What Does the Bible Teach About Grace?

We haven't exactly had a lot of articles on it, never published a booklet on it, haven't heard a lot of sermons on it, I've heard a few from time to time. And one reason that we have shied away from discussing this particular topic is that it is so misused, so abused, so misunderstood by others, that we have pretty much just avoided the subject.

And at the same time, it's also a subject that can be hard to wrap our minds around, and that hasn't helped in trying to understand or explain that particular subject.

And what is that subject? Well, the subject is grace. Or more specifically, what does the Bible teach about grace? What does it say about it? This is the first of what will be at least several sermons on this topic. And the word grace actually appears a lot in the Bible. In the King James Version, it appears 163 times. So it's not a subject that's often a corner. It's something that is mentioned quite often, quite predominantly. However, at the same time, it's a little bit hard for us to understand because grace is not a word that we use in everyday conversation these days. When is the last time you heard somebody use the word grace in modern conversations? It's probably been years. Maybe some of our younger people have never heard the word grace used in everyday conversation. Grace is a word that is often associated with religious beliefs, acts, actions, that sort of thing. For example, people used to hear this a lot when I was growing up about saying grace before meals. Our terminology is more as God's blessing on the meal, but saying grace is a term that was often used for that. People would speak of being saved by grace, or people would speak of God as being full of grace, meaning that He is graceful, He is gracious, He is kind, He is merciful. And all of those things are, of course, true. But over the years, the subject or word grace has kind of been used sometimes, or forms of it have been used, in a more secular manner. And we occasionally hear, for example, here's a number examples that I came up with or took from other sources. We speak, for instance, of someone who has fallen from grace, and that's actually a biblical phrase, but it's used today to refer to somebody who has done something that has put them in a very bad place in their life. They are described as having fallen from grace. They're in a bad situation or a bad place as a result of their actions. Looking again at this list, we hear of people who are a disgrace because their deeds have disgraced them and been disgraceful. Variations on this word grace. We may even say that a person has no saving grace about them, meaning that they just don't have any good characteristics about them. They're just good for nothing. There, you occasionally hear that phrase, no saving grace. For those of you who are musicians or appreciate music, you understand that composers sometimes will add notes to their musical composition called grace notes.

Grace notes, meaning they're not necessary, but they are added flourishes to add to the enjoyment. The listeners' enjoyment of those musical pieces there. In the publishing field, which I've been involved in for 40-some-odd years, subscribers to magazines and newspapers will occasionally let their subscription lapse, but the publisher will continue sending them several issues.

And those are called grace issues. And that practice is called gracing. You send somebody, you keep their subscription going, three, four, five, six issues in the hopes that they will go ahead and renew and keep their subscription to your publication there.

Car rental agencies or credit card companies or mortgage companies will also, many times, give people a grace period in which to make their payment. In other words, if your payment is due on the first of the month, they may give you a grace period until the fifth or the seventh or eighth of the month to give you an additional time in which to make your payment before there's a penalty due on that. And that is called a grace period. People sometimes refer to royalty as your grace.

There was a new prince born in the House of Windsor this week, Prince Louis. I think they really ought to get up with the times to be a little more modern and call him Prince Louis. But they're probably not going to do that. That reminds me, as I was thinking about this, I remember we were living in Texas when his father was born. One of the local East Texas radio stations had a contest to name the new prince. And the winner, for those of you from Texas, was Prince Bubba. And they didn't take that advice either. So they're probably not going to take my advice to name him Louis-Louis. But anyway, yeah, royalty is quite often addressed as your grace, meaning that it's a sign of the esteem in which the person is held.

Variations of the word grace appear quite often in the English language. One of the highest compliments we can give someone is to say that they are gracious or that they are graceful.

On the other side of the coin, the word ingrate is a very deep insult for a person. You ingrate there. So that also is taken from the word grace. We are grateful when good things happen to us, or at least we should be. In a restaurant, when we receive good service, we leave a gratuity or a tip. We congratulate others on a job well done, or a promotion, or an achievement, or something like that. That also is from the word grace. Something that is gratis means that it is free. A relationship there to grace as well, which we'll discuss a little bit later. At times, people try to ingratiate themselves with others, which is not a good thing.

