2 CORINTHIANS CH 13 V 14
INTRODUCTION
The story’s told of a beggar who stopped a lawyer on the street in a large American city and asked him for a quarter. Taking a long, hard look into the man’s unshaven face, the lawyers asked, ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ It turned out that the two men had been college classmates. Without any further question the lawyer wrote a check for $100. ‘Here, take this and get a new start. I don’t care what’s happened in the past, it’s the future that counts.’ He then hurried on. The beggar was so grateful as he walked to a bank nearby. But stopping at the door, he saw through the glass well-dressed clerks and the spotlessly clean interior. Then he looked at his filthy rags. He thought, ‘They won’t take this from me. They’ll swear that I forged it,’ so he turned away. Next day the two men met again. The Lawyer asked the beggar what he’d done with his check. Had he gamble it away? Drunk it up?’ ‘No,’ said the beggar as he pulled it out of his dirty shirt pocket and told why he hadn’t cashed it. ‘Listen, friend,’ said the lawyer. ‘What makes that check good is not your clothes or appearance but my signature. Go on, cash it!’
Last week looking at 2 COR 13:14 ‘The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit, be with you all’ we explored the Bible’s basic teaching about the Trinity, that is, the fact that God is the One and only true God who exists as three distinct persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
This morning we’re going to explore how rich the salvation is that God the Father planned; God the Son purchased God the Spirit puts us in possession of: the wonderful check God puts in our hand and tells us to cash to His glory.
GOD THE SON SAVES
An Awesome Grace
‘The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.’ There are a number of big, hugely significant words in the Bible, and one of them is this word ‘grace.’ Put simply: if you don’t understand grace you can’t understand how God saves us. How can we explain it?
When Bible teacher Jerry Bridges was a boy in East Texas his family lived near railway lines. Homeless men or ‘hoboes’ often rode the railcars from town to town. Now and again a hoboe would knock at the front door and ask for food. Without asking any questions, Jerry Bridges’ mother would go prepare a meal for him. She gave it freely, without requiring the man to do any work in payment.
Some one might say that this was an act of grace. Now, whilst it was certainly a generous act it didn’t qualify as an act of grace in the Bible sense. To make the story explain true grace Jerry Bridges added an extra fictional element to it: ‘One day a hobo shows up at our front door, again asking for food. This time, however, mother recognizes him as the man who had robbed our home some weeks before. Instead of going to the phone to call the police, she again goes to the kitchen and prepares a plate of food. She gives it to him - no questions asked - no work required.’
The new factor makes all the difference: not only is there a lack of merit but more importantly there is now the presence of demerit. The hobo not only doesn’t deserve the food, in the sense of not having worked for it; he actually deserves to be arrested and imprisoned.
You see, grace in the Bible is God not dealing with us as our disobedience deserves but showing us His free favour. We deserve to be condemned eternally for our wrongdoing, yet instead God forgives - to be excluded from His life and joy; yet instead God’s receives us into His Kingdom - to be left in spiritual darkness, blindness and sin’s power, yet instead God freely brings light, sight and holy power to live for Him.
How is it God can possibly act like this toward us? Because of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. He gave up heaven’s glory for the sinful dump that we’ve made the earth for our sakes. Was there anything to commend us to Him; to warrant that He should do something for us? Not at all. It was all of His free favour! 2 COR 8:9 ‘For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.’
Lessons:
(1) How we should be lost in wonder at the truly awesome grace that brought Jesus into the world, laying down His glory and humbling Himself to exalt us; making Himself poor to make us rich. In a book called, ‘Speechless’ Christian singer Steven Curtis Chapman and his Pastor Scotty Smith say: ‘In the Gospel we discover we are far worse off than we thought and far more loved than we ever dreamed.’
A Redeeming Grace!
A.J. Gordon Pastor of a Boston church met a young boy with a rusty old cage which held some nervous birds. He asked the boy where he’d got the birds and he said that he’d trapped them in a field. ‘What are you going to do with them?’ Pastor Gordon enquired. The boy said: ‘I’m going to play with them, and then I guess I’ll just feed them to an old cat we have at home.’ When Pastor Gordon offered to buy them the boy was amazed, ‘Mister, you don’t want them, they’re just little old wild birds and can’t sing very well.’ But the Pastor persisted and soon the boy went off with two dollars in hand convinced he’d got by far the better deal. Pastor Gordon opened up the cage and let those birds fly free into the sky. He’d paid for their freedom!
The next Sunday Pastor Gordon took the empty cage into church and used it to illustrate his sermon about Jesus coming to seek and to save the lost -- paying for them with His own life’s blood. He said: ‘That boy told me the birds were not songsters but when I released them and they winged their way heavenward, it seemed to me they were singing, “Redeemed, redeemed, redeemed!”’
