you remember when you first started to feel like a failure?  Like there was a standard, and you didn’t live up to it – that you somehow fell short?

It usually happens quite early in our lives.  Our parents, or our brothers and sisters, or our teachers find a way to let us know that we are not cutting the mustard.  As a matter of fact, we sometimes break the rules so badly that we need a whoopin’ – or time out, or whatever punishment is available.

And then when we go to church – at some point, we realize that it is not all about singing, “Jesus Loves Me” and getting some candy from our Sunday School teacher.  We start to understand that there are some serious standards, and we seriously fail to live up to them.

Paul put it this way in Romans 3: 23… “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

All of us…every last one of us has missed the mark.  We were created by our good and loving God in God’s own image.  But ever since Adam and Eve, we have been prone to sin, and that image of God has been distorted.  Instead of reflecting God’s glory, we reflect back an image that looks like a fun-house mirror.  We are just – well, we’re broken…failures.

What we need is to be restored.  What we need is to be forgiven.  What we need is reconciliation with God, accepted by this awesome and holy God.  We need to be justified!! To be justified, is to be declared righteous, or blameless. .. “just as if I’d never sinned.”

The way I see it, we have two choices when it comes to being justified.

We can try justifying ourselves.  And we all try this.

We go about this in a variety of ways:

We try to be good.  We try to keep all the rules perfectly.  You ever try to just “be good?” To keep all the rules…perfectly?

How did that work out for ya?  If you haven’t been able to accomplish perfection, you are in good company. 

The Pharisees worked pretty hard at keeping all the rules.  They seemed to live for rules.  They had taken the 10 commandments of Moses, and by Jesus’ time they had turned them into 613 rules.  The Pharisees would take a commandment like the 4^th commandment – to Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy – and turn it in to something impossibly complicated.

For instance – on the Sabbath you could ride a donkey, and that wasn’t considered work.  But – you couldn’t carry a switch with you, for you might be tempted to whip the donkey to make it go faster, and that would be work.

A woman was not allowed to look in the mirror on the Sabbath.  It was thought that if she looked in the mirror, she might see a gray hair and be tempted to pull it out, and that would be considered working on the Sabbath.

Even today, in Israel, the buildings have what are called Sabbath Elevators.  These elevators automatically stop at every floor.  The reason?  They do that so that no one has to push a button on the elevator.

Now it is easy to point fingers at the Pharisees and say, “Shame on you,” but they aren’t the only ones who have had lots of rules.  We Christians have done the same.  In the book I told you all about at the beginning of this sermon series, What’s So Amazing About Grace, I read a list of things that were banned for Christians in John Calvin’s day in Switzerland.  You want to hear this list?  Here are some things that were forbidden:

Feasting, dancing, singing, pictures, statues, church bells, organs, altar candles, “indecent or non-religious” songs, staging or attending theatrical plays, wearing rouge, jewelry, lace, or “immodest” dress; speaking disrespectfully of your better; extravagant entertainment, swearing, gambling, playing cards, hunting, drunkenness; non-religious books; and get this – naming children after anyone but characters in the Old Testament.

There are records that showed a man who was put in jail for four days for naming his son Claude – a name not found in the Old Testament.  There is also a record of a woman who was jailed for four days because her hairdo reached an “immortal height.”  It would have been difficult to be a country music star in those days!

My point is this – if our only hope for justification is to justify ourselves by keeping all the rules perfectly, then we are lost and without hope.  We just can’t be that good!

So sometimes we try to justify ourselves by being super religious.

Monks in the fourth century would live in small cells on a diet of bread, salt, and water.  A certain branch of monks lived in the forests and survived on wild herbs and roots.  They only wore a loincloth made of thorns.  The most extreme one I heard of was a monk named Simeon Stylites.  He lived on top of a column for thirty-seven years.  He bowed and prayed 1,244 times a day.

We sometimes try to justify ourselves by belittling others.

It’s the old game of “I might not be perfect, but at least I’m not ________ (fill in the blank).”

The devout Pharisee in Jesus day began his day every morning with the following prayer.  “I thank you, God, that I was not born a slave, a woman, or a Gentile.”

Belittling others…comparing ourselves favorably to others…

Or we try to justify ourselves by blaming others.

You know the old problem I told you about in little league baseball?  That I sometimes missed the ball when it was hit to me?  Or I sometimes struck out at the plate?  Well – I have been known to say, “It’s not my fault…that umpire needs glasses!”  Did you ever do that?