Sometimes, to do that, they use gratuitous words or actions. If taken too far, they may become, to borrow a Latin phrase, persona non grata, which means a person without grace. Somebody who isn't appreciated, you do not want to see them. With so many different uses and so many shades of meaning that come out of the word grace, it's not surprising that grace is a concept that we can have difficulty defining and understanding in that way. This has led to many misunderstandings when it comes to the theology of grace, the biblical teaching about grace. Some of those consequences are quite serious. In failing to understand grace, as it is revealed in the Bible, some people have accepted very distorted and twisted views of what grace is and its relationship to God and to Jesus Christ. And it has led some to even deny God, as we read in Jude 4.

He 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 lewdness and denied the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ. So some people, as Jude says, their misunderstanding of grace is so off base that they end up denying God and denying Jesus Christ. So yes, the consequences of understanding what grace is and isn't are serious. It's a serious matter.

What about you? What is your understanding of grace? Is it grounded in what the Bible says? Do we really understand that? Well, it is vital that we do understand it, so I'm going to be giving a series of sermons on this particular topic. To introduce it, to help us begin to understand what it is, I'd like to project some words up here that probably all of us are familiar with. These are some of the words to the hymn, Amazing Grace. Is there anyone here who has not heard of those words of that hymn? Okay, same thing. Here's in Denver. Yeah, everybody has heard it. It's a wonderful, beautiful hymn.

I keep a version of my Judy Collins on my iPhone and listen to it there. I think she's done the most beautiful version of it personally, but a number of artists have recorded this song over the years, and it's truly a beautiful piece of music and some amazing words to the hymn, Amazing Grace.

I'll just read it for us here. I won't sing it. I don't want you all to leave, but 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. And there's actually a number of words to it, but these are the ones that we're most familiar with. And some people are even familiar with a man who penned these words. How many of you have ever heard that story of how these words... Okay, about a third here. Okay, it's quite an interesting story and involves an individual by the name of John Newton. And you can see his painting of him up here in the bottom right corner here. John Newton was a sailor.

Later in life, he actually captained slave ships. Ships that took captive slaves from Africa and delivered them to the New World, the Caribbean, North America, South America. And this was in the early 1700s. And on his ships, he transferred, rather, or transported literally thousands, maybe tens of thousands of slaves from Africa to a life of misery in the New World when slavery was legal at that time. And what happened to him? In the year 1748, his ship was caught in a violent storm off the coast of Ireland and began filling with water. The hull ruptured, and to hear the way he related it, he realized that the ship is filling with water, and he's going down, and he's going to drown. And he cried out to God to save him, to spare him. And to describe the story that he related, the cargo of the ship, which wasn't slaves at that moment, shifted and actually plugged the hull in the hull and stopped the water from coming in. The ship was still crippled, but it stayed afloat and drifted to shore, and his life was spared. And he viewed that as a miracle. And at that point, he committed his life to God, and over a course of several years, repented of what he was doing and began seriously studying the Bible. So seriously, in fact, that he later became a minister in the Church of England, if I remember correctly. And he devoted his life to abolishing the slave trade that he had made quite a good living off of as the captain of a slave ship. And later on in life, he wrote a number of hymns, and one of those hymns was Amazing Grace, where he tells the story. He reflects on his life prior to God, by his grace, granting him repentance and a change of life, and delivering him from a life of evil as he saw it to something far better. And that is the motivation why he wrote this hymn, 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. And he did live to see, he dedicated his life again to abolishing slavery, and lived to see Britain abolish the slave trade shortly before his death in 1807. And the reason I mentioned his story is that story could apply to any one of us, as well, about our situation in life before God's calling. The subject of grace is vital to our spiritual health and well-being. And yet, at the same time, as I mentioned earlier, it's something that is often misunderstood, and even controversial, because the way, the idea, the concept of grace has been misunderstood, has been misapplied, has been abused over the years, leading to, as we saw in Jude 4, permissiveness, or license, or licentiousness. So how would you define grace? If I went around the room and asked every one of you to define grace, we'd come up with different answers, or different shades of meaning, or nuance, or emphasis in that. For some, the definition of grace might be God's goodness to an undeserving person. Others might respond that they see grace as God's unmerited, or as his unmerited pardon. Others might say it's the forgiveness of a person's sins.

And all of those answers are right. They're absolutely right. But the problem is those answers are only a small part of the spectrum of the subject that is God's grace.

