March 3, 2025 • 26 mins
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
If you think grace and mercy are just two words
for the same thing, get ready to have your thinking
changed profoundly. Today on turning Point, doctor David Jeremiah explains
the difference between the two terms and why the difference
is so important to your spiritual life. From Captured by Grace.
Here's David to introduce the conclusion of his message, the
(00:28):
captivating presence of Grace.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
And thank you so much for joining us for a
turning point. Today, we are studying a series of lessons
called Captured by Grace. These lessons come from the Book
of Romans, from the life of Paul, and from the
writing of the wonderful hymn Amazing Grace. Like you, I
have been captivated by the presence of that song in
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so many places, places you had never expected to be.
In the funerals of important people who may not even
be Christians, in military settings. I've seen it all over
the place. I remember hearing an incredible presentation of it
in the Rose Bowl that had people standing on their
(01:15):
feet with their hands up in the air. Yes, Amazing
Grace is one of the great hymns. In fact, it's
been recorded more than any other piece of music in history,
not just Christian music, all music. It's the most recorded
piece of music in the history of the world, and
just about every artist has a rendition of amazing grace. Well,
(01:38):
behind that song is an incredible story, and that's what
we're talking about here on Turning Point, and we'll continue
that story today in part two of the Captivating Presence
of Grace? Friends? Are you receiving Turning Points Magazine? Every month?
I get that magazine put on my desk as soon
as it is finished, and I am always amazed at
the beauty of the magazine, the incredible adornment of each page,
(02:01):
and all the information that's there, including the devotional material
for every day of the week Monday through Friday, and
one for each weekend. This magazine is available to anyone
who would like to receive it. All you have to
do is request it. So why don't you get your
note in the mail today and ask for your copy
of Turning Points Magazine to be sent to your home,
(02:23):
or if you prefer, we can download all of the
devotional content right into your email box and you can
go there every morning and find fresh bread for your soul.
That would be a wonderful opportunity for many of you
who travel, and we hope you'll take us up on
that offer. Let's get back to our discussion of the
captivating presence of grace. Here's part two.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
The song that he wrote, Amazing Grace, was written by
him in seventeen seventy three, and it was written like
a lot of songs were written by John Newton. And
I cannot quite fathom this, but when John Newton would
preach sermon, he would often write a hymn to go
along with it. So he'd spend all week preparing a sermon,
and then he'd spend as much time preparing a him.
(03:07):
So many of the hymns that he wrote were written
to go along with a sermon that he preached. The
hymn Amazing Grace was written to go along with a sermon.
When you first read the text and read the sermon,
you wonder where did amazing Grace.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Come out of this?
Speaker 3 (03:21):
On New Year's Day in January of seventeen seventy three,
John Newton presented Amazing Grace for the first time as
he was getting ready to preach a message on First Chronicles,
chapter seventeen. Now I'm going to read this passage for
you and you probably wonder, as I did when I
first read it, where is amazing grace in this passage?
Speaker 4 (03:42):
Here's what it says.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Then King David went in and sat before the Lord,
and he said, who am i, oh Lord? And what
is my house? That you have brought me thus far?
And yet this was a small thing in your sight,
Oh God. And you've also spoken to your servant's house
for a great while to come, and have regarded me
according to the rank of a man of high degree,
O Lord God. And what John Newton preached about in
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his sermon, because I read his sermon, he preached that
he was like David, that just as God had been
so good to David's house, giving him the opportunity to
be the father of Solomon and ultimately the great kingdom
that came out of his loins, in the same way
God had blessed John Newton and given him the opportunity,
after all that he had done to violate the grace
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of God, to finally receive God's grace and ultimately become
a preacher of the grace and a writer of hymns. Well,
he wrote that hymn amazing Grace. But if you had
seen that him the day he wrote it. You would
probably not have recognized it because it looks a lot
different now than it did then. Do you know that
when they would write hymns back in John Newton's day,
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they would write the words and then they go try
to find a tune that fit the words. They didn't
always write the music to go with the words. So
they would find the words, they'd find a tune that
had the metric that went with the words.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
And then they'd marry them together.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Believe it or not, Amazing Grace had twenty different tunes
before it finally settled on the one that we now sing,
and the melody that we now sing Amazing Grace is
a melody called New Britain. It was married to the
words of John Newton in eighteen twenty nine, that long
after seventeen seventy three when it was written, and even
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the name of the song wasn't Amazing Grace, Faith, Review
and Expectation.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Now doesn't that light your fire?
