Extraordinary Grace: How the Unlikely Lineage of Jesus Reveals God's Amazing Love

By Gary Chapman and Chris Fabry

God’s extraordinary grace is hard to grasp—but made easier to understand through stories of God’s people.

Gary Chapman and Chris Fabry search the Scriptures for examples of God’s grace in the lives of those named in Jesus’ lineage, but what they find are people with faults, foibles, and sins, just like the rest of us. So obviously, grace is not about doing everything exactly right. It is a gift . . . an astonishing gift given by God.

In Extraordinary Grace, you will hear the call of grace; laugh because of grace; apply grace; be overtaken by grace; and know the extraordinary grace that comes from loving Jesus.

Chapter studies, for individuals or groups, will help you to find examples of extraordinary grace reflected in the lineage of Jesus.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Moody Publishers
• Release date: Aug 15, 2013
• ISBN: 9780802485885

Gary Chapman

Gary Chapman--author, speaker, counselor--has a passion for people and for helping them form lasting relationships. He is the #1 bestselling author of The 5 Love Languages series and director of Marriage and Family Life Consultants, Inc. Gary travels the world presenting seminars, and his radio programs air on more than four hundred stations. For more information visit his website at www.5lovelanguages.com.

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Introduction

You can choose many things in life, but your lineage is not one of them. You can’t choose your parents. Or your ancestors. You’re stuck with what you get, good or bad or in-between.

Except for Jesus.

Ponder this fact: Jesus was the only person in history who chose His mother, father, grandmothers, and grandfathers all the way to the beginning of time.

So who did He choose? People who obeyed God and showed great faith? Sinless, perfect people who always did what was right?

Hardly. Those people didn’t exist, of course.

What do you know of your family tree? You may have pictures on a wall or in faded photo albums. These wrinkled faces represent stories shared and passed down. Lore, lies, and truth mixed and matched. You see the eyes, you recognize a little of yourself in their smiles, but most never read between the lines. Most never know the heart of their ancestors.

The Bible contains this kind of record of the lineage of Jesus. Men and women who bare their souls in the struggle to know God and follow Him in challenging times. The fascinating thing about these stories is that they reveal more than the foibles and follies of desperate human beings. They also record the heart of God. The lineage of Jesus is a litmus of the love, mercy, and longsuffering of the Almighty toward His people. Toward you.

This record includes good news for your heart: 1) God is not mad at you, 2) God wants to lavish His love and blessing on you and, 3) God wants you to reflect His grace to others.

Of course, you’ve heard this news before. Grace has a popular acrostic:

Grace = God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense.

Everyone’s heard of grace. But not everyone understands it. Not everyone receives it. And even fewer learn to give it. Do you?

Have you received it? Are you living in light of it? Are you expressing God’s grace to others?

This is a dangerous book because it’s a mind-blowing, heart-altering concept. It’s threatening to the religious establishment that wishes to keep people in line. This is one reason religious leaders were so threatened by Jesus.

God wants you to receive His grace, possess it, and extend it. It’s a process that will change you from the inside out. You were created to receive, experience, and extend that kind of love every day to your family and friends.

Even your enemies.

This is not an intellectual concept for the brain or simply an ethereal, spiritual theorem. Grace is not a mystical, impossible-to-apprehend idea. It’s a practical, hands-on exercise that will help you live fully, from the heart, rather than from obligation or expectation.

What would your life look like if you knew, somewhere deep inside, you absolutely knew you were forgiven? Accepted? Deeply loved? Embraced? What if you knew someone was looking at you with wonder and awe? What if someone saw you as perfect?

Read that again. Perfect.

No blemish, no spots, no defects. No wrong motives. No sin. Perfect.

That someone is God Himself. And He is the One who provides the grace to make perfection a reality.

Most followers of Jesus don’t live this way. We know we’re not perfect. So we compensate by clenching our fists and trying to please God. By sheer willpower, we will get on God’s good side. This lasts about a half hour on a good day.

So we live defeated. We lose at life because we cannot be good enough. We cannot please God and never will because He will always look over heaven’s portal with His arms crossed, shaking His head.

The problem lies in the chasm that exists between God’s demands and our ability. Only one person has ever been able to bridge the gap.

The message of this book is that there is an extraordinarily better way. Here it is: God’s love stripped bare. Hanging on a cross. Paying the penalty. Offering forgiveness. Cutting a new path of freedom for you to walk. A path where mercy bids you leave your guilt and shame behind. A path with a hand on your shoulder to guide you.

Let this truth wash over you. God has chosen to give you extraordinary, extravagant, exceptional grace. John Newton, the old slave trader, had no reason to claim God’s love. He called it amazing. It crosses the border of the unthinkable. We don’t deserve to be treated like this. But here it is. God’s grace.

This is a study of God at work among ordinary people. Our travels will take us through a massively dysfunctional family tree. These are not stories for the faint of heart. We will chart seven major characters in the genealogy of Jesus. Seven people who failed, fell, or chose badly, but God used them mightily. Their failure was not final. Their past did not exclude them from God’s love. Their sin did not determine their destiny.

And neither does yours. No matter what you’ve done, where you’ve been, what bad thing has been done to you, or what bad things you have done, the grace of God and His extravagant love are available.

When God sent the Word made flesh to dwell among us, He gave us the perfect representation of this extraordinary grace. In fact, if you look at the hinge-point of history, you will see the Creator of the universe nailed to two beams of wood, hanging between the incomparable need of every human heart and the undying love of God. This cursed God/man reveals God’s extraordinary grace.

Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.

Perhaps you’ve been following Jesus for years, but you feel aimless. Perhaps you know about Jesus, but you have no idea what abundant life means. Maybe you’re skeptical that God even exists.

Wherever you are, whatever your background, these stories cry out about the incomparable, unbelievable love of God. Anyone willing to abandon their efforts to please God through their own efforts can receive the righteousness of Jesus. And once you receive this grace, you can begin to live fully from its power, and you will draw from that well of forgiveness and extend that to others.

Dare to take God at His word. Dare to believe. And see what He will do in and through you by His extraordinary grace.

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.

ANNE LAMOTT

Chapter 1

Hearing the Call of Grace

ABRAM

The story of Abram begins before he is born. God was at work in the world. He created everything we can see and can’t see. He created the first man and woman and watched as they chose disobedience. He fashioned animal skins to cover them. Their choice had consequences. They were forced to leave God’s presence.

And when people had walked so far from His plan, God spoke to Noah and had him build a boat. The ark was salvation for Noah and his family. Those outside perished. Those inside lived. And from that remnant, people and animals populated the earth. But people continued to walk away from God. They believed in themselves, not in Him, and built a tower to show their strength. So God confused their language and scattered them.

And it was to one of these scattered people, at just the right time, that God spoke clearly. God invaded the heart of a man named Abram with fantastic words and unbelievable promises.

Abram chose to believe.

God said He would bless Abram, He would make his name great, and He would bless the entire world through his descendants. Abram’s job was to believe. Then, acting on that belief, he was to leave his relatives and his country for a place God would provide. And believing, he would leave and then possess God’s promises.

Abram packed and left everything he knew because God had given a promise. These are the first steps of Abram. This is the call of grace.¹

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. The journey of grace begins with hearing its call. And grace is calling you. It may sound distant, like a train whistle across a barren landscape, but grace is calling every heart. And the grace we’re talking about will not be thwarted. As John Newton wrote, it will "lead us