And we'll see some of that as we go through this sermon today. The Bible's, the biblical study of grace in the Bible isn't all that complex. There are actually only two words in the Bible translated grace. One in Hebrew, one in Greek. And we'll take a look at those in a minute. So one in the New Testament, one in the Old Testament. So it's not theological rocket science to get into the definitions of the Hebrew or Greek words translated grace. The Bible was written over a period of some 1500 years, 15 centuries approximately. And as the word grace appears in the Bible, which we see, it appears very early on, we'll see different nuances, different shades of meaning, different emphases as the word is used, how it comes across and what it means. Grace shows up, let's look at the very first time, appears in the first book of the Bible, Genesis. Genesis chapter 6 and verse 8, where we're told that Noah was under or within God's grace. As it says here, Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. It doesn't mean he was out looking for it, then he found it, but God extended grace to Noah is what we're being told here. So grace is not a concept that appears only in the New Testament. It goes all the way back to Noah here. It's not something that Jesus Christ brought grace and it was unknown before them. Noah was known for about 2000 years before then. The Old Testament contains many mentions of grace, such as what we're told here, that Noah found grace in the eyes of God. So what does that mean? Let's take a look at the word here.

The Hebrew word translated grace. Depending on which source you look at, it'll be spelled either H-E-N or C-H-E-N. That's because in Hebrew, it's not a sound that is used much in English, it's a k sound. So it's kind of a combination of H and k. It's not like change, as we would view it, but it's pronounced cain, cain there. It means from the complete word-study dictionary Old Testament, it means favor, grace, acceptance, unmerited or undeserved or unearned favor or regard in God's sight. The word conveys a sense of acceptance or preference and some special standing or privilege with God or people. I should note that grace isn't exclusive to God. In the Bible, you'll find individuals extending grace to others. And there's an important lesson for us there, which we'll get to later on. We should be people of grace. We should extend grace to others as grace has been extended to us. So this is the definition for the word, and you can again see a broad range of meanings there. So in this particular case of Noah finding grace in the eyes of God, what does that mean? How is that relevant to us and our lives?

To put it in more modern terms, what we might say is that Noah was on God's good side. If you want a simple definition of grace in our relationship with God or with someone else, it's to be on God's good side. There are many people that we in life want to be on their good side.

Probably the person that you or I want to be most in grace with on their good side is the person sitting beside us, our husband or wife. And we know that if we find favor in the eyes of our husband or wife, that things go well. You know, if I want to get on Connie's good side, I've got a magic phrase that I use. Connie, I love your dog! And it's like magic! It works! And I know it works, and Connie knows it works, and Jake knows it works. And I do love the little mess, but that's my get-out-of-jail-free card. Honey, I love your dog, because she loves the dog, and she loves it. I love the dog, so it's good. And that's one way that I can stay on our good side, or attempt to, at least. Usually it works. So we know that if we are in favor, if we're on the good side of our spouse or husband or wife, that things go well. That little things get overlooked. Things don't grind to a halt where you're butting heads over this or that issue or whatever, but they get worked out, and you can discuss ideas and plans and so on, calmly and rationally, and work out things. And it works well. And everything works better when we're on our spouse's good side.

On the other hand, we don't want to be in a state of ungrace, or not in a state of grace or favor, with our spouse, because you don't want to be in that position where you are not found in favor, because then what happens? Nothing goes right. Small irritations grow to be big irritations, and little things become a big deal. So we want to be in good graces with our spouse, with our husband or wife, with our parents, with our children, even. And we also, let's look at another relationship with our boss, with our employer. We want to be in good graces with them. You know what it's like when you go into your job and your boss or your supervisor likes you. You're in favor with them. Everything goes right. Small problems get overlooked if you, you know, get caught in a traffic jam. It's got an idea. Get down here 10 minutes late. Sometimes those things happen.

And your boss, if you're in their good graces, will say, no, no, no problem. You know, you can make up the time some other time. You're a good worker, and I know that, so we'll just, you know, you can let it slide and we'll make it up some other time. But on the other hand, what happens if you are not in good graces with that person? Well, then things get magnified. Little irritations like that can get amplified. Mistakes get amplified, and things go downhill from there.

And the situation can and does go downhill, and it gets worse and worse. So you want to be in good graces with your boss, with your supervisor. Think about friendship, too.

