This morning I want to speak to you the first in a series on the "Grace of God". I know that might sound like a basic thing but I believe the Lord is going to do something in us over the next couple of weeks. This morning I want to preach on the confidence of grace.
Turn with me in your Bibles to Hebrews 4:16, "Let us come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need".
Heavenly Father, we thank you that you are here this morning. Holy Spirit, I ask for your anointing. Lord, without you I may not preach. I pray that Lord not that I would look good but that I would represent you well. Holy Spirit I pray that in this place we would decrease and that you would increase and be glorified this morning. Amen.
In Decision Magazine a few years ago, Ruth Graham tells a story of some fishermen who were in the Highlands of Scotland and they had gathered at a little Inn to have tea together after having gone through a day of fishing. They were swapping some stories and one of them was describing the days exploits and as the waitress came down and put some tea in front of them, one of the scotsman who can be very demonstrative in his talking, just reached over and knocked the teacup and the tea all over the freshly painted wall and there was a great stain. The waitress kind of gasped and went to get something to clean it up and one of the fisherman stood up and said, "No, don't do another thing" and out of his pocket he pulled crayons and began to draw on the wall all around that stain.
Pretty soon what emerged from that was a great sketch of a beautiful deer with antlers in all his power going through the wilderness and all of a sudden what once was a stain that ruined the wall became a great work of art. It really was because the artist, Sir Edwin Lancier, had just painted a mural for that Inn to keep. I think in a lot of ways that is exactly what Jesus does for us. We made a mess out of our lives and God began to make a work of art out of it. How many are thankful for what God has done in you and through you? What a wonderful favor of God.
This morning as we talk about the grace of God, I want to talk about his love for us, the unearned, unmerited favor of God. There is nothing like the love of the Lord. I wonder if anyone has just been going through a time in your life where things were so heavy and so hard and that gracious mercy of the Lord just came in and began to touch your life? Many of us have been touched by his saving grace, the wonderful grace of the Lord in spite of ourselves and everything that we've done. The truth is that in this room everyone of us has a history. Everyone of us has stuff that we know we've done and things we'd never tell anyone even if you paid us because we'd just be too ashamed. In spite of ourselves, because of God's great love we've been able to receive the forgiveness of our sins by his grace.
There's a reason for that song, "Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see". I remember hearing a man say, "I hate that song because I don't want to sing about being a wretch, I really wasn't all that bad". I thought, you know that man really hasn't had a true revelation of who God is and who we really are. There's a song that we sang when I grew up and every once in awhile we sing it here, "Grace, grace, God's grace, grace that will pardon and cleanse within. Grace, grace, God's grace, grace that is greater than all of our sin". You can't talk about the confidence in grace and talk about the confidence in God without talking about his saving grace.
The truth is what I want to talk to you about this morning is not a lesson in theology but really about a testimony of the reality of God's saving power and his work inside each and every one of us. This past week I went to a funeral for the passing of a friend of mine and a wonderful minister of the Gospel of Christ. He was about 78 years old. It's fun when people get up at Christian funerals and they begin to tell tales of what they were like when they were kids. This man was a powerful man of God and they were sharing the stories about what their past was and the things that could have been after receiving the Lord, just sitting around this wonderful room, a room full of pastors, a room full of Christians, godly families with a great heritage in the Lord. Hundreds of people were just sitting there and it wasn't a mournful service. This was a service we lived more laughing than we did crying. Laughing in the joy of the Lord, laughing about the things that God had done in us.
