Holy, Righteous Character

Dr. Orthe, you're very strong. We're very impressed. There you go, that's right. That's right. You know, time of graduation, summertime like this, can be a time of hope. And being here on the Sabbath, it's an encouragement to be with brethren and to be in a safe place, to have a chance to relax and talk a little bit. And when we see young people going off to new adventures, we can share in that excitement at the hope of a new beginning.

But as time goes along, inevitably we make mistakes. Some of those mistakes can be serious mistakes, embarrassing, shameful things even. And over time, sometimes those mistakes can accumulate, and they can begin to weigh us down. That's why we use the term baggage, right? This person has baggage, because they're weighted with sort of the cumulative impact of those various decisions.

And even if that person has truly repented of those things, sometimes a person may still feel a certain weight of what they've done. We see examples in Scripture of this. If you think about Paul, Paul killed in the name of God. But then he realized that he had picked the wrong side, and the weight of what he had done began to crush him. There was a woman, it's recorded in John 8, we don't know her name, there's speculation about who she might have been.

She was caught in the very act of adultery, dragged out in the public square, and put before the judges to be stoned there on the spot. You can imagine, what was she wearing?

Did they even give her a chance to put her clothes on her? Did she have some sort of robe or something draped over her as she was pulled out? What shame, what guilt, what embarrassment?

How do you walk away from something like that, even if you are forgiven? And yet, I believe that each of those people in their time discovered the beautiful gift of grace, the beautiful gift that God gives us, which is His grace. Look in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 9. A lot of times we call 1 Corinthians the resurrection chapter, because we know it talks a lot about the resurrection, but Paul says something here in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 9, which I think is very telling.

He says, For I am the least of the apostles. Why would he say that? Who am not worthy to be called an apostle? He didn't even feel worthy to be called an apostle. And at another place, he says he was an apostle out of season. Because I persecuted the church of God. He persecuted the church. That's saying it lightly. He murdered people.

But, verse 10, By the grace of God, I am what I am. That's a very powerful statement. That's a statement that I want to be able to say about me. By the grace of God, I am who I am. And his grace towards me was not in vain.

But I labored more abundantly than all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. Paul never lost a sense of where he came from. He knew where he came from. He knew what he had done. But he also never let that past constrain him. He knew that God had forgiven him. He knew that he had to work. He had to do his part. He had to labor, as it says here, more than any other.

But he knew his labor and God's grace was not in vain. That's what he's saying here in this verse. Can we say, by the grace of God, I am what I am? You see, I think Paul could simultaneously embrace the shame of what he had done in his past with the joy of what his future held. And that is a very hard thing to do. That is a very hard thing to do, to embrace that. He stood before the Corinthians, in this case, knowing that he had the blood of Stephen on his hands, but he had the blood of Christ that covered his whole body.

He knew both of those things existed simultaneously, and he accepted them both. You know, if you turn over to John 8, let's just look at that story for a moment. John 8. This woman is unnamed, I think almost out of respect for who she was. Can you imagine if you were named? Yeah, I was that woman caught in the act of adultery, dragged out before everybody. I think it was almost out of respect that she was not named.

John 8, verse 2, But early in the morning he came again into the temple, and all the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. So there's a lot of people around. Then the scribes and the Pharisees brought to him a woman caught in adultery, and when they set her in the midst, they said to him, Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. I mean, this is just like, ugh, really?

You just drug her out here right now? I mean, what kind of respect do you have for this woman? Now Moses and the law commanded us that each should be stoned, but what do you say? Now they want to have a theological discussion. There's been a lot of speculation about this was basically a set up, that they basically had some man, you know, who went to some prostitute, a married man, right, who thought he was just going to go to a prostitute, and then suddenly, you know, they drag her out.

Where's he? We have no idea. And so they want to have this discussion. And they said, testing him that he might have something to which to accuse him, but Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with his finger as though he did not hear. And so when they continued asking him, he raised himself up and said to him, He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.

And again, he stooped down and wrote on the ground. And then those who heard it being convicted by their conscience went out one by one, beginning with the oldest, even to the last. And Jesus was left alone. And the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had raised himself up and saw no one but the woman, he said to her, Woman, where are those accusers of yours?