Friendship's another situation like that. You want to be in... friendship is based on being in good graces with someone. The reason you gravitate toward some people is because you are favored by them, and they are favored by you, and you get along, and you overlook the small differences, the personality quirks and differences, and so on. But on the other hand, if you are not in their good graces, then little things become irritants and become problems and affect that relationship in a derogatory way.

And God's grace toward us is essentially the same. What kind of relationship does God want to have with us? Notice John 15, verse 15. What relationship did Jesus have with His disciples? We read 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.

We read elsewhere that Abraham is called the friend of God. God wants a friendship with us. Not a servant-master relationship, as Jesus said here, but He wants to be friends with us. He wants us to have that close relationship, that relationship where we are in His favor, where we're on His good side. In other words, so you might say that being under grace or being in good graces is being on somebody's good side, and we want to be on God's good side. When we wake up in the morning, we want to be on God's good side. When we pray and talk to God, we ought to ask, God, I want to be on your good side today.

Help me to do that. Help me to honor you. Help me to serve you. Help me to please you. Help me to do what is right in your side. I want to be on your good side. And that's a kind of relationship that we should want to have Him. And if we are in that kind of relationship, we know that we are on His good side. We can have that confidence and that faith.

Noah was a man who was on God's good side. Did Noah have problems, frailties? Yes, they're spelled out in the Bible there. But he was still favored by God. He was still on God's good side, where we should want to be. And in Noah's case, being under God's grace literally saved his life.

And the flood saved his life, his wife's life, his children and their spouses there. So it was a matter literally of life and death. So Noah being saved by God's grace is in a sense a foretaste of how we also are saved by God's grace. We won't talk about that today, but we'll talk about it hopefully next time in much more depth.

In the world where it had become so violent, so evil, so repulsive, evil beyond repair, that God had to essentially start all over again with a human race. Noah found grace and it saved his life. So it's an important issue. The problem with trying to define grace is that some of the definitions become too narrow, and some people may view some of those definitions as being in contrast or in contradiction to one another. And that's really not the way we need to look at it.

An important principle in understanding the Bible, studying the Bible, is that when there are multiple definitions, it doesn't necessarily mean they're contradictory. It often means they are supplementary and complementary, meaning that they're both true, and they just give us different dimensions of the subject. And that's particularly true of grace. Different definitions, different ways of defining grace only add to the fullness of that meaning. For example, God, as I mentioned, liberally uses the word grace in the Old Testament.

And by looking at how it is used, we can come to better understanding of that. We just talked about Noah. Let's look at a few other passages. Psalm 84 and verse 11. Psalm 84 and verse 11. Here, King David says, So we see here quite a bit about God giving grace to human beings. And David understood this. The Lord will give grace and glory, and no good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly.

So we see from this that God wants to give us grace. He wants to give us His favor.

He wants to give gifts. He wants to help us in our lives and our everyday struggles.

And to anyone who is willing to walk uprightly, as it says here, He wants to shower even more of His gifts and good things on those people. And this is what David was inspired to write about God, the kind of God that we worship here.

Let's notice something else. Proverbs, one of the Proverbs of Solomon, Proverbs 3, verse 34, where Solomon is inspired to write about God, surely He scorns the scornful, but gives grace to whom? To the humble. To the humble. God admires humility. He respects humility, you might say.

And He gives grace to those who are humble. This is actually quoted twice in the New Testament, James 4 and verse 6, but He, God, gives more grace. Therefore, He says, God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. And 1 Peter 5 and verse 5, Yes, all of you be submissive to one another and be clothed with humility, for God resists the proud, but gives grace to whom? To the humble, as we see here. So this assures us that God gives His goodness, His grace, His favor, His gifts to those who are humble, who know where they are in relationship to God.

Another proverb to look at, Proverbs 4 and verse 9, this wording is going to sound a little odd, but in this proverb it's part of a section that is personifying wisdom as a woman, comparing wisdom to being a person in the form of a woman. And says, she, this woman wisdom, will place on your head an ornament of grace, a crown of glory she will deliver to you. So grace is one of the most wonderful things that God wants to extend to us and to give us. It's far beyond just the forgiveness of sin, which is extremely important. Don't get me wrong, and it also is a gift that comes from God. But forgiveness is not something we earned or something we bought or something we paid for in some way. It is a gift that is given freely by God. We'll see that more later on. But grace, the point I'm making here, is that grace is far more than just forgiveness of sins.

