Grace Notes

I want to begin today with something that has absolutely nothing to do with my sermon, but I thought it was hilarious.

So I have two little boys.

My five-year-old son is named Miles.

He is feisty.

My seven-year-old son, his name is J.R.

He just wrapped up first grade at Chapelfield Elementary here in Gehanna.

And every Monday his teacher has him do what they call weekend updates, which is essentially they have to draw a picture, they have to describe what they did that weekend.

And this was J.R.'s last weekend update.

He brought his book bag home on Monday afternoon, and we pulled this thing out.

And my wife Elise serves in one kid's on occasion.

And so one Sunday night she was back there with the babies.

And she brought JR with her.

And I'm going to show this to camera four right here.

This is this is my wife Elise right there.

That's JR.

And that's the babies.

And listen to what JR wrote.

He said, I went to church.

I helped with the babies.

It was annoying.

Y'all pray for my son.

He is not saved, okay?

He needs Jesus.

One kids is not annoying, you guys.

Shout out to those of you who serve in one kids.

There is a special place in heaven for you.

So if you want to serve in one kids, we'll take you.

But today I want to talk to you about grace.

It's uh a word or subject that certainly you've heard about if you've spent any length of time in church.

But how many of you know that so often it's the simple truths that are the hardest to believe and live out of?

Grace is one of those words where if we're not careful, it has a tendency to ring a bit hollow in our hearts because we feel like we've heard it all before, but by the help of the Holy Spirit, I'm praying for a fresh experience of grace for us all this morning.

I'm gonna do something a little different uh today.

Typically, what I like to do is I like to preach expositionally, which is just a fancy way of saying.

I typically like to drop anger anchor in a single text, and I like to walk that text and wring from it everything we can get.

I typically try to pull my outline straight from the text, but today I want to preach to you a bit more topically, which means we're gonna take a quick survey of a lot of scriptures for the sake of pointing out a single topic or a single theme.

That theme being grace.

Grace is a prominent theme throughout scripture.

John chapter 1 describes Jesus as being full of grace and truth.

John 1 · chapter mention

And he tells us that it's through Jesus you and I have received grace upon grace.

That's good news.

Amen.

Ephesians chapter 1 describes the grace that verse 8 tells us God has so richly lavished upon us.

Ephesians 1 · chapter mention

I want you to feel and hear the energy in that word.

God doesn't just sprinkle small amounts of grace upon us, He pours it out upon us in heaps out of the very overflow of His nature.

He richly lavishes His grace upon us.

And then Ephesians chapter 2, verse 7, it tells us that God's goal for all of eternity is to show us the immeasurable riches of grace and the kindness that is in Christ Jesus.

Ephesians 2:7

This is the eternal vocation of you and I.

We're going to be eternally mining the depth and richness of God's grace toward us in Christ.

Grace has been defined as unmerited favor.

Favor you didn't earn, favor you didn't deserve, it's completely unmerited.

Here's my simple definition of grace for you.

Grace is when a generous God looks upon lowly people like you and I and lavishes us with his love and mercy and kindness in spite of the fact that we did absolutely nothing to deserve it.

But even if I were to define it for you, that wouldn't be sufficient because grace is one of those things that has to be experienced.

In studying for this message, I read about something called grace notes.

Are there any uh piano players or musicians in the room that know a little something about grace notes?

So it's all good because I didn't know either.

Uh, but I I've gathered that grace notes, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, Isaac, grace notes are essentially when instead of playing the root note, they will add a little flourish to the beginning or the end of that note to really make it pop and for the entire piece to come alive.

Grace notes are featured throughout almost every genre of music, but it's it's really prominently featured in classical music by composers such as Beethoven and Mozart.

But in spite of the fact that I just gave you the definition, most of us in here still have no idea what a grace note is.

Partly because some of y'all weren't paying attention, which is fine.

I don't take that personally, I promise.

But it's because grace notes, much like grace, must be experienced in order to be understood.

Grace notes are the sort of thing where you kind of know it when you when you hear it.

You know it when you hear it, you know it when you feel it, you know it when you experience it, you know it when you are raptured up into it.

In fact, I would go as far as to say that you cannot know grace until you experience it.

But it's interesting to note that Jesus never actually used the word.

Never used the word in the Gospels, but somehow he still had so much to say on the matter.

Because Jesus showed us what grace looks like when it walks and when it talks.

Jesus's entire life and ministry was full of grace notes.