Has no one condemned you? She said, No one, Lord. And Jesus said to her, Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more. Go and sin no more. You know, after the liberation of France and the closing days of World War II, thousands of women who were considered to be collaborators with the Nazis were drug from their homes into the public square to have their heads shaved. And many times these women would be drug in their underwear.

You can go online and you can see pictures of women standing in the streets of Paris wearing just sort of their undergarments with their heads shaved. And after these women had their heads shaved, they were paraded through the village for all to see their shame. These were women who had slept with German officers or had been perceived to have slept with German officers.

Many of them were prostitutes who were applying their trade before the war and just continued during the war. These were not women who were necessarily of the greatest reputation, but this was the shame that French citizens all over the country decided to heap on these women. Something going back to the Middle Ages. How do you live that down? How do you live being paraded with your head shaved through town? You know, it's not like you could get on a plane in 1944 and sort of leave, right?

I mean, this is your village. These were the people you grew up with. This is how this woman must have felt to be drug out before everybody. How do you live that down? How do you live that humiliation down? But God says, by grace you were saved.

By grace you were saved. And Jesus forgave this woman, and He forgave that man Paul, all that He did, such that they were able to live their lives. And I think we'll find out who this woman is. There's different speculation. I'm not going to name some names. We can talk about that in a Bible chat afterwards.

But I think this woman went on to live a life that she could respect herself with. His grace did not diminish His law. Neither does His grace give us license to sin. We'll talk about that. But it does give us His strength to say, by His grace, I am what I am. God's people have a unique opportunity to understand grace. We have a unique opportunity to understand grace because we have not considered God's law to be obsolete. That's a great starting point.

You've got to get there to understand grace. We have an opportunity to understand grace because we keep the Ten Commandments, not nine, like most Christians of the world. We have an understanding of grace because we understand that God's law was not given to just the nation of Israel for a couple thousand years and then was done away with.

And so we should understand grace because we should study grace just like we study God's law. And yet sometimes I think in the Church of God, kind of like a gymnast on a balance beam, we may have a tendency to kind of fall over on one side, which is to be a little bit harder on ourselves. We have to have that balance between grace and law.

And so today I want to cover three points about grace. What is grace? How do law and grace fit together? And what is our response to grace? And that's where we're going to spend a large portion of our time. Let's turn out by talking about what is grace. Let's go back to Genesis 3 verse 24. What is grace? We can't understand grace unless we understand what happened in the Garden of Eden, what happened with the two trees.

We've already discussed that. And so I'm going to start where that sermon left off. Genesis 3 verse 24 says, so he drove out the man and placed cherubim at the east of the Garden of Eden and a flaming sword which turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. Man was driven out of the garden such that he would not have access to life. What does that mean? That means he would die. His sentence was a death sentence. And we know that from scripture, by Adam all died. Even by Christ all shall be made alive. So this is our fate. Our fate is death.

Our fate is to not have access to the tree of life. Look over in Ephesians 2 and verse 1.

We'll see that Paul understood this and he expanded on this when he wrote to the Ephesians.

The church in Ephesus probably received more instruction. It was recorded in the Bible than any other congregation. Paul writing to the Ephesians says in Ephesians 2 verse 1, And you he made alive who were dead in trespasses and sin. See, we were dead. They were dead, excuse me, the Ephesians, and they were made alive. They were given access to the tree of life because they were called at that time. And he goes on to describe that they once walked according to the course of the world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. And so, you know, when I travel to Africa, you know what I see? I see the consequence of sin. That's what I see. I see every man for himself. I see everyone trying to choose his own way. And what does it result in? It results in massive poverty, loss of life, relationships that don't work, families that are dysfunctional. And one quarter, there's different estimations here, but a quarter of the earth's population lives in this abject poverty, which is even hard for us to comprehend. That's the result of sin.

Now, trespassers here is the Greek word parapotemassin. Paraparapto, m-a-s-i-n. Parapotemassin. And according to Strongs, it means a falling away, a lapse, a slip, a false step. Those typically are the things that it refers to. And it's synonymous with sin as well. Paul uses both trespasses and sin here. The word sin is a Greek word hamaratias, h-a-m-a-r-t-i-a-s, h-a-m-a-r-t-i-a-s. And it means, I think we know this, missing the mark.

