What Is Grace?

Well, good morning, everyone! Or is this afternoon? I think it's two minutes after afternoon. It's so good to see all of you here today. It is a real pleasure and a blessing for my wife, Bev, and I to be here. First of all, I want to give greetings to acknowledge the people who are online in Roswell, New Mexico, which I guess is an hour behind.

It's mountain time there, and the people in Amarillo. So is that correct that I have that? Okay, anyway, welcome to you. And also, other people who are listening, Mr. Ward Shamblin. I was not able to be here. We saw him last night, but I hear that he's a growly bear this morning. So he has a sore throat and is not able to be here.

And also, when we first arrived, we went right over to the home of Dinger Daniel and visited with her. So I believe that she is online as well. I met her and Larry. And I had not got to know her husband over the years, but saw pictures of him.

And I just really did not have the pleasure and honor of meeting him. But I do remember us praying for him earlier in the year. And I am just amazed that so much time has already gone by since his death in May of this year. But we had a very, very nice visit with Dinger Daniel yesterday evening after we arrived. And then we also had dinner with the Shamblins. And we have gotten to know them through their granddaughter, Darcy, who is a student working for her doctor's degree at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. But she has really been a great addition to a church that I used to pastor until a few months ago.

You want to say a few things here, that there are a number of people here who are connected to this part of the world that I have gotten to know. First of all, this is our first time in Lubbock, Texas. To us, this is like a foreign country. And in a way, by the United States standards, looking over all the churches and so forth, I have always wondered how is this area managed by a single pastor? Because even before the Demours had come here, it always seemed to be such a huge area stretched out over many, many miles with relatively small churches in a huge area to be served.

And so it's been wonderful for us to kind of get to know and understand a little bit about the situation here. And we are very honored to come. From the air, it looked quite desolate. We saw some oil wells and some cotton fields that had been harvested, but we had not realized the severe drought that this area had gone through. Mr. Demours gave us a history of this area.

But there are a few people that are at the home office from here, of course, that you probably miss. I hope you miss them. Janet Hines, who is one of the ABC students this year, got to know her right away when she came. A very, very pleasant young lady, just a really wonderful lady.

And also Tim and Connie Sipes, who you probably know as well. I've known Connie for a long, long time from her living in Minnesota and living in Illinois. And she and Tim are very, very happy. They're just a wonderful addition to both ABC, but also they work full-time. Tim Sipes really handles so many physical things with the home office. He and I are usually the first ones to come in the morning, and we see each other and talk. He comes in the morning before offices are opened, so he can do all the things necessary for wiring and caring for things that have to be done.

But Janet Hines, she might tell a little bit of a story here about her. About two weeks ago, three weeks ago, she put out a little flyer. She says, I need some work. She says, I'll do anything. She says, I'll do this, this, and this. She says, cooking, sewing, ironing, washing, for anybody. And she set this flyer around to everybody. Janet's flyer was all over the place. And so we all had lunch together at the home office with the students.

And we were just sitting there, and Janet comes by. Here's Mr. Antion and Mr. Luker sitting there. And of course, her flyer got to be kind of well-known. And so they're asking about her, well, Janet, did you get any work?

No, I didn't. She was really, really felt so sorry for her. And in my office, I have had a huge stack of things, just piles of things that needed to be filed, needed to be categorized, all kinds of things. And I said, well, you know, I just wonder if I can just hire her. So I took her on for a while here to help me with filing. And she's just been a real joy. She's just really fixed things in my office and organized all my sermons.

I have had such a mess of my sermons, you know, for 15 years of sermons. I've just kind of thrown into a pile after I give them, you know, and they're so disorganized. And I just knew that I had to sit there probably for a day to go through them and get them organized again.

And so she was able to, on the floor, we had every subject you could imagine on the floor, and we kind of put them together. And also all my files that I use right away and things that I use that have to be put away, things that have to be archived.

But she's been very, very quick to pick up on these things. Our next project this week is to put together some Russian booklets. We print them on demand, but I have huge stacks of them on my desk that just need to be done. It has to be manual work, but they're in Russian, so it takes somebody to kind of watch somebody to make sure that they're kind of put together. So Janet and I will do that job this week. But she's been just a very big helper. The Demours, I've known Lisa Demours since she was a teenager in our church, and I was a ministerial trainee.

Just finished college in 1969 in Bricket Wood, where I graduated. And Lisa and her family were from central Wyoming, and they were some of the most dignified people that we had known. The parents were just such marvelous examples of Christianity and dignity. And they had these three little cute girls and their son that came to services. I still remember that very, very well. They were our neighbors, a neighboring pastor when I was pastor.

I still am pastor of Terre Haute, Indiana, and Tom Demours was in Illinois. So we got to see them from time to time. Mr. Abbott asked me about some of the things that we do in Eastern Europe about the Ukrainians. I thought I would just make a little bit of mention about one of the things that we do. We do have a presence in the Russian language. And of course, Russian is the fifth most spoken language in the world. Number one is Mandarin. A billion people speak Mandarin.