In Luke chapter 5, Jesus is approached by a man whom the Bible describes as being full of leprosy.

Luke 5 · chapter mention

For those of you who don't know, leprosy is an intensely painful and incredibly contagious flesh-eating disease.

Your flesh would literally rot off of the bone.

And back then they had no remedy or cure for leprosy, so the only thing they could think to do was quarantine anybody who contracted it.

So imagine this: you contract leprosy only to be ripped from the arms of everything that you know and love, forced to say goodbye to all your friends and family, and you are shipped outside of the city, far away from any sort of civilization, so that nobody else might be at risk of catching the disease as well.

In fact, if somebody were to come near to a leper, they would have been legally obligated to shout, unclean! Unclean.

Can you imagine what that would be like?

You can only say that of yourself so many times before even you begin to believe it to be true.

Most lepers would simply await death while their friends and loved ones slowly forgotten about them.

But this man finds himself at the feet of Jesus and he asks Jesus an interesting question.

He says, Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.

Notice he didn't say, if you are able, Jesus' power to heal him wasn't in question.

Instead, he asks an equally important question.

He wants to know what is Jesus like?

You know, often the question that we contend with is, is God real?

Is he out there somewhere?

It's an important question that you need to get answers to.

But an equally important question is, what is he like?

Because if he's real and he's out there, but he remains distant and detached, unwilling to step into your story, he wouldn't be a God worth worshiping anyway.

This leper wants to know, Jesus, what kind of God are you like?

Lord, if you're willing, you can make me clean.

And look what Jesus does in verse 13.

Scripture tells us that he reaches out his hand and he touches him and he says to him, I am willing.

Be clean.

I am willing.

There may be no more beautiful phrase in all of Scripture.

I am willing.

Now you gotta wonder why would Jesus put himself at risk of catching this incredibly contagious disease when a word would have been sufficient.

Jesus created the whole world and he sustains it with a word.

Surely he could have said to this man, be clean, and that's all it would have taken.

But instead, Jesus touches him.

Why?

It's because Jesus knew that this man needed more than a word.

He needed to experience grace.

This is probably the first touch this man has felt in years.

Which is why there are so few words spoken.

So few words are needed.

Everything was communicated with a touch.

Jesus says, I am willing to be clean grace to you.

Another example is in John chapter 8, when the religious leaders catch a woman in the act of adultery.

John 8 · chapter mention

This gal is quite literally caught red-handed.

And so they drag her into the temple courtyard and cast her down at the feet of Jesus.

And with stones in hand, they're all ready to condemn her to death.

And surely they look to Jesus thinking he was going to join them.

But the thing that they failed to realize was that you don't find shame at the feet of Jesus.

That's the place of grace.

There's only grace there.

And Jesus famously turns to the crowd and says, If any of y'all are perfect, go ahead and throw stones at this woman.

If you are without sin, cast the first stone.

And one by one, they all drop their stones and they leave.

And before long, this woman is left alone in the company of Jesus.

Surely the weight of her shame is bearing heavy upon her shoulders.

She's likely literally naked.

So Jesus takes off his robe and it covers her in more ways than one.

And he lifts her head and he says to her, Women, woman, where are your accusers?

She looks to her left.

She looks to her right and then looks back up at Jesus and she says, There are none, Lord.

He says, Neither do I condemn you.

Go and put away your life of sin.

Jesus was always honest about the realities and consequences of sin.

And I say this to those of you who would object to this sort of radical, scandalous grace by saying, Well, people will just use that as an excuse to continue to sin.

Yeah, we will, because the hellbent nature of our hearts, we have a tendency to abuse things, but when you really experience grace, that compels you to change.

Romans says, should we continue to sin that grace may abound?

May it never be.

But nevertheless, Jesus, in dealing with this woman's shame, lavishes upon her radical, scandalous, unlawful kind of grace.

One final story, Luke chapter 9.

Luke 9 · chapter mention

And we're actually going to read this one together because I think this one might be a little less familiar to us all.

Luke chapter 9, starting in verse 57.

Luke 9 · chapter mention

If y'all are still with me this morning, give me a good amen.

If you don't have a Bible, it's all good.

We'll have the sky Bibles up here behind me.

Luke chapter 9, starting in verse 57.

Luke 9 · chapter mention

It says, As they were going along the road, someone said to him, I will follow you wherever you go.

Jesus said to him, Hold up, homie.

Foxes have holes, birds of the air have their nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

To another he said, Follow me.