But there's a very famous scripture that we all should know. It should be one of those memory verses like John 3.13. Definition of sin comes from 1 John 3.4. 1 John 3.4.

Let's just turn over there for a moment. This is very important.

Definition of sin is defined in scripture in 1 John 3.4. Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness. So sin is defined by law. And we sin when we break the law.

God's law must be kept. And in fact, we are going to die if we are judged by God's law.

There's no way that we can keep God's law perfectly. All of us are going to die. And in fact, many people are walking dead already because they're so burdened by what they've done. They're suffering from depression. They're suffering from, you know, inability to have normal relationships. Maybe they can't keep a job, whatever it might be. This is our natural state.

Let's go back to Ephesians 2 and just keep reading. Because Paul doesn't leave us in a state of hopelessness. Paul is very joyful. In verse 4 he says, But God, who is rich in mercy because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

By grace you have been saved. He pardoned you, pardoned me.

My sin is not greater than Paul's sin. Your sin is not greater than Paul's sin.

Your sin is not greater than the sin of the woman who was caught in adultery and dragged into the temple to be embarrassed in front of all of her neighbors and all of the religious authorities.

And yet Paul was able to embrace this truth of grace which had saved him. And I hope we are able to embrace the truth of the grace that has saved us. Verse 6, And raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

A murderer, an adulterer, will sit there with Christ.

Now, we've already had this discussion about heavenly places and so forth, so I'm not going to go through that. That in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace.

In his kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. This is an incredible hope. If we have some sort of depression or we have some sort of worry about the things that we've done in our lives, this is a scripture for us. This is a scripture that tells us we're going to be seated at the right hand of God with Jesus Christ. We're going to be in heavenly places. We're going to have an opportunity for people to go, wow, look at that! Look how great God is! He is so kind! That person is there. Even all the things they did, they're there. They repented. God was just to forgive, and by that grace they were saved. And it says in verse 8, for by 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.

Lest anyone should boast. It is why we can have this learned Pharisee who learned at the feet of one of the greatest scholars of his day have dinner with a lowly prostitute. Because the scholar and the prostitute, those are just labels that people give to people. They are both inheritors of the grace of God. They are equal. It doesn't matter where we came from or what we are. It's the beautiful thing about God's church. It's the thing that historians actually just puzzled at in the early church, that you could have rich and poor and Jew and Greek and Gentile. You have all these people all sharing things in common. It's what God's church is all about. Grace is the acceptance and special favor from God that you see here, written in verse 8. The word is charise, like we know that word, and it means grace, favor, kindness, according to Strong's concordance.

Unmerited pardon. It is what is listed right here. By grace you were saved. It is plain and simple.

There is nothing that we can do that gives us this grace. Absolutely nothing. We are saved by grace through faith and not of works. We just need to make that clear. We don't keep the law to be saved. We were saved by grace. It's right here. Now, if God has called you and He knows who you are and your background, He knows who I am and my background, He's not going to run at the first sign of trouble. Oh yeah, I called Him, but that was a mistake. I shouldn't have called Him. He's not ready. I made a mistake. No, God doesn't do that. God is faithful to be with us. He knows who we are. He knows our backgrounds. And He is, it says here in verse 10, we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. God knew who we were before and He has called you out at this time to do something special for Him at this time. All right, so that brings us to the question of law and grace, doesn't it?

Because I've been pretty unambiguous about grace. Let's go over to John 1 verse 17.

This is one of those scriptures that people will go to and say, oh well, see, we don't have to keep the law anymore. It's one of those verses that people will turn to, so we need to feel comfortable with this one, because in actual fact it says nothing of the like.

John 1 verse 17, for the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth come through Jesus Christ. So law and grace. What does all this mean? Now we know that God used Moses to write down his law, but all he did was write down a law which had been orally given long before. How do we know that? Well, we know Cain and Abel gave sacrifices, and one was accepted and one wasn't, so there had to be some instruction there. We know that Noah took a certain number of unclean animals and a certain number of clean animals on the ark, so there obviously was a law of clean and unclean meats long before Moses, because Noah abided by it. And we know that Abraham kept God's judgments and statutes and laws, and all of this happened before Moses codified the law.