The problem is, none of us can justify ourselves.  It just can’t be done.  We can’t be good enough.  We can’t do it by praying 1,244 times a day.  We can’t do it by running other people down.  We can’t blame it on someone else.

We are failures when it comes to the law.  Paul says in Romans 3 that the Law is very useful for one thing in particular - to show us where we are going wrong.  For instance, if there wasn’t a law saying, “Thou shalt not steal,” I wouldn’t know that stealing was wrong.  But listen to what he says – Justification – being declared righteous – comes apart from the law.

But I’ve got some good news!! Where the Law failed, Jesus succeeded.  Where we lacked faithfulness, Jesus was faithful.  This brings me to the second choice when it comes to how we can be justified. 

We can be justified by grace.

“All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory.”  We are all too aware of that, aren’t we?  But listen to the next verse, verse 24:  “but all are justified (that is, treated as righteous) freely by his grace because of a ransom that was paid by Christ Jesus.”

We have all missed the mark.  But the good news of grace is that Jesus gives us His righteousness to wear as a free gift to all who would receive it.  We put on His righteousness, so that when God looks at us, all God sees is His Son’s righteousness!

Is this justifying grace offered to anyone?  Yes!  Even really dirty, rotten scoundrels?  Yes.

Even to a man you might have heard about who lived in the 18^th century.  He was a dirty, rotten scoundrel if there ever was one.  He was a hard drinking, dirty-mouthed sailor, who took delight in nothing except making more money for himself.  That’s how he got involved in the slave trade.

He would take his ship to Africa, and there he would kidnap men, women and children, and chain them in the bottom of the ship and sail them back to Europe or the Caribbean where he would sell them off like livestock.

He had been doing this for several years, and never thought anything about it until one day he had his crew ran into a really violent, nasty storm at sea.  They didn’t think they were going to live through it, it was so bad.  This near-death experience put him face-to-face with who he was, and with God.  All this set in motion a dramatic conversion for him.  He would never be the same.  He gave up the slave trade, and eventually became an Anglican priest.

He was known for mentoring a young man named William Wilberforce, a British politician and a devout Christian who led the campaign for Parliament to abolish the slave trade in the British Empire.

As important as that was, it is not what this man is best known for.  He is best known for a song he wrote – maybe the most popular song ever written.  This song went into the Guinness Book of World Records last year for being sung in unison in over 60 languages.

The man’s name was John Newton, and the song, as you have already guessed, is Amazing Grace. 

The Billboard Top 100 created a formula whereby they came up with the top 10 songs of all time.  Do you know what song came out on top?  “The Twist,” by Chubby Checker.

Other surveys have looked at the most favorite hymns of all time.  I’ll bet you can guess what the top hymn of all time is…that’s right!  Amazing Grace.  And it is not just a song sung in church.  Johnny Cash said that whenever he would sing in prison, the song that was requested most other than his songs – was Amazing Grace.

Why would that be?  Why would secular artists like Aaron Neville, and Elvis Presley, and Billy Ray Cyrus, and Janis Joplin and Rod Stewart record a song like Amazing Grace? 

I believe it is because grace speaks to the deepest need we have – to be with God and to be accepted by God…to be justified before God… “just as if I’d” never sinned!

Justification is offered by grace alone…only as a free gift.  And it’s offered to even a wretch like me!

Now we’ve been taught, and rightly so in a lot of cases, that if it sounds too good to be true, then it must be too good to be true.  There must be some “catch” right?  Well – there is a “catch” to grace.  You have to “catch” it – that is – you have to receive it.  Grace is by definition a gift, and gifts are meant to be received.

If your arms are too full of your own attempts to please God, you can’t “catch” grace.  If you have your arms folded in defiance, thinking that you don’t need God, then you can’t “catch grace.” 

Would you come and pray this morning, and pray with our hands palms up – to symbolize that you want to gratefully receive God’s free gift of grace?

"Prevenient Grace"

7-17-11

Heflin FUMC                                       “Prevenient Grace”

Gen. 28: 10-16

I’ve got something to confess to you this morning:  I like to think of myself as a person who is in control.  For instance, if I am going on a trip somewhere, I like to be the one who is at the wheel.  And if I am watching T.V., I like to be the one who has the remote control.  Anybody else like that?  Maybe it’s just a “guy” thing.

Another example of this is that when it comes to love and romance, I’m sort of an old-fashioned guy.  I like to be the one to make the first move, you know?  I like to be the one who calls the girl and asks her out – not the other way around.

