!1 1. Amazing Grace...Redeems from Sin Ephesians 1:3-7 INTRO: Amazing Grace. Grace is What?...Amazing! We read about grace in the book of Hebrews: Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need (Heb. 4:16). Amazing grace! how sweet the sound!/ That saved a wretch like me!/ I once was lost, but now am found;/ Was blind, but now I see. That's verse 1 of the hymn, Amazing Grace. Probably one of the best known hymns of all time! It can even be sung to the tune if Gillian's Island! And to the tune of House of the Rising Sun! But it is wonderful to sing it to its own tune too! Amazing grace. ME: I love learning about grace everyday! Sometimes I'm more aware of it than others. But I continue to give myself opportunities to learn about grace. Like that time I did not get the speeding ticket I deserved! YOU: How about you? Have you ever experienced grace from others? Have you very experienced grace from God? Let's see what God can teach us about Amazing Grace in Paul's letter to Ephesus: GOD:
!2 Ephesians 1:3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. 5 He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace. WE: God blessed us in Christ to be holy as we see in the first part of this passage. The God who acted in Christ and chose us and all believers to live before him deserves praise. The words translated Praise be to God in the NIV are actually, Blessed is the God. By using the word praise the NIV loses the play on three repetitions of the root bless : Blessed is the God who blessed us with every spiritual blessing. To use the same word for our worship of God and of God s showering us with spiritual gifts is foreign to us, but this double meaning of the word bless is common in both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. This expression refers to all that God s Spirit brings to enable life. The immediate context mentions election, adoption, grace, forgiveness, revelation, the gospel, and the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is the primary gift and the source of all the others. The expression in the heavenly realms does not mean that spiritual blessings are to be enjoyed later in heaven, for the focus of this text is on the present enjoyment of God s gifts. A focus on getting into heaven in the future is not the primary concern of the New Testament.
!3 The concern is much more for the present life with God and in Christ. While the coming age is important in Ephesians, only 2 verses give any focus to gaining future salvation, and both of these verses mention the future only as a motivation for present living. The text literallay reads only in the heavenlies ; and although this word occurs elsewhere as the adjective heavenly, it has the sense of the heavenly realms only in Ephesians. It is not merely a synonym for heaven, it can refer to: (1) the place of exaltation for Christ and believers (2) the place for revelation of God s wisdom to the rulers and authorities (3) and more negatively, the place of battle between believers and evil spiritual forces. So then, heavenly realms includes all of the believer s relationship to God and the church s experience. It is a way of saying that this world is not the only reality. They say every element in Paul s teachings flows from his understanding about our union with Christ. These expressions dominate this section. God s purpose and election take place in Christ. God s grace and redemption are found in Christ (1:6 7). In his book Simply Christian Bible scholar N.T. Wright uses the analogy of waking up in the morning for how some people come to Christ through a dramatic, instant conversion and others come to Christ through a gradual conversion: Waking up offers one of the most basic pictures of what can happen when God takes a hand in someone's life. There are classic alarm-clock stories, Saul of Tarsus on the road to
!4 Damascus, blinded by a sudden light, stunned and speechless, discovered that the God he had worshipped had revealed himself in the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth. John Wesley found his heart becoming strangely warm and he never looked back. They and a few others are the famous ones, but there are millions more. And there are many stories, though they don't hit the headlines in the same way, of the half-awake and half-asleep variety. Some people take months, years, maybe even decades, during which they aren't sure whether they're on the outside of Christian faith looking in, or on the inside looking around to see if it's real. As with ordinary waking up, there are many people who are somewhere in between. But the point is that there's such a thing as being asleep, and there's such a thing as being awake. And it's important to tell the difference, and to be sure you're awake by the time you have to be up and ready for action, whatever that action may be. We wake up to the reality of Amazing Grace! Just like John Newton woke up to it. He woke up to it like it was an alarm clock. John Newton was raised by a devoted Christian mother who dreamed that her only son would become a preacher. But she died when John was a child, and he followed his sea-captain father to a sailor's life. John didn't care for the discipline of the Royal Navy: he deserted ship, was flogged, and eventually was discharged. He then headed for regions where he could "sin freely," and ended up on the western coast of Africa, working for a slave trader who mistreated him. Newton's life during that period bore the appearance of a modern Prodigal Son's:
