Saved by Grace

Last week, I gave the first sermon in a series on the subject of grace. We basically discussed what is grace. We saw the poll clearly taught that the Gentiles are saved by grace. Peter applied the principle to the Jews and to the Gentiles that there is no difference. The God is not a respecter of persons. The larger Jewish segment of the Church had always been law abiding. In fact, when they had gone into captivity in Babylon and came back out, you find that there was a tremendous emphasis placed upon Sabbath-keeping. Many of the things that they knew had led them into captivity. So, they had been very law abiding. Many of them relied on their works, and then they tried to influence the Gentiles that in order to be saved, you had to be circumcised, keep the law of Moses. They were looking at what they were doing. This was the key to salvation. But we find that there is no difference, again, between Jew and Gentile. All, as the Bible says, are saved by grace. By grace are you saved through faith. Both law abiding Jews and Gentiles knew nothing about God's law. What does the term saved by grace really mean? The Bible talks about salvation. This is a part of the eternal plan of God, the eternal purpose of God. God has a plan, a purpose, and it involves salvation. Again, the Scriptures speak of salvation as being saved by grace. So, where do our works come in? Are we not supposed to have works? How do they fit into the picture? Well, first of all, let's begin with the understanding that we have all been lost. I don't know if you've ever been lost before. Who was it? Was it Davey Crockett or Daniel Boone? One of them had asked if he had ever been lost, and he said no, but he had been bewildered for three days. So, many of us have been bewildered all of our lives. It may still be, but we've been lost. I mean, this is the terminology used in the Scripture. If you're lost, it's a scary proposition.

Alan Dance was talking about being up in the Smokies in some of these areas.

I've never experienced that, but I have been out in West Texas hunting on a ranch.

I have gotten my bearings mixed up and thought I was in one place and I wasn't. And the sun's going down, and you're not quite sure where you are. It's a little scary feeling. Because the gentleman who owned the property, you cost and said, see that windmill? As long as you can spot that windmill and come back to it, then you'll never get lost. Just don't go outside the fence. So, my wife and I stayed inside the fence. She's a very big deer hunter. We were out there looking. And he never told us that there was another windmill at the other end of the property.

So, we're moving around through the bushes, and we come up, and we see the windmill, and we keep keep going. Well, we're totally at the opposite end, and we thought we were back here somewhere.

Well, it's a little scary. They came along and found this.

But this is a condition that all of us were in before we responded to God's calling. The Bible uses the word loss. Let's notice Matthew 18, verse 10. Matthew chapter 18 and verse 10. So, Christ came to save us. We've been lost.

What do you think if a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray? Does he not leave the ninety-nine go to the mountain to seek the one that is straying? And if he should find him or find it assuredly I say to you that he rejoices more over that sheep than over the ninety-nine that did not go astray. Even so, it is not the will of your father who's in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. So, God doesn't want us to be lost.

You can take a sheep and they can get lost separated from the herd.

And if it's a big ranch, this rancher I was telling you about had a twenty thousand acre ranch. And we used to roam over it all over it. But twenty thousand acres, I'll guarantee you, it's easy to get lost. And he had sheep and goats and cattle. And when something got separated, how would it ever find its way back? Well, that can be our condition. John 3 16 says that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever should believe in him should not perish. So, God doesn't want us to perish, or, in other words, to die for eternity, to cease to exist. God has given us life, but it's human life. It's physical life. It's life that's based upon a chemical existence.

And God wants to give us self-existing life, eternal life. And that's something that God wants to do. Now, the key is how do we go from this physical chemical existence to an existence where we will not die, where we will have immortality, as 1 Corinthians 15 says. On 2 Corinthians 4, 2 Corinthians 4 and verses 3 and 4, let's read this, 2 Corinthians 4 verse 3, says, Even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. So those who are in a lost condition, so to speak, are perishing, whose mind the God of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel, the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them. It says, For we do not preach ourselves, Paul said, but Christ Jesus the Lord. So Paul very clearly brought out that what he preached was about Christ and through him that an individual could have ultimate salvation. So we have been lost. We've been in essence going to perish. We've all been sinners, and the Bible says the wages of sin is death. Every time you read some of these things, you need to stop and put different scriptures together. So you don't lose sight of the overall gist of what the Bible is saying.

