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Mills River SDA Church

Cory Reeves

The Oil of Grace

I think often we kind of glaze over it as something just given to us at the cross.

But what we're going to talk about today is I think the answer so much more.

It's beautiful at the cross, don't get me wrong, but it is so much more than just the cross.

The spirit of prophecy also uses the term the oil of grace.

It uses that term 158 times to be exact, and we're going to explore that as well today.

I'm actually gonna start this off as a 3 part series and we're gonna look next week at the battle of sin and then a few weeks after that, sanctification.

She probably could have been labeled Grace after you hear this story.

I'm going to actually read what she shares.

It's at a point in her life when she re-meets 1 of the guards from the concentration camp where she was and where her sister died.

It was in a church in Munich that I saw him, a balding, heavy-set man in a gray overcoat, a brown felt hat clutched between his hands.

People were filing out of the basement room where I had just spoken, moving along the rows of wooden chairs at the door to the rear.

It was 1947 and I had come from Holland to defeated Germany with the message that God forgives.

It was the truth they needed most to hear in the bitter bombarded outland.

Maybe because the sea was never far from Holland's mind, I like to think of that when we were forgiven our sins, they were thrown into this sea.

When We confess our sins, I said, God cast them into the deepest part of the ocean and they are gone forever.

The solemn faces stared back at me not quite daring to believe.

There were never questions after I talked in Germany in 1947.

People stood up in silence and in silence they collected their wraps and in silence they left the room.

Working his way forward against the others, 1 moment I saw the overcoat and the brown hat, and the next I saw a blue uniform, the visor capped, the visored cap with the skull and crossbones.

The huge room with its harsh overhead lights, the pathetic pile of dresses and shoes in the center of the floor, and the shame of having to walk naked past this man.

I could see my sister's frail form ahead of me, her ribs beneath poking out of her parchment skin.

Betsy, how thin you were." Betsy and I had been arrested for concealing Jews in our home during the Nazi occupation of Holland.

This man had been a guard at Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Joseph's going to correct all my German afterwards for me.

Now he was in front of me, thrusting his hand forward a fine message for a line, how good it is to know that, as you say, All of our sins are at the bottom of the sea.

And I, who had spoken so ghibli above forgiveness, fumbled with my pocketbook, rather than taking his hand.

How could he remember 1 prisoner among the many thousands of women?

But I remembered him, the leather crop swinging from his belt.

It was the first time since my release that I had been face to face with 1 of my captors, and my blood seemed just to freeze there.

You mentioned Ravensbrück in your talk, he was saying.

But since that time, he went on, I have become a Christian, and I know God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there.

But I would like to hear it from your lips, for a line.

I stood there, whose sins had every day been forgiven, but could I forgive him?

Could he erase her slow and terrible death just by asking?

It could have been just seconds, he held his hand out, but for me it felt like hours.

I wrestled with the most difficult thing I ever had to do, for I had to do it.

The message that God forgives has a prior condition, that we forgive those who have injured us.

If you do not forgive men their trespasses, Jesus says, neither will your Father in heaven forgive you your trespasses.

I knew it was not only a commandment of God, but as a daily experience.

Since the end of the war, I had in my home in Holland the victims of Nazi brutality.

Those who were able to forgive their enemies would return to the outside world.

But those who could not move past their scars.

They nursed bitterness in their hearts, remained invalids.

It was simple, it was as simple and as horrible as that.

And Still I stood there with coldness, clenching my heart.

Forgiveness is not an emotion, I knew that too.

And as I did, I lifted my hand as much as I could.

Jesus, if I lift my hand, you supply the feeling.

And as wouldn'tly and mechanically I thrust my hand forward to the 1 stretched before me.

And as I did it, an incredible thing took place.

The current started in my shoulder and raced down to my arms and sprung forward in my hands.

And then the healing warmth seemed to flood over my whole bearing, being, sorry, bringing tears to my eyes.

I forgive you, brother, I cried with all of my hearts.

For a long moment we grasped each other's hands, the former guard and the former prisoner.

I had never known God's love so intensely as I did then.

And having thus learned to forgive in this hardest of situations, I never again had difficulty in forgiving, I wish I could say.

I wish I could say that Merciful and charitable thoughts just naturally flowed from me from then on, but they didn't.

If there is 1 thing I've learned at 80 years of age, it's that I can't store up good feelings and behavior, but only draw from them afresh daily from God." What a story, right?

There's something about grace that isn't even natural.

Something we have to go for and receive in order to give.

But I want to take a step back and look at what grace is.

We've often heard it said, a grace-filled sermon, or, you know what, that person has lots of grace, or I'm thankful for grace.

You've even had people named, thanks to Cindy even called it out, named grace.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary has a broad definition.

Yes, it is approval, favor, to give mercy or pardon.

But our focus today is that first definition.

A is unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration or sanctification.

C, a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine assistance.

I think this is a fairly good definition of grace.

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The Oil of Grace

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