Speaker 3 (05:25):
I have a feeling if that hadn't changed the name, we
might now be having this sermon today.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
But that's what it was originally called.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
There were three additional verses that Newton wrote to this
hymn that we almost never sing, and probably most of
you have never even heard. There's another verse that is
a part of it that John Newton didn't write.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
In fact, John Newton.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Never even heard of this verse because it was written
after he died. The last verse, when we've been there
ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we've no
less to sing God's praise. Then when we first begun,
those words were put together with this hymn by a
man named Edwin o'thello Excel. He was a prolific hymn writer,
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and he put the three verses that we do sing
and the last verse together.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
The last verse he.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Found in Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin,
and he pulled it out of that writing and married
that with the first three verses. And it has become
amazing grace as we know it today. It's an amazing
story when you think of it, well through the nineteenth century,
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amazing grace. This sort of was one of the many
songs that had been written. If you had an old
hymn book, the only hymn book which was put together
by William Cooper and John Newton. You would maybe have
found it there, but you wouldn't have thought anything was
special about it. Believe it or not, Amazing Grace did
not become what it is today until almost two hundred
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years later. It was written in seventeen seventy three, and
then something happened in nineteen seventy that catapulted it into
the mainstream of life.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
The watershed event.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Was the a cappella single released by Judy Collins in
December of nineteen seventy. In January of nineteen seventy one,
Amazing Grace was number one in Great Britain and number
one in the United States.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
Two hundred years after.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
It was cobbled together in the way that I just
told you, did you ever think about the fact that
sometimes God just anoints something that he just says, I'm
going to bless that.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
Well, he has blessed this hymn.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Since then, Amazing Grace has been heard on the worldwide
TV coverage.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
Of the Olympic Games.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
It was rendered three times during the inauguration ceremonies of
George W. Bush and what happened in two thousand and
one on nine to eleven, the Amazing Grace him was
heard all over this country. I remember being at home
late one night and watching the service that was in
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the National Cathedral in Washington and seeing Amazing Grace it
was presented honoring the victims of nine to eleven. Our
nation paused in awe and profound silence, and we listened
to amazing Grace. Well, in my study for this, I
got enamored with what's happened to amazing Grace since nineteen
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seventy So I thought, I wonder how many people have
recorded it, how many renditions of it there are. So,
with the help of some of my younger technical friends,
here's what I found.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
An amazing thing.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
We scrolled down through the website and we got to
the bottom of it, and we found out that there
are three thousand, eight hundred and thirty two renditions of
Amazing Grace. Saint Augustine used to say that God never
pours his grace into anything other than empty hands. In
other words, God will never give you grace if you're
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full of yourself. And if ever there was a man
who was ready to receive the grace of God, it
was John Newton. I'm going to tell you a little
bit about him, because we're going to be thinking about
his hymn. I'm not going to take a lot of
time later on to go into these details, but just
let me tell you, kind of in a cursory way,
the story of John Newton, so you're up to speed
with it. John Newton was born as an only child
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in seventeen twenty five on the twenty fourth of July.
His father was a commander, a seat commander, and a
merchant seaman. For all intents and purposes, John's father was
an absentee dad. He hardly ever saw him because his
dad was always out to see. His mother, whose name
was Elizabeth, was a godly woman, and she devoted herself
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to her young son's spiritual training. She taught him to read,
to read the scriptures, to memorize hymns. She took him
to an independent chapel that was near the Tower of London.
At a time when only one percent of all the
people in England went to any other church except the
Church of England, which was an Anglican church. John Newton
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was blessed to have a mother, a righteous, godly mother
like Elizabeth, but unfortunately, in July of seventeen thirty two,
just thirteen days before his seventh birthday, his mother died
with tuberculosis. His father quickly remarried, and, not knowing what
to do with young John, shoved him off to a
boarding school in Stratford. The discipline in that school was
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so strict that before very long John ran away. At
the age of ten, he returned home from boarding school,
and interestingly enough, his formal education was ended. He later
wrote in a journal that I have that he was
only in school for two years in all of his
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growing up days. So stop for a moment and reflect
with me. This man wrote this great hymn. He had
no formal education, He went through the loss of his mother.
He had nothing going for him except that later on,
as we shall see, the grace of God arrested him
and gave him this wonderful gift. At the age of seventeen,
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Newton had all but forgotten everything he had learned from
his mother. He began a decline into rebellion that was
so bad it lasted until he was twenty four years old.
He began to think about some of the more popular
secular ideas of religion, and then he just made a
shipwreck of his life. I don't know how to tell
you that in any other way. He wrote in his
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journal that it was his delight and habitual practice to
be wicked, and that he neither feared God nor did
he regard man. He wrote, I was a slave to
doing wickedness, and I delighted in sinfulness. After a short
time in the wartime navy, he went a wall in
search of his father, hoping that he could get a
better life.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
But he was captured, beaten.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Publicly, stripped of his midshipman rank, and he was kept
in iron shackles. Just an awful story. He finally got
off the navy ship and onto a ship going to Africa,
and his point was if he could go to Africa,
then he could be as abandoned to whatever he wanted
to do and nobody would ever know.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
He was literally running away.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
From life and from God. The next years in John
Newton's life took him to the very edge of despair.
On the island of Plantain, which was a small island
just southeast of Sierra Leone in West Africa. He lived
with a Portuguese slave trader whose African wife was overflowing
with hostility and made John Newton.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
Eat like a dog.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
She would feed him scraps from her kitchen table and
he would have to get down on the floor and
get the scraps of food to eat so he could
sustain himself. And he said he was so desperate that
he received with thanks and eagerness as the most needy
beggar would everything that she gave him. He finally escaped
from that home by going to the shoreline of the
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island and building a fire, hoping that a passing ship
would see him. And ultimately that ship did see him.