It's far more than pardon. God's grace is, as we've seen in some of these verses here, it's a showering on us of glory, as it says here, of wisdom, of knowledge, of anything and everything that is good that comes from God. And that is God's grace. Let's look at a couple of other interesting examples. At times, God gives grace to large numbers of people. We read about an example of that in Jeremiah 31, verse 2, and this is talking about the Exodus. We're just going through the spring. Holy days are reminded of the story of the Exodus, but it is a story of, if you put it down to the bottom line, it's a story of God's grace. And he says that here, Jeremiah 31, verse 2, "...Thus says the Lord, the people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness, Israel, when I went to give him rest." Talking about the nation of Israel, giving them rest by taking them out of slavery, where they work seven days a week.

Every day in slavery, making bricks, working on other work projects, and things like that.

And we're told here that God's delivering Israel from generations of slavery in Egypt, and leading them into the Promised Land was an act of great grace. Of God delivering them from their slavery, bringing them out of that horrible condition, of lovingly caring for them during that time, the 40 years of wandering, when he gave them food to eat every day in the manna, giving them water out of the rocks in a desert. I don't know if any of you have ever been to the Sinai Desert. I haven't. I've flown over it, and it looks like the landscape of Mars, just unbelievably desolate there. But God helped these people survive for 40 years in that environment. Their shoes didn't wear out for 40 years. God took care of them, performed many great miracles there to help them survive, because they wouldn't have survived without his grace, without his intervention, without his deliverance there. So these are some of the many wonderful acts of his grace, how he cared for them, how he loved them, and watched over them. And there's also an interesting prophecy. Let's look at this, where God is going to once again extend grace to a large number of people. This is actually a dual prophecy we read about here in Zechariah 12 and verse 10. And notice what God says he plans to do here. And I will pour out on the house of David, descendants of Israel, and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplication. Then they will look on me whom they pierced.

This is a prophecy of the Messiah. Jesus Christ is the one giving this prophecy. Yes, they will mourn for him as one mourns for his only son, and grieve for him as one grieves for a firstborn.

When and how was this fulfilled? Well, we're coming up on the Feast of Pentecost, in a few weeks, which pictures the fulfillment of this prophecy.

When God pours out the spirit of grace, when God did pour out the spirit of grace, on the people gathered there on that first Pentecost in Acts chapter 2 that we can read about there. And what happened as a result of him pouring out, giving them the spirit of grace? Well, they came to realize that they were guilty, they were responsible for the death of Jesus Christ, for piercing him, that their sins had led to him being crucified and stabbed and dying.

And they came to realize that. And what happened? They took to heart Peter's words, Acts 2.38, repent and be baptized. They ask, What then shall we do? And Peter says, Repent and be baptized, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And this is what happened. But I mentioned this is a dual prophecy as well. What's going to happen when Jesus Christ returns to earth as King of Kings and Lord of Lords? We're going to see a repeat of this. Because what's going to happen then? Then God, Jesus Christ, is going to extend the spirit of grace to the entire world and give all of the world the opportunity to repent and to understand that their sins were responsible for the death of Jesus Christ the Messiah. And as a result of that, they will mourn. As it says here, they will mourn for Him. They will realize what their sins led to. And they will feel grief for that, as it says here, for what their sins have led to. And as a result, they will have their opportunity to repent and to receive God's Spirit as well. So while it seems this prophecy was fulfilled in a small way on the first Pentecost there in Acts 2, it will be fulfilled at a much greater level throughout the world after Jesus returns. And at that time, God will show grace to many, many people, millions of people. And they will then recognize their sins are responsible for Christ's death. And this will lead to many of them repenting. So we see here, these are just a few of the examples and uses of this word, chin, here in Hebrew that is translated grace in the Old Testament. So what do we see? We see God's favor. We see God's giving of gifts. We see God's special attention to those to whom He chooses to extend His grace. Let's take a look now at the New Testament.

