What Does the Bible Teach About Grace?

So, Beverly and I have appreciated again the very welcoming warmth and spirit the very first Jamaicans that I had met in the church were on the Sabbath day. That was the Feast of Tabernacles and all the festivals of God are God's events for mankind. They're not looking to things that are important to him and his existence.

He's been around for no time that he ever began, but he's created landmark events throughout history that are for mankind, that express his plan for mankind. And it begins with a festival of the Passover in which redemption is celebrated. Note it, and we look to that event. Then we look to other Holy Days, the Pentecost, which is giving us the Holy Spirit, establishing his church for us. The Holy Days also have a chronology that they're timed from things that began at one point and go from past to future.

And now we have come to the Fall Holy Days that depict events that are in the future, starting with the Feast of Trumpets, which is the return of Jesus Christ, our resurrection. It's interesting that God wants us to celebrate our resurrection, not his, not the resurrection of Jesus Christ as a special day of worship, but he wants us to observe the day that we are resurrected, the day that we are granted eternal life.

And then, as we come to the Feast of Tabernacles, we celebrate the Kingdom of God coming to this earth. And then, when we take a look at the greatest of all the Holy Days, probably least in its significance over the years, the eighth day, a time when God's opportunity for salvation is made to everyone.

To everyone. Certainly a very beautiful depiction. Well, here we are at the Feast of Tabernacles, and part of what we do at the Feast is to educate ourselves to prepare for what this day depicts. My sermon today will be a little bit different, in that I will not go through all the Scriptures that talk about the establishment of this Holy Day. Rather, I want to talk about something that is very special at this time in the history of the Church. However, there is one passage that I would like to read that is one of the traditional passages, and that is Deuteronomy 16, because it talks about not just celebration, but also rejoicing and being educated.

Deuteronomy 16, where the Feast of Tabernacles is celebrated and discussed. Deuteronomy 16, verse 13, You shall observe the Feast of Tabernacles seven days, when you have gathered from your threshing floor and from your winepress. And you shall rejoice in the Feast, you and your son, and your daughter, and your male servant, and your female servant in the Levite, the stranger and fatherless, and the widow who are within your gates. One of the most heartwarming parts of this Feast has been seeing in the dining room to see all the families together, mom, dad, the children all sitting around, the children running in the hallways and so forth.

To me, that's a very joyous appearance and very joyous expression of keeping the Feast. It's not just for men, not for representatives, not from just select delegates from a church. It's for everybody, for everybody to come here for the Feast and to keep it together.

Five, verse 15, Seven days you shall keep a sacred Feast to the Lord your God, in a place which the Lord chooses, because the Lord your God will bless you in all your produce and all your work of your hands, so that you can surely rejoice. And we've saved up 10% of our income, so that we can come here. That is the fruit of our produce, and we come here to celebrate and keep the Feast. Three times shall all your males appear before the Lord your God, in a place which he chooses, and this is one of those places, the Feast of Tabernacles.

I would like to talk to you about something very, very special. Maybe you don't even realize how special it is, but those of us who have been working on this project, certainly regarded as a landmark moment in the history of our modern-day church. We have just published a booklet. The size is slightly between a booklet and a book. It's hard to know what exactly to call it. The booklet is, What Does the Bible Teach About Grace? Now, how many have received this already before you came here?

So you probably just got it in the mail. Our goal was to get it to every household in the church before the Feast of Tabernacles. So it may have gotten there. If not, it'll get there shortly afterwards. We do have copies for our Jamaican brethren, which are out there. We really want you to pick up one for every household. And whatever extras we have, please, Americans, don't take a copy, because you've got yours at home.

We want to make available up in the lobby for the public. There's got this booklet about grace. I want to talk about it today, because it's very, very fresh in my mind, and we have been working on this project literally for 10 years.

Not writing the booklet and everything, but discussing the approach, how to handle a subject that we have steered from. It's not even one of our fundamental beliefs. It's not among the 20 fundamental beliefs. We were steered away from it because we were concerned about all the implications that people have assigned, ascribed to the subject of grace. There's so much that's spoken of as being cheap grace, where you have to do nothing. You have to do nothing. We're under grace. We do nothing. There's either the law or grace. We have the tyranny of, well, I'm going to follow God and obey Him, or I'm going to take this route of grace.

Which will I have? Which one will I take? Which one will I follow? Are we doing away with the law by understanding grace? And so the subject has been very, very gingerly approached. But we felt like in the Church of God community and in the other Church of God, we did need to have a publication.

Okay, thank you. I thought you didn't like the sermon.