And there's a whole story of God's providence in that
part of his life. And later on he got on
that ship and then for a whole year he worked
on that ship until March of seventeen forty eight, and
in that year that ship started back to England in
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the North Atlantic. And during that journey back home, God
did something in John Newton's life. That is the reason
we sang Amazing Grace today. Well, later on John Newton
married his childhood sweetheart, a woman by the name of
Mary Catlet. He began to have a little different kind
of life. He would probably still been a sea going person,
but he started to have epileptic fits and he wasn't
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allowed to go to sea. He stayed home and for
the next ten years he cared for the needs of
his family as a surveyor of tides in Liverpool. But
during that decade in his life, John Newton began to
realize he had now become a Christian, that God was
at work in his life.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
And he thought this thought that.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Someday God might want me to be a minister, and
if I'm going to be a minister, I need to
get ready.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Well.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
He had two years of formal education. He had no
seminary to go too. He had no college, so he
began to teach himself. He studied Greek and Hebrew in Syriac,
he learned Latin, English and French, and he spent most
of his time concentrating on the scriptures. So in seventeen
sixty four he accepted the call to a pastorate of
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a Church of England located in Alney, England. He served
that church for sixteen years, and when he was fifty
four years of age, he went to the big church,
Saint Mary Church in London, where he served for twenty
seven years and preached his last sermon when he was
eighty one years old and his friends used to say, John,
you need to quit preaching.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
You're starting to lose it.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
He would say, what can the old African blasphemer stop
preaching as long as he still has breath. So he
preached right up to the end, a great encouragement to
all of us who preach anyway. That's the story of
the melody, and that's the story of the man. Now
here's what I want to really ask you to concentrate
with me on, because now I want to tell you
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the story of the message. There has to be something
beyond the melody and beyond the man that explains amazing grace,
that refuses to let it go away. For two hundred
plus years, more than a few people have asked the question.
In fact, I've even read a book by Philip Enci
entitled What's so Amazing about Grace? What is so amazing
(15:34):
about Grace? Did you know that some modern writers have
tried to shanghai this hymn from us, and they've got
some crazy idea about how it's all about greater consciousness,
about greater unity, about the inner oneness that we have
with each other. In fact, the lady who started and
catapulted it into the number one position. Judy Collins. You
(15:55):
know what she thought Amazing Grace was all about. Listen
to this, she said, it's letting go, bottoming out, seeing
the light, turning it over, trusting the universe, breathing in,
breathing out, going with the flow. Hello, did you see
that in that hymn? I didn't see that, did you?
I kind of lost that.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
You know what?
Speaker 3 (16:15):
I think it's time that sometimes we use evangelical stand
up and say, hey, look, you can't have our him.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
This is our hymn and we're going to keep it now.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
The lyrics of Amazing Grace contain the most profound outline
of God's grace you will find outside of the Bible itself.
It puts to music what the world really needs to rediscover,
the incredible truth behind the beloved love of God. Now
in the New Testament, the word grace is a very
interesting word. It is the word charras c h rs
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is how we would spell that. It's a Greek word,
and the word keras you probably would think of it.
For instance, when we say Chris Mattic. That word is
the first part of that world. Somebody who's charismatic is
a person who is gifted or if you're thinking about
it spiritually, it's someone who's involved in the spiritual gifts.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Well, chais is a gift.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
It is the undeserved favor of God. So grace is
God's gift to us. It's his undeserved favor. Somebody said,
you spell chais j e s Us, because you see,
until Jesus came and became our savior, people did not
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understand grace. Jesus is the embodiment of grace. In fact,
that's what the Book of John teaches us. In the beginning,
was the Word of God, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh
and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the
glory as of the only begodden of the Father, full
(17:53):
of grace and truth. For the law was given through Moses,
but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. And then
when you go to Ephesians chapter two, the key passage
on grace for all of us, we all understand it. Finally,
for by grace you have been saved through faith, and
that not of yourselves.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
It is the gift of God. What is grace?
Speaker 3 (18:17):
It is God's gift to us of Jesus, his son
and our savior. Let me ask you this question, is
anybody here believe they deserve that?
Speaker 4 (18:27):
I don't.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
I don't believe it for a moment. I don't deserve Jesus.
I watched the passion and one of the things I
kept thinking about after I watched the passion of the
Christ was I can't believe that God did that for me.
I know I don't deserve that. But the grace of
God is his undeserved favor. It is giving us what
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we can't earn, what we can't deserve, what we have
no right to, and God gives it to us, and
he does it primarily through his son Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
So what is go grace?
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Grace is the unsought, undeserved, unconditional love of God. Grace
is God pursuing us until He finds us and then
preserving us forever afterwards. Grace means more than we can
ever put into words, because in essence, grace is who
God is. In fact, in One Peter, we're told that
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God is the God of all grace. He's the one
who gives grace to us that we do not deserve,
not until we understand grace, will we ever appreciate it.
It's like a lot of other things, you know, until
you have knowledge, you can't appreciate it. And until you
have the understanding of grace, you will never truly appreciate it.
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And I told my wife when I was studying for this,
I said, Honey, I feel so inadequate to try to
explain to these people the beauty and grandeur of grace.