This is what the grace of the Lord Jesus is – it’s redeeming grace. It’s not simply setting free but setting free through payment of a necessary price. But what do we need to be set free from? Our slavery to sin – its guilt and its power. We’re hopelessly imprisoned, unable to free ourselves – worse we do not even want to be set free because we think we’re OK, blind to our lost condition!
The little birds’ freedom from a rusty cage cost two dollars, but the price to set us free was the priceless blood of Jesus. He became our substitute to bear the guilt of our sin and died under God’s judgment in our place! MARK 10:45 ‘The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many.’ The Lord Jesus clearly saw His death as a payment to release many from slavery. John Piper: ‘[Jesus] is paying what they cannot pay so that they may go free. He is substituting himself for them. And at the cost of his life, they get freedom.’
Lessons:
(1) Are you redeemed; have you been set free to sing of God’s saving and delivering grace; of Jesus and His cross, His bearing your sins to set you free to love and serve Him?
(2) This grace of the Lord Jesus Christ needs no enhancement or adding to – it’s sufficient for all of us all our days and for eternity. It more than covers all that we can ever need in our relationship with God. Pastor Robert Baldwin: ‘We can journey to Calvary over and over and we will return with our cups full and over flowing. When we are down and so discouraged that we feel no one cares what happens to us, then we journey out to Calvary, for, “This is love.”’
GOD THE FATHER SAVES
A Selecting Love
I’m sure most of us have experienced this: there you are on a school playing field huddled together with your classmates, cold and miserable. The PE teacher has picked out two students to be captains of teams. And those two captains are now taking turns selecting from the group who they want on their sides. And of course they’re calling out the better football, or hockey, or netball players, until eventually they’re left with only the less skilful ones to pick from. Nobody wants to be the last one left! It’s pretty humiliating. What’s happening here? The captains are picking the players to be in their team whom they know are good in whatever the relevant sport is, and ignoring for as long as possible the sporting dunces. Their choice is conditional -based on the perceived ability of each individual. Is he or she good enough?
‘…the love of God.’ God’s love is first of all a selecting love. EPH 1:4 ‘He [God the Father] chose us in Him [Christ] before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight.’ Here is another of those great depths of God that we can’t fully fathom. But in eternity God the Father gave His Son a people to save; in His infinite wisdom and perfect plan. But God’s choice is not due to anything in us. Paul says that we were chosen in Christ. As JC points out: ‘…when he says we are chosen in Christ, it follows that in ourselves we are unworthy.’ In other words, His choice was not conditional on anything in us; it was unconditional. There was nothing that could commend us to God, it was because of Christ and His worthiness.
Lesson:
(1) Don’t try to figure out God’s choice; it’s beyond our human understanding. Just know that you chose Him because He chose you first; otherwise, because of sin’s blindness you’d simply have gone on rejecting Him. Warren Wiersbe was given this advice once: ‘Try and explain election and you’ll lose your mind. Try to explain it away and you’ll lose your soul.’
(2) If you’re a believer in Christ what a wonderful assurance this gives – to know that before you chose Jesus, God chose you and it was because God chose you that you believed. God started your salvation and He will finish it, therefore, it’s simply not possible for a true believer to lose their salvation. Properly understood it becomes a huge incentive to love and obey God!
A Sacrificial Love
A missionary to the primitive head-hunting Sawis of Indonesia persuaded some tribes that were natural enemies to move closer together so that he could visit them more easily. But tensions between them grew and got so bad that he called the ‘headmen’ together and told the tribes to disperse, saying that he’d have to leave to work among other people who could get along better.
One morning the tribes gathered in an open place and the air was electric with tension. A warrior suddenly grabbed his own nursing child from his anxious wife, ran to a former enemy and handed the baby to him. The distraught mother pleas went unheard. Then a warrior from the other side did the same thing. The astonished missionary asked what was going on. He was told that the tribes had exchanged a ‘peace child’ and as long as the exchanged children were unharmed the tribes would live in peace. The people began to shout and dance for joy because the peace child made it possible for the tribes to live together without fear. A new era had been born.
The missionary realised this opened a door to introduce the God’s great love. He told the tribes that Jesus was God’s ‘Peace Child.’ God didn’t want to give up His Son to hostile people, but because of His sacrificial love, He sent a peace child to live among them.
1 JOHN 4:14 ‘And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Saviour of the world.’ We said last week that the Father is the Father of the Son from eternity, and the Son the Son of the Father from eternity. In other words, there’s never been a time when the Father and Son did not have this relationship together. What an infinitely rich and wonderful relationship this is. Can we begin to grasp the eternal unlimited love of the Father for the Son, and of the Son for the Father? JOHN 1:18 ‘No-one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made Him known.’ A better translated of ‘at the Father’s side’ is: ‘who lies upon the Father’s breast.’ It brings out just how close and intimate that wonderful relationship is; infinitely full, deep and perfect.
