The Message in the Music:

Amazing Grace

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

July 27, 2008

We’re continuing in our sermon series, “The Message in the Music” today with the hymn we just sang, Amazing Grace.  The hymn was written around Christmas in 1772 by John Newton.  Newton was a slave trader who would make runs from Africa to America to deliver the men, women and children he stored in the underneath of his boat.  In total, he estimated that he was responsible for transporting 20,000 slaves to America.  Many of those people died while on his boat.

On May 10, 1748, Newton was on his ship after delivering his ‘cargo’ and was heading home to England.  During the trip they ran into a big storm, and for awhile Newton manned the deck of the ship.  Moments after he left the deck, however, the crewman who had taken his place was swept overboard.  Newton re-took control of the ship for the rest of the trip keenly aware that he missed death by only a couple of minutes, and at one point when it seemed that it was hopeless and the ship was going down, Newton exclaimed, “Lord, have mercy upon us!”  The ship and crew survived, and for the rest of his life, Newton observed May 10 as the day of his conversion.  You’d like to think he changed his life at that point, but he didn’t give up the slave trade for a number of years.  In fact, again, it wasn’t until 1772, 24 years later, before Newton would reflect on that day and pen one of the most famous hymns in the world.  More on Newton in a moment, but now let’s go to God’s word.

Our text for today is the Epistle reading we heard just a few moments ago – Ephesians 2:4-9.  I invite you to pull out your Bibles and a pen, and a turn with me to Ephesians.  If you forgot your Bibles today, there are Bibles in the pews in front of you.  Ephesians is the 10^th book in the New Testament.  So it goes: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – the Gospels that tell of Jesus’ life and teachings; Acts – which records the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the early church; then comes the Epistles, literally the ‘letters’.  In light of the teachings of Jesus and what the Holy Spirit has revealed to us, how now shall we respond and live?  The Epistles answer that question.  The order goes Romans, 1^st and 2^nd Corinthians, Galatians, and then Ephesians.  Again, we are going to chapter 2, verses 4-9.

This letter was written by the Holy Spirit through the Apostle Paul while he was in prison to the group of Christians in Ephesus. You may remember we talked about Ephesus a couple of months ago: it was located in modern day Turkey and was an extremely important city because it had access to the sea.  Most anything that came in or went out of Asia Minor by boat went through the port city of Ephesus.  It was a rich and powerful city, and at the same time was rampant with false religion.  In fact, the ‘goddess’ of Ephesus was Diana (her Roman name; ‘Artemis’ is her Greek name) and there was a large temple built in Ephesus for the worship of her. 

I know we don’t have big buildings for the worship of gods and goddesses here in Hanover, but I wonder if we in the South Shore area have more in common with the city of Ephesus – and really most all of the cities the Epistles were address to – than we may think at first glance.  They had Ephesus – a big city with lots of different industry and trade, we have Boston with a ton of different business and commerce.  They had the big temple dedicated to worshiping their goddess, we have wicca and witchcraft running rampant in the South Shore, streaming especially out of Salem.  The first time Paul was in Ephesus, there was a city-wide riot against him because the people didn’t like hearing about our God – it disturbed their goddess worship and threatened those who stood to profit from the worship of Diana; right now in cities like Boston all throughout the United States there is a movement to stop Christians from handing out tracts or even speaking to people in the public squares about Jesus.  Somehow I think we’re a lot more like Ephesus than we might like to think.

But in spite of all that, God still has a word for you and me this morning in His letter to the Christian few in Ephesus:

“But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions – it is by grace you have been saved.  And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.  For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.”

Right away, before we can go any further, we need good definitions of grace and mercy!  You can write these in your Bibles: Mercy is ‘not getting the punishment I do deserve’ and grace is ‘getting the reward I don’t deserve.’  God, who is rich in mercy – who is rich in not giving us what we do deserve – has saved us through grace; through giving us what we don’t deserve.  And why does He do this?  He does it because of His great love for us!

God loves you!  The deepest truth in all of scripture is put into a song we have deemed too childish for sophisticated adults to sing: “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.  Little ones to Him belong they are weak, but He is strong.  Yes Jesus loves me, yes Jesus loves me, yes, Jesus loves me.  The Bible tells me so!”  God loves you!

He loves us so much that He sent Jesus to take the punishment we deserve for our sins.  Remember what we mentioned before: the punishment Jesus took for us was not simply dying on the cross, the punishment He took for us was being separated from God – i.e.: hell.  Remember what He called out to God the Father on the cross?  “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?”[1]  That’s when Jesus experienced hell – separation from the Heavenly Father – so you and I won’t have to; so you and I won’t get what we deserve.  Those who believe in Jesus as their only savior have been made alive – spiritually alive when they were once spiritually dead.

Note something else in this passage: all the action is coming from God, and it’s all been done.  We have already been made alive in Christ; we have already been saved; we have already been raised up and seated with Jesus in the heavenly realms.  That means our ‘spot’ in heaven is already set.  There is a banquet waiting for us in heaven, and at the table there is a place that has been reserved for you.  It has your name right on it, and it was put there a long time ago by Jesus Himself. 