It has haunted me for days that I might not
be clear, and that I might not be able to
help us all appreciate the wonder and the greatness of
the grace of God. But one day I begin to
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see something that helped me, and I'd like to share
this with you as we come to the end of
this message. I think the way that we can really
get to understand the importance of grace is when we
began to compare it to mercy.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
Most of the time in.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
The Bible, you will discover that grace and mercy are
found together in the same passage. Some people think they
are synonyms, that they're just two different words for the
same thing, but that's not true. Once in a while
I hear somebody say, well, I'll tell you what I want.
I just want justice. You know what, I don't want justice,
I want mercy. Amen, how many of you are candidates
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for mercy? You don't need justice. You know, if we
got justice, we wouldn't be in very good shape today. Well,
let me tell you if I can, the difference between
grace and mercy. And I hope you put this in
your heart, and I hope you'll spend some special time
thinking about this.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Here it is.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
Mercy is God withholding from you what you deserve.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
Grace is God giving you what you don't deserve.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Mercy is kind of God taking care of what's there.
Grace is God giving you something that's not there, something
that goes beyond anything you can think of. And I
think most people don't understand that. They just think of
grace as God forgiving.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
No.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Grace is the gift of God through Jesus Christ. And
if you go through the Bible and you begin to
read all the stories with that in mind, you will
begin to see grace and mercy as they play off
of each other throughout the pages of the Scripture.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
Here are just a few.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Examples that I've called out of the scripture. First of all,
it kind of goes like this. Take the story of Abraham.
Mercy withholds the knife from the heart of Isaac. Grace
provides a lamb in the thicket. Mercy runs to forgive
the prodigal son. Grace throws a party with a robe
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and a ring and a fatted calf.
Speaker 4 (21:58):
Mercy bandages up.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
The wounds of the man who is beaten on the road.
Grace covers the cost of his full recovery. Mercy hears
the cry of the thief on the cross. Grace promises
paradise that very day. Mercy pays the penalty for our
sin at the cross. Grace provides the righteousness of Christ
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in its place. Mercy converts Paul on the road to Damascus.
Grace calls him to be the great Apostle. Mercy saves
John Newton out of a life of debauchery. Grace allows
him to write the greatest.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
Hymn that's ever been written.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Mercy keeps us out of hell, Grace takes us to Heaven.
And the difference between Mercy and Grace is this, Mercy
withholds from us what we deserve. Grace gives us what
we don't deserve. I'm here to tell you today that
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God is not angry with you. He's not trying to
hurt you. He's running after you with his arms open wide,
full of grace. God doesn't want to just forgive your
sin and keep you out of hell. He wants to
give you life and take you to heaven. He's got
such great plans for you if you will just put
yourself at his disposal. He's run after you with his grace.
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You haven't come to him. You know, we're not seekers.
I know that's a popular word today, but the Bible
says no man seeks after God.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
God seeks after us. You say, how do I know
if he's seeking after me?
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Well, the fact that you're here is a good indication
that you're being sought after. So while he seeks after
you with his grace, will you receive it? Will you
accept what he has done for you? Will you say,
Lord God, I know him a sinner, and will you come.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
And receive him as your savior.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
You can do that right now wherever you are. Don't
have to be in church, don't have to be in
a Bible study. Right by yourself, just you and God.
You can invite Jesus Christ to be your savior and
He will come and live within your heart and change
you from the inside out. He's promised to do it,
and I have witnessed him doing it many many times
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for many, many people. He'll do it for you friends.
During this month, as we share the wonderful message of Grace,
we're making available a very special resource from Rob Morgan.
It's called one hundred Bible versus. Everyone should know by heart.
With internet searches and handheld devices, the customer memorized in
(24:30):
scripture doesn't seem necessary to many people. But if you
know what you know in your heart, it's there for
you no matter where you go or what you experience.
Here are the one hundred verses. Rob thinks we should memorize,
and I agree with him. I hope you'll get this
book when you send your gift to Turney Point today.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
Ask for it and we'll send it right to you.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Today's message originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and doctor
David Jeremiah, the senior pastor. How is this ministry bringing
you closer to Christ? Let us know by writing to
Turning Point PO Box thirty eight thirty eight, San Diego, California,
nine two one sixty three, visiting our website at Davidjeremiah
dot org, Slash Radio, or calling eight hundred nine four
(25:19):
seven nineteen ninety three ask for your copy of Robert J.
Morgan's powerful, best selling book one hundred Bible Verses Everyone
should Know by heart, and it's yours for a gift
of any amount. You can also download the free Turning
Point mobile app to instantly access our content, or search
in your app store for the keywords Turning Point Ministries.
(25:41):
Visit David Jeremiah dot org slash radio for details.
Speaker 4 (25:46):
This is David Michael Jeremiah.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Join us tomorrow as we continue the series Captured by
Grace on Turning Point with Doctor David Jeremiah
If you think grace and mercy are just two words
for the same thing, get ready to have your thinking
changed profoundly. Today on turning Point, doctor David Jeremiah explains
the difference between the two terms and why the difference
is so important to your spiritual life. From Captured by Grace.
Here's David to introduce the conclusion of his message, the
(00:28):
captivating presence of Grace.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
And thank you so much for joining us for a
turning point. Today, we are studying a series of lessons
called Captured by Grace. These lessons come from the Book
of Romans, from the life of Paul, and from the
writing of the wonderful hymn Amazing Grace. Like you, I
have been captivated by the presence of that song in
(00:55):
so many places, places you had never expected to be.
