The King's Church in Ilford
The following is the text of the talk given on 30th November 2008 by Robin Hawkins
"A Foundation of Grace"
Ephesians 2:1-10
When a person works an eight-hour day and receives a fair day's pay for his time, that is a wage. When a person competes with an opponent and receives a trophy for his performance, that is a prize. When a person receives appropriate recognition for his long service, or high achievements, that is an award. But when a person is not capable earning a wage, can win no prize, and deserves no award - yet receives such a gift anyway - that is a good picture of God's unmerited favour. This is what we mean when we talk about the grace of God.
King's is a grace church. Whenever we think of Christ, we should think of his grace. We should bask in it, glory in it, and rejoice in it. It should be our song and our shout of praise. When we've understood it, it draws from us the deepest worship and adoration. It is the most jaw-dropping, breath-taking, gob-smacking, awe-inspiring characteristic of God that we could ever discover.
It inspired John Newton, once captain of a slave-trader, to cry out, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me..." There was a time early on in my Christian life when I thought God had washed his hands of me. I thought I had gone beyond the pale of God's love. For several years I felt I was in hell on earth. I knew God was there, but I thought I'd lost Him forever. Somehow, I held onto faith by my fingernails, in the hope that He would turn and rescue me. Then one night, I had a dream. I was walking with two friends up Mt. Horeb. We were going to meet God at the top. When we got there, there was God and He was talking to my two friends, and he was ticking them off about something. I thought, as one does, I must remember this and tell them - but it's the only thing about the dream I can't remember. Then it was my turn, and I cowered before God, expecting a heavy rebuke - but it never came! All He said was, "You're OK. You just go on doing what you're doing." The next thing I knew, there we were, Father and son together walking arm-in-arm down that mountain, and I talked about my fears, and asked him the question that had tortured me for so long. And He answered me with questions of his own - just like He did to Job - questions that had such healing wisdom in them. And they healed me, and restored me.
That was grace. For a long while afterwards, I couldn't sing Amazing Grace without being overwhelmed at His grace to me, and without tears coming to my eyes. I don't believe I had stopped being a child of God during that time of spiritual depression. It just felt like it - and that was bad enough.
Now why have I told you that story? Mainly because I don't think we'll ever truly appreciate the wonder of God's grace to us until we realise what He's rescued us from - and the fact that it was all his doing - from start to finish.
Eph 2:1 tells us that before God saved us, we "were dead in our transgressions and sins." This doesn't mean we were physically dead. It means we were spiritually dead. Our bodies' were working. We could walk, talk, eat, and sleep. What we couldn't do was find God or respond to Him, because we were dead to him. You could hear the gospel time and again, but it's like water off a duck's back, because you were dead to God. Now some people I've talked to have trouble accepting that dead is dead, so I wanted to play the Dead Parrot Sketch just to remind us what it is to be dead, deceased, extinct, belly up, croaked.....
Paul says us we were blithely following the ways of this world, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature, following its desires and thoughts. Being translated that means, "Doing our own thing." Like everyone else, we were by nature objects of wrath. Let me translate that: we were heading for hell. Like one of those Indiana Jones films when they were in a runaway rail truck, heading for a bottomless pit, so we were in our own runaway truck, heading helter-skelter for the Lake of Fire. There was no hope for us, no-one to rescue us. We were heading for the awfulness of everlasting conscious destruction. Did you see that clip from the space station last week when this worker lost her tool-bag - and it drifted off into space - lost forever in all that emptiness? Imagine that was you, cut off forever from everyone and everything you know and love. Even that wouldn't touch hell. Imagine being adrift on an empty ocean; lost in a scorching desert. Neither of those do justice to the eternal despair, pain and agony of hell.
We had a book a while back called Twentieth Century Miracle. This man was raised by an aunt who prayed faithfully for his conversion, but he firmly resisted the gospel. He worked in a timber mill, and one day, he fell off this walkway into millpond. It took them forty minutes to get him to the surface, and he was long-since drowned. But when his aunt came to the mill, she wouldn't accept his death. "I've prayed too long for him and he's not saved yet. Lord, you can't take him yet. So she prayed for him to come back to life.
Meanwhile he had found himself in a strange place, a kind of prison on the banks of the Lake of Fire, with countless other souls, just waiting for the final judgement. He said later that he could see Jesus walking across the surface of the Lake of Fire; and you knew instinctively that if Jesus turned and looked at you, you would be saved. But He just kept looking straight ahead, and the man had this awful sense of abandonment - until suddenly, Jesus turned and looked straight at him. At that moment he returned to his body, and came back to life. That's the crunch! We can do nothing to save ourselves. Unless Jesus turns and looks at us, we too are heading for the Lake of Fire. "But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive again in Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace that you have been saved." He has "looked at us"! It was like those Children of Israel. They couldn't save themselves from the Egyptians. It was because He loved them that God stepped in and rescued them. They experienced God for the first time, and it started them on a journey that took them to a Covenant Relationship with God at Sinai.
But we too had that moment of awakening - God chose to bring us to life spiritually; and at that moment, we became aware of God for the first time. Something about him drew us to find out more. Could we have said "No"? Could we have resisted God's grace drawing us to himself? Yes, in theory. It would probably have been easier to resist the love of your life; but, yes - we always had a choice. But that act of grace that brought us to life, spiritually, and started us on a journey, that took us to the cross. It was a journey of discovery as God chose to reveal more and more of himself to us; until we realised that God's ultimate act of grace had taken Jesus to the cross. He had given himself to those Roman whips, and those cruel nails. He didn't have to do it. No-one took his life from him. He gave it freely and willingly for you and me, and for all mankind.
All to pay the price for my sin. A pardon would have been enough, wouldn't it? An escape from Hell and just to be in God's presence for eternity? Wouldn't that have been enough for us? Maybe, but it wasn't enough for God. He wasn't satisfied with raising us up from death. He intended that we should share His throne, to rule from highest Heaven with Christ. This is all about grace - so that in the ages to come He can show the whole of creation the extent of His kindness. Imagine our queen as an absolute ruler, pardoning and adopting a condemned man into her family, and saying, I want you to help me rule this country. That is nothing compared to what God has done in choosing us to share His throne. But why has He done this? Imagine having that level of kindness in you, but no way to express it. But God has found a way. He's taken condemned humanity, paid our punishment, set us free, adopted us into His family, and made us His heirs together with Christ - All so that He can show creation the extent of His grace and kindness. We haven't earned it. We don't deserve it. It doesn't depend on us!
What kind of response can we make to that level of kindness? Once we realise what we've been saved from, and, more importantly, what we've saved for, surely nothing short of total and absolute devotion to the Saviour - His for life! - is going to be enough.
And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Psalm 19:1