Isaiah 63:7-10

It’s hard to work with someone looking over your shoulder. Your supervisor hovering around you, watching every move you make, making sure you’re working fast enough and accurately enough, waiting to pounce on the first mistake you make. The purpose, of course, is quality control. They want good work from you. They want accuracy and precision. They want you to do the job right.

The thing is, that’s what you want to. You don’t want to make mistakes. You want to do a good job, the best job you can do. But you’re not going to do a good job with someone watching over your shoulder. You get jittery, it’s unnerving, and it’s almost guaranteed that NOW you’re going to make a mistake. You’re spending so much time looking back at your supervisor that you’re not paying attention to what you’re doing, and there you go, you messed up. All that tension, all that worry about making a mistake only led to mistakes being made.

This is a picture of what life looks like without grace. A life where we are always wondering if we are good enough. Are we living up to people’s expectations? Are meeting their approval? What are they saying about us? What are they saying about our families? Do they like us? Do they make fun of us?

And the pressure of living up to the expectations of other people is nothing compared to the pressure of living up to God’s standards. Are we doing worship well enough for God? Are the ministries that we do around here what God wants us to do? Is this church the kind of church that God wants us to be? Do we read the Bible enough? Do we pray enough? Do we talk about Jesus enough? Do we honor and fathers and mothers and the Sabbath and don’t covet and don’t steal and don’t lie? Do we love God with all our heart and soul and strength and our neighbor as ourselves and are we going into all the world and making disciples of Christ? Is God watching over our shoulders watching to make sure we’re doing things right?

This is life without grace. And with all these expectations and requirements hanging over us, we do one of two things. Some of us just get busier, we buckle down, we try harder and harder and get grumpier and grumpier and the joy of the Christian life seems like the last thing we ever think about. We’re too busy trying harder for God. We don’t have time to be joyful.

And some of us know that this is a big waste of time, to be good enough for God. So we quit. We don’t really even try. We have some of the basics down. We get ourselves to church. We put some money into the collection. We don’t cuss. We don’t get drunk. We’re not bad people, but there’s really no point in trying so hard. We’ll never make it anyway.

Grace is an amazing gift. Grace works two ways. Grace lets us off the hook. Grace frees us from the scrutinizing eye of God always watching over our shoulder waiting for us to mess up. Grace lets us breath a sigh of relief.

But grace does something else. Grace motivates us. Grace gets us going. Grace actually makes us try harder, not because we’re afraid, not because God is glaring, but because we want. We are free to try as hard as we want, without any fear of failure, without thinking that we are not good enough.

And let’s just get this out of the way first. We are not good enough. We have never been good enough, and, and here’s the hard part, we will never be good enough. I need to say this again. We will never be good enough. When we hit this wall, when this hard fact sinks in, when we know just how deep we are stained with sin, just how totally we are totally depraved, then we’re beginning to understand grace. We’re beginning to realize how futile it is to try to be good. And we’re ready, we’re ready to hear verse 7:

The kindness of the Lord is only kind when we know that we don’t deserve it. And when we know our failures, when we understand how deep our sin goes, then we start to see the kindness of the Lord.

And that kindness takes our breath away. How He reaches out with a tender hand to gently reassure us, that it’s going to be okay. How He comes after us and cleans up the messes that we’ve made. How He softly wipes away guilt and remorse and regret. Even how He makes bad memories start to fade away. How, after we’ve sobbed our eyes out, He’s still there, reassuring us that we’re going to make it through. How, after we’ve forgotten Him for days, maybe even weeks, He’s right there, waiting, when we’re ready to come back. How, when we’ve failed Him miserably, He’s not surprised, at all. We had a perfect opportunity to talk about Jesus. We saw the opportunity. And we chickened out. We talked about the weather. We saw someone with a need, and we had the ability to fill that need, and instead we came up with a great excuse for why we should not help them, and why we should help ourselves instead. And the Lord saw this, and He’s not mad. He’s not frustrated. He’s not disappointed, because He didn’t really expect it from us, knowing the level of our sin.

That’s grace. If this makes you uncomfortable, I’m glad, because grace is not an easy truth to grasp. At least not pure grace. Half grace, we understand. Half grace, we’ll accept. Where God shows His grace, and we do our part, too. Where we meet God in the middle, with His kindness reaching out and our good intentions reaching back.

That’s an imitation grace, a grace that is easier to swallow. But that’s not God’s grace. His compassion comes all the way. It has to, because we can’t reach back. He forgives us completely, even before we cared about Him forgiving us completely. He forgave us even before we spat in His face and didn’t care what He wanted and did our own think anyway. He forgave us. He forgave us completely.