When God called us, guess what you and I had to offer him? Nothing. What did we have to offer God?

Take me! I've got a big nose or big feet. Or look how handsome or how beautiful I am. Look at the intellect I have. Look at what I can do. Look at what I've accomplished. Do you think that God was impressed by that? The God who stepped out and created the whole universe, billions of stars, created the atom, created matter, made everything that man can know. And he looks down here at a bag of clay that's got air inside of it and blood flowing around, and we have anything to offer God. We had nothing to offer him. We weren't good people. We weren't righteous people. God didn't look down and say, I want you or I want you because we were good or because we were righteous. God was not impressed by us. We were worldly, carnal, deceived, following our own lust, our own desires. I mean, this is the way we were as human beings before our calling. In Romans 11 and verse 5, we find how God did call us. Romans 11 and verse 5. Even so, then, at this present time, there is a remnant according to the election of grace.

Now, we are called by grace. The word election means the act of picking out our choosing. So, we are the chosen ones of grace. Now, at this time, everyone will be chosen eventually. God will extend salvation or the opportunity for salvation to all mankind. But in this age, the first six thousand years of man's existence or man being on the earth, there is an election taking place, a choosing, a picking by God of individuals to be chosen. Is that picking based upon intellect, based upon looks, based upon abilities? The answer is no. Guess what it's based upon? It's based upon God calling on His grace. How many times have you ever wondered, why me? Why did God call me? We all know people who can run rings around us intellectually, ability-wise, talent-wise. I mean, how many people like Beverly Seals, Frank Lloyd Wright, you know, how many people, the mighty, the billionaires of this world, do we have in the church? You know, the Apple guys, the Microsoft guys, you know, Gates, and all of these people. Where are they as far as the church? I'm not saying that God can't call them, but not many mighty, not many noble, are called in this age. Now, the problem in the first century as we read about it, and see, problems will vary from decade to decade, centuries to centuries. The problem, there was a certain faction in the church which had some background in what we would call righteousness, in doing what was right, keeping the Sabbath, keeping the holy days. They kept God's law. But what did Jesus Christ say about the Pharisees, Sadducees, the lawyers of his days? He said, you hypocrites, you white-washing sepulchers, you vipers, you generation of snakes. He called them all kinds of names. He said, you're hypocrites, he called them self-righteous, and yet they did the law, or they obeyed the law. But when it came to Jesus Christ, they stumbled. In chapter 9, cross page of my Bible, verse 30, it says, What shall we say then, that the Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained to righteousness even the righteousness of faith? So there is a righteousness that comes through faith. The Jews who were unconverted did not have faith, not the true faith, the living faith. But Israel, pursuing the law of righteousness, so it is a law of righteousness, nothing wrong with it. It's not called the law of wrongness, it's a law of righteousness, is not attained to the law of righteousness. Now why?

Well, verse 32, why? Because they did not seek it by faith, but as it were, by the works of the law. For they stumbled at that stumbling stone as it is written, Behold, I lay in Zion a stumbling stone in a rock of offense, and whoever believes on him will not be put to shame. So they stumbled over Jesus Christ, and they didn't accept Him. So there's no way that you can become righteous the way God wants us to be without believing in Christ. And they didn't believe in Christ. They went about establishing their own righteousness, as we read last week. But let's go right on. I mean, the story goes right on, chapter 10, verse 1. Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they may be saved. For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God. So they're very zealous, but not according to knowledge. For they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, in seeking to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted to the righteousness of God.

Now, what did Jesus Christ say when He was on the earth? He said, of my own self, I can do nothing.

He said, what I speak, I heard, I learned from the Father. And you read through the book of John, and He says over and over again, I can do nothing on my own. It's what the Father does. So what you find that Jesus Christ, even the Son of God, when He came to the earth as a human being, still had to rely upon the Father and trust in Him for righteousness and to do what is righteous.