Here again, one word in Greek that is translated grace. It is charis, pronounced charis, although it looks like it would be spelled charis, but it's not. It's charis, a K sound. And it's defined in the complete word study dictionary New Testament as grace, particularly that which causes joy, pleasure, gratification, favor, acceptance, for a kindness granted or desires, a benefit, thanks, gratitude, a favor done without expectation of return, the absolutely free expression of the loving kindness of the giver, unearned and unmerited favor. So again, we see quite a range of meanings there that encompass some of the aspects, some of the shades of meaning of grace here. It's interesting also, charis is the root word for charity. You may remember 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter in the Bible. Charity, as it's translated in the King James, suffers long and is kind. Most other translations translate that as love, understanding that charity there meant love. So it's interesting, this word charity means both love and a gift. And both of these are important aspects of God's grace. It is an expression of God's love. It is also a gift that He gives us. So you can see the relation between charis and charity there.

It's interesting, this word comes from the Greek verb kairo, which means to rejoice, to rejoice, to be grateful, to be happy there because you have received grace.

It's also interesting, it's the root for our English word charisma. We don't have time to get into that, but it's an interesting side note there. It's related to the root of our word charisma. In the New Testament, where do we find the first use of this word?

Chronologically, we find it in Luke 2, in verse 40, where Jesus is a young boy. And we're told here, the child grew and became strong in spirit filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him. So when Jesus is a young boy, when He's growing up, there's probably nothing more important in the mind and priorities of God the Father than to do everything He can for this young boy, to nurture Him, to care for Him, to protect Him. We already know that Herod tried to kill all the baby boys, and he was miraculously spared and warned his family to escape to Egypt. And in every way to bring this young child into adulthood so that he could fulfill the purpose that the two of them had planned before the foundation of the world, of Him being a sacrifice for the sense of mankind. So we see that the grace of God was on Him. Every possible attention and favor was on Him. We see also from the passage that we cannot just limit grace to pardon of sins, because who is this boy Jesus? He's Immanuel. He is God in the flesh. He is sinless. He will always be sinless. He never sin. So if you define grace as only pardon of sins, it doesn't apply here because He had no sins to be forgiven. He would never sin. So obviously grace is much more, a much broader concept than that. Forgiveness, and again, don't get me wrong, forgiveness and pardon of our sins are only part of the definition of grace. So when we think of ourselves as being under grace, it's not just that God forgave our sins, forgave the things we've said and done and thought that we're wrong, God's grace encompasses a lot more than that. As we think about grace and explore this concept of grace, a good way to think about grace is not to think of it of the standpoint or from just the standpoint of what God has removed from us, i.e. our sins, which He has removed, but what God has given us, because the focus of the passages we've talked about so far are more on what God gives, not that He has taken away our sins. So what are some of the things God gives?

Well, some of the things we've touched on, and this is just part of a very lengthy list, but the opportunity for eternal life, the opportunity for a loving relationship with God the Father and Jesus Christ, the understanding of God's plan and purpose for us, the understanding of the kingdom of God and how we may enter that kingdom, and the forgiveness of our sins. Yes, the forgiveness of our sins is taking something away, but what does it take away? It takes away the guilt, which enables us to have something that we didn't have before, which is confidence in faith to come before God, to come before that throne of grace and seek help in time of need. So that removing our sins actually gives us something wonderful.

There is well. I might touch on here briefly, too, that a very key part of grace, and we'll talk about this much more in a future sermon, a very key part of grace is the law of God, because what is God's law? God's law is a great blessing to us. We're familiar with 1 John 3, 4, a classic definition of sin. Sin is lawlessness. Here, the transgression of God's law.

But God's law is a part of His grace, His goodness toward us, giving us that direction for how to live, giving us that light for our past to show us the right path to walk on, to show us how to avoid the sin, the suffering, the heartache that comes as a result of sin. There's the classic theological argument, are you under law or are you under grace? It's a nonsensical argument, and it confuses people because it's argued that way to do away with the need to keep God's law.

But God's law is one of the most precious and wonderful and beautiful things God has ever given mankind. Let's notice that God's law is a blessing and intended to be a blessing.

Just a few passages here, Deuteronomy 6 and verse 24. The Lord God commanded us to observe all these statutes to fear the Lord our God. Why? For our good always that He might preserve us alive as it is this day. Over a few chapters, Deuteronomy 10 and verse 13. Breaking into a thought and to keep the commandments of the Lord and His statutes which I command you today. Why? For your good. So you will be blessed, in other words. Another one, Joshua 1 and verse 8, as the Israelites are entering the Promised Land. This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. And what will happen then if you do all that is within this book of the law? For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. So you see, repeated again and again, God's law is a blessing to people, not a curse. It's part of His grace. It is a gift that comes from Him. It is His guide for how we are to live, His instruction manual, as we've described it. And it is a beautiful gift, a beautiful guide, a beautiful direction for a prosperous, a peaceful, a successful life, as we see here in Joshua 1 and verse 8.

