Marcus Mecum - Grace Is King
I wanna talk to you about «Grace is king» for a few moments. This is a story about a woman by the name of Rizpah. She has seven sons that are very clearly victims of past sins and past mistakes. King Saul, their father had become king over Israel, and God had already made an arrangement with the Gibeonites that they were to be at peace. And Saul, in his zeal, the Bible says, kind of crossed the line and annihilated the Gibeonites. And years went by, and it appeared like maybe the Gibeonites had let it go, like they had forgotten. But eventually, the past came looking for revenge. Eventually, the past said, «We want our payback». The Gibeonites built some gallows. They tied together seven nooses for the seven sons of Rizpah. And there their bodies were hanging for five months.
Five months, those lifeless bodies are hanging there. But Rizpah, their mom, never leaves their side. Took a sackcloth, laid it out on a nearby rock, rain or shine. It didn’t matter what the temperature was, what the heat of the day or what the cool temperatures of night were. She never left their side. When buzzards would circle, she would fight the buzzards off. When beast of the field would try to come and rip those bodies down from those gallows, she would fight the beast off. And David hears about Rizpah, hears about how she’s fighting for her sons, and he intervenes. And his instructions were, «I want you to take those bodies down, loose that noose, take the bones down and give them a proper burial».
I love this old testament story because it’s a great picture of how dangerous your past can be. We all have a past, we all have a history. Some of our histories is worse than others. But the past, whether it was a terrible, horrific, horrible past, or maybe you just dabbled here and there, a past has a way of hanging on. It has a way of refusing to let go. It has a way of saying, «I’ll let you go so far, but I’m never far behind you». It just nips at the heels in your life. Matthew 9:36, Jesus saw the crowds and he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. The word harassed in the Greek dictionary means demons that were born from past wrongs and they’re sent to hound and harass you.
You try to get up and those demons from your past wrongdoings are there to pull you back down. You get back up and those demons from your past grab you and they pull you back down. And every time you try to get up, it’s there to pull you back. This happens so much that you get exhausted and you become weary from even the trying to get back up. So, the past here in the story that we read in many ways is like that noose. You try to break free from it and it tightens more and more. You try to get away from it, and it seems to get even a greater grip on you. Proverbs 3:22 says that you are to allow grace to be around your neck.
The word neck in Hebrew is our English word for trachea. It means to be open or vulnerable. It comes from the idea that back in the day when the famous gladiators would get in Rome’s great coliseums, and they would fight to the death, once the greater, stronger gladiator had overcome his opponent, he would disarm him, take his helmet off, take the sword, put it to his throat, and then he would look up and wait for the king to either give a thumbs up or a thumbs down to determine its fate. The point is, that defeated, weak, vulnerable moment is where we get the word trachea or neck from.
And the Bible says you are to allow grace to be around your neck. You’re to allow grace to be there in your most vulnerable, weak moments. You’re to look at your life, and when you feel defeated, and weak, and vulnerable, and hopeless, and overwhelmed, you have to be reminded that you’re not down and out and on your own. That if you’ll look up a little bit, you can be reminded that grace sits on the throne, that grace is king, and that grace always gives you a thumbs up. That grace has the final say. Your weakness doesn’t have the final say. Your past doesn’t have the final say. Where you been doesn’t have the final say. God, who is our king, gives you a thumbs up. And if God be for you, who and what can be against you?
And so, these seven sons had seven nooses that were made for each one. The first noose I want us to look at is the noose of shame. Mephibosheth means the end of shame, the one who destroys shame. So, when you begin to serve God, when you give your life to Jesus Christ, not only does he forgive your sin, but he destroys your shame. But the enemy has a way of just bringing shame back into our life. You see, shame is not I feel bad for what I’ve done, it’s I feel bad for who I am. It’s not I made a mistake, it’s I am a mistake. It attaches itself to your identity. It convinces you that you… Okay, you’re serving God now, but you still got all of this history, all of that past that really defines you more than God’s unmerited, undeserved divine enablement in your life.