The problem with the Jews, they went about to establish their own righteousness. They had their own do's and don'ts. They were like so many people today, even in religion, who go about, and one of the easiest things to do is to say, well, you know, my group's better than your group, because my group does this, your group doesn't do that, therefore we're more righteous than you. And you see this all the time out in the world, in the way the world operates. And if we're not careful, we can even do the same thing within the Church by comparing ourselves among ourselves, how we keep the Sabbath, how well we do whatever it might be. The law does not make us righteous.

All the law-keeping in the world cannot make you righteous. Only God can make us righteous and impute His righteousness to us. The problem is, we have sinned. We have a sinful nature.

We're made subject to sin. We continue to sin. What if, and I'll be a little silly here, what if, from this point forward, not a person in this room sins again until he dies? I mean, you can go to your grave, and if Christ comes back 20 years from now, 20 years you've lived a perfect life, never sinning, does that make you righteous? Will that mean that you have now earned salvation? Can you tell God, you've got to give it to me because, look, I have shown you I can go 20 years and not sin?

No, that doesn't do it. Because, how are our past sins going to be forgiven? Well, there has to be a sacrifice, and Jesus Christ came, and it was sin. And it was through His sacrifice that our past sins can be forgiven, and that our future sins will be when we repent of us.

The greatest attempt through keeping the law won't make you righteous before God. Do you know why not?

Because we continue to sin, and we continue to need to be forgiven.

And this what if doesn't work that way. Because what if we all sin continually? We are all human. We all have weaknesses. We all bring our baggage with us and our way of thinking, and we all stumble.

So God's call, His calling of us, was by grace. So it starts by grace, and the Bible says you're saved by grace. So you start out by grace. You end up being saved by grace.

Does that mean everything else you do in between is not by grace? Well, it doesn't work that way. Some have thought, well, I began at the beginning, I began with grace, but I have to earn it by works. I don't think most of us feel that way, but yet sometimes how we live belies that, as I will show you. You and I are saved by grace. We stand by grace. We were called by grace, and you receive your inheritance of eternal life by grace. Now, does that mean that you and I don't have to do anything? See, this is the way the world interprets it. This is how many theologians explain grace. That you're saved by grace, therefore there's nothing that you have to do because if you do anything, then you're trying to save yourself. Well, as long as you realize that your obedience is not what saves you, but that obedience is still required of you because God is not going to give eternal life to anyone who doesn't obey Him. I mean, that's a simple fact from one end of the Bible to the other.

We learned in the last sermon on grace that God extends His grace to us, and as a result, you and I, now, through the love of God and His Son, submit to Him and we obey Him. Remember last week I mentioned that I gave you the definition of the word grace. I gave you a handout, three different Greek experts on what grace means. Traditionally, we have said grace is unmerited pardon, and that's absolutely true when it comes to our sins. There's nothing that we can do that would merit the pardon.

Again, it's like a person being a heinous murderer. He's guilty of murder. He's committed all of these crimes. He's sentenced to the electric chair, and before, you know, he's about to die, the president, the governor, whoever has the authority comes along and pardons him.

