OT: Psalm 107:23-32
NT: Romans 5:1-15
Sermon: Amazing Grace
"Amazing" means astonishing, incredible, wonderful,
and “Grace” means either a pleasing or charming quality.
(for example we say someone, like Grace Kelly or Princess Diana, possessed “Grace” because they were elegant, and refined),
or it can mean a short prayer before meal.
(for example:
Catholics: "Benedictus, benedictat, per Jesum Christum Dominum Nostrum, Amen."
Jews: "Baruch atah, Adonai, Melekh melehenu."
Children: “Thank You for the world so sweet, thank You for the food we eat,
Thank You for the birds that sing, thank You Lord for everything.”)
For Christians, however, the word “Grace” refers to the belief or doctrine,
that God Almighty, the Creator of the Universe,
King of kings, and Lord of lords,
gives His unmerited and undeserved love to sinners,
that's every human,
providing we are honest and humble enough
to truly and sincerely repent of our sins
and believe that Jesus not only died for the world, but died for us.
And the Bible clearly teaches that while God’s grace is available to all,
it's not ours to keep to ourselves, like a miser hoarding gold;
it is something we should pass it on to as many people as we can.
In our OT reading we see how God's hand was on Jonah;
and He saved him from a watery grave,
so that Jonah, having received God's grace,
could go and preach the Gospel of grace to the people of Nineveh.
Another beautiful example of grace being received and being passed on
can be seen in the life of John Newton.
Even though we live in the 21st century
just about everyone in the English-speaking world
knows most of the words of one of the 200 hymns
that he wrote 300 years ago:
“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.”
As a child, John Newton’s mother had told him about Jesus
and the Christian way of life, but she died when he was only 7.
His father was a sea captain and John joined his ship as a cabin boy
at the age of 11.
Over the next 10 years “religion” meant nothing to John,
as there was too much excitement and too much danger to think about.
The excitement of maybe finding a new island or even a continent
that would be named after the discoverer,
e.g. the Cook Islands, Tasmania;
and the danger of pirates, or shipwreck.
Things like Jesus, the Bible, and Church,
had been very important to his mother,
but John's life revolved around drinking
and this, together with brawling, often got him into trouble.
"Sin" to him was not a "religious word",
but an everyday experience.
On his 18th birthday, celebrating with alcohol was in plentiful supply,
he was “Press ganged” (or kidnapped) into the Royal Navy.
Fortunately the captain of the ship, the man-o-war HMS Harwich,
was a friend of John’s father, so John was made a junior officer
and life for him was easier than it might otherwise have been,
but he did not like Navy discipline.
One day he was sent ashore at Plymouth in charge of a Liberty Boat.
His job, as Officer in charge, was to make sure none absconded,
but he took advantage of the opportunity himself, and deserted,
but was captured and brought back in irons.
He was flogged and thrown out of the Royal Navy
but the sea was in his blood so he got a job with a slave trader.
He was part of the crew of a ship which carried cheap manufactured goods
such as scissors, mirrors, needles and thread
from ports such as Liverpool, Bristol or London to West Africa.
There, Europeans entered into deals with local chiefs
to exchange the manufactured goods for slaves,
men, women and children, who had been taken prisoner.
Slaves were packed into the ship’s hold or chained on the deck
and transported across the Atlantic
to become labourers on tobacco fields or cotton or banana plantations.
They were fed as little as possible on the voyage
in order to keep costs down and boost profits
and the bodies of those who died were thrown over the side
without any burial ceremony.
Those who did not die were exchanged
for bananas, cotton, rum or tobacco,
which was brought across the Atlantic Ocean
and sold, making great profits for those involved in the Slave Trade,
and some of the big houses and great estates that people visit today
were built or bought with money from it.
At the time very few people thought trading in human beings was wrong,
because they were pagan natives without souls,
and even if some people thought it was a sin, John Newton didn’t,
until one night when his ship was crossing the Atlantic back to Liverpool
with a cargo of cotton, tobacco, rum and bananas,
and a severe storm blew up.
John was at the wheel, with the boat lurching in all directions,
the wind screaming in his ears, and the rain lashing his face.
For the first time in his life John felt real fear.
He feared death by drowning in the Ocean.
but more than that, he feared judgement
at the hands of the righteous and holy God
that his mother had told him about,
because the sound of the wind reminded him of the screams of the Africans
as they left their families and their homeland;
their cries due to hunger and discomfort during the voyage;
their cries as they were whipped by the plantation owners and managers.
And John felt guilty.
Guilty for the wild things he had done, the drinking and the fighting,
and guilty about his part in the trade in human beings.
He experienced the despair Jonah suffered inside the Great Fish,
for he knew, like Jonah, that his life-style and actions had angered God.
But he also remembered that his mother had told him
that God was a God of Grace, a loving God who always forgives,
even the wickedness sinner, who truly repents,
and at the wheel of that waterlogged ship, John truly repented.
His mother’s God became his too.
He asked God to forgive him and save him,
not only from a watery grace but from the Hell
he knew he deserved, and thought he would soon be in.
He made God a promise, something along the lines of:
“God, if I don’t die, I’ll give you the rest of my life!”
Gradually, slowly, over the next few days, the storm abated
and the ship reached Liverpool in one piece,
and unlike many people who have prayed “Help me” prayers,
and then forgotten them,
John never went back on the promise he had made to God.
When the ship was unloaded and the crew received their pay,
John resigned, and at the age of 30, in 1755,
he obtained the post of Surveyor of Tides at Liverpool.
He also started to go to church and read the bible,
and in 1764 after 9 years of study and training
he was ordained a priest in the Church of England
and was inducted to the parish of Olney in Buckinghamshire.
It was as a priest that he wrote nearly 200 hymns,
many of which are still sung today.
In 1780 he became the parish priest of a church in London
and he became friendly with William Wilberforce,
a great Christian and an M.P.
who became the leader of the movement for the abolition
of the slave trade.
It took a lot of praying, lobbying, and arguing with vested interests,
but laws were passed by Parliament in London in the early 19th century
which made Britain the first country in the world
to abolish both ownership of slaves and trading in human cargoes.
So, the hymn “Amazing Grace”
is a record of John Newton’s experience; it's his personal testimony.
He, John Newton, had been blind to the existence of God
and blind to the fact that Black Africans were as much human beings
as White Europeans.
He, John Newton, had been “lost”
in the sense that his life wasn’t going anywhere,
and that if he had drowned he would have been “spiritually lost” for eternity.
But just as Hell is a reality, so is grace,
and John had been “found” by the God of grace,
Who called him to pass on that grace by preaching from a pulpit,
writing hymns, and helping to end the slave trade.
The GOOD NEWS is that the God who saved sinners in the past,
still wants to save people in the 21st century.
The Good News is that grace that could turn a slave trader into a minister
is still available today, and can turn the wickedest sinner in ( x )
into a beautiful Christian, if they believe and repent.
Is there anyone here who feels lost?
Too bad to get into Heaven?
Ask God to give you the assurance that you
have received His amazing grace.
Do it now.
Is there a mother, a father, a grandparent
who has prayed, is still praying,
for a child or grandchild to know Jesus
as their Saviour and Lord,
but there's no sign of it happening?
Keep praying.
You sowed the seeds like Mrs Newton did to little John.
Keep praying that the seeds will become fruit
and that person you pray for
will come to faith in God's time.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father
thank You for Your amazing grace
and for what Jesus did for us
when he died on the cross to take our guilt and sin away.
Be with our family members, our friends, our neighbours,
people we work with and spend time with,
draw them to the cross and to Your amazing grace.
In Jesus' name.
Amen
