My wife's grandfather, Jess, is in very poor health these days, and I find myself thinking about him quite a lot. He has told me many stories of his life. Here is one I would like to share with you.
Not long after Jess had return from the European theater of World War II, he and his brother, Earl, decided to try their hand at farming. I don't think they ever made much money in this venture, but it did provide them with many stories to share with their kids and grandkids.
Jess tells of one summer day when he and Earl were putting up hay. It had been cut, raked and baled. All that was left was to put it in the barn. Unfortunately, it was about to start raining later that day. Jess had tried to find someone to help with the hauling but had been unsuccessful. So, he and his brother were struggling to put it up by themselves.
Now, if you have ever hauled square baled hay, you know it is not a two man job. You need at least one man driving, one man on the ground loading, and one man on the truck or trailer to do the stacking. If only two men are doing the hauling it is a very slow process, to be sure.
Jess and Earl were in the field exhausted and struggling to do a three (or four) man job as the clouds began to darken the horizon. If the bales got soaked they would be ruined and worthless. Not only the hay, but also all of the time and expense of the baling would be lost.
Just then, one of their neighbors drove past the field and saw these two young men struggling to save their hay crop. Sitting behind the wheel was an older gentleman many years their senior. He could have justifiably been called an "old man". If he had simply driven on by no one would have thought the worse of him. But this old man still had considerable strength and he knew it. He pulled his truck to the side of the road and crossed through the fence, sliding his broad shoulders between the strands of barbed wire.
As dark clouds continued to boil higher into the sky, he strode across the field toward Jess and Earl's truck. He grabbed a bale of hay in each hand and tossed them onto the truck. Wordlessly he continued to toss bales of hay onto their truck two at a time until the field was clean. Jess, Earl, and this kind old neighbor drove the last load of hay in to the barn just as the rain began to fall.
With the hay crop saved, Jess and Earl turned to the old neighbor and thanked him for coming to their aid, then Jess tried to pay him for his help. "Son," the old man replied, "you can't pay me enough to haul hay!"
"Son, you can't pay me enough to haul hay!"
Of course I am going to draw a moral from this story...
Grace is illustrated here. The hay crop is like your eternal soul. It is valuable but it is under a cloud of judgment. You can't work hard enough to save it, and you can't buy your way out of a fix. You are about to lose the crop.
God sees your plight. Motivated by love for your everlasting soul, he crosses the "fence" that separates man from God and becomes "God with us" in the person of Jesus Christ. He offers you the gift of salvation. He provides an escape for your from the storms of sin and judgment.
Should you be grateful? Absolutely.
Can you pay him back? Never.
I'm sure that the old man who help Jess and Earl has been gone a long time now, but the story of his kind deed as been told for many years and still lives on.
So here is the question:
If you had been in Jess and Earl's situation would you have accepted the old man's help? I'm guessing you would have.
Jesus is offering far greater salvation than that of a hay crop. He offers salvation for you soul. Will you accept his help today?
If you go to the last verse of the last chapter of the last book of the Bible you will read this:
Rev. 22:21 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.
Is this the most important verse in the book of The Revelation? I don’t know. We really can't elevate one verse over another, but I am sure that it is one of the most often overlooked. This phrase (or some variation of it) is contained in nearly one-half of the books of the New Testament.
This passage follows on the heels of some pretty dramatic reading. For twenty-two chapters the reader has been reading about some pretty astounding things. There have been trumpets and vials and bowls of judgment. Mountains are falling out of the sky. Weird creatures have come out of the earth to torment mankind. Prophets breath fire. All kinds of judgments have been unleashed on a sin corrupted earth. Wars have been waged and kingdoms over thrown. We have also been ushered into the throne room of God to witness the greatest worship service the universe has ever seen, and the King of kings returns to earth on a white horse.
Now imagine you are one of the first people to hear the message of the Revelation. Perhaps you are sitting with the church at, say, Philadelphia when the minister reads the message. As he finishes this letter and reads this last verse the audience sits in stunned silence.
Most of the crowd thinks they have heard from God.
Some of them may think that John has been out in the sun too long.
To be sure, the closing verse is not the most notable one in the book; yet, it is a very important verse. Here is why.
First, the Revelation is addressed to working churches, persecuted churches, faithful churches, loving churches, dying churches, patient churches, healthy churches and lukewarm churches. I am guessing that you and the church you attend fit somewhere in that list.
Second, these the final words of this book to these churches. In fact the final words penned to the church, the entire church, in the canon of scripture is “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.”
I want to take this phrase apart and look at it.
I. First of all is the word “grace”. It is that unearned, unmerited favor of God. It is one of those churchy words that we use in church and in very few other places. Yet, grace is so important because without the grace of God we cannot be saved.#
You see, here is the thing:
We cannot demand salvation because we are too weak.
We cannot buy it because we are too poor.
We cannot scheme our way into it because we are too simple.
Salvation comes only by faith through grace.#
II. The next stop on our tour of this verse is the word “Lord” . It means “master”. Our times are an oddity in the history of the world. Odds are, you were born as a free person, as you should be. You may not have two nickels to rub together, but you are a free man or woman, and (unless you commit a crime that warrants incarceration) you will die a free man or woman. That has not always been the case. In fact, for most of the history of this world, slavery has existed as the accepted norm.
