Tag Archives: God’s grace

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Grace, Grace, God’s Grace

Essential 100—Read:
Genesis 6:5-22; 7:1-24

“So the Lord said, ‘I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.’ But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.” ~Genesis 6:7-8

Everybody knows the story of Noah and the Ark—and the flood.  And just about everybody has a couple of questions they would like resolved about this story.  Like, is it true?  Was there really an ark—and does it still exist, undiscovered in some far away location? Could all the creatures of the earth fit into this boat—even elephants and dinosaurs?  Is there any evidence of a world-wide flood? And what about…?

Well, I’m not going to try to answer those questions for you—I don’t think you’ll ever get the details you would like to have about this story on this side of heaven. I would simply encourage you to accept the veracity of the flood account on faith—the Bible has a pretty good track record of authenticity, you know!

But I would like to point out a couple of unusual details of this story that have personal ramifications for you and me.  The first one is from Genesis 6:7, where we notice that God felt tremendous emotional pain from the sinfulness of man.  So much did it grieve God that he actually regretted making the creature he loved the most.  And don’t be misled, our sinfulness still grieves God, because even the “littlest” of sin goes against the grain of who God is, violates the core purpose of why he created us, and disrupts the fellowship he longs to have with us.  Sin stinks!  Don’t ever forget that!

But the second unusual detail ought to make you stand up and do a jig at this point.  It’s found in the next verse, Genesis 6:8:  “But Noah found grace in God’s eyes.” (NKJV) Hallelujah!  God’s grace trumps sin—my sinfulness and yours, too!  A. W. Tozer wrote,

“Abounding sin is the terror of the world, but abounding grace is the hope of mankind.”

The ark made it possible for one man and his family to escape the righteous wrath of a God who must call sin to account, and God’s greatest display of grace, Jesus’ death and resurrection, makes it possible for you and me to escape the ultimate consequence for sin—eternal separation from God’s presence in hell.

Yes, God’s grace is greater than all my sin. Thank God for grace!

Reflect and Apply:  Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.  How can you?  Not by earning it, but by simply surrendering to the Fountain of Grace that never runs dry. Titus 2:11 reminds us that “for the grace of God that brings salvation hath appeared to all men.” Jesus Christ, he is that Fountain!

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Thanks!

Read Psalm 136

Featured Verse: Psalm 136:1

Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good.
His love endures forever.

There’s a chorus we used to sing in our church called Hallelujah, Thank You Lord.  The song has a line that says, “Who could ever list your miracles?  Who could praise you half enough?” 

That’s so true!  How can any of us narrow down all the many reasons we have for thanksgiving to just a few words? Yet whenever I begin to count the many blessings in my life—like family and friends and the fellowship of the church, prosperity and provision, health and wholeness, and so many other wonderful blessings that come in the form of people, things and experiences—I always come down to  this bottom line reason for my gratitude:

God’s grace and mercy in my life! 

That’s really the reason I’m most thankful.

In Lamentations 3:22, the prophet Jeremiah summed up this whole idea of grace and mercy in one of my favorite verses, where he wrote these words:

Because of the Lord’s great love
we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
Great is your faithfulness.

Think about it:  If it weren’t for the great love of the Lord, none of us would be able to sit at the Thanksgiving table with our loved ones to recount our reasons for gratitude.  That’s God’s mercy.  In his rich and unending mercy, God didn’t give us what we really deserve: judgment and complete separation from his presence.

So on the one hand, I’m sure thankful for what I don’t have, what I didn’t get, what I do really deserve: God’s wrath poured out on me.

On the other hand, I’m thankful for what I did get—and what I got is what I really didn’t deserve: God’s favor in the form of his love, his friendship, his protection and his provision both for this life and for the next.

Unlimited mercy and undeserved grace! I don’t think I’ll ever recover from that—and I don’t really want to.

And that’s why I am most grateful.

“Gratitude has been called the gateway to the virtues. As Cicero put it, ‘Gratitude is not only the greatest of the virtues, but the parent of all others,’ opening the heart to deeper appreciation, compassion, repentance, forgiveness, generosity and wisdom. Giving thanks should be cultivated as a habit. It is a kind of therapy for the spirit.” ~Bruce Chapman

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Whew!