If somebody else comes up.

What we wanted to do is expressed in page four of this booklet, a very, very important statement. A proper understanding of grace will forever change how you see God. It will also change how you see yourself and how you see others. Through God's grace, we get right with Him. And through grace, we get right with others. God's grace can motivate and encourage you in times of trial. Grace is an essential part of who God is and how He works with us. It's what God is and what He's thinking and the way He's thinking about you right now.

While it includes, which was hard definitions mostly, and we have not really had an official statement about grace until really this point that's in its fullest. About being something of undeserved forgiveness, undeserved favor, or just plain forgiveness of sins. And we limit it that way. We want to follow what it says in 1 Peter 5 and verse 12, which is called the true grace of God. The word grace is used almost as many times as the word prayer is in the Bible. And it starts being used in the sixth chapter of Genesis. It's not some New Testament concept. Grace goes back all the way to the time of Noah where Noah found grace in the sight of God. Noah was under grace. And also, the very, very last verse in the Bible, the grace of Jesus Christ be with you always, is at the very end of the Bible. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you always. That's how the Bible ends. Grace is used 150 times. 100 of those times are by the Apostle Paul alone and 50 times alone in the book of Romans. There's got to be something to it.

And it's got to be something that we should speak about with confidence. And not watering it down and not feeling ashamed, not feeling we have to qualify everything that we say about grace, but truly understanding how we can explain and how we can talk about grace. The kingdom of God that's coming is one of the greatest acts of grace that God could give us. And we'll be talking about that.

Grace, though, is a subject that means different things to different people. And when we chose the title of the book, we had different titles for it. Believe me, we've gone through so much brainstorming, especially this past year when last year in August I said to our team, I said, we've got to pull a trigger on the book. We've got to finally get a booklet about grace out. And we had several writings of the book and several things that we wanted to express and use. Several different examples that illustrated how God is working graciously with us. And we found that the strongest examples and the strongest story that we could tell is what the Bible actually says. And so while we've had different titles for the booklet, we decided to use, What does the Bible teach about grace? Everything here is about grace. It's not just stories, because we've done a lot of research. We've studied what other people have said about grace. We've looked at material. There's so many books about grace to see just what approach they're taking. What are they trying to say with the examples they have? And we found the strongest examples of all to be the biblical ones. Because any examples that we tried to bring out that were more contemporary about people overcoming alcoholism or people coming out of some depraved lifestyle had holes in the story. Was it really God helping them, or was it AA helping them, or how in the world did they get to the point of where they're at? But when you use the story about the prodigal son, you can't poke holes in that story. Because that's God talking. In the story about David and Bathsheba, you can't poke holes in that story. Because as we may not understand the forgiveness of God to David for what had happened, the story is biblical, inspired, and inerrant. When we have the story about the Pharisee and the publican standing at a temple praying, you can't poke holes in that story, because that's biblical. And so we have felt strongest with that particular position. So all the stories, all the examples, are biblical in this book.

As I said, it's not one of our fundamental beliefs. We were fearful to allow the floodgates of cheap grace to enter into our thinking.

And we in the process have unwittingly cut ourselves off from the full strength and beauty and power and freedom that comes with understanding grace and all the things that grace implicates. Grace is freely given to us. God wants to give us grace. He wants to give you all these gifts. But it does not come free. And that's one point that we make very, very strongly in this book, that it comes through the life of Jesus Christ, which was sacrificed and given to us. We find that by emphasizing this point about how much God wants to give grace, but the price that it was is very important for us to have this correct.

It's free, but it costs. Just as I write to people in our co-worker letters, and when we offer literature to people, and all the things that we offer to people from the telecast to the magazine, to the Bible study course, or any of our literature, visits from ministers and so forth, it's all free, but it costs to produce. And the same thing is true about grace. It's totally free, but it took the life of Jesus Christ to pay for it. By fully understanding grace, what the Bible teaches about grace, we will come to understand and see God as our wonderful Creator and Father, who is giving us His generous goodness and favor freely. In return, He desires a close relationship. He's not just giving it to us and walking away, just giving us gifts and giving us gifts, and having us remain static. Just think about your relationship to your children. You want to give your children everything. You want to give them as much as you can in this lifetime, and you want to give them an inheritance of everything that you have worked for. You want to do that. But don't you expect something in return? They can't pay for it. Certainly not. But you expect something in return. You expect a relationship with your children. That relationship is based upon their obedience, their love towards you, the way they react towards you. He desires a close relationship with Him, as we would desire of our children, to whom we give good graces.

