A Most Pleasant Surprise

 

As part of my usual practice on a Sunday morning I go to our church building and go through the worship service. I speak the entire liturgy out loud. I hook up my computer and projector and sing through each song. I preach the sermon aloud to an empty sanctuary. I do this to make sure I am ready for leading God’s people in worship later in the morning. Going through the entire service early prevents a wide variety of surprises during our actual time of worship, like stumbling over a phrase that I didn’t expect. Going over the service early can also be surprising in ways that are good. It was one of these that happened last Sunday.

Our closing song last Sunday was “Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder.” The words were written by John Newton, many years ago, and more recently they were set to music by Laura Taylor. As I was watching the video and singing along these particular words really struck me:

“When through grace in Christ our trust is, justice smiles and asks no more”

After finishing the song I went back and pondered those words, and the powerful way they show the truth of the good news of Jesus Christ. When our trust is in Jesus, the demands of God’s justice regarding our sin have been satisfied, completely. Paul says it this way in Romans 8:1:

“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

God’s justice towards human sin is a very real thing, but our faith, our trust in what Jesus gave on our behalf satisfies it completely. End of story. In God’s providence our congregation was also sharing the Lord’s Supper as part of our worship and so then, in the seemingly inconsequential elements of a wafer and bit of juice, we were reminded that the sacrifice of our Lord’s life was a very real thing, and that we don’t have to live with any doubts about the effectiveness of what He did or the promises that come to us by faith in Him.

The routine task of walking through a worship service led me to a most pleasant surprise in the way it highlighted God’s grace. It was my joy to share that insight as we worshipped, and with you today.

 

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.