"The
Incredible Grace of God"
The
Lord's Day, December 5, 1999
|
The ECF Pulpit |
Please turn in your Bibles to John chapter 4. As you know,
as we are working through this passage, these last verses of
this chapter, 43-54, we marked out as having 6 principles of
understanding God's dealing with man - contained in this
simple account of Jesus coming back to Cana of Galilee. In
His arriving there, knowing full well that He's going to be
rejected, knowing full well that a prophet is not without
honor except in His own country, He is coming there as a
sign to the people--for some unto salvation-- to others, for
judgment. But we saw first in verses 44 and 48 this first
principle that grace refused leads to grace removed. That
when men reject what grace they do have from God, even
common grace, that God then withdraws some of His grace as
judgment. That is often the case. This is perhaps new
thought to some of you but the truth is, the very nature of
grace is that it is something this is completely, freely
given. And therefore it may be as freely withdrawn as freely
as it is given.
Now that is one of the things with God that we're terribly uncomfortable with. We really don't like to give God the right of personal choice. We believe that's the domain of the human being. We're "free moral agents." We can make up our own mind. WE can have likes and dislikes but God somehow is restricted from having that motion that we preserve for ourselves. It's simply not true. Anything left of freedom of will that we have, is certainly bound under sin as we're lost. But then, the Believer is one who has been brought to the saving knowledge of Christ where the will is set free again and enabled to believe and to trust in Christ for salvation. But even then, all that we receive, we receive at HIS whim-not at ours. And men are uncomfortable being at the whim and will of God.
Secondly, we saw that signs and wonders do not create faith but can only confirm it. For those who would say, well, if they could just see someone healed; If they could just see someone raised from the dead; That would settle it. That would bring them to the saving knowledge of Christ. In fact, it doesn't! It only hardens the heart of the unbeliever. But it is the Believer who finds his faith confirmed when he sees those things and thus he delights in them. And of course we went back and developed that in great detail with the two accounts of the two Lazarus' in the New Testament.
And thirdly, we saw that grace delayed is not grace denied. This noble man, this probable underling in Herod's own household, came and was seeking for this healing for his son who was certainly near death as a result of his fever. That Jesus withheld for a time because He doesn't deal with us in a vacuum but He also deals with those around us at the same time He is dealing with us. So, while He delayed for a moment, He rebukes this man, or rebuffs Him, although its rather light, but He says to them all "you people just won't believe unless you see signs and wonders, will you?" And immediately some in the crowd are bound to be offended by that because they had wanted to see another sign and wonder-they had seen Him do so up in Jerusalem. He refuses and calls them on this attitude. But this man, stripped of that, just says, "Look, my son's going to die, please come!" God deals with us that way often, I think. And we fear that grace delayed means that grace has been denied and we fail to take into account the fact that God is dealing not only with us as individuals but all of those around us in the process of what He does.
Chuck Colson, in one of his early books made mention of his own experience when he was in the hospital suffering from cancer and awaiting his treatment. As he was laying in his hospital bed the night before surgery, he was laying there and he said, "Lord? What's this all about? You know when I was serving the devil, I served the devil well and when I was working in the White House I did all that I was doing but, You know, that since my conversion I have been working for You. I've been preaching Your Gospel. We've founded the Prison Fellowship. We've been out there on the front lines preaching and teaching the Gospel of Christ and ministering to people-and why now? Why, after my life has straightened out am I sitting here in this hospital room with cancer? And he said, as sure as he was a foot tall, he was pretty sure He heard God say back, "Why not?" He said that in his own heart and mind, that he had come to a certain sense that moment, that often God enables us, allows us, and appoints us to go through the same difficulty that the person beside us (the pagan, the lost one) goes through. So that, they might see us in the same place. Why it's true.
