Wednesday, 7/3/19 – Pressing on…

Drenched, and Squeezed tight!

One point I didn’t quite have time to get to last Sunday is found in the following verse,

“In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.” (Eph. 1:7-8).

In Matthew 20 verses 1 to 16 we read the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. You may know the story. It starts off talking about a landowner who went out looking for people to work in his vineyard. He offers a denarius for a day’s work, a decent wage.

He hires several men. Some he hires at 9 a.m. some he hires at noon, some at 3 p.m. and some at 5 p.m. Then at the end of the day he pays each man a denarius!

Well, as you may guess, the guys he hired at 9 a.m. start to complain; they say “It’s not fair. We worked all day long in the hot sun and the guys you hired later on worked less and less, yet you’re paying us all the same!” But the landowner sees things differently. He says, “No I paid you exactly what we agreed on and if I want to be generous and give the same amount to everyone it’s my money and I can do what I want with it!” Well OK, I may be paraphrasing some, but you can read the story yourself in Matthew 20:1-16.

Then there’s another story in the Bible about a poor widow lady. Jesus is teaching in the temple courts one day and He notices a poor widow woman putting two very small copper coins into the treasury. Jesus, knowing this lady is very poor, says to his disciples “This poor widow has put in more than all the others. All these people gave their gifts out of their wealth; but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.” You can read this one for yourself in Luke 21:1-4.

In both of these stories we see how God measures amounts and percentages of things a little bit differently than we may tend to. God measures things according to the economy of His Kingdom not ours. He measures our giving for example not by how much we give but by how much we keep. He measures His own giving by His grace and generosity, not according to the merit of the recipient.

When it comes to forgiveness we may think that the seven-year-old boy who stole a cookie needs a certain amount of forgiveness, but the man who murdered an innocent person requires a much greater amount of forgiveness. There may be a sense in which this is true, but note well this:

“In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that He lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.” (Eph. 1:7-8).

God forgives us according to the riches of his grace! This is a marvelous truth! Let’s liken your sin to a campfire burning in the woods. God doesn’t just dump two or three buckets of water on it, i.e. just enough to equal the size of the fire. No… He dumps all the water he’s got – say, the whole Atlantic ocean!

What am I trying to say here? I’m trying to say that as brothers and sisters redeemed by Christ you need not fear that there may not be enough grace to go round… that there’s some unforgiven bit of sin off in a corner somewhere. When God forgives you He forgives you utterly! He lavishes forgiveness upon you! He just loves you so much — like the prodigal’s father He smothers you with kisses and squeezes you tight! He’s so glad to have you come home!

Press on…