Praise the Lord for this new day. It is going to be sunny
and brilliant. We will meet for our Wednesday Bible study and fellowship this
evening at 6 PM with a special meal. We will be looking at John 1 and 2. The
choir will practice at 7:30 PM. Those of you who live in the area please join
us this evening at 6 PM. One of the powerful passages in the New Testament is
found in Titus. This passage is usually read during Christmas eve readings,
“For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all
men.” Titus 2:11
In his book
"Spirit, Word, and Story", Calvin Miller writes, “Grace we define as
‘unmerited favor,’" John
Bunyan wrote, “O Son of God, grace was in all thy tears; grace came bubbling out
of thy side with thy blood; grace came forth with every word of thy sweet mouth;
grace came out where the whip smote thee, where the thorns pricked thee, where
the nails and spear pierced thee. O blessed Son of God, here is grace indeed!
Unsearchable riches of grace! Unthought-of riches of grace! Grace to make the
angels wonder, grace to make the sinners happy.”
With his
wonderful sanctified imagination, C.S. Lewis wrote about a bus that was leaving
hell to take a tour of heaven. While riding through the streets of gold, one of
the guys in the bus sees an old friend walking through the streets of gold, and
all of a sudden he jumps up and starts yelling, “It’s not fair, it’s not fair,
he was a sinner all his life, it’s not fair. I want justice, I want justice.”
Then one of the people walking through the streets of gold turned to his
neighbor and said, “Poor guy. He doesn’t know that we’re not here because
justice has been imparted to us. We are here because we have been given
grace.”
The Good News of
Grace is recorded throughout the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. One of the
beautiful stories of Grace is recorded in 2 Samuel 9. This
passage records that after
David became king over Israel he asked, “Is there no one still left of the house
of Saul to whom I can show God’s kindness?” David, the man after Gods own heart
was demonstrating the counter-culture of the time. The Ancient Near Eastern
culture would dictate that he kill everyone in Saul’s family. David found out
that there is one man, Mephibosheth, Jonathan’s son, was still alive. He was a
man who was crippled in both feet. “Where is he?”, David
asked.
“He is in Lo
Debar.” In other words Mephibosheth had nothing going for him. He was in “no
man’s land”, but David said
to Mephibosheth, “Don’t be afraid for I will surely show you kindness for the
sake of your father Jonathan. I will restore to you all the land that belonged
to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.” Notice
Mephiboshet’s response. “What is your servant that you should notice a dead dog
like me?” In other words he
was saying, "I am crippled; I don’t belong; I don’t fit with the intelligent,
with the good looking, with the beautiful.” Nonetheless he experienced GRACE,
because the king came to tell him, “You sit at the table anyway.”
Metaphorically,
Lo Debar is not a permanent place. It is a waiting place. Remember, the king
knows where we are. Even Lo Debar is a place of grace. God is ready to pour
grace upon us . I love the story of Mephiboshet because his story is our
story. Sin has crippled us and we are lame. We may be lame in our talk. That
is, we stutter or we have an accent. We might be lame in our motives,causing us
to do the right thing for the wrong reason. Whatever our
"lameness", God our King says to us, “You sit at My table anyway.” That’s grace. One day we will sit at the King’s table, and our
feet will be crippled no more, because He will make all things
new.
In Jesus our
Lord,
Brown
