Father, You are the original Kabiyesi; the sovereign God that cannot be questioned; thank You for the gift of life, thank You for bringing us here again together to worship at Your feet, Father, we pray, You accept us, accept our worship in the mighty name of Jesus.
Father, we pray that You will anoint the ears that will hear Your word this morning; let Your word come with simplicity. Father, the Bible says the entrance of Your word brings light, let thy word bring light to all parts of Your children today in Jesus name; anoint the lip that will speak Your word.
Father, we pray that at the end of Your message, we shall have cause to glorify and bless Your name; thank You eternal Father of glory; speak to us alone today oh Lord in a way that will be clear to us; let Your children not hear from any man but let them hear from You alone; thank You eternal Father, blessed be Your name King of glory, in Jesus name we pray.
Before we sit, let’s take a word of prayer; going with the calculation we just heard, it’s about 70 days to the end of the year; I want you to say Father, in the remaining days of this year, let me receive double portion of blessing, double portion of grace, double portion of anointing, double portion of favor, double portion of all the things you want in the remaining days of this year, Father, grant it unto us; grant to me oh Lord, (make it personal); double portion of Your blessing, double portion of anointing in the remaining days of this year, in Jesus name we pray.
Good morning once again; God bless you, thank you for coming to church this morning. It’s the tenth month of the year, we all know, and the theme for this month is double portion, but we usually take the month as the month of double grace because 5 + 5 = 10, and 5 is a symbol of grace.
So I’ll be talking this morning on the subject of grace, and I did not have any discussion with the choir when they were singing about grace, when I just heard, I said haha, this is God saying this is My way, this is what I want My children to hear today, so it’s all about grace, we are here by grace and the grace will keep us to the end in Jesus name.
Talking on the subject on grace, I read somewhere that ‘you don’t work to be saved, you work because you are saved; you don’t labor for your redemption, you labor for your reward’. It’s a pattern of God, they never change, He will not lower His standards to accommodate anyone, rather, He will give us grace to meet up with the standards; so in order to receive the grace of God, we have to take a step towards meeting God’s standards.
James 4:8 (and that’s part of the ministration of the choir this morning, even the hymn we took). ‘Draw near to God and He’ll draw near to you; nearer my God to thee’; that also was not planned, that’s God working and that’s just by grace. Draw near to God and He will draw near to you; the song says nearer my God to thee, it says I’m coming near to God and He will draw near to us.
We have examples in the Bible of those who received grace, many examples; people like Noah, Jacob, David, Mephibosheth, Mordecai, Ruth, Nehemiah, Hezekiah, like the thief on the cross, like Apostle Paul, like the woman caught in adultery, Jonah, Peter, like you, like me, people that have received grace from God.
Before I go further, let me just appreciate God for the gift of life again and I appreciate the opportunity that has been given to me to bring this message; I want to thank our father in the Lord, the Pastor in Charge of Province, the pastorate, for this opportunity and like I said earlier, it’s about grace that we are talking about today, but I had a bit of a problem with giving it a topic.
I read somewhere about grace, very wide area, but I want to talk about the injustice of grace (somebody talked about the injustice of grace) and I begin to ask myself, is grace unjust? But then, I will present the case today for the first side, for the other side and you will be the judge whether grace is unjust. So the topic is going to be, “Is Grace Unjust”?, after the 30minutes of our ministration, you will be the judge whether grace is unjust or not; I will present a case against those who say grace is unjust and for those who say grace is not unjust and you my listeners be the judge, praise God!
So let’s talk about first – Jesus the symbol of grace; we’ll take that from the Book of Jonah 4: 1-11, the story we are all very familiar with: Jonah 4: 1-11, the subject topic is, “Is Grace Unjust?” “But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was very angry. 2And he prayed unto the Lord, and said, I pray thee, Oh Lord, was not this my saying when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God, a merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repentest thee of the evil.
3Therefore now, oh Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me; for it is better for me to die than to live. 4Then said the Lord, doest thou well to be angry? 5So Jonah went out of the city, and sat on the east side of the city, and there made him a booth, and sat under it in the shadow, till he might see what will become of the city. 6And the Lord God prepared a gourd, and made it to come up over Jonah, that it may be a shadow over his head, to deliver him from his grief. So Jonah was exceedingly glad of the gourd.
7But God prepared a worm when the morning rose the next day, and it smote the gourd that it withered. 8And it came to pass, when the sun did arise, that God prepared a vehement east wind; and the sun beat upon the head of Jonah, that he fainted, and wished in himself to die, and said, it is better for me to die than to live. 9And God said to Jonah, doest thou well to be angry for the gourd? And he said, I do well to be angry, even unto death.