In the funerals of important people who may not even
be Christians, in military settings. I've seen it all over
the place. I remember hearing an incredible presentation of it
in the Rose Bowl that had people standing on their
(01:15):
feet with their hands up in the air. Yes, Amazing
Grace is one of the great hymns. In fact, it's
been recorded more than any other piece of music in history,
not just Christian music, all music. It's the most recorded
piece of music in the history of the world, and
just about every artist has a rendition of amazing grace. Well,
(01:38):
behind that song is an incredible story, and that's what
we're talking about here on Turning Point, and we'll continue
that story today in part two of the Captivating Presence
of Grace? Friends? Are you receiving Turning Points Magazine? Every month?
I get that magazine put on my desk as soon
as it is finished, and I am always amazed at
the beauty of the magazine, the incredible adornment of each page,
(02:01):
and all the information that's there, including the devotional material
for every day of the week Monday through Friday, and
one for each weekend. This magazine is available to anyone
who would like to receive it. All you have to
do is request it. So why don't you get your
note in the mail today and ask for your copy
of Turning Points Magazine to be sent to your home,
(02:23):
or if you prefer, we can download all of the
devotional content right into your email box and you can
go there every morning and find fresh bread for your soul.
That would be a wonderful opportunity for many of you
who travel, and we hope you'll take us up on
that offer. Let's get back to our discussion of the
captivating presence of grace. Here's part two.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
The song that he wrote, Amazing Grace, was written by
him in seventeen seventy three, and it was written like
a lot of songs were written by John Newton. And
I cannot quite fathom this, but when John Newton would
preach sermon, he would often write a hymn to go
along with it. So he'd spend all week preparing a sermon,
and then he'd spend as much time preparing a him.
(03:07):
So many of the hymns that he wrote were written
to go along with a sermon that he preached. The
hymn Amazing Grace was written to go along with a sermon.
When you first read the text and read the sermon,
you wonder where did amazing Grace.
Speaker 4 (03:19):
Come out of this?
Speaker 3 (03:21):
On New Year's Day in January of seventeen seventy three,
John Newton presented Amazing Grace for the first time as
he was getting ready to preach a message on First Chronicles,
chapter seventeen. Now I'm going to read this passage for
you and you probably wonder, as I did when I
first read it, where is amazing grace in this passage?
Speaker 4 (03:42):
Here's what it says.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
Then King David went in and sat before the Lord,
and he said, who am i, oh Lord? And what
is my house? That you have brought me thus far?
And yet this was a small thing in your sight,
Oh God. And you've also spoken to your servant's house
for a great while to come, and have regarded me
according to the rank of a man of high degree,
O Lord God. And what John Newton preached about in
(04:04):
his sermon, because I read his sermon, he preached that
he was like David, that just as God had been
so good to David's house, giving him the opportunity to
be the father of Solomon and ultimately the great kingdom
that came out of his loins, in the same way
God had blessed John Newton and given him the opportunity,
after all that he had done to violate the grace
(04:24):
of God, to finally receive God's grace and ultimately become
a preacher of the grace and a writer of hymns. Well,
he wrote that hymn amazing Grace. But if you had
seen that him the day he wrote it. You would
probably not have recognized it because it looks a lot
different now than it did then. Do you know that
when they would write hymns back in John Newton's day,
(04:46):
they would write the words and then they go try
to find a tune that fit the words. They didn't
always write the music to go with the words. So
they would find the words, they'd find a tune that
had the metric that went with the words.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
And then they'd marry them together.
Speaker 3 (04:58):
Believe it or not, Amazing Grace had twenty different tunes
before it finally settled on the one that we now sing,
and the melody that we now sing Amazing Grace is
a melody called New Britain. It was married to the
words of John Newton in eighteen twenty nine, that long
after seventeen seventy three when it was written, and even
(05:18):
the name of the song wasn't Amazing Grace, Faith, Review
and Expectation.
Speaker 4 (05:23):
Now doesn't that light your fire?
Speaker 3 (05:25):
I have a feeling if that hadn't changed the name, we
might now be having this sermon today.
Speaker 4 (05:29):
But that's what it was originally called.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
There were three additional verses that Newton wrote to this
hymn that we almost never sing, and probably most of
you have never even heard. There's another verse that is
a part of it that John Newton didn't write.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
In fact, John Newton.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Never even heard of this verse because it was written
after he died. The last verse, when we've been there
ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we've no
less to sing God's praise. Then when we first begun,
those words were put together with this hymn by a
man named Edwin o'thello Excel. He was a prolific hymn writer,
(06:13):
and he put the three verses that we do sing
and the last verse together.
Speaker 4 (06:19):
The last verse he.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Found in Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin,
and he pulled it out of that writing and married
that with the first three verses. And it has become
amazing grace as we know it today. It's an amazing
story when you think of it, well through the nineteenth century,
(06:41):
amazing grace. This sort of was one of the many
songs that had been written. If you had an old
hymn book, the only hymn book which was put together
by William Cooper and John Newton. You would maybe have
found it there, but you wouldn't have thought anything was
special about it. Believe it or not, Amazing Grace did
not become what it is today until almost two hundred
(07:03):
years later. It was written in seventeen seventy three, and
then something happened in nineteen seventy that catapulted it into
the mainstream of life.