!5 "a wretched looking man toiling in a plantation of lemon trees in the Island of Plaintains--clothes had become rags, no shelter and begging for unhealthy roots to allay his hunger." After more than a year of such treatment, he managed to escape from the island, in 1747. The following year his ship was battered by a severe storm. Newton had read The Imitation of Christ, and during the life-threatening voyage he became a Christian. Ironically, Newton then served as captain of a slave ship for six years. He gradually came to abhor slavery and later crusaded against it. Newton became greatly influenced by George Whitefield and the Wesleys. He married his long-time sweetheart and began studying for the ministry and preaching in whatever vacant building he could find. Known as the "old converted sea captain," he attracted large audiences. He was ordained within the Anglican Church, and in 1764 he took a Church in Olney. Newton felt dissatisfied with the hymns of the traditional psalter. He began writing his own, many autobiographical in nature, including "Amazing Grace!" He also befriended poet William Cowper, and they collaborated to produce Olney Hymns, which became the standard hymnal of evangelical Anglican churches. The hymnal, which includes Newton's hymns "Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken" and "How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds," was reprinted in England and America for the next century. In his old age, it was suggested that Newton retire because of bad health and failing memory. He replied, "My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things: That I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Savior!" In other words, Amazing Grace redeems from sin.
!6 Hebrews 4:6 says: Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need (Heb. 4:16). Kings, queens and presidents can't do it! They cannot pardon our transgressions. Silver and gold cannot buy forgiveness. Medicine and science cannot produce it. But Jesus Christ can redeem from sin. Jesus Christ, through the grace of God, can reach down into the gutter of despair, lift up the penitent soul out of the miry clay, and redeem his soul from destruction. THE SERMON IN A SENTENCE: Like an alarm clock, grace wakes us up to our need for God and God's mercy for us. YOU: How do you feel about that word redeemed? When I served Broad Street UMC in Portsmouth, there was this wonderful old woman named Louise Clayton who di not like such a legal sounding term for what the grace of Christ does for us. Ho do you feel about it? Perhaps you feel like a bottle being redeemed for change? But no, it is so much deeper than that. It is so much richer than that too. God sees beauty even in our imperfections. So much so that he longs to redeem us with wabi-sabi Amazing Grace! Please allow me to explain: CLOSE: According to Japanese legend, a young man named Sen no Rikyu sought to learn the elaborate set of customs known as the "Way of Tea." He went to tea master Takeno Joo, who tested the younger man by asking him to tend the garden. Rikyu cleaned up debris and raked the
!7 ground until it was perfect, and the garden immaculate. Before presenting his work to the master, he shook a cherry tree, causing a few flowers to fall onto the ground. To this day, the Japanese revere Rikyu as one who understood to his very core wabi-sabi. Emerging in the fifteenth century as a reaction to the prevailing aesthetic of lavishness, ornamentation, and rich materials, wabisabi is the art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in earthiness, of revering authenticity above all. When a white pottery bowl breaks, for example, one might glue it back together with white lacquer to disguise the breaks, making it look as new and complete as possible. But in the East the bowl might be glued back together with lacquer sprinkled with gold to highlight the cracks and imperfections. Japanese culture sees the aesthetic value of imperfection in wabi-sabi just as much as the Greeks valued perfection in their art. Wabi-sabi is seen as beautiful because it is imperfect and broken. The gospel is like spiritual wabi-sabi. It is the story of how God redeems imperfect, broken people and uses them to bless a fractured world. God does not need to forgive and forget. He sees the richness in the lives we've lived by the growth we have made from our mistakes. He sees gold in the responses we make to grace once it has awakened us. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that save a wretch like me... Let us pray for that golden grace now...