10Then said the Lord, thou hast had pity on the gourd, for the which thou hast not labored, neither madest it grow; which came up in a night, and perished in a night: 11And should not I spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand; and also much cattle? Praise the Lord.
We’ll also look at Ephesians 2: 4-10, “But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us. 5Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) 6And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: 7That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness to us through Christ Jesus. 8For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourself: it is the gift of God: 9Not of works, lest any man should boast.10For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them”. Praise the Lord!
So like I mentioned earlier, Jesus is the symbol of grace; grace is a short hand – I read that somewhere too, it’s a short hand for the entire ministry of Jesus through which we receive salvation. So grace is synonymous with Jesus, He is the personification of grace.
Titus 2: 11-13, it says “For the grace that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men. 12Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; 13Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ”. Praise the Lord!
Jesus routinely showed mercy to the people who least deserved it; He did routinely – if you look through, His ministry was symbol of showing grace, for example, the two women in John 4 and John 8, both of them are adulteresses, Jesus Christ showed grace to them. Grace allows people to make choices, (and anytime I’m talking about grace now, you can put Jesus there because He’s a symbol of grace, He’s synonymous with grace). So grace allows people to make choices; it is free flowing; it’s an encumbered by guilt or shame.
Grace says I know about you and I still love you; I know about your deeds, I know about everything negative about you and I still love you. God’s interest is in redeeming us, not in keeping us in the hook for our sins; when Jesus had an encounter with the woman by the well of Samaria, the woman went back to the village, (I’m assuming you know the story very well) and said come, and see the man who told me everything I’ve ever done; John 4:29, it says to them, “Come, and say the man, who told me everything I’ve ever done”.
Nothing was hidden from Jesus about that woman, yet He communicated in such a fashion that she left feeling accepted and loved; that’s God’s grace; that is grace at work, not condemning but loving – gracious, that’s is grace at work. The woman went back and said ha, this man knows a lot about me; she didn’t feel condemned, she felt good, despite the fact that Jesus told her that you are with the fifth husband; that is saying indirectly that you are an adulteress, praise God! But He didn’t use that strong word; He just used nice words – gracious words.
So what is grace? Grace is love in action; it is unmerited favor. Grace is love favoring us when we are not lovable; it is love accepting us when we are not acceptable; it is love redeeming us when in human terms and by all the rules of the book we are not redeemable. Grace is a word with a stoop, it’s a word that bends, it’s not a word that stands round rod, and it’s always bending to pick us up, praise God!
Grace is love applied – love in action, the word of love is becoming flesh. I want us to have a word of prayer this morning and say Father, I’m grateful for Your grace -Your amazing grace. Grace is a resolve to do good, not permission to do bad; some of us take grace as permission to do bad: I have the grace to do it, I’ve been forgiven; it’s not a permission to do bad, it’s a resolve to do good, and if you ever find yourself thinking ‘I can do whatever I want because God will forgive me, because I’ve been given grace’, then grace is not happening to you, maybe it’s selfishness, maybe it’s self-centeredness, maybe it’s arrogance, maybe it’s a licentiousness, it’s not grace; grace does not allow you to do what you like, it’s not a permission to do bad.
Grace is not narcissism, (sorry for the big language): what that means in effect is that if you love yourself too much, that’s who a narcissist is. Narcissism – when you just love yourself, ‘I just love this person I see’, that’s what God has – I’ve just been warned this morning about big language, praise the Lord!
The court of law is not a place for seeking grace; it’s a place for seeking justice and equity. Grace is not justice, you will be set free by grace but justice will punish you, the law will punish you, praise God! The accusers of the woman that was caught in adultery (in John 8) took her to grace and that was why she was set free. If they had taken her to the Pharisees, what would have happened to her? She would have lost her life that day, that would be justice, because she was caught in adultery and the Lord says what do you do for the adulteresses? Kill them, but the people made a mistake, they went to grace and grace set her free, praise the Lord!
Our topic is “Is Grace Unjust?” Don’t forget you are going to be the judge, so what is unjust? I don’t know how to define unjust but I I’ll define just; so when we define just, unjust is the opposite of just. Just is fair, impartial, reasonable, deserved, upright and equitable, so unjust is just the opposite of all these – unfair, unreasonable, praise God!