Because we are a free people, the word master does not carry for us its full meaning, but Jesus, by virtue of the fact that he is God, is our Master. The good news is that we have the grace of the master. That is, we have His unearned favor. It is his grace which elevates us above the status of a mere servant. In John we are called friends. In Galatians we are called sons.*
III. “Jesus” . His name means “Jehovah is salvation”. The wonder of the incarnation is contained in this name. This name, in five letters, contains the entire meaning of John 3:16.
The first instance we have of anyone who says his name “Jesus” is when the angel announces his birth with the words “…And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.”^
Have you ever felt inferior? Well, think about this for a bit. Within the name of Jesus we have a description of the unearned favor of Jehovah, the great I AM at work to redeem the helpless. Christians who routinely hide behind “I ain't.....” and "I can't...." statements need to realize that they have received grace from the omnipotent "I AM".
IV. “Christ”. This is not Jesus’ last name. It is a title. It means the anointed one, chosen of God. The Messiah. The Deliverer. He came to this earth the first time humbly, as a servant to save.
Soon, the Bible teaches, he will return to this earth as a King. He is King of kings and Lord of lords.
And I have his unearned favor.
V. Here is an important word you may not suspect. It is the word "With". This little word is sometimes translated from the Greek as “after”, “among”, or “behind”.
This best way I know to illustrate for you the meaning of this word is to compare it to perfume.
Have you ever known someone who really, really likes their perfume or cologne?
Grace is like that. I’ve known people whom you could identify by their perfume. You didn’t have to see them to know they were in the room. Strong perfume will fill a room where a person is. It will linger after they are gone. If they hug someone, the perfume will transfer to that person. They carry their fragrance "with" them wherever they go.
Similarly, grace not only flows from God to us, but through us to those around us. In other words, to be like Christ we show "unearned favor" to those around us.
It is not enough to be kind to those who are kind to us. That isn't grace. That's normal. Grace goes beyond normal. We truly display grace when we show our favor to those who have not earned it.
The Conclusion on all of this is tied to the little word “all” . Do you want to know how to get this blessing? How to receive the “grace of our Lord Jesus Christ”?
I have the secret right here. Look at 1 Peter 5:5.
“ ...all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with
humility, for "God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.”
Have a wonderful day my friends! And may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with each of you!
# Ephesians 2:8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; [it is] the gift of God...
* Galatians 4:4-7, John 15:15-17
^ Matthew 1:21
I want to show you a story about kindness that you may have never seen before. It is from the life of the great king of Israel, King David.
David is an interesting guy. We first start following his story when he is a shepherd boy in the Judean pastures. In the Bible we read about his triumphs, his trials, his failures and his comebacks. This story of kindness spans a great portion of his life.
In 2 Samuel 17:27-29 (esv) we read:
"When David came to Mahanaim, Shobi the son of Nahash from Rabbah of the Ammonites, and Machir the son of Ammiel from Lo-debar, and Barzillai the Gileadite from Rogelim, brought beds, basins, and earthen vessels, wheat, barley, flour, parched grain, beans and lentils, honey and curds and sheep and cheese from the herd, for David and the people with him to eat, for they said, 'The people are hungry and weary and thirsty in the wilderness.'"
Here is the setting for these verses. David had a son (one of many) named Absalom. Absalom staged a coup against his father, and David and his household fled into the wilderness, running for their lives.
Now David (and company) left Jerusalem with little more than the clothes on their backs. There were women and children in the group, and David himself was now advancing in years. They had no food and no bedding. The situation was serious and getting worse.
As they were running they came to a place called Mahanaim. Word of the coup was spreading. They were met there by three men; Shobi, Machir, and Barzillai. These men helped David and his family in a time of desperation by bringing them bedding and some high calorie, high protein food.
Now remember, there was a coup underway, and these guys were sticking their necks out by picking sides. Why would they do such a thing? Why not hang back and see who was going to come out on top first?
There is an interesting story for each of these guys, but I want us to look at this fellow known as “Machir…of Lo-debar” for a minute.
Machir's back story
If we scroll back through the life of David to 2 Samuel chapter 9 we will find him as a much younger man. At this point in his life he is on top of the world. He has finally succeeded in defeating his enemies and the Kingdom of Israel has been consolidated under him.
Then he does a very classy, non-typical thing, especially for monarchs of that period in history. He sent for the crippled, orphaned grandson of the previous king, King Saul. The boy's name was Mephibosheth. David brought the boy to sit continually at the royal table and restored to him his grandfather's property.
In this event, David sowed seeds of kindness in the way he treated this unfortunate child. He had no way of knowing that some day those seeds would come to fruition in his own life.
How can we draw such a connection? Well, let's take a look at where they had to go to get Mephibosheth so they could bring him to the kings house:
"The king [David] said … 'Where is he?' And Ziba said to the king, 'He is in the house of Machir the son of Ammiel, at Lo-debar.'" [2 Samuel 9:4 esv]
Yes, that's right. It is the same guy. Many years before he had watched as David went out of his way to show kindness to this crippled orphan boy. Now David was in need and it was payback time. Funny how that turned out.
What goes around does come back around after all…