Speaker 4 (07:14):
The watershed event.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
Was the a cappella single released by Judy Collins in
December of nineteen seventy. In January of nineteen seventy one,
Amazing Grace was number one in Great Britain and number
one in the United States.
Speaker 4 (07:32):
Two hundred years after.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
It was cobbled together in the way that I just
told you, did you ever think about the fact that
sometimes God just anoints something that he just says, I'm
going to bless that.
Speaker 4 (07:46):
Well, he has blessed this hymn.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Since then, Amazing Grace has been heard on the worldwide
TV coverage.
Speaker 4 (07:53):
Of the Olympic Games.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
It was rendered three times during the inauguration ceremonies of
George W. Bush and what happened in two thousand and
one on nine to eleven, the Amazing Grace him was
heard all over this country. I remember being at home
late one night and watching the service that was in
(08:16):
the National Cathedral in Washington and seeing Amazing Grace it
was presented honoring the victims of nine to eleven. Our
nation paused in awe and profound silence, and we listened
to amazing Grace. Well, in my study for this, I
got enamored with what's happened to amazing Grace since nineteen
(08:39):
seventy So I thought, I wonder how many people have
recorded it, how many renditions of it there are. So,
with the help of some of my younger technical friends,
here's what I found.
Speaker 4 (08:50):
An amazing thing.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
We scrolled down through the website and we got to
the bottom of it, and we found out that there
are three thousand, eight hundred and thirty two renditions of
Amazing Grace. Saint Augustine used to say that God never
pours his grace into anything other than empty hands. In
other words, God will never give you grace if you're
(09:13):
full of yourself. And if ever there was a man
who was ready to receive the grace of God, it
was John Newton. I'm going to tell you a little
bit about him, because we're going to be thinking about
his hymn. I'm not going to take a lot of
time later on to go into these details, but just
let me tell you, kind of in a cursory way,
the story of John Newton, so you're up to speed
with it. John Newton was born as an only child
(09:34):
in seventeen twenty five on the twenty fourth of July.
His father was a commander, a seat commander, and a
merchant seaman. For all intents and purposes, John's father was
an absentee dad. He hardly ever saw him because his
dad was always out to see. His mother, whose name
was Elizabeth, was a godly woman, and she devoted herself
(09:56):
to her young son's spiritual training. She taught him to read,
to read the scriptures, to memorize hymns. She took him
to an independent chapel that was near the Tower of London.
At a time when only one percent of all the
people in England went to any other church except the
Church of England, which was an Anglican church. John Newton
(10:16):
was blessed to have a mother, a righteous, godly mother
like Elizabeth, but unfortunately, in July of seventeen thirty two,
just thirteen days before his seventh birthday, his mother died
with tuberculosis. His father quickly remarried, and, not knowing what
to do with young John, shoved him off to a
boarding school in Stratford. The discipline in that school was
(10:39):
so strict that before very long John ran away. At
the age of ten, he returned home from boarding school,
and interestingly enough, his formal education was ended. He later
wrote in a journal that I have that he was
only in school for two years in all of his
(10:59):
growing up days. So stop for a moment and reflect
with me. This man wrote this great hymn. He had
no formal education, He went through the loss of his mother.
He had nothing going for him except that later on,
as we shall see, the grace of God arrested him
and gave him this wonderful gift. At the age of seventeen,
(11:20):
Newton had all but forgotten everything he had learned from
his mother. He began a decline into rebellion that was
so bad it lasted until he was twenty four years old.
He began to think about some of the more popular
secular ideas of religion, and then he just made a
shipwreck of his life. I don't know how to tell
you that in any other way. He wrote in his
(11:41):
journal that it was his delight and habitual practice to
be wicked, and that he neither feared God nor did
he regard man. He wrote, I was a slave to
doing wickedness, and I delighted in sinfulness. After a short
time in the wartime navy, he went a wall in
search of his father, hoping that he could get a
better life.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
But he was captured, beaten.
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Publicly, stripped of his midshipman rank, and he was kept
in iron shackles. Just an awful story. He finally got
off the navy ship and onto a ship going to Africa,
and his point was if he could go to Africa,
then he could be as abandoned to whatever he wanted
to do and nobody would ever know.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
He was literally running away.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
From life and from God. The next years in John
Newton's life took him to the very edge of despair.
On the island of Plantain, which was a small island
just southeast of Sierra Leone in West Africa. He lived
with a Portuguese slave trader whose African wife was overflowing
with hostility and made John Newton.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
Eat like a dog.
Speaker 3 (12:44):
She would feed him scraps from her kitchen table and
he would have to get down on the floor and
get the scraps of food to eat so he could
sustain himself. And he said he was so desperate that
he received with thanks and eagerness as the most needy
beggar would everything that she gave him. He finally escaped
from that home by going to the shoreline of the
(13:06):
island and building a fire, hoping that a passing ship
would see him. And ultimately that ship did see him.