So like I said earlier, is grace unjust? Let’s continue to think about it. The passage we read earlier, Jonah 4:1-11, Jonah was saved by grace from the belly of the wind; it was his lack of grace that made him disobey God’s instruction to preach to the people of Nineveh. He was instructed to go and preach, he did not go because he felt that they were bad people, how can you save them? They are herdsmen, they kidnappers, they kill people, they rape people, why would you want to save them? Maybe some of us are thinking along that line now because we don’t like God to save those who we think are bad people, they need to die, they should be killed, they should be in the hottest part of hell; and that’s what Jonah thought of the people of Nineveh.
He did not want them to be saved from destruction; when he finally obeyed and preached and they repented and God forgave them, Jonah was angry and ungracious, he thought grace was unjust; that’s one of those who think grace was unjust (somebody like Jonah); he felt Nineveh did not deserve to be saved, but grace is not by merit. God gave Jonah an example of a withered tree, (we read about it) and (He) compared Jonah’s position (Jonah’s anger) with the withering of the tree and the lives of humans and animals in Nineveh.
Jonah’s position was that Nineveh deserved to be punished; he believed grace (our Lord Jesus Christ) was unjust not to punish Nineveh; he felt that it was wrong not to punish them.
There’s another story in the Bible about some people who felt grace was unjust; Matthew 20:1-16, (we can read when we get home), but we are all very familiar with the story. The story of the worker in the vineyard is an example of what men describe as injustice of grace: Jesus told the story (it’s a parable of Jesus Christ) about the last minute workers in a vineyard who were paid the same wages as those who had worked the whole day.
Let me just paraphrase the story in two minutes: an owner of a vineyard went to the market looking for laborers – some people were waiting, he said okay, go and work in my farm, I’ll pay you a day’s wage, (Bible says a penny, for our sake, let’s say ₦5,000 per day) I’m going to pay you guys ₦5,000 per day; 10 of you, go and work in my farm; they went there, 9:00 am, work till 5:00 pm, I’ll pay you ₦5,000 each. 12pm, he went again; he saw some people still lying about; you guys don’t have work to do, go and join those who are working in my farm, I’ll pay you what is right at the end of the day.
3:00, he went again, saw some people still haggling, (because he’s a kind man) okay, you guys go and join them too, go and work; you guys don’t have work to do, go and join the workers. At 4 pm, he went again (1 hour to the time of closing), he saw some people sitting, go and join them, I’ll give you what is right, just don’t be idle all day. So when it was 5 and end of the day and he was paying them, he started with those who started at 4p.m. here is ₦5,000; 3pm, ₦5,000; 12pm, ₦5,000, and then the guy at 9am was thinking that mine must be double, I worked the whole day, why, and he gave me ₦5,000 as well and they were angry, praise God!
And see what the man said, they encountered (that’s when the man told him that he was unjust), he said, are you envious because I’m generous? Matthew 20:15 (KJV), “Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eyes evil, because I am good”? NLT says, ‘are you envious because I’m generous? I agreed ₦5,000 with you and you worked for 8 hours; the man that worked for 1 hour, I gave him ₦5,000, what is your problem? Praise God! You got what we agreed, I didn’t tell that guy I was going to pay him ₦5,000 and I paid him ₦5,000 because I was generous, praise the Lord!
As I was thinking, I was meditating on this yesterday, and God gave me an example that maybe you own a company – big man, you have a company; you hired an accountant, B.Sc, ACA, all the other things and you said well, I will pay you ₦400,000 in a month and the man was happy, he took the job and he’s working with you and he got to know later at the end of the month when he was preparing the salary that your driver earns ₦400,000, praise God! And he’s angry, why should the driver be earning the same? But he had interview and he agreed to take ₦400,000, because you are generous, you pay your driver ₦400,000; that’s like this case, I’m just trying to make it practical, praise God!
You have no business doing that but it’s okay for me to stand here and be saying that, if I was the accountant I wouldn’t be happy too, I’m confessing, I don’t know about you maybe you’re a very wonderful person, I will be angry, praise God! I would say haha, his driver who would just sit in the car all day from 9 till 5 and drive the man back home to (maybe) 2 km away and earns as much as I; it took me 12 years to get this ICAN can’t thing; you’ll be angry and it’s okay to be angry but Jesus Christ is saying that is wrong, you shouldn’t be angry because the man was generous.
Grace humbles us but confounds us as well; it often highlights the worst in us but only in order to bring out the best for us, praise God! It shows us the bad part of us so that we can be a better person, praise the Lord! The older brother in the story of the prodigal son was angry that the father welcomed the errant son back home; Jonah was angry that God saved Nineveh, (those who say grace is unjust, I’m just mentioning their names for you, if you’re part of them, that’s fine; if I’m part of them, I’ll see myself too later). Jonah felt his reputation as a prophet was threatened; he would rather have Nineveh perish than saved to achieve his selfish goal.