There's nothing that he did to earn it, but he is pardoned and he's let go. This is what God does for us when it comes to our sins. But remember, the definition of grace is much broader than that. It talks about God's graciousness, God's kindness, God's giving. All of these things are things that God does for us that we don't merit. Think of all of the gifts that God gives to us through grace. Nothing that you do to earn it. What kind of gifts does God give to His people, and not only to His people, but to the rest of the world? The Bible says God calls us the sun, the shine, on the just and the unjust. God provides food. He provides the earth. He's given it to us as a human race, as a gift, so that we can live, we can eat. He's put within that various minerals so that we might be able to smelt, mine those particular things, and use them for our benefit. As we heard in the sermon, you and I live in a country that's the recipient of the blessings of Abraham. Now God blessed Abraham based upon grace, but also upon Abraham's faith. Abraham had living faith, which means it was translated into obedience. He showed by his obedience that he had faith. But did his obedience earn 300 million people several thousand years later? This beautiful country? Is this something that's been earned? Or did not God give this blessing? Yes, as a result of Abraham's obedience, but as a gift. He didn't earn it. I mean, his obedience. I mean, how could he have earned this continent? The British Isles, the Australian continent, South Africa, and all of those things just because he obeyed. No, God extended blessings to him and set the pattern that God wants to bless his people if they would obey him, if they would do what he says. So the physical blessings that you and I have, brethren, of life, of food, clothing, shelter, all of these things God gives to us, they are blessings as a result of his grace. What about the spiritual blessings that God pours out upon us? We find Galatians 5.22 says, the fruit of the Spirit. God gives us the fruit of his Spirit. How do we earn that? These are gifts that God gives to us. 1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12 lists the gifts that God gives to us of knowledge, wisdom, understanding, healing, faith. All of these are gifts that God pours out upon his church, on his people, and he distributes them as he sees fit. The ministry is a gift that's given to God's people, or should be a gift that's given to the people for their good. And you find every good thing comes from God. What does James 1 say? Every good gift... Let's go back. I didn't write that in my notes, but it just popped into my mind. Verse 17, every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. Of his own will, he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of his creation. So, brethren, every good gift comes from God. So we have to realize that. And what a tremendous blessing it is to have that from God. Now, in Ephesians 2, let's look here very quickly at something we touched on last week.

But to realize that God has created us for a reason. But God, who is rich in mercy, again, that's an extension of his grace, because of his great love, which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses. So you and I spiritually, at one time, were dead.

We were dead men walking, dead women walking, so to speak. He's made us alive, together with Christ.

For by grace you have been saved. So we've not been made spiritually now alive. Verse 8, For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourself, it is a gift of God.

I know you can look at that in different ways, but it seems to imply that the very faith that it takes for us to be saved is a gift that comes from God. Our faith is not good enough. We start out with our faith, but later on we have the faith of Christ in us. Not of works, lest any man should boast. So again, we don't save ourselves by our works. For we are his workmanship. See, God is the one who's working in us. Created in Christ Jesus for good works.

So God then expects us, brethren, to have good works. To do good. To do what's right. To serve people. Help people. To love. To give. And it says, for God, prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. So you and I should walk or live in good works. This is to become a way of life with us. It is a way that we live. To do good. To serve. To help.

To love others. It is the way that we live. Why is it the right way to live? Because it's the way God lives. When you do good to other people, when you give, when you help, when you expend your time, when you sacrifice, you are exhibiting grace in your life. You are showing what God would do if God were on the earth. How would Christ conduct Himself? What would He do? If He lives in us, this is the way that He would be living. So you and I have to live in this way. John 14 verse 23. Sometimes we get things a little backwards.

Let's notice John 14.23.

Jesus answered and said to him, If anyone loves me, he will keep my word.

And my Father will love him. So He says, If you love me, you will keep my word.

And we will come to Him and make our home with Him. He who does not love me does not keep my words. A lot of people profess they love Christ. You know the Lord. They'll say, Oh, do you know the Lord? You love God. They have all these slogans that they use. But if they don't obey God, they're not keeping His commandments, then they don't love Him. They may profess it. They're not doing it. And the word which you hear is not mine, but the Father who sent me.

I think sometimes we get it backwards. We think, well, we try to keep God's commandments. And somehow, later on, think that maybe we'll grow and we'll learn how to love God. But we love God, and that motivates us to keep His commandments.

Notice, I think it's verse 15 here.

He says, No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing, but I have called you friends. For all things that I've heard from my Father, I've made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain. So God wants us to produce fruit, the right kind of fruit. It has to be the fruit from the tree of life, not the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It's got to be the proper type of fruit. Love is the basis of obedience, and faith is the motivation for obedience. The two go hand in hand.

Faith is the basis for obedience, and then love is the basis for obedience, and faith is the motivation.

Now, notice again what was happening back in the first century in Galatians, the third chapter.

We covered this, and we went through this in Bible study.

Galatians 3, verses 1 through 3.

Here you have these false teachers, as Paul said, over here in Galatians chapter 2. We come down, and we're teaching them false doctrine, teaching them that they had to be saved by circumcision and trying to save themselves. He says, O foolish Galatians, verse 1, chapter 3, Who has bewitched you, that you should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified? So he came preaching Christ, and him crucified. This only I want to learn from you. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are you so foolish, having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?