I know that I don't suffer very gracefully. That's why I didn't want anybody coming to visit me when I was sick. Number one, I'm so vain I don't ever want anybody to see me with bedhead. It's the worst possible thing on the planet! This is part of the curse and I know in Heaven, we won't have bedhead because we won't sleep anymore. But I hate to be seen when I'm in that weakened condition. I hate to have people come and to look at me in that state. It's a terrible thing. And yet, when is it that Christ availed the greatest work on our behalf? It was at that weakest moment suspended between Heaven and earth on a wooden crossbeam. And in His suffering He met our need. I wonder if we shirk off our suffering too quickly sometimes and forget that God uses these opportunities to open doors to speak with some authority to people in their suffering. It DOES give you an opportunity that you can't have otherwise. Each of these things are things that He gives us - and that He gives us grace delayed, is not necessarily mean that grace is denied. But that leads us then onto our fourth point. And it comes to us again in verse 48 as we work back through this passage.
Starting back at verse 39: "From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word that the woman had testified." And then when we come down to the end of his journey in Samaria where it says: "That many believed no longer because of what the woman said, but because of what they heard themselves" and then He moves into Cana. It had been quite a time there in Samaria-a time of real awakening-these two days that the people wanted Him to preach. "And then when He came, where He had made the water wine, there was a certain royal official whose son was sick at Capernaum." We discussed that this was somewhere near 25 miles away. "And when he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to Him and was requesting Him to come down and heal his son for he was at the point of death. And Jesus therefore said to him, "Unless you people see signs and wonders, you simply will not believe." And the royal official said to him, "Sir, come down before my child dies." Jesus says, "Go your way, your son lives." And the man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and he started off toward home.
If I can go back to verse 48 for just a moment, because this is a critical matter for us to consider, especially, in this day and age. There is a great fallacy among us, and it's a great fallacy that persists in religion as a whole. And certainly one that we hear barked back at us from time to time from the world. It is this, that somehow man has some position of authority or some right to "make up his mind about God". Now I don't know where we came up with that idea, but then again maybe I DO know where we came up with it. In the Garden of Eden. When Satan first said, "Did God say?" and he left it to man to judge something God had said. Now let me be very clear on this because we have - and I don't know about you, but I've heard others and probably in my younger years I've done the same, but certainly this is a prominent tactic, if you will, in Mormonism - that when Mormons are witnessing to you, one of the things they will do is hand you a Book of Mormon, and they'll say now we want you to go home and we want you to read this and then you pray about it and then you'll feel the witness inside. And when you feel that witness you'll know it's true. Do you know what they've just done? They've just said fallen man has the ability to judge God. That's why we like it so much. That's why it's so attractive to the world. Man gets to say, "Yes, I'm the one who received the witness. I'm the one discerned this is real. I'm the one who has taken it upon myself that this is the authentic truth!" And that's always a way for us to enter into the lie. You see, when the Scripture begins, it begins with this bold statement, "In the beginning God!" It makes no justification for God. It doesn't try to explain God. It doesn't try to say now you have to believe in God. It says, this is the reality. Your requirement is to accept it. And some say, "Well, I don't want to believe in God." Like that's going to make a difference to Him. When I was a little kid and I would tell my parents that I was going to hold my breath until I pass out...and they would laugh. Like that was going to make a difference to them. Whether or not we believe in Him, is not the issue. The issue is, He is! And we have no right to judge whether or not we WANT to receive what He has said.
Let me show you how that plays out in evangelism or the way that it should or in the way that it doesn't, ordinarily with us. It works out in two specific ways. The first is, it works out in apologetics. We spend a lot of time defending the Bible so that people will believe its authenticity. Wrong. Because man doesn't judge the Bible, the Bible judges man. We're at the wrong court. When Jesus stood before Pilate it wasn't Christ who was on trial, it was Pilate. No matter what Pilate said, he was the one that was in trouble because he stood before the king of the universe and he was about to make a determination but it's Christ who judges...not Pilate. It is God who judges, not man.