The word grace, as one of our authors were commenting about, as we were writing the book, is probably the worst word that you could use for grace. It's kind of a fluffy word. What does grace mean? Graceland? There are just so many implications to the word, in an English language in particular, that really just don't define the word. They don't really hit the nail on the head, to be very truthful and honest. Now, those of you who speak other languages, I speak Ukrainian and I speak Russian. You hear the words grace, blagodets, or blagodets in Ukrainian. When that word is uttered, you know exactly what it means.

It's self-defining in the way it's constructed. It's two very, very simple words. Blago, which means good, and dat, which is given. It's good that is given, by whom? By God. And so when you speak about grace, and when you use the word grace, it already is self-defined. You're already way ahead of the game by saying, oh, grace, that's good that God gives us. So already you have something that goes beyond just the forgiveness of sins and unmerited pardon. You have something greater already. And as you study the subject of grace, you see that it goes way beyond that. And to all the things that define what that good is that God has. So we were saying, we wish that there was just a better word for grace in the English language. This booklet, what it'll do is this.

It'll come to help you understand aspects of grace that you may never have heard of before. I know we've spoken about it, and we have quite a bit, actually, on our website about grace as they define various things. Obviously, you cannot ignore the word. But I feel like we have been able to put together in one booklet a story that is very, very wonderful about this very important aspect of who God is. Because grace is what God is. When you see what he does with grace as how he relates to us, that's what God is. And that's how he is to us. We will learn in this booklet how grace reconciles us to God. It's more than just something that unmerited pardon and forgiveness of sin, that's past. We invoke grace, no longer are we guilty, we are freed of the sin, and we've been pardoned.

We go far, far beyond that. Grace is something which gives us the ability to move forward.

Grace is the capacity to rid ourselves of guilt.

How many of us live with guilt, even though we've been forgiven, and even though we have known that, well, that's not being held against us, still live with that? We always will live with some kind of guilt from the past. I don't believe there's a human being that's totally capable, a converted human being that totally rids himself of what he may or may not have done. The Apostle Paul, who was responsible for persecuting Christians, and even beyond that, killing Christians, the first mention of the one who was Paul was at the martyrdom of Stephen. He was sitting there supporting the event, maybe even orchestrating the entire event. He gave approval to the event of Stephen, the first Christian martyr being killed. Then he was snorting and pulling people out of homes and sending them to prison, and perhaps to die as well. Don't you think that after he had become the Apostle that he was years later, that that didn't bother him? And how he thought, you know, I certainly have been forgiven of those things, but I still have that guilt over me. I still believe that Paul struggled with that. Even years later, when he wrote in Romans 7, he said, O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death? And he knew that through Christ's grace that he could be delivered, that he could go on, that he could be forgiven. You may think of silly things that you have done in the past, sins that you have committed, useful indiscretions, all the stupidity that we may have involved ourselves in. But through grace, we're given the ability, through the Holy Spirit of God, to be able to continue. Grace is something very overriding with God, because grace's functions go to all the things that God does for us, including His Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is a function of God's grace and goodness, as He extends His Holy Spirit, which has that power, to help us.

This booklet will also cover some of the main objections that have been, I feel, the logs in the path for us to be able to roll this booklet out. Because we've had trouble, not trouble, but we have not explained fully, which we do in this booklet. And we have explained fully, but with people that look upon us as those who are very, very conservative, and we certainly want to uphold everything to the law, that way, weakening grace, we explain you are not under the law, but under grace. You're not under the law. What is the meaning of you are not under the law, but under grace? And of course, these are some of the very, very big charging-on passages for the Protestant world that move towards ridding and finessing away the law of God in favor of grace. I'd like to turn to just one of those passages, Romans 6, verse 14. One interesting thing about grace is that all of the arguments about grace can be very easily explained. Romans 6, verse 14. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. And it stops right there. See? We're not under the law. The law is something that is irrelevant, because you're under grace. Forget the law. But then, the explanation is in the next number of verses, next three or four verses, about what that means. Verse 15. What then? The Apostle Paul was already thinking ahead. Shall we sin because we are not under law, but under grace? Certainly not! This is one of those places in the New Testament where there's an exclamation mark. Should we sin? Should we be breaking God's law because we're under grace? Certainly not. Do you not know to whom you present yourself slaves to obey? You are that one's slaves whom you obey? You are slaves to the one that you obey. Whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness. How many remember the song by Bob Dylan? You're going to serve somebody? See their hands? 1979, number one song. You're going to serve somebody. You're going to serve the devil or you're going to serve the Lord? But you're always going to serve somebody. And what the Apostle Paul is saying here that we're not longer going to continue to serve sin. We're going to be serving the Lord. We'll be serving God. I'll read this again. Do you not know that to whom you present yourself slaves to obey? You are that one's slaves whom you obey? Whether of sin leading to death or of obedience leading to righteousness. But God be thanked that through though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered to you. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness. And right now we are slaves of righteousness. Slaves of our God in heaven, God the Father and Jesus Christ. And our love towards Him is expressed in how we serve Him. No longer under the law in the sense of what the law was leading us to which is death. I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. In another place, and right at the beginning of this chapter of chapter 6 of Romans, what shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Because Paul spoke so much of the graciousness of God. Certainly not! Once again, exclamation mark. About certainly not. Also another place, the fourth verse of Jude.