It's not the flesh that makes you perfect. It is the Spirit that makes us perfect.

He says, Have you suffered so many things in vain? See, they started out with their life in Christ, having the Holy Spirit going on the right path, and then these individuals came along, telling them, Well, you can't be saved unless you do all of these physical things. And as we discussed the last time, temple worship sacrifices and all of these, we're not going to save them. Backing up to verse 16, chapter 2 of Galatians, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law. No matter what you do in keeping the law, it doesn't matter what law, that doesn't justify you. It doesn't forgive your sins. That's Christ's sacrifice. But we have believed in Jesus Christ that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by the works of the law, for by the works of the law, no flesh will be justified. So if, verse 17, while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners. Is Christ therefore a minister of sin? Well, certainly not. Again, what is sin? 1 John 3, 4. Sin is the transgression of the law. He says, if I build again those things which I destroy, I make myself a transgressor. See, if righteousness comes through the law, then Jesus Christ died in vain. What are the steps to righteousness? There are steps to righteousness. 1. Is called by God. 2. You then become convicted of sin through the Holy Spirit. 3. You repent. 4. You're baptized. 5. You receive the Holy Spirit.

We then, because we've been baptized and received the Holy Spirit, have been justified and made right with God. We're now in a right relationship with God. We can truly call Him our Father. We are His children. The Bible calls this being reconciled to God. Now Jesus Christ lives in us and gives us the power to begin to obey the spirit of the law as well as the letter of the law. The problem is you and I are still human. We're still in the flesh. We still have the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. Satan's still out there bombarding us. He's throwing his darts at us all the time. We have to have the shield of faith to block them and to keep them from getting at us. So we still sin. We still make mistakes, but we can have forgiveness through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. So it's only through Jesus Christ, His sacrifice, and His living in us that we can truly be righteous. We try to do it on our own just simply by our physical effort to try to keep the law and the commandments. We will fail. Nobody has ever been able to do that. You can't do it on your own. Well, what does James 2 mean then? Is it a contradiction of what the Apostle Paul said? If you remember, James 2 talks about obedience that you show by your obedience, your faith. Let's go over to James 2 again, verse 14. James 2. This is why Martin Luther called the book of James an epistle of straw. Because he said, grace alone. By that, he meant you don't have to obey the law. See, that's what they mean by grace alone. They mean you don't have to obey the law, period. No law-keeping whatsoever, that Christ keeps it in you and for you, and so therefore you don't have to do anything. But that's not what James says in verse 14. What does it profit? Again, he says, my brother, if someone says he has faith but does not have works, can faith save him?

So he gives the example of a brother or sister naked, destitute of daily food, and one of you says to him, depart in peace, be warm, be filled, and you do not give them the things that are needed for the body. Why does it profit?

Thus also, faith by itself. Faith over here alone. So just picture, if we had two rocks up here, we'll call one faith, we'll call this a rock. If we have one rock up here and it's called faith, and it's alone, it's out here by itself, and doesn't have works, the other rock, then, notice, it's dead. It's just dead out here by itself. It's got to have something to give it life. Something's got to be there added to it. But someone will say, you have faith and I have works. Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.

Rather than this topic or subject through here is not faith or works. It's not an either or situation. But what James is writing about is what is the proof that anyone has real faith? What is the proof that you or I have faith? What's the proof that we have living faith versus dead faith over here? The mere profession of faith with no works is not faith. It's dead.

Faith is shown to be alive by your works. It's either dead or alive, and by your works, you show that it's alive. You say you have faith and you don't keep the Sabbath.

Well, I'm afraid I can't meet my bills. You don't have faith. It's dead. You don't tithe, and the Bible says tithe. Your faith is dead. I didn't say this. James said it. This whole section is talking about what demonstrates, what shows, what live faith is versus dead faith.

A person can state that he believes in Jesus Christ, and yet there's no change in his life. What he believes, what he professes, does not translate into works or into obedience.

God will not give salvation to anyone who does not respond to him, who does not begin to live by his standards, who is not developing his character.