In the light of this eternal love relationship, we see something of what it meant for God the Father to send His Son into the world; He sent Him among sinful human beings who would despise and reject Him; into a world that rejected and hated Him; to deprivation and abuse; misunderstanding and isolation. He delivered Him up to death on the cross, its humiliation and shame, its pain and agony to bear our sins
In the giving of the Lord Jesus up for you and me, we can grasp the true measure of God’s love for us. He gave what was most treasured and valuable to Him; He was willing to sacrifice the best He had. ROMS 8:32 ‘He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all.’ The Lord Jesus didn’t die to make God love us, but He died because God loved us. ‘For God so loved the world that He gave…’
JET ‘’The measure of the love of God is in what, or I should say, who He gave. He gave His Son. His life. His only begotten. He gave everything, nothing held back, every last ounce, all in all.’
Lesson:
If you want proof that God is love look to the cross of Calvary; look at the Son of God dying in agony of soul bearing the sin of the world! ‘…if we are looking for a definition of love, we should look not in a dictionary, but at Calvary.’ There can be a tendency today to focus purely on the Lord Jesus and the sacrifice that He made in giving Himself up to the cross. But we must never forget too the great infinite love of the Father and what it cost Him to send His Son for us.
GOD THE SPIRIT SAVES
A Heart Renewing Fellowship
David and Jane Mann missionaries to Madagascar recently showed a DVD of the work of the Good News Hospital in Mandritsara. One particularly encouraging story was that of an elderly and blind woman who walked to the hospital with her daughter. She was checked out by the eye specialist who found that, sadly, one eye was completely useless; but the other eye had a heavy cataract that could be operated on. The operation was done under local anaesthetic and when next day the dressing was removed the woman could see. She saw the colours and patterns of her dress and could see how many fingers the nurse was holding up. And her joy was so infectious. She was smiling broadly, chattering away and every now and then did a little skipping dance. Her life was revolutionised!
‘…the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.’ Fellowship means participation, partnership, communion, or having anything in common. The Holy Spirit makes sinners like us possess what the Father planned and what the Son purchased through renewing our hearts so that we will respond to the Good News. TITUS 3:5-6 ‘He [God the Father] saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit whom He poured out abundantly on us generously through Jesus Christ our Lord.’ The new birth or renewal itself is unseen as it takes place within us, but its effects can be seen.
Firstly, conviction of sin and repentance. To repent is to have a huge change of mind and heart over sin, and it’s the Holy Spirit who is behind it. The elderly woman at the Good News Hospital knew she was blind and needed help, but spiritually we are blind to our blindness! The Spirit alone brings us light and understanding on, and convicts us of, our true sinful state before God. JIP ‘Conviction of sin is essentially an awareness of a wrong relationship with God.’ Until we see our danger we’ll never look for rescue; until we see our danger of judgment by God, we’ll not look to the Lord Jesus for His salvation.
Secondly, the Spirit opens our eyes to Jesus Christ and His saving work on the cross. That’s His ministry in saving souls – He shines the spotlight on the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus said to His disciples: JOHN 16:14 ‘He [Spirit] will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.’
Lesson:
(1) To be a true Christian you must born again which shows itself in repentance – turning from your sins – and trusting in Jesus completely for forgiveness and life with God. Can you say that you’ve off loaded all trust in yourself, in man-made religion, in anything apart from God and that right now Jesus Christ is your one and only hope?
(2) The Holy Spirit’s ministry is to draw attention not to Himself but to the Lord Jesus Christ. JIP ‘The Spirit’s message to us is never, "Look at me; listen to me; come to me; get to know me", but always, "Look at him, and see his glory; listen to him and hear his word; go to him and have life; get to know him and taste his gift of joy and peace."’
A Continuing Fellowship
Have you ever bump or push started a car? It’s pretty exhausting especially if it doesn’t work first time. If a manual transmission car won’t start because the battery’s flat or the starter motor’s broken the driver puts the car into gear and keeps the clutch down whilst a couple of people push from behind. Once a bit of speed has been reached the driver quickly let’s up the clutch. This gets the engine turning over in much the same way as the starter motor would and the engine hopefully splutters into life. The driver can go on his way.
Though it puts it rather crudely, this is a little like the way some Christians can treat the Holy Spirit. He gives us a bump or push start when we’re first saved and then we go on along merrily under our own energy. Not so! We rely moment by moment on the spiritual wisdom and energising grace of Holy Spirit. Who lives in us.
Lesson:
EPH 5:25 ‘Since we live by the Spirit [He is the source of all spiritual wisdom and energy] let us keep in step with the Spirit.’ We should march to the beat of a different drum – not worldly wisdom and desires but the values and priorities of the Kingdom God. AWT ‘Though every believer has the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit does not have every believer.’ We can only do what out Father God wants as we walk in dependence on the Spirit of God. Not we doing everything and Him nothing; nor we doing nothing and Him everything– but rather we doing and achieving through the power He gives! Let’s honour the Holy Spirit in that unique ministry He has in us.
