Grace In An Ungraceful World

Welcome to online listeners and church.

Grace

Someone close to me once told me that speaking from my heart in the leading of the Holy Spirit is the way to growing a church. So today I don’t want you to walk away from this message with a list of things I have given you to change in your life. All I ask is that while I am speaking today, you do your best to listen not to me, but to God and whatever he might be trying to say to you through what I speak in this message.

pray

Today we’re talking about grace. It’s a concept which at first glance is fairly simple and easy to understand, but when looked at more carefully there can be seen a deeper more powerful understanding of what grace is and what it means to live a life that is full of grace.

So what is it?

Romans 11:1–6 ESV

1 I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel? 3 “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.” 4 But what is God’s reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” 5 So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. 6 But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.

“But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.”

The nature of grace is that the recipient doesn’t deserve it. The reason grace can’t be grace if it is on the basis of works is because that would mean to receive grace you must be deserving or have earned it in some way. Grace isn’t earned.

Grace is a sacrificial offering. It goes against our very nature as human beings in a dog eat dog world which is full of un-grace, a thing we’re going to discuss later. When I was a youth pastor I had one student in my youth group who we will call Sally. Sally was an awesome kid and she had a great heart but, she had a habit of retaliation against her peers when they did something she didn’t like either in a game during our gym time or when they were just hanging out in the youth room. Whenever I or another of my leaders questioned her about it and she was told that she should apologize to her friends, she would become defensive and say something like, “but it’s not my fault! They did this and made me do it, why should I be the one to apologize?”

We are all just like Sally, whether we choose to act as she did or not, we all have the desire and potential to do so. Sometimes I would have a conversation with her about this and we would talk about giving grace to her friends and holding back her retaliation or her words of fury. Sally really wanted to get better with this but she found it very difficult to think before acting and she ended up dishing out ungrace again and again.

Grace is not easy. It’s not easy for adults let alone a child in middle-school.

Acting on grace is so hard because of the natural eye for an eye response that we want to give to those who hurt us.

We’re going to look at Jesus, and the one thing that stands out is His love for the disciples and his people… not only that but the grace that he had for his students and even the pharisees, who were out to kill him.

In John 15:12 Jesus talks about giving love He says,

John 15:12 ESV

12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

Both Grace and love are two things that are given regardless of the recipients ability to receive such gifts and they are both things we are tasked to give to others. When Jesus tells us that we should “love one another as he has loved us,” He is also telling us we should be giving grace.

We need to understand that love encompasses grace. In commanding us to love as he has loved us, Jesus is also commanding that we give grace because it is through God’s love that He gives us grace in abundance.

Grace and love are dependent on the other. If we do not give love, we cannot give grace. If we cannot give grace, then we cannot give love…

Grace? What about Un-grace?

I’m reading a book called “what’s so amazing about grace?” In it, the concept of Un-grace is discussed at length. I found this interesting because when we talk about grace we don’t usually talk about it’s antithesis, the thing that works against grace. That is un-grace.

The Old Testament, when we read it we discover that it held to a very different set of rules and expectations than those of the grace and love Jesus brought. In the old testament, eye for an eye was law… This is ungrace.

Here’s the part where we all need to listen close...

Ungrace has the potential to be passed down from generation to generation. Not only can this happen, but it happens in such a subtle way that we don’t notice that it’s happening.

In "what’s so amazing about grace,” the author Philip Yancey tells a story of a woman who grew up with a Father who was abusive to the point where she would hide until the altercations would stop. At one point her father sent her mother away from their family. As she grew this woman became bitter towards her father and she refused to have any sort of relationship with him. Fast forward to a time in her life where she had a family of her own… She was so bitter at her father that she ended up just like him and her relationship with her son deteriorated fast and she ended up kicking him out of the house.

Then one day her father shows up and goes to each of the family to ask for forgiveness and to apologize for the way that he had acted all those many years ago. But his daughter refused to forgive and she chose to live in bitterness. She didn’t care that he was genuinely sorry, she was still bitter and mad at him for what he did. She was full of ungrace.

The thing that is sad about this story is that because of the ungrace she lived in, she was perpetuating a loop of ungrace in her relationship with her son. She refused to even talk about her son, let alone forgive him, and he too refused to forgive or talk about her.

Ungrace is a feedback loop. Unless someone steps out and says no and forgives, the ungrace will continue to spiral out of control.

Think about it like a hot-wheels track which has one of those boosters in the middle. I loved hot-wheels when I was a kid. We had this massive blue tub full of hot-wheels tracks and tons of cars to go with it.

Now Imagine a loop of track, in the middle there’s a device that the track goes through with two spinning foam wheels on either side. When the hot-wheels car goes through this device, the wheels propel the car forward so that it goes around the track again.

Ungrace is that device with the spinning wheels. Every time we decide that we are not going to forgive we send the car through the booster and the ungrace continues.

In John 15:12 Jesus commands us to give love and consequently grace.

John 15:12 ESV

12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.

The moment we allow there to be ungrace in our lives we are no longer following this commandment

If we want to be a light in the world, live Christ like lives and be disciples who make disciples, the ungrace in our lives needs to be dealt with.

I want to challenge everyone who is watching this online, who is in this sanctuary, where is there ungrace in your life? Think about who it is that you may need to give grace to.

Remember, it is not in our nature to give grace. We deserve ungrace, all of us. But God sent his son to die a death he didn’t deserve, to love a people that didn’t deserve his love, to forgive a people who sinned against him time and time again and didn’t deserve that forgiveness.

My question to you is this…

Will you allow Jesus to change your heart so you can do the thing that seems impossible? Forgive that person who hurt you to the core and you haven’t talked to years? To be humble and break the ungrace loop between you and a parent by being the first to apologize?

Jesus want’s your heart, every part of it. Will you let Him have it?

Let’s pray