I Am Having A Bad Day (PAL)

I am having a bad day. [My friend Abraham Lincoln of Boston UBF gave the sermon at West Loop today with this title.] What do you do when you have a bad day? When Adam had a bad day he blamed his wife (Gen 3:12). When Cain had a bad day he committed fratricide (Gen 4:8). When Abram had a bad day, he complained about his childlessness (Gen 15:2-4). When the older son had a bad day, he angrily accused his gracious father for being unfair (Lk 15:29-30).

God (always) comes in grace. When they each had a bad day, God came to them in grace. God gave Adam a chance to come clean (Gen 3:9). God gently asked Cain why he was upset (Gen 4:6-7). God promised Abram a great reward (Gen 15:1). The father (who represents God) said tenderly to his son, "My son, you are always with me and everything I have is yours" (Lk 15:31). What a marvelous grace it is to be told by God, "Everything I have is yours!"

Grace is "God loves you regardless." God loves us anyway. God simply would like us to come to him with brutal honesty about ourselves. The honest to goodness truth about ourselves is that we cannot and we can never fix ourselves up no matter how much we work on ourselves.

Two types of Christians. One Christian thinks he is basically very good and always doing good and definitely better than others (Lk 18:11-12). But another Christian thinks that no matter what he does he always messes up (Lk 18:13). The first Christian is very good, but he is like a Pharisee who rejects grace because he thinks he is doing good and better than others. Only the second Christian who is very bad knows what grace is (Lk 18:14).

Why do we reject grace? We (the younger son) reject grace because we are not satisfied with the father's love. We (the older son) reject grace because we think that we need to always do something to satisfy the father. They did not know that the father's love for them was always there for them unconditionally.

The whole Bible is about grace; it is about the God of grace.