1) The Grace of God is what God gives to us and what we absolutely do not deserve! When Our Lord began His ministry on earth, He read the text from Isaiah and the last row of that text says: “To preach the acceptable year of the Lord” (Lk. 4:16-19) In the ori­ginal Scripture, the word “acceptable” is identical with the word “grace”. This statement of the Lord can thus be also read: “To preach the year of the Grace of the Lord”. Of course, the “year” here means “age, dispensation” and that from the Birth of the Lord in Bethlehem until the Last Judgment. Hence, the AGE OF GRACE includes the 1,000 years of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. We should be enormously thankful that we were born and live in this age of Grace; we should enormously value this Grace in our heart, never ignore it, refuse it, gamble with it, rape it with out attitudes, pride, negligence, arrogance, foolishness, stubbornness. Our pride alone is sufficient for us to refuse the Grace and thereby lose it! This is a fact with all pagans and with many proud believers just as well. After all, there are many ways on which our heart may get into conditions and situations, which can close the door to God’s Grace and we can lose it!

A clear example of this is the reaction of Jews to Jesus when He was speaking to them about the Grace of God shown to the widow from Sidon and to Naaman, the Syrian. These were not Jews and had nothing in common with Israel and thus could not “boast with the rights of Israel” and expect from God any “privileges”. However, God sovereignly saved their lives and healed Naaman from leprosy and thereby showed to Israel that He can give Grace to whomsoever He wants and whenever He wants. And Jews got at that so furious that they wanted to kill Jesus (Lk. 4:25-29)! It could have been their pride, stubbornness, rebellion of their hearts, heart injury, offense towards God or their utmost selfishness that stood in their way to recognize the Grace of God and receive It.

Let us return to Isaiah for a moment to whom the Word of God was given, which Word the Lord Jesus Himself read: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me; because He hath anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised. To preach the acceptable year of the Lord” (Lk. 4:18,19). This means, the beginning of the Dispensation of Grace. At the time of this prophecy, Isaiah probably believed, that he spoke this above himself because God gave that Word to him, He sent him with that Word, and thus he probably never in­clu­ded in this Word the future Messiah. The Lord Jesus knew into what world He came and where people are in the conditions about which He speaks in that Word – they are exiles from their Father’s house, they are in bondage and captivity, in prison, their eyes were blinded by Satan and they are wounded, oppressed, in a lamentable state, in a very se­ri­ous situ­ation – and they don’t even know about it! They are not aware of it! Furthermore, the Lord did not tell them just this good news, but He said to them another shock: “TODAY is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears” (Lk. 4:21)! This was a triumphant arrival of God’s GRACE to the earth for all people! The Lord does not speak here just to Israel, or to the Church, but about the Grace for every man! That’s why the Jews in the synagogue, which were first rejoicing aver His gracious words then became furious when He spoke to them about the Grace shown outside of Israel, to the widow of Sarepta and Naaman the Syrian. In their great pride, these Jews were making claims to God’s Grace being furious  when God healed “dirty” pagans and not them! Here Israel showed that deep root of evil, which was in them and still is, even their abominable hearts that were ready not only to refuse this Messenger of Grace toward them, but also to kill Him! That’s why Israel also killed their own Messiah and the Giver of Grace. I believe that a normal man cannot even imagine such an inhuman filthiness! The Parable in Matthew 21:33-44 is similar in prin­ciple. And in the verses 37-39, the Lord prophesies how Israel will deal with Him Himself.

If we, therefore, think even for a moment that God owes us anything, or He is obliged to give us anything, or do for us anything just because we are Israel, then we are on a very dangerous ground. If this is our case, there will soon appear difficulties, frictions and pro­blems, which we never expected and which will not disappear through any prayer. On the contrary, they will get worse and we will not even know why. But when we remain on the foundation of Grace, we remain in harmony with the Lord “For by GRACE are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God”(Eph. 2:8). Truly I do wonder whether even the simple fact that “God… holdeth our soul in life…” (Ps. 66:9)is not a clear Grace of God? And He holds our soul even when we do not deserve it at all and are “not worthy” to continue in our earthly life. Therefore, Grace is not granted to them, which need it, but to them that are convinced that they need it!

The Grace of God is, of course, mostly shown in the New Testament. One of the known examples is in Matthew 22:1-14. Here God is inviting born-again, baptized believers to the feast prepared for His Son. He sent out His servants with the invitations to them that were invited, that the feast is ready… and NOBODY came! Everybody had excuses and enormously stupid excuses at that! (Somebody had to go and see the land that he bought before; well, only a fool would buy land which he never saw in his life, etc.) An import­ant point here is that God the Father KNEW that the invited guests will not come! God has foreknowledge of things and events as He is not limited by time; for Him the past or the future do not exist (Rom. 8:29). However, here God did not act on the basis of His fore­know­ledge, but send out the invitations anyway… despite His foreknowledge! God could have said: To hell with these ungrateful and arrogant bastards for I know that they will refuse and will not come. NO! God gave to them the same opportunity and privilege and invited them. Is this not a pure Grace?

And not only Grace, but also Wisdom. One of the fundamental Principles of God and of His Grace is that whatsoever He may foreknow, who will refuse what, who will not receive but will ignore, even here He will keep the door to every such opportunity wide open! Thus He always takes the positive way of Grace and Hope and never the negative way of judg­ment and condemnation. This way the grace of God actually retains and delays the Judgment of God until man himself will finally deal with that matter and come to his own free and final decision. God always acts in Grace to give to every man opportunities to react and take his position. God thus shows not only His Grace, but also His Wisdom since by doing this He removes all possibilities where man’s destiny, destruction or sentence in his judgment might be ascribed to His guilt. It will never be possible for any man judged by God to say: You never gave me a chance, never any opportunities, the door was never open to me, never was a way given to me. NO! If anyone will miss what God prepared for him or even called him to it, or invited him, that will be solely and entirely the guilt of that man.

If any man will not answer God’s request, entreaty, invitation, appeal or ignores His Word, whether he be pagan or born-again and baptized believer, it always means that that man has no respect for God, does not consider His Personality worthy of any honor, recog­nition or even worthy to take into consideration! The consequences are devastating and abso­lut­e­ly unimaginable.

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To be continued next week

brother Hanola

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