But he said, Lord, let me first go and bury my father.

And Jesus said to him, Leave the dead to bury their own dead.

But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.

Yet another said, I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to my home, my family.

Jesus said to him, No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.

Now these are hard words to hear from Jesus.

It almost sounds like Jesus is working really hard to talk these guys out of following him.

To one, he says, don't worry about burying your dead dad.

To another, he says, there's no need to go and say goodbye to your family.

Things that seem like reasonable requests prior to giving up everything and following Jesus.

Where is the grace in that?

I have preached this text in such a way that it says to us a lot about the cost of following Jesus.

And do not misunderstand me.

Following Jesus is costly.

That's a faithful reading of this scripture.

To follow Jesus, you're gonna have to say no to some good opportunities.

You're gonna have to say goodbye to some relationships.

But what I want to do is I want to try to tilt the prism a little bit and get us to see what this text has to say about what it means to be people of grace.

I want you to consider with me for a moment the power of the before and after photo.

Think about it.

This is every company's go-to sales tactic.

If you just buy this product, you'll have pearly white teeth.

Or if you just buy this pill or this workout regiment or this or this bicycle thing, if you just buy this stuff, you'll be shredded, you'll drop 20 pounds in two weeks.

Everybody loves a loves a good glow up, don't we?

Extreme home makeover had us thinking that we could have a new house in less than an hour.

Chip and Joanna Gaines and fix her upper.

What do they do?

Before they reveal their innovation, they put a giant picture of what the house looked like prior to being fixed up.

And then they they wheel that bad boy away for the family to behold the newness of their home.

What is it about before and after photos that we find so compelling?

I think it's in part because the after photo gives us hope.

We see that and we say to ourselves, well, I'm not I'm not that far away from the after photo.

You know, I can have a chiseled physique like that.

Just give me a couple of weeks.

All I need is a little bit more money, a little bit more discipline.

All I need is this product, and that could be me.

The after photo gives us, we think that we're never too far from the after photo, but rarely will we stare down the truth that we are the before photo.

We all love the after.

We struggle to come to terms with our before-ness, don't we?

Uh, over uh the COVID lockdown, I read a book called Infinite Jest by a guy named David Foster Wallace, which I do not recommend.

That thing is a slog.

It's like a thousand pages.

It's a tough read, you guys.

I didn't like it, but you can read it if you want.

But uh one of the major themes of infinite jest is the uh the consequences of substance abuse and alcoholism.

So at one point, David Foster Wallace actually goes to great lengths uh to describe the mechanics of an AA meeting.

You know, AA meetings have a liturgy and vocabulary of their own.

Whenever somebody stands up to speak at an AA meeting, it always begins with the same mantra.

They would say, Hi, my name is Shane, and I'm an alcoholic.

My name is Shane and I'm an alcoholic.

Now, mind you, the person speaking, it's plausible that they have been sober for many years and many decades at this point.

But no matter how beautiful and long-lasting their after photo is, there is freedom when you come to terms with your beforeness.

One of the things that you hear often at uh AA meetings is this phrase coming in.

Coming in is men and women who are a part of AA sort of have a timestamp for when they came in.

So somebody might say, I came in two years ago, or I came in two weeks ago.

When you come in, that essentially means that you have arrived at the place where the bottom falls out for you.

You realize that your issues are beyond what you yourself have the means to overcome, and so you finally seek out help.

You come in.

I want to submit to you that the church should be a little bit more like AA meetings.

But here's the thing with us Christians: we we think the church is full and for people of the after photo.

So before I can come, before I can be here and belong, I gotta clean myself up first.

I gotta get my life right.

It's the same impulse that has me thinking that I gotta lose 10 pounds before I can go to the gym.

Like the gym is the place where that stuff goes down.

You don't gotta fix that first.

You just you just come on in.

The church should be the place where you can come broke, busted, disgusted, joy, full of victory.

It does not matter.

You can come in under any condition.

We so often apply the same logic to following Jesus, in spite of the fact that Jesus said himself that he did not come for those who think they are well.

He came for the ones who have the courage to admit that they are sick.

The church isn't full and four of people, people of the after photo.

We are people of the before photo.

We think that Christians are good people, or at least they should be.

But there's no such thing as good people.

There is only a good God who brings healing and restoration to sick people.

There's only a good God who brings new life inside of dead people.

The church is people of the before photo.