Tammy and I have been married 18 ½ years.  When we first started dating, I was following “the program, you know.  I was the one who was in control.  I was the one who asked her out.  I drove to her house and picked her up.  I paid for dinner.  I opened the door for her.  You know the drill.  When I fell in love with her, I was the first one who said, “I love you.”  When I decided to ask her to marry me, I was the one who got down on his knees and said, “Will you marry me?” – not the other way around.  Remember – I am “Mr. Control.” I’m the boss.  That’s my story, and I’m sticking it.  At least – that’s the way I remember things happening.  You do believe me, don’t you?

Well – I’ve got something else to confess to you:  Most of the time, I’m only “Mr. Control” in my mind.  In reality, I’m not nearly as in control.  I don’t always get to drive, and I’ve come to accept that other folks can do OK behind the wheel.  I usually don’t control the remote control, especially when our children are in the room.  If they are in the room we are watching SpongeBob, or Phineas and Ferb, or something like that.

And as for the romance thing – looking back on it, I may not have been as in control as I thought.  Thinking back on it, I can recognize what Tammy did.  She did three things:

She got my attention.  There I was, minding my own business, all “in control” and everything, and then all the sudden there she was.  I mean, she was there before, but there she was.  She was looking good.  When did she start looking so good?

Then she offered me the possibility of a relationship.  You might say, she let me know that she was available.  She would smile at me, and bat her eyes.  And she would write me these little notes and leave them on my desk and all….oh, she’s a sneaky woman!

The third thing she did was to do unexpected, undeserved nice things for me.  One example was at Christmas time 20 years ago.  It was the Christmas right after my divorce.  If you have ever been through a divorce, or if someone in your family has, you know how hard the holidays can be.  Well, I was pretty depressed.  As a matter of fact, if it had been up to me, I would have just canceled Christmas that year.  For the very first time in my life, I didn’t even put up a Christmas tree. 

Tammy saw what a state I was in, and one afternoon I heard a knock at my door.  I opened the door, and there was Tammy dragging a big old tree behind her.  I just stood there, looking at her with my mouth open.  She said, “Don’t just stand there, hold the door for me.  This thing’s heavy.”  So she drags in the tree, and starts to put it up.  She has gone out and not only got a tree, but the lights, decorations, and the whole nine yards.

I was standing there watching her – still sort of in shock – and she said, “Are you going to stand there just looking at me, or are you going to help me decorate this tree?”

Oh yeah, I was really in control, wasn’t I?  Looking back on it, I never stood a chance!  I thought I was in control, but there were forces at work that I couldn’t begin to understand.

You know, this same “delusion of control” is something that we have when it comes to our relationship with God.   We like to think that when it comes to us and God, we are in the driver’s seat, right?  “God is my co-pilot.”  Give me a break!  God relates to us by means of a five-letter word:  G-R-A-C-E!

This month we are looking at this special word and how it works in our lives.  Grace is a word that comes from the Greek word, charis, meaning “gift.”  It is God’s unearned, undeserved gift to us that includes our salvation, our reconciliation, and our eternal life.

It is one “grace” we are talking about here, but there are many facets of it.  We experience grace in different ways according to the different stages of our spiritual journey.  We are going to be talking about these this week and for the next two weeks.  Today we are looking at prevenient grace.

When I gave Iris and Kathy the title of this sermon for the bulletin, they looked at me with this look that said, “Do what?  Pre what?”  Prevenient comes from a Latin word that means “to come before.”  In Christian theology, it refers to the grace that comes before any decision we make to say “yes” to God.  It is already at work, even before we are ever aware of it.

It is the love of God, “courting” us.  Did you realize that God was “courting” you?  Well actually, God does for us the same three things that Tammy did when we first started dating.

God gets our attention.  For Jacob, God gets his attention in a dream.  In his dream, he sees a ladder, reaching from earth to heaven.  Angels are going up and down the ladder.  I don’t know about you, but that would get my attention!

God is good at getting our attention, isn’t He?  He got Moses’ attention through the burning bush.  He got Jonah’s attention through a whale.  He got Saul’s attention on the Damascus Road.  What has God used to get your attention?

Well – the second thing is that God offers to us the possibility of a relationship.  For Jacob, the Lord stood beside him and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and your offspring; and your offspring will be like the dust of the earth…all the families of the earth will be blessed in you and in your offspring.  I will be with you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land.”

This offer of relationship is called a covenant, and this is the way God works.  The covenant is the strongest form of a relationship that is identified in the Bible.  From the covenant with Noah in Gen. 9, where God said he would never again destroy the earth with a flood, to the covenant God made with Abraham and Isaac, and now the covenant God is making with Jacob.