But our response and our obedience doesn't call us, does it?

Doesn't justify us, and eventually does not give us salvation. God calls us. God justifies and forgives us, and God will eventually give us eternal life.

Nothing you can do will earn any of those. Only God.

In 1 John chapter 3 and verse 17, 1 John 3, 17, I'd like to read this out of the NIV.

If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need, but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be on him?

Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue, but with action and truth.

How do you know that you have the love of God? The love of God is demonstrated by action, by obedience, and according to truth.

This is where a lot of people get all mixed up. They look at, quote, unquote, the good people in the world, in society. There are many good people out there. They do good things, but they don't always do it according to the truth.

I mean, they do good things in helping other people, but they don't do good according to the truth. Our goodness has to be funneled. Mr. Armstrong used to say that love had to be channeled down through the bed of the Ten Commandments. It was like a river running. And the Ten Commandments is the way that it's shown how you show love. You show love by how you keep the Ten Commandments. The first four, loving God. The last six, how you love your neighbor. I mean, this is how you express it. And then throughout the rest of the Bible. So we have to love in action, and that action has to be according to the truth. And thy word is truth. You know, the Scriptures, God's law and way of life.

Now, going on here in 1 John 3 and verse 19, it says, By this we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him.

For if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts and knows all things.

And whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. See, our whole life, everything we do, is to please God to serve Him. And this is His commandment that we should believe on the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, love one another as He gave us commandments. So you and I are to love one another. Now, again, we're not justified by what we do. If we ask God to forgive us, and we're committing adultery, we're robbing banks, we're lying, have a lying nature, we're rebellious to government, is God going to forgive us? Well, of course not. So we have to do what God says. If we love God, in other words, what obedience is, it shows God that you and I are willing to put Him first. We're willing to do what He wants us to do. Grace leads to obedience. But that obedience is not what saves us. God saves us. He's in the saving business. He's rescuing us, and He's the one who gives us, eventually, eternal life. Let me show you a few things the Scriptures do not say about grace.

It does not say that you and I have to add to grace.

How can you and I add to the grace of God? I mean, He's already perfect.

God does not say that grace is not sufficient. Grace is sufficient.

If we don't believe it, then we say God's not perfect or He's not complete, or His grace isn't enough for us.

Now, if we say God's grace is not sufficient, where that leads us is, well, our own works. Then we can boast about what we do. What you find is that God's grace cuts through all of the pride and vanity that we have. We have all of us, a tendency to take pride in our own accomplishments.

Who we are, what we've done, this type of thing. Yet the Bible shows anything spiritual that is accomplished is accomplished by God. Not by us, but by God. Galatians 2.20 again, Christ lives in us in the life that we now live in the flesh. We live by the faith of the Son of Man.

So operating through God's grace, standing in God's grace, cuts through all of the ideas that we have to perform to receive His approval.

I want you to get this point because it's very important. What we really say when we say that is that God's love is conditional.

That God shows His love towards us conditionally. That if we don't live up to a certain standard, in other words, if we sin or we fall short occasionally, God removes His favor. And we're no longer what? We're always His children.

Many of us here have had children. Did your children always obey you?

How many times have you told your child, don't slam that door. Get your elbows off the table.

You know, don't chew with your mouth closed.

If I've told you once, I've told you a million times. Pick up your clothes, put your toys away, do this, do that. It seems like, as my wife used to say, they don't need a mother, they need a tape recorder.

Just repeat the same thing over and over to get their attention.

During all of that, you may have been tempted to say, go live with a neighbor.

But the bottom line is, they're your children. You love them.

And even though they may do things that displease you, they're still your children. And you're going to take care of them. And they could have done something wretched that you didn't like.

And the next moment they're in trouble or they're hurt. And you know what?

You're right there at their side. You're there to aid them, to help them, to assist them. And all of this is certain in the background, this is my child. He needs my help. And you're there to help and to be with them.

You see, when we begin to try to think that we've got to live up to a performance, then we begin to wonder, how much do I have to do?

And how do you ever answer that question?