And so Jesus' invitation in Luke chapter 9 is simply this.

Luke 9 · chapter mention

Come on in.

You got baggage, that's fine.

Come on in.

You got wounds, it's good.

Come on in.

You got secret sin?

That's that's just fine with me.

Come on in.

And I love you enough not to leave you the way that I found you.

But you you just just you don't don't worry about going and fixing your past.

No need to say goodbye to your loved ones.

You let the dead bury their own dead.

You just just come on in.

One of my favorite poems was authored by a guy named Shell Silverstein.

Anybody remember old Shell?

Yeah?

People of a certain age will remember Shell.

You ever open the back flap and been like, oh my gosh, that's what that guy looks like?

No shade on I'm a man Shell, but he ain't a looker.

Let's say that's mean.

I shouldn't have said that.

Shell Silverstein wrote a poem called Come In.

Here's what he says.

He says, if you're a dreamer, come in.

If you're a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, a hoper, a prayer, a magic bean buyer.

If you're a pretender, come sit by my fire.

If we have some flax golden tails to spin, come in.

Come in.

If you're a dreamer, a wisher, A liar, a porn watcher, a partier, a failure, an addict.

Jesus' invitation to you today is come on in.

It's not bad.

It's so good.

Now, one of the reasons why we struggle so much with the concept of grace is because our culture has conditioned us to believe that the moral universe works according to karma.

You know what karma is, right?

Karma is essentially the idea that if you're a good person, good will generally come back to you.

But if you're a bad person, you better watch out.

Karma says that you get what you deserve.

What goes around comes around.

Now let me be as clear as I can.

Grace is not an abdication of personal responsibility.

There are still consequences for your actions, but thank God karma is not my judge.

Because if it were, I would be in big trouble.

Big trouble.

Because I am the worst sinner I know.

I try to be a good person generally.

I try to be honest.

I try to be generous.

I try with all my might to be a good father, to be a good husband, to be a good friend, but but I am at war within myself on a daily basis, suppressing desires for things I should not want and things I should not do.

I have to rail against my own anger, my own pride, my own lust.

In fact, if all of my thoughts, not even my actions, just my thoughts, were to be displayed for you on these two screens, I would be utterly mortified.

But karma says, all that's coming back to me somehow.

Karma says that it's all about what I do and don't do.

But then grace steps in and does what I cannot do.

God gives me his love in spite of all my sin.

Romans chapter 5 says that God shows his love for us in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5 · chapter mention

While we were still sinners, he doesn't just disregard my sin.

That wouldn't be just of him.

Instead, he deals with it himself.

He died the death that I deserve so that I could have the one thing, the very thing that I don't deserve.

New life, eternal life, life that is only found in him.

That is grace.

That is good news.

Thank God karma isn't my judge.

Now I want to close by bringing this idea of grace to bear on a couple groups of people.

The first are those of you in here who would say, Shane, I'm a Christian.

I buy all that.

I recognize that I'm a sinner in need of grace.

It's why I became a Christian in the first place.

And to you, I want to say that is the best decision you will ever make.

But I'm curious, have you experienced grace?

Have you tasted it?

Have you touched it?

Have you held it?

Has it held you?

And I'm not just talking about once upon a time.

When you first, grace is so much more than the means by which we punch our ticket to heaven.

You gotta, I need grace moment by moment, breath by breath.

Grace is the means by which we get access to God.

Ephesians chapter 2 tells us that it is by grace through faith that we're saved.

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

Not because, not on account of anything that you and I could do so that we don't get the glory, so that only God gets the glory.

But but check this out, you guys.

James chapter 4, James, the brother of Jesus.

James 4 · chapter mention

James chapter 4, verse 6 says that God gives more grace.

James 4:6

As if the grace he's given isn't already sufficient, he gives more, and I want it all.

I want it all.

Grace can sustain you.

Paul's speaking of Jesus, my grace is sufficient for you.

My power is made perfect in your weakness.

God's grace can hold you up when you're feeling weak.

God's grace will cover you when you're feeling shame.

God's grace can satisfy you when you're feeling disappointment.

And the result of this grace should be uproarious worship.

Ephesians chapter 1, verse 6 says, So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear son.

Ephesians 1:6

Grace isn't something that we access once upon a time to get right with God, only thereafter to never have need of it again.

We need grace every single moment.

The second group I want to talk to are those of you who may say of yourself, Shane.

Grace sounds good, bruh, but I'm too broken.