The second place, as I said, it comes out, is in evangelism. And that is that we want men to make up their mind about God. Wrong again. Because the question isn't whether or not I have received Him - he question is whether or not He has received ME, in Christ. And yet we lay it before men as though this is their determination. And it's not their determination. Now, let me prove that to you. Paul enters the city of Athens and he goes to the Areopagus. He goes to the place where all the philosophers and religionists go to debate all the new ideas and they gather on the hill and they get into this big discussion. And Paul says in Acts 17, "I am walking through and I see all the various idols that you've erected. I see that you've erected an idol to the unknown God." And then He slapped them in the face and they didn't even know it. He said, "So I've come, to declare to you this God that you don't know because the truth is, you don't know God." That's not how to win people or to influence people but that is speaking the truth. So he said, let me tell you about this God. He's the One who created everything. And He's the one who made all men of one blood to dwell on the earth and He has appointed their times and their circumstances that they might seek after Him. This is stunning stuff. He said listen to me, you pagans, here's the deal - this God, you rightly named Him "unknown" because none of you know who He is - let me declare Him to you. He's the one who made everything. Not only did He make everything-- He made you. And not only did He make you, He made you for a purpose. And that purpose is that you might seek after Him. Now he's probably got their attention at this point and then he says, "And so, God commands all men everywhere to repent: Because He's coming to judge the world by His Son!" Well, that doesn't sound like a free offer of the Gospel, does it? But that's precisely what it is. What He set up at that moment was, 'I don't care about your judgment; you need to understand we stand under God's judgment.' And God doesn't beg and woo and hope and plead and ring his hands and say, "Oh I just hope they'll come to Christ." He commands ALL men EVERYWHERE to repent! That's a stunning declaration of truth! And in that moment, Paul told them the issue isn't what they think about God, it's what God thinks about them and they have to come to terms with God on HIS basis and not their own.
Never think that you have to defend the Word of God. You don't have to defend it. I like what John MacArthur said: "The Word of God is like a lion in a cage; all you have to do is open up the door and let it out and it will take care of itself!" You don't have to defend the Word of God-nor do you have to defend the Gospel in that sense. Because our job is not to help men make up their mind about God-our job is to present the truth to them and they stand in God's judgment...unless they repent. See we've approached it very apologetically. We've told the world while we're kind of sorry about this Gospel we preach, we hate to put you on the spot, we hate to put you in a position where you might have to make a choice, but you really do need to make a choice. That isn't the point at all. We've come into this world to declare the truth of Jesus Christ. That He, in human flesh, came and died for the sins of those whom God had appointed from all eternity and, that, in His coming, the only righteousness that can possibly sustain us before a perfectly Holy God, before whom every creature will eventually stand for judgment...is Christ's righteousness. That's what we tell the world. Ours is not to give them options-ours is to give them Truth. And we fall down when we give them options because we've told them it's legitimate for them to reject as much as it is to accept-and it's not legitimate. No man has the right to disobey God. It's not a function of the human will. That's not something we can have. Let me just emphasize this a little bit more. You saw it back in Romans 9 but take a look at that passage again. Fascinating page. You know, Paul talking about the doctrine of election, and we're not talking about that particularly, but none the less, we need to see it. Picking up in verse 14, "What shall we say then? There is no injustice with God, is there?" And He exclaims back, "May it never be! For He says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. So then it does not depend on the man who wills, or the man who runs, but on God who has mercy."
You see the Gospel is intended to humble men-not elevate them. And when we put men in the position of telling them that they can judge God for themselves, we've given them a right that the Scripture never gives them. They have no right to do that. He is God. For the Scripture even says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I raised you up." Now Pharaoh wasn't a saved man-Pharaoh was a skunk. And yet he was raised up for this purpose that you might "demonstrate My power in you and that my Name might be proclaimed throughout all the earth." So then, He has mercy on whom He desires and He hardens whom He desires and so the natural retort will be, "You will say to me then, 'well, why then does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?'" And isn't that the question? Isn't that what's in the back of men's minds? Well, if God is truly Sovereign, if this is the reality of things, then how is it that God can find fault because who has resisted His will? If He had made Pharaoh to be hardened and He made someone else to come to Christ-how can God judge us? Paul gives us a very unsatisfactory answer because it doesn't feed the human soul. It doesn't meet me where I want my itch scratched. Instead, He responds, "It's this simple. Who are you to judge God?" Folks, that's the truth. And for far too long we have permitted people, have taught people, to judge God.