This is what has caused people to think that by slipping away from a full understanding of grace, and slipping into the cheap grace, that we would turn away from the law of God. Verse 4 of Jude, For certain men have crept in unnoticed, who long ago were marked out for this condemnation, a godly man who turned the grace of our God into lewdness, and denied the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ. So we certainly don't want to go that direction, but we certainly want to explore all the goodness and wonder and all the power of God and His relationship with us by looking at grace. Well, we could say just a great deal more. The booklet runs about 88 pages or so, and it's well worth a very detailed study for new people, and I think especially for those who have been around the Church for a long time, to understand fully where we're going with this work. I feel it's so very, very important for us in the Church to have this understanding. As I said, we've been thinking about this for about 10 years, and actually, as I've been looking upon this subject, I've actually been giving a sermon that is pretty much chapter 1 of this book that goes back to 2001 about grace simplified. The one thing about grace, it is not a difficult concept. It is not a concept that's rocket science, theologically. There's only one word for grace in the Old Testament in the Hebrew, hen, and there's only one word for grace in the New Testament, which is kariz, the word from which charisma, gift, love, all come from. As I said, we have limited those definitions to something far less than what God wants us to limit it to. God wants us to expand it. God wants us to see His greatness and His goodness towards us. He wants us to have a relationship of being at one, a relationship of our working towards being His servants and feeling free of guilt. And it will affect the way that we talk to God. It will affect the way we pray to God. It will affect the way that you and I talk to one another, because we are filled with the graciousness of God. Again, the very first place in which grace appears is in Genesis 6, verse 8. It begins with Noah. Grace is not a New Testament concept. It is something that was brought in by Jesus Christ. The one passage also that is very easily discounted or easily explained is John 1, verse 17. The law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. There you have it. We have Moses, something ancient and old, and we've got Jesus Christ who brought in grace. Out with the old, in with the new. But do you know if there was a law way before Moses? And there was grace way before Christ. There was graciousness shown by God to Noah in the sixth chapter of Genesis. What's highlighted is that there was a codified law given through Moses, even though that law existed beforehand. It didn't come through. It wasn't invented by Moses. And Jesus Christ is the one who made grace possible, but the graciousness of God was shown to all of mankind way before. Even the fact that man was created was a gracious act. Even the fact that we are created as clay models, as prototypes of future gods is God's goodness and graciousness. God wants you and me and his family. How much more good do you want to expect? That is what God is doing for us. He wants you, you, you, every one of us to be part of his family. He's yearning for that. And he wants to understand the process. He wants to understand what it takes to have that relationship. Which is incumbent upon us to expect, well, what's expected of us? What are the preconditions? What do I have to think? And yes, what do I have to do to be able to receive that gift?

The word can in the Hebrew means favor, being pleasant, being well favored, means to be kind.

What meant that he was found favored with God is that Noah was on God's good side. Really, in very simple terms, Noah found favor in God's side. He was on God's good side. Do you want to be on people's good side? You know who I want to be in favor with? My wife, right there, ladies. When I'm in her good graces, everything goes well. My terrible little habits are overlooked. My grumpiness might be overlooked. Mistakes that I make are overlooked. But if I'm in good graces with her, things go well. But if I'm not in her good graces, the slightest thing is picked at. Well, how about this? How about that? So Noah was found in good graces with God. Another entity we want to be in good grace with is our boss, the person that we work for. Now, if we're in good graces with our boss, he'll overlook things. If you make a mistake, or if you're late for work, or if you even make an error at work, because you're in good graces with him, because he likes you, because he likes you, things will go well. But if you are not in good graces with him, he will use your mistakes to get rid of you, or someday to move you somewhere else, or get you out of his hair. We want to be in good favor. Relationships of friendship are all based on favor, on grace. The people who are my friends, the people I'm close to, are people in whom I am in good graces with them, and they're in good graces with me. That's friendship. Abraham was a friend of God. He could sit down with God and enjoy an ox roast like he did, you know, the old biblical story of him coming. He could talk with God about all kinds of planning for the future, because they were good graces. They had a good relationship, and that's what God is striving for. I'm a very relational person. Relationships mean a lot to me. And the people I work with at the home office, believe me, a big part of it, massive part of the effectiveness I feel of doing the work of God is based upon the personal friendship, relationship, goodness, and grace that we have with one another. I know that the people I work for are the people that work for me. I know my strong points. They also may be aware of things that I'm not as strong in. But that's overlooked, because we like each other. Of course, we have competencies, and we have things that we do by process, and so forth. And I consider myself a person who really wants to get things done and move forward as much as I can and do the work of God. But I know that so much of it is based upon goodwill on the relationships and the relationship of grace with one another.