The woman the people around caught in adultery, John 8:1-11, were also not happy that grace saved her; the Bible says they left the scene one after the other probably dejected and confused at the injustice of grace. I can imagine the neighbors of Zacchaeus felt, (Luke 19: 1-10) after grace saved him from hell; they were hoping that he would be sent to the hottest part of hell. You know people did not like him, I don’t know who I can compare with Zacchaeus now, maybe somebody that is just a scammer around, somebody that we all don’t like – maybe a kidnapper, known kidnapper but rich and then you now find out that he has been saved, that one saved? Ha, grace is unjust, we’ll say that; that was why I believe how the neighbors of Zacchaeus felt.
Prophet Isaiah (for example) was sent to King Hezekiah in the Book of 2nd Kings 20: 1-6 to tell the king that he was going to die; prepare your house, you’re going to die. And of course Hezekiah reacted – he prayed, asked God, reminded God about what he has been doing for the kingdom of God and God changed His mind, and before the prophet left the vicinity of the palace, He said go back to him and tell him I’ve given him 15 additional years, how do you want the prophet to feel? You sent me to him to say he will die I prophesied and You are now saying to me that it’s not going to be like that, what type of prophet will this man say I am?
Some of us are so arrogant, you can’t tell what God has tell us to go and say it’s not going to be that again, it’s going to be like, this praise God! But Isaiah was not like that, from the account of the Bible, he gladly went back to tell Hezekiah that he was going to live. Jonah was not like that, Jonah was angry, he felt threatened; Isaiah did not feel threatened, that’s a good example of somebody who has grace.
The ultimate was the robber at the cross; I first called it the ultimate but I later found out that that actually is the penultimate, not the really ultimate example of the injustice of grace. The robber at the cross, (we know the story very well) Luke 23: 40-43; his victims, (you know he was a robber, maybe armed robber), I’m sure his victims must have cried at the injustice of his redemption at the last minute, the one that Jesus Christ said you will meet me in Paradise today because he repented. He was about to die, condemned, in fact, he was already on the cross but he repented at that last minute and the symbol of grace forgave him, praise God!
That is the way of grace, that is the way of Jesus, that is grace personified. How sad that so many Christians live out their lives with the attitude of the elder brother (the elder brother in the story of the prodigal son); God invites us to wash away our anger and pride, our fear and our envy, our guilt and shame in the pure stream of His forgiveness; He invites us (you and me) in the words of Luke 15:6 to rejoice with Him over our new brother or sister in Christ. Luke 15:6, it says rejoice with me over this new brother that came to Christ. When we share our Father’s delight in the lost being saved, we find that our inner anger, our mixed emotions are swallowed up in the joy of the kingdom of God.
Let me just make this one even a bit more practical too; at the altar call today, one or two people came to the altar and you see one of them, somebody that had robbed you in one chance before in church; some of us will feel glad, some of us would say ha, this one? The last thing I know was he was in cell in Kirikiri, how did he come out here, praise God! We are like that, the elder brother syndrome.
The ultimate injustice of grace was sending Jesus to the world as a man to die for the sin of men, John 3:16; God’s love for humankind extends beyond His chosen people to lost people everywhere; Jesus sent forth His disciples into the entire world to preach the gospel and make disciples of all nation, that is love at work. In the Book of Jonah, God’s love for Nineveh was the love of the Creator for His creatures – human and animal alike, even though the Ninevites were ungodly people, God’s compassion and love reached out to them for salvation; His love goes beyond any human love; Romans 5:8 says ‘while we are yet sinners, Christ died for us; while we are yet sinners, the grace of God is unfathomable.
As I begin to close this morning, the Book of Jonah illustrates the biblical truth that God does not desire anyone to perish but desires all people to come to repentance, to forgiveness and to eternal life.
During a drought, Isaac dug wells and enemies moved in and claimed them, we can see the story in Genesis 26: from verse 2; it was not fair, but instead of retaliating or fighting back, Isaac moved on and dug new wells and God blessed him greatly, Genesis 26:22, he dug to Rehoboth, he found fruitfulness in the land.