You know, maybe the uh shame or guilt of a past mistake is lingering into your present.

It informs everything you do, it haunts you.

Maybe you got some secret sin that you walked in here with that nobody knows about, and you're you're deathly afraid of somebody finding out.

Shoot, maybe your sin isn't so secret.

Maybe it's out there in the open, but it's still destroying you, destroying your life, destroying your family.

Upon an honest inventory of your life, you would say, Shane, this stuff is making me become somebody I don't want to be.

I just met with a man this week who had an affair on his wife.

He cheated on his wife and he said to me, Shane, this sin is causing me to be the person that I never imagined myself becoming.

But I want you to hear today from the heart of heaven, there is nobody beyond the reach of God's grace.

There is nobody.

Nobody is too broken beyond what God can fix.

I need you to get this in your spirit.

Nobody is too far gone.

There are testimony after testimony of people who have been radically met and transformed by the grace of God.

My father is a perfect example.

Many of you know my story, but for those of you who don't, my dad was an abusive alcoholic my entire adult life.

He was physically abusive, he was verbally abusive.

My dad was not a pleasant man.

And our relationship was fractured.

My dad was a militant atheist.

In my estimation, my dad was as far away from God as a person could possibly get.

But then one day, homeless, broke, alone, my dad found his way into a residential rehab facility through the Salvation Army, and after 18 months of sobriety, my dad gave his life to Jesus.

Nobody's too far gone.

One of my favorite stories is about a man in our church named Stan.

When you meet Stan, it feels a lot like meeting Jesus.

Stan is effusively kind, he's so tender, he's always on the verge of tears because Stan knows what it means to have experienced grace.

Stan was convicted of murder at the age of 17.

Murder.

Spent the next three decades in Marion Correctional Institution.

Stan was a child in a man's prison facility.

He was scared, he was alone, so he went searching for any sort of protection and community he could find.

So he joined the Aryan Brotherhood inside of Marion Correctional Institution, neo-Nazis.

But while he was in prison, Stan experienced grace on a Christian retreat.

Listen to what Stan says.

He said, I accepted Christ in 1999.

When you walk around after doing a crime like I did, you just carry that guilt and shame and everything that goes along with that.

You carry it with you and you can't get rid of it.

You're trying to fill that void with something else, but you can't fill it.

Christ is the only thing that can fill that.

When Jesus came into my life, he changed everything.

Typically, you'll find Stan sitting on the third row right over here.

And with him, there's about five to seven former inmates on any given weekend because right now Stan is the director of community outreach for a ministry called Kindway, which works to share the grace of God with other inmates and comes alongside of them as they re-enter society after they've been released.

Isn't that lovely?

How beautiful is that.

As we consider the person who might have been the most unqualified to receive the gift of eternal life.

It was the thief on the cross.

You know this story, this guy is condemned to the death penalty because of his crimes.

Jesus being crucified next to him, and this man makes this simple request.

He says, Jesus, will you remember me?

Up until this point, this man's life has been lived, running in the complete opposite direction of God.

But in a moment of honesty and utter desperation, he says, Jesus, will you remember me?

And Jesus says to him, Today you'll be with me in paradise.

The point of the story is this Jesus always remembers those who ask to be remembered.

It doesn't matter what you've done.

And I love the way Pastor Alistair Begg puts this.

Anything good you've ever heard me preach, it's because I heard him preach at first and I stole it.

But allow me to take some liberties with this one.

Pastor Beg imagines this thief making his way to paradise.

And I like to think of it going down this way.

He jumps out and he approaches the pearly gates and he's got his ticket to paradise in hand, and he hands that ticket over to the gatekeeper.

And the gatekeeper takes his ticket and punches this man's name in the heavenly MacBook and up pops his resume.

And and and the gatekeeper is looking at this guy's credentials and he looks at the ticket and he looks at this guy and he looks at his resume, and he looks at this guy and looks at the ticket, and he probably hands the ticket back to the thief and he says, Brother, I think you got off on the wrong floor.

And the thief is like, No, this is paradise, right?

I'm supposed to be here.

And the gatekeeper's like, Man, there I don't think you are.

Like, I'm looking at your life.

There isn't much to write home about.

By what means or merit are you standing here today?

To which the thief responds, The guy on the middle cross told me I could come in.

He told me I can come.

Jesus says to you today, Come on in.

That's good.

Your sin is great, but his grace is sufficient.

Come to Jesus, it's never too late.