Behold Our God Who Is Gracious

Prayer

O Lord our God, whom heaven and the highest heavens cannot contain, whose majesty and splendor, angelic hosts sing without end; whose greatness is found in humility, whose heavenly wonder is found in the earthly ordinary, whose perfect grace is given to those who deserve it least.

We beseech Thee, God Most High, that we may find favour in Your sight this day. For we are but a breath and You are forever. We are passing and You are eternal. We have sinned and You are holy, and we confess that we bring nothing worthy of Your favour.

Even so, grant to us today the grace of open ears that we may shema Your voice; grant to us today the grace of open hearts that we may behold You as You are. Set before our earthly eyes our Lord Jesus, from whom we have all received grace upon grace, Jesus who is glorified both now and forevermore, and Jesus through whom we offer this prayer. Amen.

Introduction

Slide

Who Is God?

Slide

For some of us, this is what God looks like—a kind, loving figure who accepts us unconditionally.

Slide

But for others, God looks like this: an angry Force up in the sky that we rightly are afraid of.

Slide

For the ancient people of God, answering this question took them on a journey that lasted a lifetime. A journey in which they realised that the same God who promised Abraham that He would make from him a great nation…

Slide

…was the same God who would rescue them from slavery in Egypt through the chaotic waters of the Red Sea.

Slide

This God is all-powerful and all-loving. He is intense, and yet intimate. He is terrifying, and yet tender. He reveals Himself to His people, and still there’s so much more! And the more they recognised God’s character, the more they became like him. It’s also our journey today. We desire to be transformed into God’s people; we desire to become as He is; so we need to shema who He is.

Slide

Last week, Irvin kicked off our series by bringing us back to Exodus 34:6-7, which reads:

Exodus 34:6–7 ESV

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”

We explored how it was this powerful emotion of parental love that drives God to respond to those who cannot help themselves. This God is not a deity who delights to rain death and destruction on those who break his rules. This God delights to show compassion just as a mother has compassion on the children of her womb.

Slide

Today we’ll explore the second characteristic that God reveals of himself: his graciousness.

Defining Graciousness

Slide

When we think of graciousness, we think of its root word ‘grace’.

In Christian circles, we normally think first about how the New Testament uses it. ‘Grace’ is that which saves us from our sins because of what Jesus did. Grace is that great and priceless gift that reconciles us to God; grace does for us what we could never achieve by our own effort—the defeat of sin and death and our restoration.

Slide

However, if that is all that grace is, then we have reduced ‘grace’ to a kind of supernatural soap, like a divine Dettol or a holy hand sanitizer, because it washes us clean, it makes us pure, it wipes away our sinful ‘germs’.

Slide

But for the people of Israel, they were not simply concerned with grace as the thing that God gives in response to sin. They were interested in the gracious character of the grace giver.

Slide

What does it mean for someone to be ‘gracious’ in character? Here in Singapore, we talk about wanting to be a gracious society. There’s the SG Kindness movement that encourages certain kinds of behaviour that is considered gracious. And so we see signs like this: a sign that was created to remind people, hey, let’s leave this seat open for those who need it. Of course, now this makes it so that the people sitting on non-reserved seats don’t feel like they need to give it up!

Or we see signs like this, that encourage us to be considerate and clean up our tables after we’re done. Or rather, it’s not an encouragement so much as a threat! And we willingly comply because we’re very protective of our wallets!

But most of us remember a time when we didn’t need the threat of a fine to clean up our tables. Some of us will remember a time before reserved seating was created. We just did those things because we are considerate people, because we desire to show grace to people who need it more! And really, if someone needs to be told or even threatened in order to behave graciously, you wouldn’t necessarily call that a gracious person!

Slide

Graciousness is about being the kind of person who always acts in ways that bless others. It’s a habit, they don’t need reminding, they just are gracious in everything they do! Now, what does it mean for God to be ‘gracious’?

Slide

The Hebrew word that describes this concept is ‘khen’. Think female chicken with a bit of breath. Kh-hen.

Slide

This word is most often translated as simply “grace” and also “favour”. From there we get all its various forms: grace and favour can be shown to someone else. Grace and favour can be requested and found. Someone’s character or personality can be described as gracious or favourable. All from the same root of ‘khen’.