So the law didn't suddenly appear at Mount Sinai. The law existed for thousands of years before.

And we also know that God granted salvation to a select few prior to Jesus Christ coming.

Let's go see that over in 1 Peter 1 verse 10.

So we know the law existed before Christ came, excuse me, before Moses gave it. And we know that there was salvation given before Jesus came. Let's look over in 1 Peter 1 and verse 10. It says, These men like David and Moses, Noah and others, they had the Spirit of Christ. This is what it says.

And they testified before Him, and it was revealed to them, not to themselves, but to us. They were ministering the things which now have been reported to you through those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things which angels desire to look into.

So we know that there were a select few prior to the coming of Jesus Christ who had the Spirit of God in them and who will be in that first resurrection. We've studied that. So trying to start drawing lines of, well, there was no law, and then there was law, and then there was grace, and no law, and so forth, it gets very muddled very, very quickly. In actual fact, what John is describing here is that as in Christ, excuse me, as in Adam all dies, so in Christ you'll all be made alive.

When Christ came, His Spirit began to be open to more people.

And John simply wants to reinforce that what is repeated throughout Scripture, which is that our human nature, which is passed down from Adam, makes it impossible for us to keep the law perfectly.

And so God gave His Son to die that we might be reconciled to God to receive salvation.

Now, later towards the end of the New Testament period, we see that some came into the Church drawing a distinction between law and grace. If you look over in Jude 4, this only comes up really at the end where suddenly people are making distinctions. We'll see a little bit of that also in Romans here in a bit. But in Jude 4 it says, For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, ungodly men, who turned the grace of our God into licentiousness, and deny the only Lord God, our Lord Jesus Christ. So certain men came in and said, Oh, you know, you have grace.

You know, one's saved, always saved. These types of language that have sort of been a mantra over the centuries, and they began to make this distinction between law and grace and so forth. But that doesn't need to be the case. The fact is that we have grace, and we have law. Moses had the law, and we have the law. Paul had the law, and they also always had grace as well. They go hand in hand. We'll understand that here as we continue. So what is our response to grace? We're going to expand on this a little bit. Let's go over to Romans 6, verse 1.

Paul addressed this concept of law and grace by getting into what we should actually do in terms of our lives. Romans 6, verse 1 says, What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? This is what Jude was writing about. He was saying, hey, you know, people will say that now. Oh, you know, I have grace. I can just do whatever I want.

And his response in verse 2 is clear, certainly not. Now he's responding to this sort of theological discussion that's up in verse 20. If you just look up in verse 20 for a moment, it says, Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound, but where sin abound, grace abound much more. So that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through the righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

See, Paul needed to go back to that over and over and over again, because if he didn't have that, he was dead because he had sinned greatly before God. And so he kept going back to that. But then he went right back and said, does that mean we can just sin as much as we want? We don't have to keep the law. And he says, certainly not. In verse 2, how shall we who died in sin live any longer in it?

If we've died to sin, how can we live any longer in it? Verse 3, Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ, Jesus were baptized into his death. We were baptized into his death. What does that mean? He goes on. Therefore, we were buried with him through baptism into death that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. Walking in newness of life. That is our response to grace. To walk in newness of life. Paul makes it very clear. Our response to grace is not that we can sin or that the law doesn't have any consequence anymore. Our response to grace is that we should walk in newness of life. Now, we should not confuse this state of grace as an ending point. This is a beginning point. That's why it says newness of life. It's a new beginning. It's a newness of life. Now, what's less obvious is that walking in newness of life means taking action to address those sins and difficulties that can separate us from God. You see, in mainstream Christianity, there's this fault, this ditch, that people fall in to say, oh, I have grace. I don't need to keep God's law. It's obsolete. We're under the new covenant, and so forth and so on. We know all those stories. But in God's church, we can tend to fall into another trap, which is to say, I'm walking in newness of life. And then we don't do anything. Well, walking in newness of life means that you are actually doing something different than what you did before, before you were baptized.