And there's a whole story of God's providence in that
part of his life. And later on he got on
that ship and then for a whole year he worked
on that ship until March of seventeen forty eight, and
in that year that ship started back to England in
(13:29):
the North Atlantic. And during that journey back home, God
did something in John Newton's life. That is the reason
we sang Amazing Grace today. Well, later on John Newton
married his childhood sweetheart, a woman by the name of
Mary Catlet. He began to have a little different kind
of life. He would probably still been a sea going person,
but he started to have epileptic fits and he wasn't
(13:51):
allowed to go to sea. He stayed home and for
the next ten years he cared for the needs of
his family as a surveyor of tides in Liverpool. But
during that decade in his life, John Newton began to
realize he had now become a Christian, that God was
at work in his life.
Speaker 4 (14:05):
And he thought this thought that.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
Someday God might want me to be a minister, and
if I'm going to be a minister, I need to
get ready.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
Well.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
He had two years of formal education. He had no
seminary to go too. He had no college, so he
began to teach himself. He studied Greek and Hebrew in Syriac,
he learned Latin, English and French, and he spent most
of his time concentrating on the scriptures. So in seventeen
sixty four he accepted the call to a pastorate of
(14:33):
a Church of England located in Alney, England. He served
that church for sixteen years, and when he was fifty
four years of age, he went to the big church,
Saint Mary Church in London, where he served for twenty
seven years and preached his last sermon when he was
eighty one years old and his friends used to say, John,
you need to quit preaching.
Speaker 4 (14:51):
You're starting to lose it.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
He would say, what can the old African blasphemer stop
preaching as long as he still has breath. So he
preached right up to the end, a great encouragement to
all of us who preach anyway. That's the story of
the melody, and that's the story of the man. Now
here's what I want to really ask you to concentrate
with me on, because now I want to tell you
(15:12):
the story of the message. There has to be something
beyond the melody and beyond the man that explains amazing grace,
that refuses to let it go away. For two hundred
plus years, more than a few people have asked the question.
In fact, I've even read a book by Philip Enci
entitled What's so Amazing about Grace? What is so amazing
(15:34):
about Grace? Did you know that some modern writers have
tried to shanghai this hymn from us, and they've got
some crazy idea about how it's all about greater consciousness,
about greater unity, about the inner oneness that we have
with each other. In fact, the lady who started and
catapulted it into the number one position. Judy Collins. You
(15:55):
know what she thought Amazing Grace was all about. Listen
to this, she said, it's letting go, bottoming out, seeing
the light, turning it over, trusting the universe, breathing in,
breathing out, going with the flow. Hello, did you see
that in that hymn? I didn't see that, did you?
I kind of lost that.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
You know what?
Speaker 3 (16:15):
I think it's time that sometimes we use evangelical stand
up and say, hey, look, you can't have our him.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
This is our hymn and we're going to keep it now.
Speaker 3 (16:24):
The lyrics of Amazing Grace contain the most profound outline
of God's grace you will find outside of the Bible itself.
It puts to music what the world really needs to rediscover,
the incredible truth behind the beloved love of God. Now
in the New Testament, the word grace is a very
interesting word. It is the word charras c h rs
(16:49):
is how we would spell that. It's a Greek word,
and the word keras you probably would think of it.
For instance, when we say Chris Mattic. That word is
the first part of that world. Somebody who's charismatic is
a person who is gifted or if you're thinking about
it spiritually, it's someone who's involved in the spiritual gifts.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
Well, chais is a gift.
Speaker 3 (17:09):
It is the undeserved favor of God. So grace is
God's gift to us. It's his undeserved favor. Somebody said,
you spell chais j e s Us, because you see,
until Jesus came and became our savior, people did not
(17:30):
understand grace. Jesus is the embodiment of grace. In fact,
that's what the Book of John teaches us. In the beginning,
was the Word of God, and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh
and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the
glory as of the only begodden of the Father, full
(17:53):
of grace and truth. For the law was given through Moses,
but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. And then
when you go to Ephesians chapter two, the key passage
on grace for all of us, we all understand it. Finally,
for by grace you have been saved through faith, and
that not of yourselves.
Speaker 4 (18:14):
It is the gift of God. What is grace?
Speaker 3 (18:17):
It is God's gift to us of Jesus, his son
and our savior. Let me ask you this question, is
anybody here believe they deserve that?
Speaker 4 (18:27):
I don't.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
I don't believe it for a moment. I don't deserve Jesus.
I watched the passion and one of the things I
kept thinking about after I watched the passion of the
Christ was I can't believe that God did that for me.
I know I don't deserve that. But the grace of
God is his undeserved favor. It is giving us what
(18:49):
we can't earn, what we can't deserve, what we have
no right to, and God gives it to us, and
he does it primarily through his son Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
So what is go grace?
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Grace is the unsought, undeserved, unconditional love of God. Grace
is God pursuing us until He finds us and then
preserving us forever afterwards. Grace means more than we can
ever put into words, because in essence, grace is who
God is. In fact, in One Peter, we're told that
(19:22):
God is the God of all grace. He's the one
who gives grace to us that we do not deserve,
not until we understand grace, will we ever appreciate it.
It's like a lot of other things, you know, until
you have knowledge, you can't appreciate it. And until you
have the understanding of grace, you will never truly appreciate it.
(19:43):
And I told my wife when I was studying for this,
I said, Honey, I feel so inadequate to try to
explain to these people the beauty and grandeur of grace.