It’s an amazing thing how shame works. And shame, if you don’t catch it, produces pain. And all pain needs to be medicated. For example, you grow up in an alcoholic home and you have shame because of growing up in that type of an environment. Well, that shame produces pain. So now you’re a teenager and you have to medicate the pain of the shame of growing up with an alcoholic father or whatever it was. Now what you do is you medicate that pain by taking a drink. And now you have shame because of the choice you made to medicate the pain of the shame of the environment that you’re raised in. And guess what? That produces more pain.
So, you take another drink, and you take another drink, and before you know it, every night you’re taking a drink, and you’re in the cycle of addiction. But really, you’re just medicating the pain of the shame that you grew up in an alcoholic family. We could go into so many different areas of our life, but shame insists you are powerless. Yes, God can forgive me, but can I forgive me? Jesus, on the cross took our sin and our shame. One of the evidences that you are free is not just that you say, «God, you forgiven me of my sin». It’s you look at your life and you have no shame. You were there, you lived it, you did it. You were there. But God has freed you from the shame of that. God has revealed to you that grace is king, shame is not king. But the enemy, even though you’re saved, has a way of getting that noose of shame around your neck. And he tightens that noose, and he tightens that noose.
Luke 22: 64. I read this this week, and I’d never seen it before, and I ask you to forgive me for never seeing this detail in the crucifixion story. It’s not a big detail, but because it was a new detail, it spoke to me so much about the grace of God. And it says that, «Having blindfolded Jesus,» everybody say «Blindfolded». I never saw it. I never saw that before Jesus went to the cross, they blindfolded him. And Jesus, the Bible says, «They struck him on the face and ask him, 'prophesy! Who is the one who struck you'»?
So, we have a God, as part of the crucifixion story, who chose to be blindfolded. He chose to not see some things. And that’s what grace is. Grace is the faculty where God has made the choice to not know some things that you know. That’s why the Bible says he takes your sin and he throws it into the sea of forgetfulness to remember it no more. You remember, other people remember, but God chose to be blindfolded. God chose to not see it or know it. He created a faculty in his character to say, «I remember it no more». Not, «I remember, but I’m not bringing it up». No, he remembers no more. God created in who he is a faculty to forget. So not only are you atoned, not only, so atonement means God’s covered you.
Okay, let me teach you for a second. So he who knew no sin became sin that we might become the righteousness of God. So, when God looks at you, he sees Jesus. That’s what he sees. The atonement is the covering. Standing between you and God is that atonement. That’s Jesus. So, God doesn’t see you, he sees Jesus. Got it? Because if he saw you, you’d fall over and die. But because you have sin and all sin has to be judged, the wages of sin is death. So now, your sin, you’re saying, «Well, what happened to my sin»? You look at Jesus. Your sin was judged. Your sin died on the cross. That’s what put Jesus to death. Not the Jews, not the Romans. Your sin killed the son of God. And it was judged.
So, all the anger, all the wrath of God was poured out on Jesus on the cross, so all his love could be poured out on you. That’s the atonement. He who knew no sin became sin, that we might become righteous or the right standing with God. We have right standing with God, not by what you earn or what you deserve, because grace, atonement has covered you. So there’s the grace that covers you, but there’s also the grace that covered God’s eyes. He’s blindfolded. He made the choice to not remember.
So, you can lift your hands in confidence in God’s house. You can come to his great throne of grace in your time of need boldly. How do you do it? Because he don’t see what you see. I can bring up Jordan’s sin. I know a few of them. He could probably bring up my sin. He’s probably got some. He works for me, so he might keep it quiet for a little bit till I make him mad. But God doesn’t see us how we see each other. You and I are forgiven, which means shame, the noose of shame should be broken from your life.