Let's take a look at some other passages that relate to grace. Showing that Old Testament was not the raft of this subject.

Psalms, there's a number of Psalms on the subject of grace, 84.

In verse 11.

This is showing the mind of God. This is the God of the Old Testament. Here. The God is a sun and shield, and He'll give grace and glory. And no good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly. Because God is gracious. God is one who is the giver of good. God is the one who is the giver of good. Proverbs 3, verse 32, which is quoted by James, Proverbs 3, verse 32. For the perverse person is an abomination to the Lord. But His secret counsel is with the upright. Verse 34. Surely He scorns the scornful, but gives grace to the humble. God rejects those people with whom He has a bad relationship with. With those with whom there is no real favor.

But we have a God that gives grace to the people who are humble and come before Him. The one thing about the story about the publican and the sinner, I'd like to turn to it, Luke, chapter 18.

Do I have a chapter wrong?

Chapter 18.

To me, this expresses so much about the attitude of God towards people that come to Him, even in His name. He spoke the parable to some, verse 8-9, of Luke, chapter 18. He spoke this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and despised others. This gives you a clue here as to where this is going. There are people, and we may be among those righteous people, that look upon our own righteousness because of all the wonderful things that we do. And the process despises those that don't do the things that we do. This is part of the attitude that may be wrong with us in doing His work and also a lesson that God is teaching us. Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. Pharisees were known to be people that lived by the letter of the law. Actually, people who did a lot of good in the community, they were generous.

And then there was this tax collector. That was a euphemism of the lowliest of all. He's the person from the IRS. He's the person who came in to do the assessment of your home for how much taxes would be collected. You didn't want him around.

The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank you that I'm not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, and even as this tax collector right here. See Him, God. See this lowly person. See how his head is bent over. Look at the stuff that he's wearing. He stinks. But look at me. I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I possess. In fact, I owe a string of stores. You know, I give you a lot of money, God.

The tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his head, eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, God be merciful to me, a sinner. I tell you, this is red letter, words of Christ, this man went down to his house justified. This man came down as a friend of God, is on God's good side justified.

Rather than the other, for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. This is, we had read back in Proverbs. He gives grace to the humble. So how do we look upon ourselves as being righteous people? Now, we're very righteous.

We can publicly say, look, we don't eat pork.

And for the Days of Love and Bread, we make sure that all 11 is cleared out. We check ahead on menus and restaurants. That makes us righteous.

Not as the world, that they don't know these things. I remember one time on a visit, at one of my churches, new prospective members, just very, very new. Actually, they should have known better. They had known the truth for a while.

And I came there, and this couple was living together with one another. And I was there to talk to them about the fact that this is not what they should be doing. Well, we do this, but we don't eat pork. Okay. Their righteousness was established by things that they did, and they missed bigger issues.

And as we look at this parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, sometimes we may say that we're the good people.

We're the ones who do things right before God. And there could be certain pride in the things we do right, because there's a lot of things we don't do right as well. There's a lot of things that we really don't do right physically, and even in the Spirit. Because when Jesus Christ came and gave His sermon on the Mount, and He expressed what level of law observance is necessary. He said, don't even lust after a woman, because in doing so you have committed adultery. He made law abiding, if you want to use that as something which is a measurement of how good you're going to be with God, how you're going to do an end. He said, if you hate somebody, that this is committing, this is the spirit of murder and committing murder. So what He said, that if you want the law, that don't even think about breaking it, don't even think about the things that go on in your mind. We need to associate ourselves more with this tax collector. He made a lot of mistakes. He probably took bribes. Who knows what he did? People didn't like him. They knew that they were all crooked. They were dishonest. And even if they were honest, that made him worse, because then they took money. But He said, that this is the person who justified, the person who asked forgiveness, the person who came and said, forgive me, I am a sinner. And from this basis, then, develops a relationship with God, where you no longer become a slave of the law, but you become a slave of righteousness. God, forgive me for the things that I have violated in keeping your law. And now, I ask you to give me the strength, the power, give me the Holy Spirit to obey you. O wretched man that I am, this tax collector uttered. O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me for the body of this death? You know, one passage that's quoted, I don't know how many times in the booklet, but it's one of the premier passages, Ephesians chapter 2 verse 8. And then we kind of go through that.