This is no cheap forgiveness. This is not God just getting over it. This forgiveness took thorns the size of nails being pushed into God’s head. His grace required a whip, with little pieces of glass and pottery, to come down onto His back 39 times. His compassion, His kindness led to three nails, one in each hand and one through the feet, that pinned Him hanging on a hunk of wood. Romans 5:8:

His grace, His forgiveness, His compassion came from this thought. Verse 8:

While we were still sinners, He declared us His people, they ARE My people, He said. We didn’t have to apply for membership. We didn’t have to yell and scream and beat ourselves up to make Him feel sorry for us and do something for us.

He came to us first. And reached down into the smelly mess that we’d created for ourselves, and He hauled us up. He pulled us out of the lust that we had enjoyed for so long. He yanked us away from the pride that had us all wrapped up. He eased us away from the burdens we put on ourselves, the expectations that we tried to live up to. He brushed away the worries. He washed away the guilt. Verse 9:

The grace came first. First, He loved us. First, He forgave us. First, He made us His. Before we had a chance to obey, He declared us obedient. Before we could even try, we said, "You’re perfect." And surely, we would never walk away from this kind of love, this compassion, this grace. We would want to live our gratitude for this amazing grace. We wouldn’t want anything to come between us and God, ever. We wouldn’t want to replace this grace with anything, because everything else seems cheap and worthless.

And yet, verse 10:

After His grace, after His compassion, His undeserved love, they rebelled…we rebelled. We rebelled in the obvious ways. We went back to our sin like a dog goes back to its vomit. We rewrapped ourselves in our pride, after having been free. We went back to our lust, after having escaped. We grabbed hold of our anxieties, we chased after our ambitions. We spit in the face of our loving, gracious God, and then we forgot about Him.

That’s the obvious rebellion. But rebellion against God’s grace shows up subtly, too. Remember the half grace that we are comfortable with, the idea that God reaches half way, but we need to do our part, too? It sounds so holy, it sounds so right, we look like we’re being responsible Christians, doing our part.

And it’s such a slap in God’s face. Grace is not grace unless the grace is complete. If we are thinking anything other than that we are completely forgiven through the blood of Jesus, that there is nothing more that we need to do, ever, to win God’s favor, that we are and always will be completely perfect in God’s eyes, because of Jesus, …if we are thinking anything other than that, then we are rebelling against God’s compassion. We are throwing His grace back in His face.

And He doesn’t take this lightly. Verse 10:

And having God as an enemy is a frightening place to be. He will not be ignored. He will get our attention, one way or the other. But God even shows His compassion and grace as an enemy. Even in His anger and discipline, He is loving and kind. Micah 7:18,19

In His grace, He teaches us, corrects us, scolds us, all to get us back to His grace. If we are quite happy in our sin, He’ll make sure we become unhappy soon enough. And it won’t be pretty. The sin that we are comfortable with will become uncomfortable, and if we don’t listen to His warnings, we will get hurt. But when we are hurt enough, sick of the sin enough, He’ll bring us back. He will heal us. And hopefully, this time we won’t go back.

But as angry as God gets at sin, He’s just as angry when we water down His grace, when we try to add to what He’s already done. If we are going to take on any responsibility to meet God half way, to contribute to our salvation, to say that we have to do our part, then God will let us. And the burden will not be light. If we want to carry it, then God will say, "Fine. Try to carry it. You’ll realize, hopefully sooner than later, that you can’t. And then, hopefully, you’ll be ready to know My grace again."

We can resist God’s grace for a while. There can be something inside us that draws back from the intensity of His compassion. We’ll talk about grace for a while, and it’s nice. We’ll sing Amazing Grace, and enjoy singing an old favorite. But after a while, we hit a wall. We grow sick of hearing about grace. God’s kindness and compassion grow old and we want to move on to other, more interesting topics, issues that seem more important to us.

But if we can get through that wall, if we can get back to grace, and know His compassion, His forgiveness, His kindness, we will be overwhelmed, consumed by the kindness and grace and forgiveness of God. Amazing won’t begin to describe God’s grace. And then, we’re ready to go. And then, nothing can stop us.

When we accept God’s grace as total, then our surrender to God’s becomes total. When we know that we have been forgiven even before we try, that gives us the freedom to really try. We won’t let God down, because He’s already lifted us up.

Grace, true, grace does not give freedom to sin. Grace, true grace, God’s grace, gives freedom to serve. And so, from now until Easter, we are going to be immersed in God’s grace. This is a lot of time to spend on His forgiveness and compassion. And we might hit that wall. There’s a danger that God’s grace might grow old. But if we keep going, if we don’t stop, if we dive in, head first, and sink into the warmth of His grace, we will understand how good Good Friday is. We will cheer at the top of our lungs on Easter, seeing Jesus alive again! And we will live. We live holy. We will live pure. We will live and eat and breathe God’s kindness, His compassion, His grace.