When we see any of these words in Scripture, we should imagine, not ‘supernatural soap for sin’, but more broadly, a gift. Grace is an act of kindness given by someone of a higher status to someone of lower status. And someone who is gracious does these acts of kindness as a habit. They can be depended upon to show grace when it is needed.

Slide

In Scripture, the first time ‘grace’ appears is when God shows favour to Noah. In Genesis 6, the world is in a mess and God in His grief is going to allow humanity’s violence to destroy itself, but in His graciousness, God will not allow all mankind to be destroyed. He shows favour to one man, Noah, and he is given the gift of life.

Slide

We also see this in the story of Esther. She has to go to the king to ask for help, but the law was that the king had to invite you first, and if you showed up uninvited, you could be executed. Esther risked her life and showed up anyway, and the king chose to be gracious and spare her life.

Slide

In these cases, it seems that grace was easily given. God showed favour to Noah, who was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Of course God would show favour to him! Esther was the most beautiful woman in the entire Persian empire, essentially the Miss Universe of 500 BC; of course the king would show favour to her!

This is where we begin to encounter what makes God’s graciousness so truly strange, scandalous and wonderful. Because God is gracious not only to those who deserve it, but even and especially to those who do not.

Story-ing Graciousness: Jacob

Slide

Let’s turn to Genesis 33:5-11. This is a story about Jacob, the younger son of Isaac, and at this point in the story, we know that Jacob is a terrible person. The TLDR is, Jacob cheated his older brother Esau and his own father to get a blessing that he wasn’t supposed to have. He ran away from home to stay with his uncle Laban, where he became very rich, only to run away again and taking with the best of Laban’s flocks and possessions and even his daughters for himself! Sure, his uncle wasn’t very honest himself, but Jacob probably shouldn’t have responded to dishonesty with his own dishonesty!

When we come to Genesis 33, Jacob is on his way home, and he is about to meet his Esau whom he hasn’t seen for 20 years. He’s still afraid that Esau might still be mad, so he sends a series of presents ahead of him.

Notice as we are reading for the words “grace” and “favour”.

Genesis 33:5–11 ESV

And when Esau lifted up his eyes and saw the women and children, he said, “Who are these with you?” Jacob said, “The children whom God has graciously given your servant.” Then the servants drew near, they and their children, and bowed down. Leah likewise and her children drew near and bowed down. And last Joseph and Rachel drew near, and they bowed down. Esau said, “What do you mean by all this company that I met?” Jacob answered, “To find favor in the sight of my lord.” But Esau said, “I have enough, my brother; keep what you have for yourself.” Jacob said, “No, please, if I have found favor in your sight, then accept my present from my hand. For I have seen your face, which is like seeing the face of God, and you have accepted me. Please accept my blessing that is brought to you, because God has dealt graciously with me, and because I have enough.” Thus he urged him, and he took it.

From one perspective, Jacob is being absolutely absurd. Jacob is in no way like Noah, righteous and blameless. He is nothing like Esther, who risks her own life for the sake of others. This guy cheated his brother of his rightful blessing so he could have it for himself! When he got the blessing, he became rich because of it, and then cheated his boss. And now he is asking Esau to show favour to him? That’s ridiculous!

You can probably think of a Jacob-like figure quite easily. You might even be picturing a Jacob-like person in your mind right now!

Jacob is the person in your team who doesn’t do any work but takes all the credit at the end and says they did all the work alone. They get promoted and enjoy all the perks of their privilege and status and higher salary, and then they come back to you and ask a favour from you.

Jacob is the slick salesman who tricks vulnerable, gullible people into investing all their life savings away, only to run away with the money and leave them in poverty. Then somehow, after years of living in luxury, they come back to the people they cheated who have been begging on the streets, and they ask for another favour.

Jacob is the one who took everything from us. If you’re a younger sibling, you might feel that your older sibling took the love and affection that you deserved. If you’re an older sibling, you might feel that when number 2 came along, you were forgotten. Maybe you were in a relationship where you gave your heart and invested your time and energy and money, and then he or she leaves for no good reason.