But it's an important passage to look at as you review it. And I really do advise you, even though I had a part in the booklet itself, I went through it. A few days before the feast and Mark threw it about the things that were so important to it, but Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 8.

For by grace you have been saved by faith, and that is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. Now the grace is what will save us. It's not going to be a list of things that we have done perfectly. It's not going to be tithing. It's not going to be fasting twice in a week. It's not going to be making sure that we were just perfect about menus, that we ate our omelet from a skillet that didn't have pork in it beforehand. We were more righteous in that not only did we not have pork, but there wasn't pork in the skillet beforehand, and we feel righteous as a result. You know, as far as a score with God, that means nothing to Him.

But you know something? It's important to do those things. On the other hand, it's important for us to be servants of righteousness as well.

Not of works, lest anyone should boast. You're not going to come to God with a scorecard of all... Here's all the things of the resurrection. Hey, where's my scorecard? Here's all the things that I did real well.

That's not supposed to save us. God's grace is His mercy. It's His goodness. It's His forgiveness. Based on the precondition that you were humble, and you were willing to receive it.

Not of works, lest anyone should boast. Anybody who boasts about their spirituality is not a person who is gracious.

I know one person. The reason I know he's a good guy is because he tells me that so many times.

But then verse 10 is so important. This is to tell the whole story. For we are His workmanship. We are being formed by God. We are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works.

For keeping the law. For respecting God. Respecting His name. Not having other gods. Honoring the Sabbath. Our predecessors, our parents. Our families. Our wife. Our husband. We respect other people's property. And we work out evil thoughts from us of hatred and anger. And we will tell the truth. We're created unto those good works. We're created unto those. We want to do them because we have been graciously approached by God. O wretched man that I am. That's the story that we want to tell in this booklet about grace.

Created unto Jesus Christ for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

Other passages relating to grace, and I can't obviously cover them all here. Jeremiah 31 and verse 2 is one of my favorite. Talking about Israel in the desert when they left Egypt in the Exodus. Jeremiah 31 verse 2, Thus says the Lord, the people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness.

The people of Israel, the slaves, being expelled from Pharaoh, a nation that represented Satan the devil, or the Pharaoh did, and the nation that represented evil. They found grace in the wilderness. They were there. And you know what did God tell Pharaoh? Let my people go so they can serve me in the desert. Let my people go from evil so they can serve me.

Found grace in the wilderness, Israel, when I went, to give him rest, I should say. Zechariah chapter 12 and verse 10, even though it's referring here to the future, nonetheless, the word grace is used. Zechariah chapter 12 and verse 10, I will pour out in the house of David, and on inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace, as supplication. Then they will look upon me, whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for him, as one mourns for his only son, and grave for him as one grieves for firstborn.

Okay, we can find many, many passages in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, one of my favorites is Luke chapter 2 and verse 40, where grace appears for the first time. Grace appears for the first time in Luke chapter 2 and verse 40. Talking about Jesus, the young Jesus, as the child grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. Did Jesus at this point need forgiveness of sins?

Did he need unmerited pardon? No. There was nobody in God the Father's sight, any form of life, that was more important than that child Jesus, who would redeem all of mankind and make his plan work for you and me. The grace and the goodness of God was totally upon him. God's total, God the Father's total attention was upon Jesus. The grace of God was upon him. This is absolutely marvelous. When the New Testament church was established, when the New Apostles went forth, Acts chapter 4 and verse 33, Acts chapter 4 and verse 33, talking about the work of the Apostles.

And with great power, the Apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And great grace was upon them all. That was through the power of the Holy Spirit. It started with the Day of Pentecost when 3,000 people were baptized, and then a short time afterwards could be several days later, another 2,000 people were baptized.

That's great grace, the goodness of God being poured out through his Holy Spirit. You know, one thing that I pray continually, maybe not just exactly every day, I pray for God's grace upon the United Church of God. I feel that our greatest days are ahead. I feel like we are turning some corners. I do feel like there's some good things about to happen. I feel that one of them is understanding the goodness of God, the graciousness of God, being able to use his Holy Spirit that he gives us to do what we do, to inspire us in our speaking, inspire us in our message going forth.