Let's go over to Hebrews 12 verse 1. We can see Paul describe this. You see, we have to walk in newness of life, leaving aside our past. Hebrews 12 verse 1. Therefore, we also, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, drop the baggage, forget about the past, leave that behind. And what has he said? And the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. How are we laying aside every weight? What are you doing? What am I doing to lay aside every weight? So, here's what I see in myself. It's what I see being in the Church of God for many years. We accept God's grace. Maybe we don't really quite understand it, but we're working to understand it. We repent. We're baptized. And we begin to walk in newness of life. And then we immediately sin again. And what do we do? Well, we ask for God's forgiveness, and he is just to forgive. And then we sin again. And we ask for forgiveness, and he is just to forgive. And we sin again. And the cycle continues. It continues.

When in actual fact, that is not actually walking in newness of life. That is God being gracious and patient and merciful to us as we don't get that we need to change. And God is gracious and merciful. But God reveals to us that we need to walk in newness of life. Which means that we have to actually develop strategies and actions and plans that allow us to change our behavior.

And with the help of God's Holy Spirit, our behavior can change. And we can become a new creation. That's what Paul talks about. So let's look at an example of this because James, in chapter 1, go over to James 1 verse 12. James actually goes through some examples of actions and strategies that people can take that will change their behaviors. James 1 in verse 12. Let's get the context. Blessed is the man who endures temptation. This is what we're talking about here, right? We're tempted, we sin, we ask for God's forgiveness, he's gracious to forgive. We're tempted again, we sin again, God's gracious to forgive us. This is that cycle. And it says, Blessed is the man who endures temptation, for when he has been proved he will receive the crown of life. See, we just can't just keep staying in that cycle. God doesn't want us in that cycle. At some point, you know, God is going to have something happen in our lives that is just going to make it clear that that cycle is not where he wants us to be. He wants us to change. And we'll receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted, I am tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he himself tempt anyone.

But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed. And that's what happens. We're drawn away by our own desires and we're enticed. And then when desire is conceived, he gives birth to sin. And sin, when it is full grown, brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my brethren, my beloved brethren. Now, you could say verse 16 goes with verse 15. I think it actually has an interesting connotation that way. A lot of times we read it to go with the next one, which is, every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the father of life with whom there is no variation of shadow of turning. So I think verse 16 is a nice segue. Don't be deceived. Don't be confused. You will fall into this same trap. If you keep sinning and God keeps forgiving, you are going to keep going. You're going backwards. You're going backwards.

Don't be deceived. Even in God's church, we can fall into this trap and it can eventually lead to death because we're not getting it. We're not making the changes that we need to make in our life. It doesn't nullify grace. It's just the fact that we're not listening to what God is trying to tell us. He is gracious, but he wants us to change. Of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth that we might be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. So James has outlined this whole discussion, right? Something we've read many times. But then notice in verse 19. There's something very interesting in verse 19. Therefore, therefore means, okay, based on everything I've just told you, pay attention. My beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath. These are three strategies that are going to help you, James is writing to the the Jews of the region. These are three strategies that are going to help you not fall into the trap of sin and desire and death and temptation. These are three strategies. Therefore, let every man be swift to hear. Don't judge too quickly, right? Judging is a big problem in God's truth. Oh, we judge. Oh yeah, I don't know why they're doing it. No, no, hold on. Take a little more time. Listen a little bit longer. Slow to speak. Don't open your mouth. You open your mouth, you're going to say something that's going to offend somebody. Slow to speak.

