(Sermon by Pastor Michael D. Schultz 03/26/06) 

INTRODUCTION:

March Madness!  Gonzaga was pounding UCLA for 3/4ths of the game till the Bruins mounted a tremendous comeback and posted a thrilling, last minute come from behind victory.  For those UCLA players (in the NCAA tournament), it was the thrill of a lifetime.  Hunting sometimes gives a person a thrill like that – take a shot at a large animal, trophy antlers, it staggers and falls, and you walk up to it and your heart is pounding so hard it feels like it’s going to come out of your chest.

For me, there was something like that in the spring of 1985.  At a track meet in Chicago I had a personal best day in the pole vault.  Run toward the box, plant, elevate the hips, turn over, push off the pole, kick your head and arms back – and for that second and a half where you’re falling backwards down to the mat and the bar stays there – you just want to come out of yourself.  You want to be able to bottle the thrill of that second and a half so you can have it again later.

That thrill has been bottled.  It’s something that can’t be plain or mundane, something we dare not grunt about (ugghhh), as if it were yesterday’s news.  For as many times as we might refer to it or say it or talk about it, it can’t become cliché or passé.  Grace has a thrilling sound in a believer’s ear.

God’s Grace – Never Less Than Thrilling

We’re in a part of the bible that gives one of the ugliest descriptions of us in the whole book.  Dead as a doornail, dead in the water, dead as dead can be – but it’s not talking about a body in which the heart has stopped beating.  Dead in transgressions and sins is talking about a soul that is not living, that’s stuck in sinfulness and can’t move an inch, can’t even twitch.  The ugliness, the repulsiveness of a decaying, decomposing spiritual corpse – no desire or ability to reach out to God, complete corruption through and through.  Each of us has to write that description next to our pre-baptism baby pictures in the family photo album – spiritually lifeless, corrupt, doomed, dead.

Two of the finest words you’ll ever hear or read are the next two: “but God.”  But God’s going to approach this rotting corpse of a sinner that I was?  I was giving off the repulsive stench of a rebellious traitor, and he came my way?  “But 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.”

God made Jesus the dead sinner you were.  He pounded him with the guilt of your sins.  He crushed him with the punishment for your sins.  He handed him over to death for your sins.  But then, the living soul of Jesus was returned to the body that was in Joseph’s tomb, and death was done, for Jesus and for you. 

Oh the thrill!.... The thrill Jairus had when the cold body of his twelve year old daughter warmed up again because Jesus raised her to life, the thrill Mary and Martha had when Lazarus, looking like a mummy, came out of his tomb alive at the command of Christ, the thrill in the heart of the women on Easter Sunday to hear the angel say, “He is not here, he has risen,” – that’s the thrill there is for you, like you were drinking it out of a bottle, every time you think of how the Holy Spirit stood over your spiritually dead soul and raised you to life along with Christ and flooded your heart with faith in Christ and filled your soul with hope and good cheer.

That he should pity the likes of me, love me, raise me from spiritual death to spiritual life, that he should seat me with Christ – what kind of grace is this!  Christians throughout the ages have heard these things from God’s own mouth and have stood before him dumbfounded. What’s Paul (the killer of Christians) doing in the Christian Church?  What’s Luther (the misdirected monk) doing in the Church of Jesus Christ?  What’s any sinner doing in the Church?  What am I doing in the Church?  I have no business being a believer, but here I am.  God, what have you done!   All ages will marvel at God’s grace – never less than thrilling!

If John 3:16 from today’s gospel holds the #1 spot for most well known bible passage, then Ephesians 2:8-9 would have to be somewhere in the top five.  It says something about God’s grace that God doesn’t want anyone to miss.

It’s all a gift!  “And this not from yourselves.”  The grace is not from yourself – it’s a gift of God.  The being saved is not from yourself – it’s a gift of God.  And yes, the faith to believe this, it’s not from yourself – it’s a gift of God.  It’s never easy for us, but the best answer to the question “Are you saved,” is the answer that leaves out the pronoun “I.”  Are you saved?  Yes!  Christ lived for me.  Christ died for me.  Christ rose.  God saved me.  God showed his grace to me.  God gave me faith.  The answer to that question is yes.  And for who I was, it’s a thrilling “yes” every time.

Everything in the world to be thankful about and to be thrilled about, but nothing to boast about.  All credit to God for his never-less-than-thrilling grace.

So we close today by describing your day to day existence with the phrase “a thrill a minute.”  That’s how it is for you, right?  If you knew that the Lord God Almighty had outlined tomorrow’s schedule for you, if your daily activities, your work activities, your retirement activities and your school activities had come down to you straight from heaven, arranged and approved by God himself, you’d be glad to dive right into tomorrow, wouldn’t you?

We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do.  Whatever it is you have to do tomorrow, it is what God has placed before you.  I don’t mean to be sarcastic or even too sound sarcastic in saying that Jesus died and rose for you and God has showered you with his grace and given you faith in Jesus so that you will be as pleased as can be in carrying out for him the noble tasks of diaper changing, floor scrubbing, bus driving, house building, paper correcting, potato peeling, envelope addressing, room cleaning, yes even running copies or attending meetings.  The very life that God has set before you and placed you in right now is how he would have you thank and serve him for his grace.  And you will as you remember:  I shouldn’t be here.  I shouldn’t be on God’s side.  I shouldn’t be in Christ’s church, but God saw to it that I am.  All complaining aside.   By grace I’m saved!  My life isn’t about self-fulfillment.  It’s about doing for God what God has given me to do.  It’s about doing it well because God has been too good to me.

Grace has a thrilling sound in a believer’s ear.  Recapture that thrill over and over again by going back to Ephesians 2 this afternoon and this coming week.  Saved by grace through faith in Christ – God’s gift to me.  Catch that thrill right now, as if you were drinking it from a bottle, through the words of a poem that will be one of our hymns a couple years from now:

1. What grace is this!  My Lord and King has set his face to suffering.  My God eternal dies to bring eternal life to me.

2. What grace is this –  that very God would stoop to lift a cross of wood, and walk a road of rock and blood, a sinner's road, for me.

3. What grace is this!  Though Lord of all, He yields to Pontius Pilate's law and lets the Roman hammers draw a rush of blood for me.

4. What grace is this!  Rude agonies!  With common thieves he hangs and bleeds.  The sinless Son bears each misdeed.  He pays for all, for me.

5. What grace is this!  Once wrapped in cloths and gently laid in mangertrough, He's taken, dead, from wretched cross and wrapped again for me.

6. What grace is this?  How can it be?  He wears this raw humility to lift me to eternity.  Such grace – sweet grace – for me.

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