It is God who takes the initiative.  It is God who makes the offer of a covenant relationship.  God loves us so much, that he pursues us -  even when we rebel against him.

And then, God does unexpected, undeserved nice things for us.

We’ve already said that God pursues us with the offer of a relationship – and this goes on throughout our lives.  But God also acts with grace.  Listen to these familiar words from Romans 5: 8…

But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

Before we ever had the first thought of God, God had already given his all.  Is there any end to the grace God pours into our lives before we ever even realize it?

The grace that goes before – prevenient grace.  Can you see it your life? 

I think of God’s prevenient grace at work in my life, and I think about my grandmother.  From the time I was old enough to know what was going on, my grandmother would read the Bible to me.  She prayed for me every day of her life.  Any of y’all have a praying grandmother?  If you did, you know a little about prevenient grace.

And then there was my Aunt Leo, my grandmother’s sister.  Aunt Leo was a missionary, and she had retired by the time I came along.  So instead of being a missionary to China – she was a missionary to me.  In the summer, she would give me my own personal little vacation Bible school.  What a gift of prevenient grace my Aunt Leo was!

And there’s my parents.  God graced me with wonderful parents.  My mom is my hero – probably the biggest single example of God’s prevenient grace in my life.  God must really love me a lot to give me a mom like the one I got!

My little church that I grew up in…I could give you so many examples from my church family – godly folks who lived a life before me.  That was a gift, you see.  I didn’t deserve any of that.  It was all God’s grace!

All of these people, all of these circumstance worked in my life, drawing me to God.  All of this happened before I ever said “Yes” to Christ.  God’s prevenient grace!

I hope that by now we all understand that God’s grace works in our lives before we even realize it.  There is only one question  remaining:  How will we respond?

Maybe we will respond like Jacob did.  I want to you to think about Jacob’s response in terms of 2 powerful words:

AWAKEN.  He woke up, and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I didn’t even know it!”

Awaken to God at work in your life, pursuing you.  Through the Holy Spirit, drawing you… Through circumstances – both positive and negative… Through people that God has placed in your life…  Wow!  God was here all along, and I didn’t even know it!

ACT.  Jacob set the stone that he had used for a pillow up and poured oil over it.  He consecrated the place as a special place – the house of God, and he consecrated himself to God.  He said, “God, if you will go with me, I will go with you.”

The point is, he acted by faith on what he had awakened to.

God’s grace goes before us, preparing the way.  God gets our attention.  He offers us a covenant relationship.  He does unexpected, undeserved things for us, just to show how much he loves us.

Will you say “Yes” to him today?

The invitation today is two-fold.  If you would like to come and just say, “Thank you, Lord, for your prevenient grace – for all the ways in my life that you have gone before me and pursued me,” then I would invite you to come to the altar this morning.  Second, if you have realized this morning that God has been after you your whole life and you’ve never really said “Yes” to him, I’d like to invite you to do like Jacob did and give your life to him this morning.

"What's So Amazing About Grace?"

7-10-11

Heflin FUMC                           “What’s So Amazing About Grace?”

Matt. 20: 1-16

I told you all a couple of weeks ago about my brief experience as a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman.  Talk about a rough way to make a living!  This was a straight commission job.  In other words, if you sold something, you earned a commission check.  If you didn’t sell anything, you didn’t get paid.  There were days I would work hard and would do pretty good.  There were also days, when I would work hard, and not sell a thing.

I thought back to those days when I read this parable from Matthew 20.  I wondered what it would be like to go in at the end of a hard day, and to hear the boss say, “Sam, you’ve sold 3 vacuum cleaners today.  Here’s your check for $300.”  And then, what if he said to the person next to me, “You’ve sold no vacuum cleaners today.  Here’s your check for $300.”  How would I feel?  Well – I think I’d be fightin’ mad!

Why would I be mad?  Well – it’s just not supposed to work that way.  The math is all wrong!  It’s supposed to work like this:

• ·        The early bird is supposed to get the worm.
• ·        If you work hard, you’ll get ahead.
• ·        You get what you pay for.
• ·        Give 110%, and it will pay off for you.
• ·        We get what we deserve.
• ·        What comes around goes around.
• ·        Instant Karma’s gonna get you.
• ·        No pain, no gain.
• ·        Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.
• ·        If you can’t run with the big dogs, stay on the porch.