So everything that God gives is a part of His grace, and His law is certainly a part of that as well. Again, we'll talk about that in much more detail in a future sermon.

Let's move forward a little bit chronologically here to the early church, and something that we should take note of here, Acts 4 and verse 33. This is early in the book of Acts, the history of the church. And notice what we're told here.

describing the work, the activity of the early church. And notice that great grace is given to Jesus Christ's followers, not just average grace, not just ordinary grace, but great grace. It's poured out on them, heaping, overflowing here. And with this great grace came what?

We see in the first few words, great power, great power by which the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. So they had great power because they had great grace. The two went hand in hand there. And God's graciousness and favor gave them power, just as it can give us power as well. And if anything could be described as the biggest help that God could have given his church in those early days, it was his grace. Giving them his Holy Spirit there. Three thousand people who were baptized into the church on that day of Pentecost there, and opening unbelievable doors for them to get off to a strong start, a fast start. So the church was under a great deal of extra grace from God. And they have great power as a result of that. And they do great things, great miracles that are performed. Now how might that apply to us today?

If you ever considered, you might think about this as we come up to Pentecost, consider praying for some of the grace that came on the early church that resulted in great power, for that power and that grace to be multiplied in God's church today. You know, do we regularly ask God to open doors for Him to give us His power, for Him to multiply our strength so that it is actually His strength and His power? So that His work can be done in us individually, in our lives, and through us and through us collectively as a group as well. Because what is done is not done by my might or my power or my spirit, but through God's might and God's power and His Spirit there. And it is also through God's grace that He opens the hearts and minds of people to understand His way of life. That also is God's grace, as we'll see. A person's heart and mind opening up is part of the goodness of the gift of God's grace. It comes from Him.

Let's notice Romans 5 and verse 17. This is from the English Standard Version.

And Paul writes here, if because of one man's trespass, this is talking about Adam's sin, death reigned through that one man, Adam, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

So what Paul is essentially seeing here, that there wouldn't have been a need for grace had Adam not sinned. That created a need for grace and all of his descendants and followers of Adam ever since, which includes every one of us. We put ourselves in a position of beating grace because of our sins and mistakes. And here Paul talks about what he, as he mentions it here, the abundance of grace that we have received through the one man, Jesus Christ.

Because that grace covered the sins that we committed, and had that not happened, where would we be? We know we would still be facing the death penalty. We would die, we would be dead, we would be in oblivion forever. So it is a great gift to have that penalty removed. That's part of the abundance of grace that Paul talks about here, having that penalty removed and no longer hanging over us. Another passage over in Romans, a few more chapters, Romans 11 and verse 5 and 6, from the New International Version, discusses a fact that God calls and chooses by his grace. In context here, Paul is talking about his countrymen, his fellow Israelites.

And he says, "...so too at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace." Some Israelites were being called and chosen by God's grace. Most were not. But we see in the early church, the early years, it's almost 100% Israelite, mostly Jewish. But there are a few others, like Paul, who's a Benjamite, a few others who are called into it, and occasional Gentiles called in. That will later change, and more and more Gentiles come in as other Israelites reject that calling in God's grace. So being called and chosen to be a part of God's church in his family is an expression of God's grace. And that calling that we received, each of us, to understand God's truth came how? It came by God's grace. God's grace to us.

Paul then goes on to say, verse 6, "...and if by grace..." if that calling came by grace, that choosing came by grace, then it is no longer by works. It's not by anything we have done, or earned, or deserved, or anything like that. Because if it were by our works, by what we've done, grace would no longer be grace. So he emphasizes here grace is a gift. It doesn't depend on who we are, on our lineage here, as he's in context talking about Israel. It's not who we are. It's not our greatness, how good looking we are, what we've done, anything like that. Because if it were, it wouldn't be grace. But it is God's grace. Grace is a gift. And when you give a gift, you do it.

Not because of what they've done to earn it or deserve it. Otherwise, it's not a gift.

