God Gives You Grace

We begin a new sermon series today called “God Loves You.” We will be spending the next few weeks looking at the ways God shows us his love. This week our focus is on the grace given to us by God. Our scripture comes from Ephesians 3:1-12.

3 For this reason I, Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles— 2 assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you, 3 how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have written briefly. 4 When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, 5 which was not made known to the sons of men in other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit. 6 This mystery is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

7 Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power. 8 To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, 9 and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God, who created all things, 10 so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. 11 This was according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, 12 in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him.

Please pray with me…

If you have ever read or watched a good mystery you have one surprise occur after another. You are constantly wondering what is going to happen next. You will also usually be surprised by the ending and how the writer or director has led you to this specific point when all is revealed.

The Jewish people had a lifetime of being told the importance of the law. The law was what they were to live their lives by. The law was to be their focus. They were to do all within their power to keep the law.

Jesus turned the script. He attempted to show them and lead them down a different path. He was revealing to them the mystery. The surprise ending that they would never expect. Their Messiah would die so that they would be able to no longer have to focus on the law. The power that sin had over them now could be removed.

The law didn’t disappear, but the focus was now changed. The people that walked the earth during that time and also us today had to admit that they were not good enough. We are not good enough. There is a better way. That way is for each of us to believe in the mystery of grace.

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We have to have faith that the grace we receive from God is enough. The law was not abolished. This means that we should desire to follow the law but we shouldn’t be doing it out of obedience. We should choose to follow the law out of love. The love for the one who came to save us from the power of sin. The one who first loved us.

All we need is grace. It is when our focus turns to a need for grace plus the law that we can get ourselves into trouble. This can lead to legalism which can put us into the same position as the Jewish people, attempting to fulfill the impossible task of following the law.

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This was played out early on with followers of Jesus. Paul would go into a town and preach the gospel and form a church. A group of fellow Jewish Christians we call Judaizers would come behind him and tell these Christians that they needed to become Jewish to be Christian.

This would lead to division and confusion within the church. These were new followers of Jesus attempting to figure out who was right. That is why Paul fought this movement, and the early Christian leadership made the decision that becoming Jewish was not mandatory to become a Christian.

Jesus made it so that grace is enough and is available to all people. John 3:16 tells us that “God so loved the world that he gave his only son.” There is no one who is willing who is not able to be saved by grace. Grace is available to all people.

Paul says it this way in Galatians 3:28. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” All people are loved by God equally and therefore are able to receive the grace of God.

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We believe in the United Methodist church that all people deserve grace and there is no time in our lives that God is not offering us grace. We believe the grace of God is lived out in our lives in three unique ways. They are called prevenient grace, justifying grace, and sanctifying grace.

We are celebrating Epiphany Sunday. Some churches celebrated Epiphany last week. The actual day of Epiphany fell on Monday. The story of our first reading is the big revealing to those outside of Judaism that the Jewish Messiah had been born.

This story can give us a good example of the three types of grace that we are able to receive in our lives. The first is prevenient grace. It is able to be received by all people. This means that God is attempting to lead all people towards a relationship with him.

This is often referred to as God attempting to woo those that don’t yet believe into a relationship with him. We see this played out within our Epiphany text through the knowledge given to the wise men.

They were given information about the birth of Jesus. They were told that there would be a Jewish Messiah. This information eventually led them to decide to look for ways to know that the Messiah had come. They ended up being wooed by God to meet Jesus through a star that they hadn’t seen before in the sky.

This star led them on what is believed to be a two-year journey to Jesus. They traveled for many miles to reach the one that they were told about. We help God lead people into a relationship with him by telling those God places before us about him.

Jesus told his disciples that they would tell of him in “Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, unto the ends of the earth.” We need to remember this. We need to remember that we are to let those around us about the one who first loved us and loves them.

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We next have the wisemen meet Jesus and acknowledge who he is. They are there to meet the one who will become the Savior of the world. We would call this justifying or saving grace. It is when we admit that we can’t make it on our own, that we need a Savior. This decision leads us to ask for our sins to be forgiven and Jesus to be our Lord and Savior.

The difference being that the wise men offer gifts to Jesus. When we meet Jesus and are willing to believe that he offers us grace to save us from the power of sin, we are the ones who receive the gifts. We receive the gifts of forgiveness, the Holy Spirit, and eternal life.

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This leads us to the last form of grace we can receive sanctifying grace. This grace is reserved for those who are willing to be followers of Jesus. This is the free gift given to us by God to help us become closer to him.