The only way you don’t walk around in shame is if you know grace is king. If you know that there you are defeated, vulnerable, weak, the sword of judgment on your throat. But if you’ll look up, you’ll see God is there to give you a thumbs up. Grace has determined your fate. God’s mercy has determined your fate. God’s love has determined your fate. Your performance, if that’s what it was, up to your fate is you’re defeated, you’re down, thumbs down. But if grace is on the throne, then grace always says to you and i, «I’m king, and I’m not going to allow your past, your weakness, your vulnerable moments to have the final say».
Number two, it was the noose that was made for armoni. I wanna call this one the noose of being normal. Armoni means belong to a palace. It speaks of Royalty and worth and value to God. It speaks of your potential. The Bible says in 1 Peter 2:9 that, «You are a chosen generation, a Royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own special people». And what are you to do? You are to show forth praises to him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. So, I’m not a subject, I’m a son. I’m not a slave, I’m a friend. The second you give your life to Christ, guess what happens? You become uncommon. A normal life is over for you. The idea of living a normal life is gone from this point on.
Every single one of us have to realize that you and i, when God saved us, we got completely delivered from normal. You don’t live a common life, you don’t think common thoughts, you don’t make common decisions, you don’t make common relationships, you don’t live a normal life. Everything I do, everything I say, everywhere I go, I represent the king now. So that’s why I dream uncommon dreams. That’s why I believe for uncommon things. That’s why we pray in a big way, believe in a big way, love in a big way, because we’re not going to allow the noose of normal to rob us of what God’s called us to do. All of us have voices in our life that want to convince us some way that just stay normal, conversations that cause you to wanna stay small, shrink back, things that make you feel inferior, things that make you feel inadequate.
A few years ago, I was having a lunch, Evan and I were having a lunch with some people that we work with as a church, and one of the people we’d never met before. And we’re talking about how we’re gonna open a location in Cincinnati, this is before we had opened the one in Cincinnati. This is, which would’ve been our first location outside of Florence. And in this conversation, we start talking about what we’re gonna do. And this person that we didn’t know speaks up. He starts saying, «You guys shouldn’t do that. I’ve lived here my whole life». He starts naming all the boards that he’s on with all these gazillionaires. And he says, «You’ll never make it here. You’ll fail. You don’t have a chance, you don’t have a shot. That’s that Kentucky stuff. That don’t work over here».
And I looked across the table and I said, «You do what you do, and I do what I do». And I told him, «I remember when someone just like you sat across the table and told me I couldn’t do what we’ve done there. And I looked across the table and told them the same thing I’m gonna tell you. And that is God does what he wants to do with who he wants to do it. And he don’t talk to you about it, and he don’t talk to me about it. And the same God that’s done what he’s done there in Florence, can do it anywhere he wants to do it. And a little 50 foot river in no way is gonna build a wall and limit what God can do».
And so, I know it’s not right, God’s gonna have to help me. And you’re gonna have to understand, I still got some flesh. But the second we opened that building, I took a picture of it and sent it to the guy and said, «Hey, send this to your friend». We just bought that land in Cincinnati, took a picture of it. I said, «Hey, send this one to your friend». When we grand opened over there, you don’t have to be excited about, and it’s not me bragging about me, it’s me saying, «I know the God I serve. And he did not save me to be normal».
And he didn’t save you to be normal. He didn’t save, ordinary is gone and over. It’s a noose. And God’s people should be set free from the noose of normal. I’m gonna preach until you believe it. In those conversations like that that I have, there’s conversations like that that you have. And by the way, I didn’t need his help to believe I couldn’t do it. Because the things I say at myself when I’m having lunch with myself are way worse than what he says. But you’ve gotta believe that grace is king. Everything God’s done here as a result of grace. Not talent, not gifting, not intellect, not wisdom. Grace has done it. The grace of God has built this church. The grace of God is building this church. Yeah, it takes some hard work. Yeah, it takes some effort from God’s people. But at the end of the day, grace is king in Jesus' name.