And that's what Paul is explaining here. God's grace is something we can't buy, we can't work for, we can't earn. In any way, it is something that comes freely from him because we're on his good side. As we talked about earlier, because he wants to be our friend. He wants us to have that friendship, relationship. And he wants to give us everything. And his grace is so profound that he wants to give us an inheritance that is almost beyond human comprehension. We read about that in 1 Corinthians 2 and verse 9 from the New International Version. Paul writes, as it is written, no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind is conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him. And that reward we're going to receive is the ultimate act of God's grace to show us the entire universe, everything that he has made. And these verses just only begin to scratch the surface of the fullness of what God has planned for us in his grace toward us.

And the picture is far greater than what we have time to cover here in one sermon, or even several sermons here. Let's notice here, as we get close to wrapping up, one other aspect of God's grace. And we see the workings of God's grace in our lives through the example of Paul, and something he wrote about here, describing his struggles and his everyday life, his day-to-day existence, and exactly the kind of battle that we go through in our spirit, in our heart, in our minds, trying to please God. And Paul writes here in Romans 7.23, But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind.

This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me.

Now, when is Paul writing this? He's writing it about 20 years after he's been called and converted and chosen to be an apostle. And during that 20 years, he has preached the Gospel many, many places, many, many cities. He has raised up churches. He has performed miracles.

And what's going on in his life? He's still struggling with things after 20 years, the kind of things that we still struggle with.

The personal battles that he's still trying to fight. And notice what he says, continuing in verse 24. What a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God the answer is in Jesus Christ, our Lord. So you see how it is. In my mind, I really want to obey God's law, but because of my sinful nature, I am a slave to sin. So what's... He goes on to explain that he realizes he has to rely on, not on himself, but on the help that can only come from God through Jesus Christ and through God's Spirit.

He's not relying on his own goodness, his own strength, but on God's goodness and God's strength and God's grace. And he has to rely on that strength that comes from that source to fight the weaknesses of the flesh. And every day when we pray to God and when we ask God to forgive us our trespasses, our sins, as we ask him to give us the strength to not make those mistakes again, not to give in to those weaknesses, and not to do them, not to repeat the evil things we've done or said or thought or whatever it is by God's grace, we should ask God by his grace to give us that will, to give us that desire, that determination to go on and to remain on his good side and to not give in to the sin that will separate us from him.

Because he wants to give us that help, as we've seen here, and he will give us that help if we surrender our lives, if we are humble, as we saw earlier from the Proverbs there, or Psalms rather, and submit our lives to him. So we should be praying for that help every day here, so that whatever our personal fights and struggles are, God's grace is how he leads us to change.

Paul expresses a very similar thought in Romans 2 and verse 4.

Our duty to despise the riches of his goodness, forbearance, and suffering, long suffering rather, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance. We talked earlier about Acts 2 and that first Pentecost, and people realizing their sins were responsible for the death of Jesus Christ, the Savior of mankind. And as Paul says here, don't you know that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? We could just as easily substitute in here the grace of God leads us to repentance because goodness and grace are essentially the same thing. They are aspects of God's character, God's loving character of who and what he is, and everything good comes from God because of his grace and his goodness. And repent and repentance are terms used in the Bible for turning our lives around, for changing directions, for stopping going one direction and turning and going a different direction, of stopping turning from our own ways of thinking and living to seeking God's way, seeking to think as he thinks, to live as he lives. And that is a requirement for salvation. Again, Acts 2.38, repent and be baptized and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. That is the first step in responding to God's grace toward us. And in closing, the primary way in which God directs us toward him and his kingdom is not through punishment and tragedy. Often it takes something to dislodge us from our apathy, from our comfort zone, you might say, of being out of touch and cut off from God.

You might remember again the story I told earlier of John Newton, the slave ship captain. He was comfortable, had a good life, paid well, was captain of a slave ship.

Was he right with God? Absolutely not. And it took something to jar him out of that, took almost dying and realize he is minutes from dying to shake him out of that.

So it is God's goodness and grace that leads us to repentance.

And when we receive a good gift, we should recognize that God is the giver of that gift, is encouraging us to do things right, to make changes that we might be reconciled to God, that we might get on his good side and have that right relationship with him and drawing ever closer to him. And we'll pick it up there next time in this series.