Common Grace

Genesis 8: 20-22 et al

 

 

          I spent two years getting up every morning at 5AM to report to my ship’s captain that all the ship’s guns were ready and able to fire. He believed in being ready. The great by-product of those daily reports was that since I was already up, I would go outside to the forecastle (pronounced foc’sle). The forecastle is the bow or front of the ship. Particularly at sea, it was my time with God to start the day. It never failed to register with me that the ocean was so much bigger and more powerful than even that big ship. I could feel God’s presence in all that vastness. This week, Cindy and I took a few days to go to the beach. The night we got there, we went out on the pier and enjoyed the full moon coming up. As we stood at the end of the pier, I remarked to her that it reminded me of all those days at sea, looking out at a world of ocean.

          Do you ever wonder what stops that ocean from coming all the way to your front door? What stops the volcanoes of the world from blowing sky high? What stops cyclones and tornadoes and tsunamis and windstorms? What stops epidemics and plagues? What stops war?

          God does.

          Think of the tides. Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravitational forces exerted by the Moon and the Sun and the rotation of the Earth. Isaac Newton discovered this about 300 years ago. Newton said that every object exerts a pull on every other object. The moon pulls on Earth, causing water to move toward it. The effect is a high tide. Since the moon rotates around the earth and turns on its own axis, tides have more and less gravitational pull. Newton knew a lot about this stuff, for he also provided us with his theory of gravity, a fairly significant scientific concept.

          This might be a good time to be reminded of all the science we now have at our disposal. We should take notice that when we give credit to these various scientists throughout history, we are paying homage to the men and women who discovered something about the universe we live in. Newton discovered gravity. Franklin discovered electricity. Marie Curie discovered radioactivity, Jonathan Salk a vaccine for polio, Christopher Columbus, or Leif Erikson to be more accurate, the new world. All of them were discoverers.  They discovered something already in existence. Nothing on this planet has ever been made from nothing by man. Only God can do that.

          When God decided to create, the year was…oh that’s right…there was no year. There was no earth. There was only chaos. God formed it all from the nothing.  The earth had no form. It was not. God made it from scratch.

          The creation story is what it sounds like. It is a story of God creating. For five God days, he created and found it good. On Day 6, God created mankind. God created man and woman and gave them dominion over all the earth. He created mankind in his image (literally “our” image--as in Trinity). This passage and those in Genesis 5:1 and 9:6 refer to that fact. This has been called the Imago Dei, the image of God.  The Bible says Day 6 was very good.

         As you know, we no longer live in Eden. Actually, we were evicted in the time of Adam. Adam and Eve were evicted from the garden. God cursed the serpent who tempted them and the ground from which they drew their crops. And yet, we are still here.

          Not too long afterward, Adam and Eve were blessed with children. The first two were Cain, a man of the field, and Abel, a herdsman. You will remember that Cain, in a fit of temper and rage, murdered his brother Abel. He was banished. He carried a mark that protected him from the violence or punishment of others. He was allowed to live out his life. He murdered his brother. And yet, we are still here.

          As the story of mankind goes forward in Genesis, the worst is yet to come. Genesis 6 finds God declaring that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, so great that God decided to blot out man from the earth. Only Noah was righteous and only Noah and his family were saved in an ark carrying all the earth’s animals for re-population. The earth was destroyed by flood. And yet, we are still here. How can all that evil and disobedience take place and find mankind still alive?

          There are those who would argue that grace is the province of Jesus, that we were only introduced to God’s grace when Jesus died on the cross. Is that grace? Of course, it is. It is by grace alone that we are saved through faith, a faith revealed to us by the Holy Spirit. Of that there is no doubt. But no grace in the Old Testament? Without the common grace extended to mankind by God in the days before the coming of Christ, there would have been no world for Christ to enter.

          Common Grace is the term coined to indicate the God-given grace to all mankind. It is not just for believers. It is not just for the elect. It is for all. It is God’s adorning of Adam and Eve with the skins of animals when they found themselves in sin and disobedience and apart from God. It is the rehabilitation of Cain in allowing him to live, to raise a family, to build a city. It is the saving of a remnant family and animals with which to re-populate the earth. It is Common Grace, grace common to all.

          While preparing for this message, I came across an author who will remain unnamed, who espoused that there is no grace in the Old Testament, that the God of the Old Testament is a God of justice and judgment, that he hates sin and punishes it, that there is no grace until Jesus. I’ll give the fellow this much. He could be right, but only in this sense. Jesus was there is the beginning. Jesus was never not, any more than God. Even Genesis 1 says that we shall make man in our image.

          How do the mountains not come crashing down on us, or the oceans drown us in our own homes? God cares. He cares even if we don’t. Isaiah 45: 4 tells us that “For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by name. I name you though you do not know me.” Why do the seasons continue to come and go, planting and harvest abound? Why does the world continue to work with all the evil that seems to be present? Because God gives us all Common Grace. In the 8^th chapter of Genesis, God covenants with Noah that “while the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

          Grace is a big term. The Bible doesn’t talk about common grace or special grace. Those are man-made terms. The Bible just talks about grace. Don’t worry about remembering what the terms are. but never forget that God has not left the building. He loves his creation. He allows us great leeway in the evils we bring on ourselves, but he never leaves us. Elihu’s speech in Chapter 34 of the book of Job reminds us of what could be: “If he should set his heart to it (says Elihu of God) and gather to himself his spirt and his breath, all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust.” But God has not so set his heart. Instead, he sends Common Grace to mankind every day.

          It’s Homecoming for this church. Someday it will be homecoming for Jesus. Until that day, we have kind and unswerving protection of God throughout the ages. He has promised he will not leave. For us as Christians, we also have the Special Grace of the New Covenant in Jesus Christ.  “And God so loved the world…”  You know the rest. That message is for another day. But today, let’s thank God for Common Grace.