The wisemen meet Jesus and then our directed by God to go back a different way. They meant God, they listened and responded to God. We know that Herod wanted to know where Jesus was to kill him. The wisemen listening to God allowed for Jesus to be able to escape.

We get to decide if we want to allow this grace to be at work in us and through us. God desires to allow for us to be as close to him as we are willing to be. God desires to help us become more Holy so that we can become closer to him every day.

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I have defined our journey with sanctifying grace as phases of faith. There are four phases: they are discover, decide, develop and discern. These are ways that show are willingness to listen and respond to God.

The “discover” phase often occurs when we become new followers of God through Jesus. We are attempting to understand what we are to do to become closer to God. We want to get to know God better but we are unsure how we are able to succeed.

This points out the importance of the church community. It is through a local church that a person can find people around them to learn ways that can have them be able to become closer to God. They are able to get to know God through those around them.

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The next phase is “decide.” This is where we have developed some ways to connect with God and are now ready to serve God and have him help us become more like Jesus and be willing to help those in our Christian community and those outside of the church.

This is us deciding that we want to be who God wants us to be. We begin to discover our own theology or understanding of God. We spend time praying to God and asking for God to lead us to allow us to become who he desires for us to be.

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This leads us to the “develop” stage. It is at this stage that we take the steps to attempt to live out our faith. We desire to share our understanding of God with those around us. We have spiritual practices in our lives that allow us to believe that we are connecting to God and living how God desires for us to live.

Most of us that are in the church become comfortable and stay in either the decide or develop phase of faith. We believe that we are where God wants us to be. We fulfill all of the goals of a good Christian. We spend time with God, we go to church on Sunday. We help out those around us.

I fell into this trap for a long time. I was a good person. I was at church, I was attending Bible studies and sometimes leading them. I was serving the church. I was putting money in the offering plate. I was good and God was good with what I was doing.

The problem with this is that we are never good enough to deserve the grace given to us by God. Therefore, we should always be growing closer to God and discovering new areas of our lives that God desires for us to work on together

Eventually life wasn’t good enough. I felt the need for more. I reached a point where I no longer felt that I was doing what God had called me to do. This led me to ask God to let me know if he expected more. This led me to the “discern” stage of faith.

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It is through the “discern” stage of faith that we are telling God I want to know if there is more that you expect from me. Are there areas of my life that you need me to work on to become closer to you? Are there additional ways that you desire for me to serve you?

This stage reminds me of the “Prayer of Jabaz.” This prayer is found in 1 Chronicles chapter 4. It is found in a list of the descendants of Judah. The scripture says that

“Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, ‘Oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.’”

It is the line asking God to “bless him and enlarge his territory” that we focus on when we are discerning what God desires from us next. It is us offering up to God our open-ended prayer. We are saying to God “I want to do what you want me to do, tell me what to do and how to do it.”

We will hopefully receive an answer on what is next. This should lead us back to the “develop” phase in order for us to grow closer to God and for us to become the person that God desires for us to be.

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I challenge you to ask the open-ended question. Ask God if there are changes that he desires for you to make. Ask him if there are ways that he wants you to serve him that you are not already. Be open to hear from God.

But hearing is just the beginning. We also need to be willing to respond. We have a God who desires to work with us and through us. He wants us to have the faith to believe that if he calls us, we can accomplish what he wants us to do for him.

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These phases of faith are not only for us as individuals. We should be attempting to also live them out as a church. We should all be praying asking God to help us discover the kind of church he wants us to be.

We should decide that we are going to live out our mission for God. We need to ask God to help us develop ways in which we are able to live out our faith in order to allow us to grow closer to him and for us to reach out and serve those in our communities.

We also should be discerning if we are doing all that God desires for us to do as a church. Just like our personal faith journey our journey as a church never ends. We need to always be discerning as a church what God is asking us to do and be.

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Paul points out that it is the church which helps spread to the world the “manifold wisdom of God.” I had to look up what the word manifold meant. The word “manifold” means “many-sided.” To me this is telling the church and us individually that we are to use all our gifts to serve the God that loves us.

We are to bring light into the world through our gifts given to us by God. We are to allow God to be at work in our lives in such a way that we impact the lives of those around us. We are to be the hands, feet, and voice of Jesus.

We are to find ways to be there for those that need us while also looking for opportunities to share the love of Jesus with those around us. We have a message of love, hope, joy and peace to share with the world. Let us allow the grace of God to work in us and through us in such a way that his love is shared by us.

Let us pray…