It was more of a church service than it was a funeral and there was a point where we all began to stand and one of the songs that we sang was, "Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine, oh what a foretaste of glory divine, heir of salvation, purchased of God, washed in his spirit and bought with his blood". The church began to sing, "This is my story, this is my song". I want to tell you as I was listening to all of us sing, that verse came back to me from 2 Corinthians 4:15 that says, "For all things are for your sakes having spread through the many, may cause thanksgiving to abound to the glory of God". It hits home at a funeral about the grace of God, to stand in a room of people at the going home of a precious saint of God and to sing, "This is my story, this is my song, praising my savior all the day long". I want to tell you as I watched it, I could look around that room and everyone of us, some that I knew and some that I didn't, knowing the things that we had been through and done and come out of, as we've served the Lord, the struggles that we've had and the trials that we've faced and to be able to stand there at a funeral and say, when everything else is said and done and everything alse has been dealt with and there we are saying, "Thank you Lord for your grace and this is my story". It's that simple.
The confidence that we can have in a room full of people and say, "I know that my friend has gone home to be with Jesus and there's no fear because pretty soon so are we". How many are looking forward to that day? I'm looking forward to it. Nothing that we do can earn our salvation, there's not a thing in the world. I look back over my life before I was saved and even after I was saved and the truth is that really no matter how good I've been or how bad I've been, God has been very faithful. I'm so thankful for his grace. The Bible says, "For grace you have been saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works lest anyone should boast". I want to say this to you, Christian, because the longer you live for the Lord, there are times when you go through your stuff and the enemy shows up and tells you that you need to be doing better, you need to do this, you need to do that, you need to be this or you need to be that but the truth is there is nothing you and I could have ever done to have confidence before God that would ever legitimately earn his favor. We have confidence today before the Lord as his children because of his grace.
Ephesians 1:7 says, "In Him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace". How many of you since you've been saved have blown it every once in awhile? I know that there are times when I come to prayer, "God, I want to speak to you but I know I've blown it". Never once when I've come to Him like that has he ever pushed me away. He's convicted me when I've been wrong but when I've drawn near, his grace has been so loving and so forthcoming. It's because of God's grace that we are who we are today. What God has done for us and in us, not what we've waited for or worked for, not the things that we did. Paul said this in 1st Corinthians 15:10, "But by the grace of God, I am what I am and his grace towards me was not in vain".
What I am today is because of the grace of God. There's so much more that I want to be and there's so much more that I trust the Lord to do in me.
How many of you feel that same way this morning? The truth is that the reason we'll have it is because of his grace. There's been so many things that I've tried to do but they've never worked out quite the way I hoped. Listen to me, it is when we forget how important God's grace is in our lives that we begin to have real difficulties. Most of the struggles that we go through and the things that we fight and the turmoil that we have is when we forget about God's unmerited favor, when we forget that he is a God of love and not only so full of mercy but he is gracious in the way he gives his mercy to us. We can forget that he's loving and merciful and forget how much we need his help. I've watched too many Christians who have gone away from Christ because they tried to do things in an attempt to earn worthiness or to prove themselves sufficient to the Lord and to make a way that they can say, "God, you can have me because I'm alright". In Galatians 5:4 it says, "You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by law, you have fallen from grace".
I want you to think about this for just a minute, falling from grace really is less about our sinning and more about our believing that you must do things in order to be completely forgiven and pure on our own. How many believe we must not be in sin? I'm going to get to that in just a minute. I met a man once who would seek out people who would preach the hardest and it was almost like in the spirit he wanted to be whipped all the time. Ever met anyone like that? They just always thought they were so bad and so wrong and he knew his faults and his shortcomings, it was almost like being in the old school where they would whip themselves or cut themselves to earn the favor of God. Martin Luther used to walk up the steps on his knees to earn the favor of God and pretty soon would have a revelation that he didn't have to do that anymore, that he could just come to the Lord and receive his help. Sometimes we get so discouraged in trying to serve God because we're always trying to earn his favor on our own. I believe that works follow those who believe, someone say a good amen.
There is just something about serving God, that God will do something inside of you, that your life will reflect the life of Jesus. That is the work of God in us, It is not us becoming worthy so that God will accept us.