Let me take it a step further because Christians judge God all the time too. You know how it is-"God, why has this come in my life? I don't deserve this." Well, quite right, you deserve hell! "God, why am I permitted to go through this?" As though there is something wrong with God's reasoning. A while back I was confronted with that question. We were discussing it just briefly this morning. If God is Sovereign, why pray? And the question behind that question is - and this is the one you have to answer for yourself - if God ISN'T Sovereign, then why pray? Let's just turn it back to where it actually belongs. But it goes a little bit deeper because often when we approach prayer, we approach prayer with this mindset that I need to change God's mind. Well, if you need to change God's mind, then let me ask you a question, what's wrong with God's thinking--that yours is better? Maybe there is nothing wrong with His thinking. Maybe there is nothing wrong with His hand. Maybe He is true to His word and to His promise in every circumstance and the reality is, He is dealing with me in MY hardship and in MY difficulty with no less love and deliberate-ness than He dealt with Jesus on the cross. See that's the truth! But we are always in the position of judging God and I say there are some in this building this morning who are angry at God for a situation you've been in. You're upset with Him. Deep down, the truth is, the reason why you're so out of sorts, the reason why you are barking at your husband, barking at your wife, kicking the dog, yelling at the kids, is you're angry with God. And I've got news for you. He's done nothing wrong. The wrong is with our thinking. He's not on trial-we are. And until He's in His rightful place, so that we don't doubt His hand, His every action will be suspect and we will put ourselves in a position of judging God.
Folks, the unbeliever can't judge God. He is not told, "Why don't you examine the facts and see for yourself?" He is told this is the Truth, and someday God will come and judge. Nor are we given that option. I know that Job takes a big hit an awful lot of the time. I'm convinced Job's three comforters were Charles Capps, Kenneth Hagin and Kenneth Copeland because they all said, "Well, you know? If your life was right, you'd be OK!" That isn't necessarily true. But Job did something that was extraordinary. When he's met with the final news of that collapse of his life, in that one day, he bows to the ground and he says, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord!" He's right. As much as Job argued with God through the succeeding chapters, the truth was, he was resigned to the reality - and if you never hear another thing I ever say, hear these words-He doeth all things well! All things. He has never made an error in your life or in mine. Never put Him on trial. Fight that urge. That is the enemy's lie coming to your heart and to mine saying, "Doubt Him. Don't trust Him. Don't believe Him. Suspect His motives." But His motives are always pure. Always holy. Always righteous. Always loving. Always pure. There is never a reason to suspect God's dealing with us. We're in Christ. And those in Christ are dealt with-with the same love that He has for His own Son. Never, never judge God.
Let me take one more poke at this verse. "You will say to me then, why doth He still find fault for who has resisted His will? On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, 'Why did you make me like this?'" Will it? "Or does the potter not have a right over the clay! To make from the same lump one vessel for honor and another for common use." Purpose belongs in the hand of the maker-and the right of authority belongs there too. Folks, ours is to trust because He will never deal with us, other than in Christ-if we're His.
Let me steal one statement from R.C. Sproul, whom I've come to love more and more and more. If you remember, on some of the tapes that we've seen from him, He's responded to a bumper sticker, which he hates. We've all seen that bumper sticker; "God said it. I believe it. And that makes it so." Wrong! "God said it"-that makes it so. Whether or not I believe it has nothing to do with it-it's irrelevant. Absolutely irrelevant. All that makes it so, is that God said it. Now you see, that's what moves us actually into the very next point which is when we see this man responding to Christ, he responds in this very simple thing-he believes what Jesus said.