The truth is, God will fill the emptiness in your life, (in my life) when I forgive, (when you forgive) those who hurt us. The fact is that as we are in this world with other imperfect humans, they will hurt us; we live in this world with imperfect human beings, you are even imperfect as well, so they will hurt you; as you are hurting people too, people will hurt you, there’s no way to avoid it, the only way to avoid is maybe stay inside your room and not go out, if you go out you will meet people and people you meet especially in this Lagos, before you drive from here to that third gate, somebody would have annoyed you; so people will annoy you and when the hurt they give you goes deep, it can be hard to forgive; does that mean we should go around pretending that nothing is wrong so that we can pretend that we are gracious and deny how we feel? No, the first step towards healing is acknowledging your feeling, praise God! Acknowledge that you’re angry, you are hurt, praise God!
At times when people drive in a funny way, like people drive in Lagos, I say things that I should not say and most of the time the Holy Spirit would just caution me and say that is wrong, I’d say Father, I’m sorry I said that; I’m the only one in the car, nobody heard me say it but the Spirit will caution me and I’d say I’m sorry God, I just said stupid man, silly, look at his head and then He will caution me and I’d say I’m sorry I said that, the man did not hear me, nobody was in the car, I’m the only one inside the car and I’d say sorry to God because He’s the One cautioning me and it’s about God, not about that person, praise the Lord!
Acknowledge your feeling; Bible says pray for those who mistreat you, Luke 6:28, when you do that, something unexpected happens: your heart softens and you start seeing the offender through God’s eyes instead of your own raw emotion, and that’s what happens to me too when I get the caution and I don’t look at the man that has just crossed me wrong with an evil eyes again, not to talk of seeking to now cross him too, you feel a bit pacified.
But somebody will say but I don’t feel like forgiving him, you don’t know what he did to me, those guys raped people in our compound and you say I should forgive, I’m not going to forgive a rapist, we feel like that, praise God! That is the third step; first step, acknowledge you feel hurt; second step, pray for the person; third step, acknowledge your unwillingness to forgive and ask God for the grace to do that.
I don’t feel like forgiving this person, tell God, I cannot forgive a rapist, I cannot forgive a kidnapper, tell God, it’s okay and ask Him to make you willing to forgive. Jeremiah 31:18 says ‘turn thou me, and I shall be turned’; that means God turn me and I shall be turned, make me forgive; that is the way to practice graciousness. You may say well, you don’t know these people, they will keep offending me if I forgive them, why is grace so unjust? That’s what we always say, why should I forgive a kidnapper? Why should I forgive a rapist? Why should I forgive that horrible boss that sacked me from the office, that made me lose my whatever I lost? Why should I forgive him? Why is grace so unjust?
God says I will pay them back, Romans 12:19, never take revenge, allow God to fight for you, forgive and move on. Shall we bow our heads as we pray this morning; you are the judge, decide whether grace is unjust or not this morning: the prodigal son was welcomed back by a gracious father; the heavenly Father is a gracious Father, He’s waiting patiently for you to turn around and come back home today.
While others are praying and asking God for grace – to be the symbol of grace, to be like Christ, those of us who don’t even know this grace, you’ve never had an encounter with this symbol of grace, Jesus Christ, the call to you is like the call to that prodigal; you are not at home, you’ve left home, you don’t even know home, come to Jesus today, He’s waiting patiently, He’s the heavenly Father waiting for you. You want to know this Jesus we are talking about; we’ve been talking about symbol of grace, the One who can forgive every sin, every shortcoming, can you just embrace grace today, don’t reject grace this morning; maybe that’s why you are here, 22nd of October 2023 for this encounter with Jesus Christ, let’s just pray together for just a minute or two before we close this service.
Grace is available for you, come back home, come back sinner; Bible says draw near to God and He will draw near to you, you need to draw first and then He’ll draw to you; He’s willing to save you no matter how far you’ve gone, no matter where you are coming from, He’s willing to save you, come home sinner, grace awaits you, don’t take grace for granted this morning, accept grace.
And those of us who are still praying, ask for God to give me that heart of forgiveness, to forgive that person that I find so hard to forgive. Maybe you are just person like me too, you have some people that are just horrible people, I can’t just forgive him, ask for grace to forgive them; maybe that’s why you are also here today so that God can deal with that issue in your life to just release, to let grace take charge.
Heavenly Father, we thank You this day; we return glory, we return praise and honor to Your name; we are saved by grace, thank You for Your grace, thank You for amazing grace; thank You for the charming grace, harmonious to the ear, thank You oh Lord for grace. We pray oh Lord that as we go out of here this morning, we will live the graceful life, the life that is according to the righteous will of God. It is not in our power to save ourselves; not by power, not by might but by Your grace oh Lord; thank You for heavenly favor; thank You for divine grace, blessed be Your name almighty Father, in Jesus wonderful, precious name we have prayed.