It is us making sure that we understand that we don't fall from grace but we depend on it every single day. I want you to listen to me, one of the things that I have watched the enemy do is bring such condemnation on people. I believe in the conviction of the spirit and if you're in sin this morning and there's things in your life that aren't right, I believe that you need to let the Lord deal with that. If there are things that you know you are struggling with you need to know you can come to a loving savior and you can ask for forgiveness and receive that forgiveness and you can be set free regardless of what that is. But it is the enemy that will come to you and say "Before you come to God you have to get cleaned up and have this in place and do this right and then God will deal with it". The truth is you need to run to Jesus now and it's by his grace that we can become overcomers over those things in our life because he is faithful, because he is gracious, because of his love.
Listen, once we're saved, it is the grace of God that helps us to live for him.
I know that there have been many times on my own where I have tried to live for God even after becoming a Christian and I have failed miserably. I think one of the greatest things the enemy likes to do is help us to forget one of the greatest benefits of God's grace. There is saving grace that brings you to Jesus and there is keeping grace that keeps you for Jesus.
Titus 2:11-14 says, "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and godly in the present age; looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for himself his own special people zealous for good works".
I want you to hear me this morning, grace is a wonderful teacher, it really is. Knowing how to say No to ungodliness and worldly passions, knowing how to live a self controlled life is not a natural thing. How many of you have found even after you've lived for the Lord that it is very easy to be distracted by the things of the world? People say, "Preacher, is that the same way with you?" Yes, I'm a human being and I think that as people of God, instead of always walking around like we are saints who have got it all together, walking on the clouds and everything is always hunky and dory and just fine with everything in our life, the truth is that we have trouble sometimes. The Bible says that it is the grace of God who teaches us.
I love the spirit of God. I love the Holy Spirit who will talk to you as you're walking through life, as you're going through things and dealing with things. It's a marvelous thing.
I believe this is one of the most unrecognized benefits of the grace of God.
Jesus has the saving power to bring us to Him and I want to say it again, the keeping power to help us stay with him everyday. The grace of God teaches us to deny ungodliness. Ungodliness literally means "without worship, without a fear or a reverence for God". It is that grace of God that helps us to say yes to God's will and not to our own will and it's the grace of God that helps us to be pleasing to the Lord. It's the grace of God that helps us to say no to worldliness. It teaches us to be passionate about the things of God instead of being passionate about the things of the world. It teaches us to be passionate about Jesus.
It's very easy to let things distract. There are so many distractions in this world today. How many know exactly what I'm talking about? There's always something that wants your time, somethings that wants your attention, something that is always trying to take your passion. It is grace that helps us and teaches us to have a passion for the Lord instead of a passion for the things of the world. It's grace that helps us to have self control and with the idea of self control is an understanding of what is proper or improper, real or unreal and it's his grace that helps us to live for the Lord until He comes. How many know if the Lord takes awhile in coming, we have a long time to walk in grace?
I want to speak about this for just a minute because we're going to talk a lot about grace over the next couple weeks. I believe this is one of the key things as we start about it because Jesus came by his grace to save us out of a life of sin and out of the results that come from living in that sin. People say, "Does it get easier and easier to live for Jesus?" Yes and no. Yes it gets a whole lot easier because everyday we discipline ourselves to live for him. But everyday there are things in this world that are getting more and more attractive to take us away from the Lord. The Bible warns us that in the last days people would teach a different type of grace. We have the saving grace of God that sets us free and we just read about the keeping grace of God that helps us to live there. But there is another type of grace that is being taught, a grace that permits and excuses sin and ungodliness. Todays its called permissive grace. I call it greasy grace, you just slip and slide wherever you want to go.
Jude 1:4 says, "For certain men have crept in unnoticed who long ago were marked for this condemnation. Ungodly men who turn the grace of our God into lewdness and deny the only Lord God and our Lord, Jesus Christ". The grace of God.