Three times in the New Testament, we're given the exact same statement. It's in Romans 4:3, it's in Galatians 3:6, and it's in James 2:23. What does the Scripture say? "And Abraham believed God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." Faith is believing God and not 'merely' believing. That's the fifth principle. And that's what this man did at this moment-he believed God. Now, how do you know he believed? He went home. Isn't that simple? Now if we were to say, this building is on fire, but you couldn't smell smoke and you didn't see any flames-and you all just sat there---some of you would say, "Well the buildings on fire but I'm waiting for some sign." Maybe you want the smoke detector to go off. Maybe you want to hear the sirens from the guys across the street. I don't know what you might need. But I tell you this, the people who BELIEVE the building is on fire will get up and move. Now, this is the only true reality of saving faith. When a person believes, they act upon their belief. That's why James says, "Faith without works is dead." Not that I work in order to prove my faith but the reality is if I really believe it, I will act upon it. If I REALLY believe that the building is on fire, I'm going to tell everybody, "Get out of here, the building's on fire!" But if I DON'T really believe that the building is on fire, I'm just going to stand around. Going to take that 'wait and let's see' attitude. But the truth is, we act at the very level that we believe. Now, what is it that we need to believe? You need to believe what God has said. Not just "believe"...static. I can believe a lot of things. I happen to believe UFOs are real. Some of you think I've come from one. But that belief doesn't change anything for eternity...but believing God does.
W then did this man do at this moment? Jesus said to him, "Go your way, your son is well." And he believed Him because he turned around and he went home. He stopped saying, "Oh please, come", he believed Him. There are a couple of things to note if we were to carry this over to another place. Do you remember what it says in the beginning of the book of Hebrews? "God, who at sundry times, and in diverse manners spake unto us in times past by the prophets, has in these last days spoken unto us in His Son!" And then He carries the idea a bit further and He says that if therefore, people suffered penalties for not believing the things that were under the old covenant, how much more is it so if they don't believe what He has said. Well, what has Jesus said? "Those who come unto Me, I will no wise cast out." What has Jesus said? "Believe on Me." What has Jesus said? That He has the power to forgive sins; that He has the ability to reconcile fallen men to the Living God; that His blood atones for all our sins. He has said that He will never leave you nor forsake you-even unto the end of the age. He said that there's not a hair that's on your head that falls to the ground but that the Father knows it all together, and that He has you in the palm of His hand. What has He said? He prayed for us-in the garden. Folks, go back and read your New Testament. Look at what He has said. Believe those things. That's what faith is, believing what God has said is true and ordering my life accordingly. And this man demonstrates it in such a beautiful, simple fashion. He believes what Jesus said...and he goes. What does the Scripture say? "Abraham believed God, and it is reckoned to him as righteousness." Well, that brings us to the last point then.
Go back down to verse 51. And I just love the way this narrative ends. So powerful. Verse 50. "Jesus said to him, go your way; your son lives. And the man believed the word He spoke to him, and he started off. And as he was now going down, his slave met him saying that his son was living and so he inquired of them the hour of in which he began to get better." I've got an interesting sideline here. I don't know about you but that surprises me. It surprises me for this reason. That when he talks about it, he talks about the seventh hour the previous day. That's when he had met Christ. That's when Jesus gave him this word; seventh hour, the previous day. In other words-and I find this fascinating, the man didn't run home. He didn't run home to see if it was true. He walked home believing it WAS true. Wow! Do you and I take God's Word at that kind of face value where we don't run to see if it's true, but we WALK because we know it's true? He had 25 miles to go. He had just been told that his son, who was near death, was going to be well. Don't you think he would have run the 25 miles? He didn't! He walked home. And when he got there, he asked, "Well, when did he begin to get better? And they said yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him and the father knew that it was at that hour in which Jesus said to him, "Your son lives."
Here then is the last principle: Grace received, leads to Grace increased. So the father knew that it was that hour that Jesus said to him, "Your son lives and he himself believed and his whole household." This again, is the second sign that Jesus performed when He had come out of Judea and into Galilee. Let me give you that principle restated in Jesus' own words out of Matthew 25: "For everyone who has, more shall be given, and he shall have abundance; but from the one who does not have, even what he does have, shall be taken away and cast out the worthless slave unto outer darkness. In that place there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth!" Our first principle was that grace refused is grace removed but our last is grace received is grace increased.