You can. We try to figure out, you see, if sometimes if bad things happen to us or things start to go wrong, we have a test. You know, we pray. You know, we don't seem, maybe it's a trial, maybe it's our job, maybe it's health, whatever it might be. And things don't go away. We begin to wonder, you know, is God frowning on me? Is He sending His lightning bolts down? You know, what's He doing here? We try to figure out, well, is there something more I need to do? I think I've been praying. I think I've been studying. And maybe I should fast more. Maybe I should do this more. And we begin to become where we think, well, if I just do something more, then, you know, I'll be blessed. We do more, and we still have a problem. So how much more do we need to do? We then become performance-based.

When you're trying to merit something, prove something, perform, what happens is this is a recipe for tiredness, burnout, and discouragement. 1 Corinthians 15 and verse 10. The apostle Paul made an interesting statement.

1 Corinthians chapter 15 and verse 10.

But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace towards me was not in vain.

But I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I but the grace of God, which was with me. Paul labored more than all the other apostles because of God's grace.

Paul knew where he had come from. He knew that he had destroyed the church when it first started. He knew he had thrown people in jail. He knew he had murdered people. He had divided families, separated husbands and wives and children and so on.

So when God forgave him, He said, I of all men and the greatest sinner, He realized that He had sinned. And so He was driven to serve God, to obey God. And if you and I, brethren, are always striving to have God's approval, then when do we have enough?

When do you ever have enough? You never know, do you? When things are going well, you say, well, must be enough. Must be doing what's right. Then they start going bad. Oh, it's not enough. Maybe I slacked off, and so you start doing more. And we tend to go back and forth like this. Well, we don't try harder or to act good to get God's approval. We already have God's approval. We're His son. We're His daughter. We're His children.

Now, there's a word of caution in saying this because that doesn't mean that you can just sit back and say, well, I don't have to do anything. If you were like the apostle Paul, what did he say? Well, you know, hear again in verse 10. By the grace of God, I am what I am, and I labored more. Yet not I, but the grace of God. He realized it was because of God's mercy that he was before God. He had been forgiven. So therefore, he strove with all of his being, all of his might, everything that was within him. And he kept God's law. He kept the commandments. He worked night and day. And if you read through what Paul went through, he was shipwrecked. He was beaten. He was cursed. He was stoned. He was naked. He went night and day in the deep. And you go on and on. You read everything that he went through. But what I am simply saying is we are the children of God. Brethren, once we've been called by God, once God gives us his spirit, there is this bond, there is this connection. We have God's favor. Now, that doesn't mean that we're perfect. That means you and I will still sin. And when you sin, you repent. And you strive with every fiber within you to obey God, to labor, to serve, to give, to help, in whatever way, whatever capacity that you can, just as Paul did. But you don't go around thinking, all the time, I've got to do more. And yes, you've got to pray. And you've got to study. And you've got to keep the Sabbath. And you've got to tie. And you've got to do what God says.

But this is a mentality that I've seen over the years that many people slip into, is that if something bad's happening, I've got to do more. Everything's good. We just sort of sit back. Well, you may be praying and studying and doing everything the same in the good times and the bad times. Now, I think all of us, when things aren't going well, yes, we try to see if there's anything that we're doing wrong. I mean, that's natural. That's normal.

But what you find, you don't want to come to where you never know if you're serving enough. Because then you feel guilty. You get discouraged. I'll never make it. I can't be in God's kingdom. There's no hope for me. And you feel helpless. And people just give up. And they quit. And that's not the way God wants us to be.

He wants us to have the attitude, I am a son of God. I have His Spirit. I know that if I sin, I'll be forgiven. I don't sin deliberately. I don't try to do that in any way. But I know that if I make a mistake, that God is going to forgive me. Now, I'm going to strive to obey Him and be involved in His work and with all of my being. And that was Paul's attitude. In 2 Corinthians 12, 9, he said this. You remember the time when Paul pleaded three times with God that God would remove the trial, the tests, the thorn in the flesh that He had.

And God said to Him, My grace is sufficient for you. And then God says, My strength is made perfect in weakness. God's strength is made perfect in our weakness. Therefore, most gladly, I'd rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon me. Sometimes it's when we're going through our trials that we become the strongest. Because we realize that we need God.