When I was sitting in that funeral looking around that room and I knew many of the pastors that were there, we worked together and talked together, and I knew many of those people in that room. The thing that was so marvelous was the sense of purity that you could sense in the song. Many people, not just the ministers, because of the saving grace of God had a confidence. There is something about sin that robs your confidence before the Lord. I have watched through the 18 years that I've had in ministry a difference in the church. I remember when I was growing up in the church there was a real confidence that people had before the Lord. But there is something that has crept into the body of Christ where there has been a lack of confidence in Jesus. Believing that God can work through people, believing that miracles can happen. Part of this is because of this grace teaching that has crept in in the last days. God's grace is given so that we won't live in sin. It is not given as an enablement and a permissiveness to live in it.
I didn't come to give a complete hard teaching this morning but how many hear what I'm talking about today? The wrong teaching that has been given about grace says that once we're saved, we're always saved, we can be secure in who we are in the Lord, no matter what we do. How many believe that once you come to the Lord, not only does he save you out of sin but he begins to change that desire for that sin? That's the keeping grace of God.
The other day I was with a group of friends and Pastor's do have friends. It's interesting, I've always had to get used to that because most of the time people are very careful about what they say around me and I appreciate that, I really do. The truth is I want to be able to get up here on Wednesdays and Sundays and be pure before you, not filling my mind with junk. Sometimes you get around friends who are pretty comfortable with you and if they're struggling with different things in the world, they want to tell jokes that aren't pure. There's been a permissiveness in the world to just indulge in those things. It's funny, not really tasteful but its funny.
Those jokes, those things we watch, those things we see begin to stir up passions and lusts. They start out as little seeds and then they grow inside of us but it's the grace of God that allows us to stir up within us to not want to hear those things or have a desire to know those things. There is that curiosity because you know there's a punchline but there's that grace of God that stirs up and says, "wait a minute, I don't want this, I don't need this". It's the grace of God that teaches us to say no.
In Romans chapter 5:20 - 6:2, "Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound but where sin abounded grace abounded much more. So that as sin reigned in death even so grace might rein through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. What shall we say then, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not, how shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? For sin shall not have dominion over you for you are not under law but under grace. What then, shall we sin because we are no longer under law but under grace? Certainly not".
Now we can live in that grace and we don't have to be drawn into the things of the world anymore. God has set us free and now we have his power to stay pure and right before him. Isn't it a wonderful thing to be free in Jesus name? Shall we be bound up? Certainly not. I love that about Jesus.
Sin shall not have dominion over you. Once I was in that sin and now I'm free. Listen, because I'm not in that any longer, I can live in the freedom.
This is why when I talk to people who have come to the Lord and they've been bound up in alcohol or drugs or in lust or in different addictions. You have been saved by grace through faith, not of yourself. You are not what you were anymore, now you are by the grace of God what you are. What is that? Set free from the dominion of sin. That means when you are dragged back into that and it becomes enticing to you, it is the grace of God that gives you the power and the hope and the strength to live in His purity and his righteousness and to have confidence before the Lord because there is nothing impure in you. What a wonderful thing to have, the grace of the Lord.
The last thing that I want to talk about is that we can have confidence in life because of the assurance of God's graciousness and God's grace in our time of need. This scripture that we started off with this morning, Hebrews 4, "Let us therefore come boldly before the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need".
I want to talk about the grace of the Lord because there are times we will come with that grace to receive salvation but we forget that we can have confidence of coming before the Lord, not just that he will accept us but that he will hear our prayers and answer what we asked Him. Something happens to the believer when you know that you've received that grace to live pure before him. It's that confidence before God in relationship.
My kids, if they've behaved all day, when they finally need something or want something and they come to me, they have the favor of Dad. They'll get the favor of God through Dad. There are times when they've failed and they've been repentant and they've come to me in need, and truly I wouldn't send them away. I give them what they need. If an earthly father can be like that, how much more gracious is our heavenly father? There's a boldness by which my kids will come to me but I love that, it's ok to ask for help.