That’s how things are supposed to work.  At least that’s what we are used to in our world.

Maybe that’s why some of these stories Jesus tells are so puzzling.  It’s like Jesus gets the math all wrong.  It’s flabbergasting, really.

Today we begin a series of sermons called “Amazing Grace.”  The title of today’s message is, “What’s So Amazing About Grace?”  I got the title from the title of a book written by Philip Yancey by the same name.  In this book there is a chapter called, “The New Math of Grace.” 

He talks about our Scripture today.  He says, “The boss’s action contradicted everything known about employee motivation and fair compensation.  It was atrocious economics, plain and simple.”  I have to agree.

Yancey also brings in a couple of other examples from the Gospels.  One is from Luke, and is about a shepherd, who left his flock of 99 to go out and search for the 1 lost sheep.  That sounds great, but think about the math.  Why leave 99 there by themselves to go out and look for that one poor, dumb sheep who went and got itself lost?  I mean, the shepherd could go off and find the lost sheep, and when he got back find that wolves or rustlers had made off with 20 more sheep.  I don’t get it.  It’s baffling if you think about it.

Then he talks about a scene in John, where a woman named Mary took a pint of precious perfume – an amount that was worth a whole year’s wages – and pours it on Jesus’ feet.  That’s just…wasteful.  I mean, wouldn’t an ounce or two have been good enough?  Even Judas could see how absurd it was to use all this when it could have been sold to help the poor.  It doesn’t make sense!  Not good math at all…

One more math story…Peter asks Jesus, “Lord, how many times should I forgive someone who sins against me?  Seven times? “  Peter was really being generous.  The rabbis taught that you only had to forgive a person for the same thing 3 times.  Jesus said, “No, Peter.  Not 7 times – but 70 times 7.”  What?  Forgive somebody 490 times?  I don’t get the math, do you?

Now we’ve heard all these stories before, so we’re sort of used to them.  But imagine you were hearing them for the first time.  Wouldn’t you find them, well, amazing?

We have a grace-based Gospel, but we live in a merit-based world.  It comes quite natural for us to judge, condemn, withhold forgiveness, seek revenge, and only love and treat right the ones who love us and treat us right.

On the other hand, we worship a Jesus who heals folks who don’t deserve it, loves the unlovable, and forgives folks who didn’t even ask for it – including the ones who nailed him to a cross.  It’s grace, but seems unnatural when you think about it. That’s what’s so amazing about grace!

It’s amazing because it surprises us, catches us off guard.  And we see that we wouldn’t act that way if we were in God’s shoes.  Let’s just be honest here.  We wouldn’t, would we?

This week most of us were stunned when we heard the verdict in the Casey Anthony trial.  She was found “not guilty” of the murder of her two-year-old daughter, Caylee.  For weeks now, there has been wall-to-wall coverage of this trial.  It was like the O.J. Simpson trial back in the 90’s.  Do you remember that one?

I have to tell you, when I looked at this woman, Casey Anthony, I wasn’t thinking much about grace.  I was thinking like what my Aunt Sis used to say – “This is nothing that at tall tree and a short rope wouldn’t fix.”  I mean – I wanted to be the judge, jury, and executioner for this person.  I don’t know anyone – especially a parent – who wouldn’t feel this way, at least a little bit.

I might feel this way, and it might be understandable, but grace – this amazing grace – compels me to go to a better place with this.

When I was thinking about this case this week, in light of preaching on grace, I imagined myself standing in a room with Casey Anthony, and then Jesus walking into the room.  What would Jesus say to me?  I think he would say to me, “Come to me, Sam.  I love you, and I want nothing more and nothing less than for you to live a life transformed by my grace!”

That feels good!  To think about Jesus saying that to me feels amazing!

Now, I imagine Jesus turning to Casey Anthony.  What would Jesus say to her?  I think he’d say, “Come to me, Casey.  I love you, and I want nothing more and nothing less than for you to live a life transformed by my grace!”

I would say, “Wait a minute, Jesus!  Didn’t you see the trail?  Don’t you know what she’s done?”  And Jesus might say, “I knew what she did before the trail ever took place.  If I treat you with grace and forgiveness, why wouldn’t I treat her the same way?”

“But she doesn’t deserve it,” I would object.  To which Jesus would reply, “If she deserved it, it wouldn’t be grace.”

“Amazing,” I would say.  “Simply amazing.”

What would Jesus say to you, today?  I think he would say, “Come to this table, my child.  I love you, and I want nothing more and nothing less than for you to live a life transformed by my grace!”