And slow to wrath. One, two, three, four, right? You know, there's scientific studies that say you need about seven seconds. You've probably Googled that here as I'm talking, right? There's like a certain number of seconds that the emotion drains out of you, and then the wrath is not quite as edgy, right? You can kind of get a better handle on it. These are strategies that James is giving to his readers to avoid all the things that he talked about up there, and to, as it says, be that man who endures temptation. But he continues, for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Verse 21, therefore, here it is again, therefore, lay aside, that's interesting because Hebrews uses this, you know, laying aside, lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls. You see, so you lay aside, okay, now let's see, what was I doing before? How was I behaving before? What kinds of TV did I watch? What kind of movies did I watch? What kind of music did I listen to? What kind of people did I associate with, right? What was I doing before? Okay, let me think about now. I need to lay aside anything that's filthy or is full of the wickedness and I need to receive with meekness God's word. With meekness means I need to take away my pride and just do what God's word says. That's why we have that little bag, you know, Bible check, right? We receive what is listed in there. And it says, verse 22, but be doers of the word and not hearers only deceiving yourselves. And so there's this whole discussion which we're familiar with. I'm not going to go through that there. But then if you go down to verse 26, it says, if anyone among you thinks he is religious and does not bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this one's religion is useless. So here's another strategy, to bridle the tongue. If you don't bridle the tongue, then everything that's going on is not going to work for you. You've got to control what you say. And then finally in verse 27, another strategy, pure and undefiled religion before God and the Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their trouble and to keep oneself unspotted from the world. A whole set of actions and strategies which will help you, me, the readers here, be able to endure temptation and to receive the crown of life. There's a whole bunch of steps that have to be taken.

And he's given that. And you know, visiting orphans and widows, this is huge, right? What happens when you go visit somebody else? You get your mind off yourself. You get your mind off yourself. A lot of people, oh, you know, my life is so bad. This happened to me and that happened to me. And you know, my parents were so bad and my job and my boss, you know, and we get all in. I mean, I do this, right? We all start getting down. You go out and you visit somebody. You get your mind off yourself. You start realizing there's other people who have problems, too. And maybe they're worse. And so you have to do this. You have to get out and you have to see people. This is a strategy that James gives. You want to write them down, right? So in verse 19, Swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath. Verse 21, lay aside filthiness and overflow of wickedness, meekness of the implanted word, bridle the tongue, visit orphans and widows, and keep oneself unspotted from the world. These are all strategies. He's saying you've got to follow the strategies. That's what the therefore means. You actually have to do something. Now, do you do something alone? Is this alone? A lot of times you're like, well, I'm going to be praying about this.

I've got some issues I'm going to be going. I'm going to be praying about this.

Look over in Ecclesiastes 4 verse 9. Ecclesiastes 4 verse 9 talks about the lone person trying to go through these things.

Ecclesiastes 4 verse 9, Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, for he has no one to help him up. We all need help in this. We all need help in these strategies and these actions that we have to take. We need to get somebody to help us. Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one be warm alone? Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a three-fold cord is not quickly broken. If you can get three people together, even better. We should be applying this spiritual principle here. We should not be trying to go this alone. We should be getting help from others. Now, who are those others?

Family members. Family members are others. The ministry is others.

Others can be professionals in a particular area. Professionals like counselors, authors, lecturers. You know, sometimes you listen to a TED Talk and you're like, wow, that's amazing. You know, when you watch a TED Talk, you're looking at somebody whose life work has been condensed into 10 minutes. You take 20 years and you can condense that into 10 minutes. I mean, that's really concentrated learning on something. Others can be experts and counselors and authors.

You know, if somebody has a problem and they want to quit smoking, okay, somebody wants to quit smoking, I mean, this has been tried and true. There are so many programs out there to help you quit smoking, right? You don't have to go it alone. You don't have to wake up in the morning and go, oh, I've got to quit smoking. I, you know, I just, it's so hard, reach for the package. No, there's all sorts of programs to help people quit smoking. You can get a patch, you can gum, you know, there's like all sorts of things you can do, right? And so you go out and you figure out how you're going to quit smoking. Somebody has a problem with alcohol. Alcoholics Anonymous has a proven strategy, 12-step program, proven. You don't have to go it alone. You go and you get help.

Somebody has problems in their marriage. You know what? There's counselors out there, marriage and family therapists, and they know how to deal with this. They've helped thousands of people walk through marriage issues. Thousands of people. Now, sometimes in the church we say, well, you know, those people are not in the church. So they don't have God's Holy Spirit, so I can't learn from them. You know, I think that's just an excuse that's pride, honestly. I think that's just an excuse because when you go to a therapist, or you go to a counselor, or you read a book, or you go to a lecturer, and you go to someone and say, you know, I read this book and it says I'm supposed to do this, and so I want you to help me with that, you've got to swallow your pride.