I look forward to the time when we will do some of the wonderful things. I don't think we're going to die out in a whimper as a church. Now, I do see some very, very good things. We have an aging church, people say, but you know something? We also have a church with a lot of babies coming along. I feel like we've got a church that's going to repopulate itself and do a great work. I feel like we've got our sons and daughters that carry our name, that are committed to the church and the work. Look upon my own son, Deacon. He's doing things in the church, not because it's his dad's church, but because it's his church.

That's what he's convicted in doing and what he's teaching his children. I do feel God's graciousness and goodness coming down and empowering this church. Graciousness from God and His good grace in knowing that He's on our side. He can help us with those things that we really need help with. What is it that you need help with? Alcohol? Anger? Other behaviors that really need cleansing and cleaning?

Lack of truthfulness and honesty in the things that we say? Secret problems that don't seemingly go away? Read about that in the book of page 18, how grace reconciles us to God. It's a subject which is actually very, very simple, brethren. It's very, very simple. Just because we haven't spoken about it or had the completeness of it taught, as much as we should have.

Once you read this, you'll see how easy it is. I find that some of the passages, such as you are under the law or under grace, or the law came through Moses, but grace came through Christ, are so easily explained. We don't have to fear what our Protestant or non-believing or whatever people believe about them. We know what we believe about them.

We know what they say, what our obligations are. Grace is many things in the way it manifests itself. Grace is the forgiveness of sin. It indeed is unmerited pardon. We don't deserve it, but God is giving it to us. Another very important and very, very strong aspect of grace that we want to put first and foremost in this booklet, the law of God is part of God's grace. There is nothing more beautiful.

The law is our guide, our light, our path. It has been created by God. He's the law-giver to make things right. The grace of God is our inheritance, just like we write our kids into our will. It is our inheritance that God will give us. The grace of God is the kingdom of God. What we're celebrating here for the next seven days, that is part of God's grace that He has given to us and let's appreciate it and be thankful for it.

Eternal life is God's grace. Don't you want to live forever? Those of us in our seventies and eighties, time closes in. The grace of God is to have the next moment being with Jesus Christ and living forever. Rulership, if you really want rulership, you know, management.

You know, one thing I'm interested in in the world tomorrow. I'm a real techie. I like new stuff, new toys. I take a look at old toys. I say, how is that junk? You know, I like new things all the time. But, you know, we will have exploration. We will be doing things. We will be developing this entire universe. It's not so much managing planets and cities and thump, thump, thump, thump, you know. It's managing development. We're going to be developers in the world tomorrow. It's going to be a family relationship of the people that we have known. I know that when the resurrection comes, I'm going to be looking for my mom and dad.

I'd be happy for everybody else, but I want to see my mom and dad. Now, one thing about the way that salvation goes to heaven is taught. You have no idea who you're with. You're kind of a blob, you know, kind of a soul that's floating around. I don't want that. I want my mom and dad. I want to be with those who I know. I want to look up my old friends. I want to make right what maybe hadn't been right in the first part of our existence. I look forward to that time. One thing that makes the United Church of God so wonderful and the teachings that we have, especially this last issue of the Beyond Today magazine, heaven coming to the earth.

We're not going up there and floating around in some kind of ethereal gas. It'll be a realistic aspect of realness. Now, that earth may eventually become this new heavens, the new earth. I'm not sure how thou art physically is going to work out, but nonetheless, we will know each other. We will know who the rulers are. We know who David is, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, all these people. We know Jesus Christ. And I want to know what mom and dad really do. They are both faithful in the Church and died in the faith. I want to see them at their resurrection.

So, to me, the graciousness of God reveals God's desire to have these relationships. We are to grow in grace and knowledge, as Peter says in 2 Peter 3 and verse 18. Grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. One of the aspects of the Church is that we don't come here just to observe things, kind of like in a ceremonial way. We're here to learn, to rejoice, and to learn more about what it is that we're supposed to be doing.

And to grow in grace. I feel that this booklet is going to be a great booster in our growing in grace. To understanding these things with an open mind of what God is expecting. And believe me, this booklet we have written about some of the subjects. Some of them have been sermons given by Scott Ashley, who was the main author of this booklet with a team of us working on it. It's been an effort of people who really have sought to expand the subject and make it beautiful, make it accessible without compromising anything.

