On August 22, 1741, a man named Charles Jennens delivered a collection of Bible verses to a composer-friend of his, George Handel. “Can you make an entertainment out of it?” he asked. Author Hertha Pauli recorded the answer:
As soon as Jennens had left, the Master started reading the text he had received. The words, Handel noticed, were all taken from scriptures; but in arranging the quotations, the Master felt, Jennens had outdone himself. The words seemed to sing by themselves.
Handel started writing at once. He wrote so fast that the ink had scarcely dried on one page before he started another. The score was covered with splotches, but the master did not notice them. He forgot the whole world around him.
“Whether I was in my body or out of my body as I wrote The Messiah,” Handel said later, “I know not.”
For twenty-four days he remained in the little front room on the first floor of his house near Hanover Square in London, setting down thousands of notes to Jennens biblical excerpts. At regular intervals Handel’s servant brought him food, but the Master left it untouched.
Sometimes the servant stood in silent wonder as the Master’s tears fell on a page mingled with the ink while he penned his notes. And once the servant found the Master sobbing with emotion. He had just finished the “Hallelujah Chorus.”
“I thought I saw all Heaven before me,” Handel told his choir boys, “and the great God himself!”
Handel’s Messiah has enraptured audiences for over 250 years and is considered Handel’s finest work. But what if his masterpiece had never been published? What if the composer had rolled up his composition and locked it in a cabinet, shutting away all of the melodies and lyrics in his own mind and sharing them with no one? If he had, one of music history’s greatest achievements would have been lost.
Similar to Handel’s Messiah, each one of us is an inspired creation. God has inscribed His symphony of grace on our hearts like notes on a musical score. And like an artistic genius whose joy is complete when his work is shared, our Composer intends His work of art to be heard…and seen.
This passage of scripture is the gospel in a nutshell. It is the most powerful summary of the nature of salvation in scripture. These verses elaborate on God’s grace at work in the lives of His people, and explain how His grace will work through His people to magnify His greatness, grace, and glory.
EPHESIANS 2:8-10 (NKJV)
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and not that of yourselves; it
is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His
workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared
beforehand that we should walk in them.
Verse 8 expresses the dynamics of our salvation. Paul is stressing the fact that we had nothing to do with our salvation. It was God’s action and decision alone. It is not of human works. Grace is scripturally defined as “unmerited favor; favor shown to the undeserving”; and it has reference to forgiveness of sin and the riches which Christ brings; the means by which we are saved.
Romans 11:6(NASB)
But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is
no longer grace.
Grace was both the means and the motive through which God saved us. He initiated it, He implemented it, and maybe MOST IMPORTANTLY . . . He receives all the glory for it!
Faith is not the mere intellectual reception of truth, nor is it belief alone. True faith is belief plus trust. It is the hand that lays hold of the gift that God presents to us. If there is no faith, there is no salvation. No one has sins forgiven, no one goes to heaven, no one has peace until there is faith in Jesus Christ.
Every person lives by faith. Life is a constant series of acts of faith. No human being, no matter how skeptical and self reliant, could live a day without exercising faith. Faith is nothing that we do in our own power. God gives the gift of faith to all who believe and take hold of the message of the gospel.
Romans 10:17(NASB)
So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.
When we accept the finished work of Christ on our behalf, we act by the faith supplied by God’s grace, and we experience salvation.
Pastoral Brothers in Christ . . . God charges ALL of us with the solemn responsibility to preach these truths; to live this out daily for our flock to see and to teach others within the fold, so they may then teach the next generation.
Let us NOT fail in obeying this charge from the One Who granted these great and precious truths to us . . . we TRULY ARE “stewards of the mysteries of God”! (1 Corinthians 4:1b)
0 comments:
Post a Comment