You've got to submit to somebody else. And a lot of times we don't want to submit, because our problem is our problem. We know our problem better than anybody else. Nobody else knows our problem like we know our problem. So don't tell me what my problem is because I don't want to talk about it. Don't tell me. That's what we do. So we have to submit. I think it's an excuse. Now, yes. Are there marriage and family therapists out there who will give you bad advice? Absolutely.

Absolutely. But see, that's where God's Holy Spirit gives us the spirit of discernment to hear that. Right? We're not going to walk in there and blindly do what everybody says.

No, we have God's Spirit. God's Spirit is going to guide us. That person's like, that doesn't make sense. We're going to listen to that. We're going to talk to somebody in the church. We're going to talk to the ministry. A counselor told me that I should do X, Y, and Z.

That's interesting. Why do they say that? Well, because of this. What do you think? I think that's not good. You're right. That's not good. Okay, get another counselor. But see, we have to actually do something. We actually have to take concrete actions and steps if we're going to overcome and walk in newness of life and actually make changes in our lives. We will not stop at these things. We have to make changes. Look over in Romans 6, verse 15. I read the first part of Romans. Paul keeps hitting this over and over again. Romans 6, verse 15. Paul says, What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law, but under grace? Certainly not.

So here he hits it again. See, these are not mutually exclusive things. We are under grace, but we are under law. It says, We are not under law, but under grace. Well, in terms of the penalty, yes, but certainly not. Do you not know that to whom you present yourself, slaves to obey, you are that one's slaves whom you obey, whether to sin, to death, or of obedience, to righteousness. But God, be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you become slaves of righteousness. See, this is interesting, right? He's saying that you're actually becoming a slave of righteousness. Now, what does a slave do? When a master says, you go out the door and you stand outside for 10 hours and that's what you have to do because you're a slave. If you're a slave to righteousness, that means, and God says, you have to walk a new self-life, you're a slave. You have to go out and do it. He says, I want you to make changes. Slow to wrath, right? Slow to speak. You're a slave to this. You are a slave of righteousness. Do we take it that seriously?

Or do we let our pride get in our way? That's how seriously we have to take this.

It really comes down to how we live our lives day by day. And Paul hits this in Romans 12 in verse 1.

Go over to Romans 12 in verse 1. I'm going to read this from the Phillips translation. We've read this many, many times.

But this really gets to what Paul is trying to describe here, this change of life, this change of the way we live our lives. Romans 12, verse 1 and 2. I'm going to read this from the Phillips version. With eyes wide open to the mercies of God, I beg you, my brothers, as an act of intelligent worship, to give him your bodies as a living sacrifice consecrated to him and acceptable by him. Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold, but let God remold your minds from within so that you may prove in practice that the plan of God for you is good, meets all his demands, and moves towards the goal of true maturity. This is what Paul is talking about. This is being a slave to righteousness. We are living our lives not conformed to the world, not fitting into the world's mold, but making true changes in our lives. Walking and newness of life. That's the grace. That's the grace that he gives us, and that's our response to grace, that he allows us to make the changes that we need to make.

See, we cannot implement one of the most famous verses in the Bible, 1 Peter 3, 18. Look over at 1 Peter 3, 18. This is one of the most often quoted verses, but the fact is that we can't implement this verse if we don't know even what it is. 1 Peter 3.

Yeah, 1 Peter...

Well, I... Sorry. 2 Peter, sorry. 2 Peter 3, 18. 2 Peter 3, 18. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. How can we grow in grace if we don't know what grace is?

We have to know what grace is to start with. We have to be able to define it. We have to be able to live it. We have to be able to understand how God is working grace in our lives. We study God's law. We need to study God's grace. And there's a lot in Scripture that talks about grace. We are supposed to grow in grace and knowledge. When we cast away pride, when we cast away fear, when we cast away our own reasoning, then we begin to see the changes that we have to make. And only then can we begin to grow in grace and knowledge. You know, I wish to stand before God and say, by grace, I am who I am. All of my problems, all of my difficulties, that God is forgiven, that I have responded to God's call, that I have worked to make changes in my life, that God can take those changes that I've made and He can use me in His kingdom. I wish to be able to say what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 22, verse 21 and 22, that I can stand before God and say I am who I am. And I hope you can too.