That’s amazing grace.  That’s what John Newton ran head-long into on a stormy night at sea, and it’s what changed his life forever.  It’s a done deal, there is nothing we can do to add a single iota to our salvation, and nothing we can do to deserve it.  You can always walk away from it – God gives you that choice, but you don’t have to, indeed you can’t do anything to earn it, get ready for it, or somehow be worthy of God’s gift of salvation.  Think of it this way, do you have to get cleaned up to take a bath?  No!  It’s the bath that does the work of cleaning you up.  You don’t have to do anything to be saved, it’s the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.  We are cleaned up through the faith we have in Jesus, and even that faith is something given to us by the Holy Spirit!

Let’s pause here for a moment.  Do you know what all that means?  It means God goes through a lot of work for you and me!  He sacrificed His Son for us; He sends His Holy Spirit to give us faith in His Son, and then He saves us by His grace, through the faith He provides!  That God does all this shows one very important thing: He loves us!  No wonder they call God’s grace amazing!

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!  The Lord has promised good to me, His Word my hope secures; He will my shield and portion be as long as life endures!

Now for the thing most people don’t know about John Newton: even though he believed this all to be true and wrote these lyrics, he struggled for years with the application of them to his own life.  John Newton left the sea-fairing lifestyle behind when his health would no longer allow him to continue, and he then turned his life towards theology; he became a pastor!  But even as a pastor – even as one who proclaimed God’s Law and Gospel from the pulpit, Newton struggled for the rest of his life with whether or not he could be forgiven for his activity in the slave trade and the number of people who died while he was transporting them and making a profit from it, especially considering that he continued in the trade for awhile after he had the experience at sea he called his “great deliverance.”

I know a lot of people like that, though.  I’ll bet you do too.  Maybe you’re even one of them.  “Go ahead and preach forgiveness, pastor.  Preach it ‘till you’re blue in the face, but it’s not for me.  You don’t know what I’ve done.  You don’t know who I’ve hurt and the ways I’ve hurt them.  The things I’ve said, the way I’ve acted, the places and things I’ve wandered into… Go ahead and preach mercy and grace and forgiveness, but it’s not for me – I’m too far gone.”

I’d like to read you a couple of lines from one of my favorite books, The Hammer of God by Bo Giertz.  At one point in the book an old man is dying in bed, and a young woman has come to talk to him.  He is miserable, and believes he is destined for hell; he believes he cannot be forgiven.  He says to the young woman, “{My heart} never became clean…I am a sinner, a great sinner.”

And the young lady responds, “Yes, that you are Johannes.  But Jesus is a still greater savior.”

Jesus is a still greater savior.  That’s not the stuff of fiction, it’s the stuff of reality!  In your Bibles, even in the pew Bibles, I invite you to go back to these verses from Ephesians, and change all the pronouns in these verses to first person pronouns.  In other words, where it says “us” write “me”, and where it says “we”, write “I” and so on.  We’ll do it together slowly, so the verses read like this:

“But because of His great love for me, God, who is rich in mercy, made me alive with Christ even when I was dead in transgressions – it is by grace I have been saved.  And God raised me up with Christ and seated me with Him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages He might show the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to me in Christ Jesus.  For it is by grace I have been saved, through faith – and this not from myself, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that I cannot boast.”

Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come, His grace has brought me safe thus far, His grace will lead me home.  Yes, when this heart and flesh shall fail, and mortal life shall cease, amazing grace will then prevail, in heaven’s joy and peace.

Jesus is still a greater savior.  Mercy and grace are still the hallmarks of God’s unrelenting stance towards you.  He loves you so much He cannot love you any more – His cup runs over with love for you, and He absolutely will not love you less.

In the margins of your Bibles, write this reference: Micah 7:18-19: "Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant of His inheritance?  You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy.  You will again have compassion on us; You will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea."

Our God delights to show us mercy.  He stomps our sins under His feet; He throws them to the bottom of the ocean.  They’re all behind you, they’ll never find you, they’re on the ocean floor.  Your sins are erased, and they are no more, they’re out on the ocean floor.[2]

One last note on the hymn.  Most people don’t know that the last verse we sang today, “When we’ve been there 10,000 years…” was not part of the original hymn – that verse was added much later, and it’s actually taken from the novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”  The original last verse to Amazing Grace is, “The earth shall soon dissolve like snow, the sun forbear to shine; but God, who called me here below, will be forever mine.”

The earth and everything else is passing away, and one day Jesus will come back to claim His own and take them to the place He’s been preparing for us.  On that day we will finally understand God’s amazing grace, and we’ll run headlong into the love we never fully understood here on earth.  Know that today, be comforted with that today.  If you don’t know it, if you wonder if it’s too good to be true, or if you wonder if it could really be true for you personally, come and talk to me.  It’s God’s love for you that knows no boundaries; it’s God mercy that doesn’t give us the punishment we deserve, and His grace that pours out on us the reward we don’t deserve. 

No wonder they call it ‘Amazing.”

Amen.