It has haunted me for days that I might not
be clear, and that I might not be able to
help us all appreciate the wonder and the greatness of
the grace of God. But one day I begin to
(20:05):
see something that helped me, and I'd like to share
this with you as we come to the end of
this message. I think the way that we can really
get to understand the importance of grace is when we
began to compare it to mercy.
Speaker 4 (20:17):
Most of the time in.
Speaker 3 (20:18):
The Bible, you will discover that grace and mercy are
found together in the same passage. Some people think they
are synonyms, that they're just two different words for the
same thing, but that's not true. Once in a while
I hear somebody say, well, I'll tell you what I want.
I just want justice. You know what, I don't want justice,
I want mercy. Amen, how many of you are candidates
(20:40):
for mercy? You don't need justice. You know, if we
got justice, we wouldn't be in very good shape today. Well,
let me tell you if I can, the difference between
grace and mercy. And I hope you put this in
your heart, and I hope you'll spend some special time
thinking about this.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Here it is.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
Mercy is God withholding from you what you deserve.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
Grace is God giving you what you don't deserve.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Mercy is kind of God taking care of what's there.
Grace is God giving you something that's not there, something
that goes beyond anything you can think of. And I
think most people don't understand that. They just think of
grace as God forgiving.
Speaker 4 (21:17):
No.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Grace is the gift of God through Jesus Christ. And
if you go through the Bible and you begin to
read all the stories with that in mind, you will
begin to see grace and mercy as they play off
of each other throughout the pages of the Scripture.
Speaker 4 (21:30):
Here are just a few.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Examples that I've called out of the scripture. First of all,
it kind of goes like this. Take the story of Abraham.
Mercy withholds the knife from the heart of Isaac. Grace
provides a lamb in the thicket. Mercy runs to forgive
the prodigal son. Grace throws a party with a robe
(21:55):
and a ring and a fatted calf.
Speaker 4 (21:58):
Mercy bandages up.
Speaker 3 (21:59):
The wounds of the man who is beaten on the road.
Grace covers the cost of his full recovery. Mercy hears
the cry of the thief on the cross. Grace promises
paradise that very day. Mercy pays the penalty for our
sin at the cross. Grace provides the righteousness of Christ
(22:20):
in its place. Mercy converts Paul on the road to Damascus.
Grace calls him to be the great Apostle. Mercy saves
John Newton out of a life of debauchery. Grace allows
him to write the greatest.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
Hymn that's ever been written.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Mercy keeps us out of hell, Grace takes us to Heaven.
And the difference between Mercy and Grace is this, Mercy
withholds from us what we deserve. Grace gives us what
we don't deserve. I'm here to tell you today that
(22:56):
God is not angry with you. He's not trying to
hurt you. He's running after you with his arms open wide,
full of grace. God doesn't want to just forgive your
sin and keep you out of hell. He wants to
give you life and take you to heaven. He's got
such great plans for you if you will just put
yourself at his disposal. He's run after you with his grace.
(23:17):
You haven't come to him. You know, we're not seekers.
I know that's a popular word today, but the Bible
says no man seeks after God.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
God seeks after us. You say, how do I know
if he's seeking after me?
Speaker 3 (23:27):
Well, the fact that you're here is a good indication
that you're being sought after. So while he seeks after
you with his grace, will you receive it? Will you
accept what he has done for you? Will you say,
Lord God, I know him a sinner, and will you come.
Speaker 4 (23:42):
And receive him as your savior.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
You can do that right now wherever you are. Don't
have to be in church, don't have to be in
a Bible study. Right by yourself, just you and God.
You can invite Jesus Christ to be your savior and
He will come and live within your heart and change
you from the inside out. He's promised to do it,
and I have witnessed him doing it many many times
(24:08):
for many, many people. He'll do it for you friends.
During this month, as we share the wonderful message of Grace,
we're making available a very special resource from Rob Morgan.
It's called one hundred Bible versus. Everyone should know by heart.
With internet searches and handheld devices, the customer memorized in
(24:30):
scripture doesn't seem necessary to many people. But if you
know what you know in your heart, it's there for
you no matter where you go or what you experience.
Here are the one hundred verses. Rob thinks we should memorize,
and I agree with him. I hope you'll get this
book when you send your gift to Turney Point today.
Speaker 4 (24:48):
Ask for it and we'll send it right to you.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Today's message originated from Shadow Mountain Community Church and doctor
David Jeremiah, the senior pastor. How is this ministry bringing
you closer to Christ? Let us know by writing to
Turning Point PO Box thirty eight thirty eight, San Diego, California,
nine two one sixty three, visiting our website at Davidjeremiah
dot org, Slash Radio, or calling eight hundred nine four
(25:19):
seven nineteen ninety three ask for your copy of Robert J.
Morgan's powerful, best selling book one hundred Bible Verses Everyone
should Know by heart, and it's yours for a gift
of any amount. You can also download the free Turning
Point mobile app to instantly access our content, or search
in your app store for the keywords Turning Point Ministries.
(25:41):
Visit David Jeremiah dot org slash radio for details.
Speaker 4 (25:46):
This is David Michael Jeremiah.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Join us tomorrow as we continue the series Captured by
Grace on Turning Point with Doctor David Jeremiah
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