Jacob is a trickster and a cheat and an abuser of privileges. He does not deserve favour from anyone. He does not deserve to be shown grace. Not by his brother, not by his uncle or his father, and least of all God Himself! In fact, twice Jacob says that what he has is because of the grace and favour of God - when he talks about his children and his riches. When I first read that, I thought, “Really? Your children were born because your wives were jealous of each other! You’re rich because you cheated! How can that be God’s grace?”

Slide

How could God be gracious and show favour to a sinner as bad as Jacob!

Slide

How could God be gracious and show favour to a sinner as bad as me?

I think there is a bit of Jacob, or maybe a lot of Jacob, inside each of us. We are unworthy of grace and undeserving of favour. We are worthy only of punishment, we deserve only death.

Are we not like Jacob when we cover up, hide, tell a white lie for our own personal benefit, even if it means someone else loses out?

Are we not like Jacob when we run away from our responsibilities, when we’re too afraid to face the consequences of our own actions?

Have we tried to seize control of our own lives, seize blessing for ourselves on our own terms, because we were afraid that God wouldn’t provide what we wanted?

The more we read the stories of Jacob and other biblical figures, the more we find that they’re not just stories, but mirrors. We are equally undeserving of kindness, of blessing, of any kind of goodness in this life.

Slide

And this is precisely where we find the graciousness of God in all of its glory, in all its scandalous and unfairness, and its beauty. For only when we realise the depth of our unworthiness do we behold the wonder of undeserved grace.

Jacob is not wrong when he says that his family and possessions are because of God’s grace. We don’t have time to go into the details, but when Jacob tricked his brother and father and uncle, he did it because he wanted to secure the blessing that he wanted but was afraid he wouldn’t get.

So he took matters into his own hands; he wants to be in charge of his own life and success. So when Jacob says “God has graciously given me these things”, he has recognised that despite all his trickery, all his cunning, all his effort to secure his own future by his own effort, God, far from punishing him for it, was turning it into blessing and new life. God was redeeming his selfish actions and transforming them.

Slide

And to this day, we are feeling the effects of God’s grace, for it was through Jacob’s family that the nation of Israel was born, and through the nation of Israel came the Saviour of the world, whom the apostle John describes as Grace incarnate.

That’s what grace is: grace takes us in all our brokenness and transforms us into beautiful sons and daughters of God. That’s why God describes Himself as gracious: He never stops showing grace and favour to even scoundrels like Jacob, until he comes home and realizes that God was with him all along.

Behold our God, gracious to the highest degree.

Embodying Graciousness

Brothers and sisters, if God is who He says He is, if God really is gracious to the uttermost, what shall we do? What would it look like to live in a constant beholding of a gracious God?

Some of us have considered God as mainly or only an angry God who needs to be appeased with good works. We may imagine God holding a checklist, and any black mark puts us at risk of losing our salvation. Perhaps our call is to put that view of God to rest, and behold a God who is gracious and delights to show favour. Here’s a practical idea: I thought I had a clear idea of who God was until someone asked me, “What does God look like?” And then I had to think about it, talk about it, and I grew in my awareness. Maybe the way we behold God is to talk about him. Create words and descriptions, tell stories and memories, speak out loud who you believe God to be, and then come back to Exodus 34:6-7 and you’ll have something to compare. Is what I believe about God really in line with this? Chances are, you may be suprised by what you see.

For some of us, beholding a gracious God involves action. You’re a kinesthetic person, you need to move to get it in your head and your heart. Or maybe you have been touched by grace and you can’t sit still; all that grace energy has to go somewhere! How can you show favour to someone this week who doesn’t seem to deserve it? In this week’s podcast, we’ll be talking about the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery, and how Jesus shows grace to someone who was caught red handed, and by all accounts didn’t deserve to live. How can we be a messenger of grace this week?

As we look forward to a new building and a new vision for our church family, will we make graciousness a core part of who we are? Will we bar the gates and screen everyone before deciding who’s worthy to be a part of our club? Or will we be lavish and generous to our community, regardless of whether they are deserving or not? Will we lay down our privileges, give up our seats as it were, for the sake of those who are searching for Jesus, and for some reason have found us?

May we behold YHWH, God of grace and favour.