Now, here's one of the most amazing, miraculous, transformative realities found in the whole of the New Testament. It never ceases to amaze me. The truth is, everything that you and I have, we have as a gift of grace. Everything we have is a gift of grace. We've earned nothing. In fact, Jesus says when you've done all that is commanded to you, the way that you should view it in yourself, is you should say I am an unprofitable servant-I've only done what I should have done. That's kind of stunning. I know that's not so good for everybody's self-image, take it up with Jesus. He wasn't worried about your self-image, He was worried about the image of Himself in you. And so, He tells them that when you've done ALL that you can do-when you've done ALL that your supposed to do-you should look at yourself and say I'm just an unprofitable servant. Then He adds this reality, that when we reach Glory, we shall receive reward from Him. Well, on what is that reward based? Here's the astounding thing, He gives you grace and then rewards you for having it. We don't understand grace until we understand that. He takes the unbeliever, He takes the fallen man, and gives him eternal life and then brings him into His own presence as a reward for him having eternal life. He took this man who had no faith, put faith in him, and then sent him home rewarded for his faith by seeing his whole household believe. That's the kind of God we serve. The grace that He gives, He rewards. Isn't that amazing? We couldn't believe in Him on our own so He gives us faith and then He says I reward that faith because I love you. We wouldn't know Christ. We would hate Him. The proof that we would hate Him is if He were there, we would have nailed Him to the tree too. And yet, He gives us the reward of eternity in His presence based not on what WE'VE done but based on what He's given us. Grace received is grace increased. And even though you only see a little bit of grace in your heart and in your mind, Oh, cultivate it! Cling to it! Believe the promises of His Word! He rewards the very things He that places within us. And we receive the benefit of things we never earned, of things we discarded until by His Sovereign hand, He brought us to Himself. That's the nature of Saving Grace. That's the Christ we serve. I know we've sung the song...actually, the best adaptation of it was Ray Stevens---"Will There Be Any Stars In My Crown?" We've got people running around saying, "Oh, if I do this and I do that, if I do the other things, I'll get some super reward when I get to Heaven. Hogwash! The reward we get is for what He's done in us, not what we've done. That's the incredible nature of Grace. All a gift. All of Him. All of grace. All of Christ. And so all the glory will be His, and not ours.
Let's pray. Heavenly Father, what are we to say to such things? We run on this earth and we run sometimes so poorly. Oh Father, we run with so many doubts and so many fears. We have set ourselves up as judges with no knowledge. The truth be known, Father, whether we have done it physically or inwardly, sometimes each one of us in this place has raised our fist to Heaven. The miracle is that you didn't strike us down on the spot. For you've never done anything wrong. Forgive us our inability to understand how comprehensive and infinite your love and grace is. We measure it by our own fickleness. We measure it by our own limits and then we cast those dark thoughts upon You. Forgive us Father. How wrong we've been. And then casting it all aside, at last, we see this great mercy-this great grace. And how are we to comprehend this reality that we hated you, yet you've made us love you. And then we get the benefit, having loved You. We've refused you, and you captured us and then you crown us with glory! We doubt you and revile you and you subdue us and bless us. Father, our minds cannot fathom that kind of grace. We've been measuring it by human terms and your grace far exceeds our ability to comprehend. Father, I would pray this morning for those with us today whose hearts have wavered in the recent past. Will you renew them with strength? Father, will you whisper from your Word to them once again your great, incomprehensible love that will not fail? Remind us WHO YOU ARE! And that believing you-ALL is well. Father forgive us. Make us like Christ. He never doubted you but committed Himself to you-even to the cross. And in it, you brought lost men into reconciliation with yourself. Oh, what a grace is this! We give you praise for it this morning in Jesus Name, Amen.
Transcribed by Jude Heberger
Copyright © 2000 Reid A. Ferguson. Permission granted to quote in context.