God, many times will intervene in our situations and he'll change what we're going through and he'll effect them in a wonderful way but the truth is that sometimes he doesn't change our situations, he just gives us the grace to go through those situations. I call it situational grace. I wonder if you've ever looked at someone who was going through something really difficult and you thought, "How in the world could they trust God through this, how could they walk in that situation? I could never do that". The truth is that God didn't give you the grace to go through that, He gave that person the grace to go through it.
Some of you think of people you know, "How could they ever be married to that person? I'm sure glad that's not me". The truth is God gave them the grace to live in that relationship. What a marvelous thing. Situational grace, you don't have to be married to that person and you don't have to discourage them to be married to that person. How can they be married to that person? Because they fell in love with them. Love is blind, deaf and sometimes stupid but that's ok and He gives more grace. But he put two people together to have a beautiful, wonderful relationship and that's a marvelous thing.
Taylormade grace to walk through, the grace to strengthen us. His grace that we sang today is more than enough. His grace is enough for me. As I began to study through this on grace throughout the word of God and there are hundreds of references to grace and each one of them began to pop out. I want to encourage you, during this next month, take time to study about grace. You'll get so excited you won't even know what to do with yourself. God is a wonderful God. In our weakness his grace helps us to know his love because we know our limits and we can experience his limitlessness.
2 Timothy 2:1 says, "You therefore my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus". 2 Corinthians 12:9 says, "My grace is sufficient for you for my strength is made perfect in weakness".
I want to tell you, when you're going through those weak situations in the Lord, don't get discouraged about it because his grace is sufficient. It's enough, thats all you need whether its a financial thing or its a marital thing, whether its your children, whether its depression, whatever it is, his grace is enough.
Now watch this, 2 Corinthians 9:8 says, "And my God is able to make all grace (not just some grace) abound to you". This is a verse that we read sometimes and its almost just so familiar in the church that we don't want to listen to it. We just read it like we know it. I want to end with this, "All grace abound to you that always having all sufficiency in all things may have abundance for every good work".
How many know when God says, "My grace is sufficient", that leaves room for no doubt. There is nothing that he will not ever be enough for. The confidence of grace. I almost wanted to preach a whole sermon just on that, the sufficient grace of God, more than enough. But the truth is this, that more than enough, that abundance of grace, we're talking about the confidence of grace. The confidence that we're saved, the confidence to be able to live for the Lord with his help, knowing we could never measure up on our own but his grace is enough and his grace is more than enough to help us with every need we ever have.
Listen, grace is not about theology, it's about reality. It is about his life affecting us in every way and it's a marvelous thing. I want to encourage you this morning. Have you been struggling with sin? His grace is enough. Pastor, if you only knew the stuff that I struggle with? Some of you men have got a pornography problem that your wife has no clue of and its been tough. You weep before the Lord and ask him to help you, to set you free, to deliver you out of it, to strengthen you and it's just hard. Listen, his grace is enough. Some of you have been so discouraged, it feels like everything is dark all the time and I want to tell you that its by his grace that you can live. His grace is enough. Things have been hard. Some of you have struggled in so many ways, you wonder how could God ever save someone or love someone like me? If people only knew. Listen, people are fickle and they are judgmental and so are Christians and they shouldn't be. But his grace is enough.
Heavenly Father, I thank you for the confidence that you give us in you. I thank you Father for your hope, for your joy. I thank you Lord for your keeping power, for your saving power. I thank you Jesus that no one could ever love us like you do. I thank you for your love that is able to break sins grip, not only to set us free and bring us into relationship but also after we're in relationship with you, that keeping power of grace when we are so weak and we struggle. Father, in this place today I thank you that it is your grace that's speaking. Even though you have given me words to say, your spirit has been speaking individually into each heart in a way that is able to taylormake that message for their own life. It's applying and being applied. Father, I thank you that the enemy doesn't have any say in this room. I thank you Father that you are God over this place, that you are a covering over each and every one of us. Condemnation must go, fear must go, the disappointments must go but Lord in the midst of all of this, your grace is building your strength in each heart. In Jesus Name, Amen.