Read Psalm 34

Featured Verse: Psalm 34:7

“The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him,  and he delivers them.
(Psalm 34:7) ”

You’ve got to notice the title of this psalm to really appreciate it:

A Psalm of David.  When he pretended to be insane before Abimelech, who drove him away, and he left.

David was on the lam…just a step ahead of death due to King Saul’s maniacal and murderous hatred. On this particular occasion, David sought refuge, of all places, in the Philistine city of Gath. Gath, you might recall, was the hometown of Goliath, the famed warrior-hero that David had killed in stunning fashion on the battlefield.

David is seeking refuge in the city of his enemy rather than in the shelter of the Almighty. Now to be fair, David has done a lot of things right up to this point in his life. He has depended on God day-after-day and night after-night for years, patiently enduring and deftly avoiding Saul’s relentless posse. But now he makes a big mistake—and it almost costs him his life.

The people of Gath recognize David for what he is, the chief warrior of their archenemy Israel, and they want the Philistine king to have him executed. Suddenly, realizing the pickle he’s gotten himself into, David comes up with a crazy idea: He’ll go postal. So he feigns insanity, starts scratching at the door, drooling in his beard, and howling at the moon (okay, I added that last one). When the king sees David in this deranged state, he says, “Look at the man! He is insane! Why bring him to me? Am I so short of madmen that you have to bring this fellow here to carry on like this in front of me? Must this man come into my house?” (I Samuel 21:14-15)

With that, David beats a retreat back to the cave of Adullam, and there, as before, he finds God in the cave. And he penned these words: “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.”

Now I am not advocating that the mistakes we make are no big deal. They are…and they can be very costly. But friend, we serve a God who trumps our mistakes with his grace, and turns our goofs into glory for himself and good for us. We may take a few lumps along the way, but at the end of the day, on our best days and on our worst days, it is God who makes something beautiful out of our less than perfect lives.

You might want to thank God for that little fact, by the way. I think I will!

“We serve a gracious Master who knows how to overrule even our mistakes to His glory and our own advantage.”
—John Newton

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Psalm 34: Whew!

Read Psalm 34:1-22

Whew!

The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him,
and he delivers them.
(Psalm 34:7)

You’ve got to notice the title of this psalm to really appreciate it:

A Psalm of David.  When he pretended to be insane before Abimelech,
who drove him away, and he left.

David was on the lam…just a step ahead of death due to King Saul’s maniacal and murderous hatred. On this particular occasion, David sought refuge, of all places, in the Philistine city of Gath. Gath, you might recall, was the hometown of Goliath, the famed warrior-hero that David had killed in stunning fashion on the battlefield.

David is seeking refuge in the city of his enemy rather than in the shelter of the Almighty. Now to be fair, David has done a lot of things right up to this point in his life. He has depended on God day-after-day and night after-night for years, patiently enduring and deftly avoiding Saul’s relentless posse. But now he makes a big mistake—and it almost costs him his life.

The people of Gath recognize David for what he is, the chief warrior of their archenemy Israel, and they want the Philistine king to have him executed. Suddenly, realizing the pickle he’s gotten himself into, David comes up with a crazy idea: He’ll go postal. So he feigns insanity, starts scratching at the door, drooling in his beard, and howling at the moon (okay, I added that last one). When the king sees David in this deranged state, he says, “Look at the man! He is insane! Why bring him to me? Am I so short of madmen that you have to bring this fellow here to carry on like this in front of me? Must this man come into my house?” (I Samuel 21:14-15)

With that, David beats a retreat back to the cave of Adullam, and there, as before, he finds God in the cave. And he penned these words: “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and he delivers them.”

Now I am not advocating that the mistakes we make are no big deal. They are…and they can be very costly. But friend, we serve a God who trumps our mistakes with his grace, and turns our goofs into glory for himself and good for us. We may take a few lumps along the way, but at the end of the day, even on our best day, it is God who makes something beautiful out of our less than perfect lives.

You might want to thank God for that little fact, by the way. I think I will!

“We serve a gracious Master who knows how to overrule
even our mistakes to His glory and our own advantage.”
—John Newton