Or in any way having any appearance of being something that we don't want, that would lead to lasciviousness, or that would lead to us rejecting the law of God. Because for us, the law of God is one of the most important pillars of grace. The law of God is one of the aspects of that.

I'm going to conclude by reading a chapter of the Bible, verse by verse. The reason I want to read this chapter is because I feel that it embodies the totality and awesomeness of grace more than any other. This is a chapter that I have in my mind as if I were to go to some church and visit a church and didn't have a Bible with me, didn't have any notes along, and I was asked, Mr.

Kubick, could you give a sermon today? I'd say, exactly. I'm ready because I have this chapter which becomes the whole sermon. I've done this in a couple occasions. I'd like to read Ephesians chapter 1 in a more modern translation because, as I read this, I said to myself, you know, this really talks... Paul really embodies the graciousness that God is extending towards us, the gifts, the blessings, the power, so to speak, through the Holy Spirit of Himself to us.

That's raising us out of the depths of just being physical and temporary and having nothing to look forward to except dying and non-existing, which is the future in the minds of so many people in the world. And yet, for us, we have a great hope of the things that God makes very clear to us through His grace. Let me read Ephesians chapter 1. This letter is from Paul, chosen by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus.

I'm writing to God's holy people in Ephesus who are faithful followers of Jesus Christ. May God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace. I'm writing this, saying this to you as though just as Paul is saying it to the people in Ephesus. May God our Father and Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace. All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms, because we are united with Christ.

God has blessed us, if you could think of just all these words, I mean, with every spiritual blessing. He's not withholding anything from us that he's got in his toolkit, tool bag, that he wants to give to us.

See, I'm a real techy, and this thing isn't working too well.

Just be patient with me. Verse 4, even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. God wanted us to be justified from the very, very beginning. That's why Jesus Christ was slain before the foundations of the world to provide that redemption so that we could be blameless and holy with his eyes. What a gift! What a gift! The difference would be extinction. The difference is that we have now eternal life.

God decided in advance to adopt us, or to make us actually sons, in his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. God gets very, very thrilled at Sadie Williams today, who was baptized to make her part of the God of the family. God is very happy. We talked about the angels who are rejoicing.

Hey, how about God the Father and Jesus Christ? They're all happy, with one more being added to that family. So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear son. He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his son and forgave our sins.

He has showered his kindness on us along with all wisdom and understanding. God has now revealed to us his mysterious plan regarding Christ, a plan to fulfill his own good pleasure. And this is the plan. At the right time, he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ, everything in heaven and on earth.

Furthermore, because we are united with Christ, we have received an inheritance from God, for he chose us in advance, and he makes everything work out according to his plan. God's purpose was that we who were first to trust in Christ would bring praise and glory to God. And now you, Gentiles, have also heard the truth, the good news that God saves you. And when you believed in Christ, he identified you as his own by giving you the Holy Spirit he promised long ago.

The Spirit is God's guarantee that he will give us the inheritance he promised, that he has purchased us to be his own people. He did this so that we would praise and glorify him, who created unto good works. We've been given grace so that now we can do these things. We would praise and glorify him and obey him. Ever since I first heard of your strong faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for God's people everywhere, I have not stopped thanking God for you. I pray for you constantly, asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and insight so that you might grow in your knowledge of God.

I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those called his holy people, who are rich and glorious and will receive his inheritance. I also pray, verse 19, that you will understand the incredible greatness of God's power for us, who believe him. This is the same mighty power that raised Christ from the dead and seated him in the place of honor at God's right hand in the heavenly realms.

Now he is far above any ruler or authority or power or leader or anything else, not only in this world, but also in the world to come. God has put all things under the authority of Christ and has made him head over all things for the benefit of the Church. And the Church is his body.

It is made full and complete by Christ, who fulfills all things everywhere with himself. I've never heard, never read words that were more beautiful than this, all embodied in 23 verses. It's chapter 1 of the book of Ephesians, the entire plan of God. Going back to prehistory, to the birth of Christ, his purpose, the plan of God in bringing us to become part of his family, to be the head of the Church, being given power, the Holy Spirit, the down payment. It's all there in 23 verses and is sprinkled with the word grace all the way through.

That is God's gift. That is what I'm trying to paint more than anything else here today, by telling you the story about God's goodness, the goodness of God. Vlog God that's the giving of good. That's what God the Father wants to do for us. He doesn't want us to dwell on our sins, but he wants them to be forgiven. And then we move forward. The booklet has far more, and there are some stories I could tell that I would just love to take the time to tell about this, how it's in practice.

But you can read the stories. You can read the booklet yourself. May God bless you. Look forward to talking to you after church.