And God says, My grace, You know, My kindness, My love for you, My goodness and My help is sufficient. I will help you. All we have to do is make sure that we, you know, submit to God. Paul was not driven by fear or vanity. He was driven by his love for God, his recognition of his forgiveness. He wasn't a perfect. He was perfect. He was a human being just like you and me. He had temptations and trials and frustrations in life just like you and I have. You remember back here in Romans 7, the book of Romans, chapter 7, beginning in verse 18.

He said, For I know that in me that is in my flesh nothing good dwells, for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do I do not. But the evil I will not to do, that I end up practicing. Isn't that sort of what we find ourselves stumbling through?

You think that God doesn't know when he called you and he called me that we're human? That we're still human? That we have his spirit? And that we will make mistakes? But God wants us, brethren, to rely upon him that when we do that we ask for forgiveness, not like the Catholics do. You know, you know, forgive me for I've sinned and then they go right out and do it all over again.

No, repentance means you're sorry and you change. God wants us to change. But he goes on to say, I find in verse 21, a law of that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. I delight in the law of God according to the inward man, but I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members, O wretched man that I am. And how many times have we gotten down on our knees and said, O wretched man that I am and cried out to God to forgive us and to have mercy?

And God will. He does if we are sincere and then we are striving to change. So what you find, Paul went through the very same thing that you and I go through. This is how he could write all of these epistles. This is why they are so meaningful and so encouraging to us because he was a man just like us.

We can identify with what he went through because we go through the same things. You know, Jesus Christ's teaching is full of the subject of grace, but the application of those teachings of the gospel of Christ, taking what Christ said and applying it, if you ever stop to think, is only through the writing of four men in the New Testament.

It's through Peter, James, John, and Paul that we have what we know. In other words, we have these four men, these four apostles, who took Christ's teaching and amplified it and applied it to the church in their age and explained how it applied. The vast majority of what we know about the subject of grace was written by Paul. He's the one who talks about it the most, and you'll find repeatedly in his writings where he mentions this. When you understand what grace is all about, nobody has to beat you over the head to do what is right or to do something because what you realize is because of God's love and mercy and forgiveness. The huge debt that we've had has been lifted and forgiven, and God said that he will give us eternal life.

Everything that God does is based in grace and in his love, and God extends that love to us. Sometimes we rely on how well we keep the Sabbath, how much time we spend in prayer, any point of obedience we think, well, the more I do this, the more I'll get.

Doesn't Isaiah 58 verses 3 and 4, where it talks about fasting, say, why do you fast?

The people said, we fast, why don't you listen to us? Why aren't you answering our prayers? And God said, you fast to get. You fast to make your voice heard on high. You're not fasting to change yourself. You're not fasting to find out what's wrong with you, but to get something. Well, that can't be our motivation, brethren.

The gospel is called the good news, and there are several reasons why the gospel is called the good news. One, it is the good news about Jesus Christ who paid for our sins. He paid the debt to the fool and about a holy God who was willing to give his son so that we could be forgiven.

And the shedding of his blood satisfies the requirements of God, that if you sin, there has to be the shedding of life so that we can be made acceptable in God's sight. This is one reason why it's called the gospel of grace. It's also good news because it's the good news about what? Well, about the kingdom of God, but it's good news on how we can get into that kingdom. You don't get into the family of God, the kingdom of God, without obeying, without having your sins forgiven, without Christ's sacrifice, without Christ living in us. You know, that whole thing that we've covered. So God's love towards mankind, his forgiveness of mankind, his pardon, is something that we do not merit. We can't earn it. It is God's free gift to us. So truly, when the Bible says, by grace we're saved and not by works, it's true. So, brethren, we need to understand what God is telling us when it comes to this particular topic.

There's a lot more to this we haven't covered, but I think that instead of trying to give you four sermons straight in a row on this topic, we'll break it up a little bit. Next week, I want to speak on prophecy. There's just a lot going on in the world, a lot of things taking place that I think we need to focus on. So we'll take a diversion. We'll come back to this at some future point. But believe me, we have not exhausted the topic yet.