Actually, English is the second most spoken language in the whole world. About 500 million people speak English. Then the third language is Hindu. Fourth is Spanish. Fifth is Russian. It's way ahead of German, French. French is 10, German is 12 in the world. But Russian is spoken by many, many people whom the Russians had at one time or another dominated. Now, it's a shrinking language because countries have become independent of Russia. But nonetheless, we can get literature to people in former Russian-speaking areas and also in an increasing number of people who have emigrated from those countries to the United States. We have people from the West Coast, from Portland, Sacramento, Missouri, where there are Russian groups that have come over that have been requesting our literature.

And the question was, what's happened to some of our relationships with Ukrainians, Sabbatarians, and that type of thing? Well, it's not getting into the whole long story. Back when the USSR fell apart, which was 1991, where virtually in a matter of a month one of the strongest empires ever on the face of this earth imploded, the Soviet Union, which was composed of 15 republics that were under the tight grip of the Russian government, just fell apart and actually fell apart quite peacefully. Well, almost overnight, freedom of religion became just accepted, and people who had been secretly worshipping God in different ways now came out into the open.

And among them, we found that there were thousands of people that were keeping the Sabbaths, literally thousands of people. Three thousand in Ukraine, four thousand in Romania, three thousand in Moldova, and most of these people were in the extreme western part of Ukraine. We got to know them through some of their immigrants, people who had emigrated from Russia to Florida, that came to Florida and came into contact with, at that time, the worldwide Church of God. And I was notified because I speak Russian and said, would you like to meet these people? Which we did. And in the year after that, I made my first trip to the western part of Ukraine and met with some of these Sabbath keepers and found an amazing story about people that had been worshipping God since Stalin's time and had worshipped God secretly, but nonetheless observed the Sabbath and had doctrines that were very, very similar to what we believed.

The only major doctrine that they did not have the same as us was the Holy Days. And that was one of the big demarcations. Some of them kept the Holy Days, but very few. And the reason for that is that some who started keeping the Holy Days, they kept a Passover, they kept a Sabbath, and that was it as far as special days. But they felt, and some who had started keeping the Holy Days, started becoming more acting like Jews. They started growing beards, they started wearing black clothing and black hats, and they said, it's just not working.

We don't feel like this is Christian. We don't really feel the Passover. Christ was our Passover. It says that, the Bible. But all this other was just very, very hard for them. And so they resisted our attempts to even talk to them over the years about the Holy Days. Until about five years ago, where we reprinted the booklet in Russian about God's Holy Days, and I was over there right after Pentecost. And I had spoken about the Holy Days to their pastors, but basically, God, don't bother me with this. I was there after Pentecost.

It was the Sabbath after Pentecost, and gave a sermon about how the Church was established on the day of Pentecost, how that was the start of Christianity, how Jesus Christ is the center of not only the Passover, but also of Pentecost. And then I explained how He's also the center of the other Holy Days. And really clicked with this pastor. I had known him for already 10, 12 years. He said, that really makes sense. And so now He's adopted the Holy Days, and very, very slowly others are beginning to adopt them.

It's kind of a gradual thing, where in churches, some keep the Holy Days and some don't. And they have this sense of tolerance, that they don't want to break up their church. So they say, okay, if you feel like that's what you should do, then I guess it's okay. Because they just really are so careful about not ripping apart congregations. And so now more and more are keeping the Sabbath. In one church that I had always spoken in, they were quite violent. The pastor was quite opposed to that, and I could sense him being very chilly towards me. In fact, he said that he would dissellership people in his church who kept the Holy Days.

He still allowed me to speak in his church, but nonetheless, he was very much against the Holy Days. But now, I went back there two years later, and he's just changed his attitude. He's become more neutral now. He has allowed his people not to keep the Holy Days. But they have one particular church that's in the middle of many other Sabbath-keeping churches. That's the Holy Day Center, it's called. And whenever there's a Holy Day, the people from other areas, they come to that church for combined meetings.

And a very interesting thing occurred this year. The Feast of Trumpets was on a Thursday. Now, if the Holy Day falls on a weekly Sabbath, it's kind of hidden anyway.

It doesn't seem like a Holy Day to the outside. But with Trumpets being on Thursday this year, there was an unusually large group that assembled in this area. A hundred people came to keep the Feast of Trumpets. And one of their leaders, who is a very good friend of ours, and one who does their publishing, called me and said, I want to keep the Feast of Tabernacles with you. And of course, our feast for that area is up in Estonia, one of the former USSR republics. He said, I want to come to Estonia and keep the Feast with you. I had invited him many times to come and share the Feast with us, but he always had some excuse. And I knew that he wasn't convinced about them. And his business was open on Holy Days and so forth. But now he says, I really want to keep the Holy Day. I want to see how you do it.

And so he was able to obtain all the travel documents and come there and kept the Feast with us. And now he says, I see how you do it. You know, we want to keep the Feast just like you do in Ukraine and possibly in Hungary across the border. So there may be a Feast, there'll be a joint Feast between the United Church of God and the Ukrainian cepitarians. I told them we had to know by February what their intentions and plans are. But it's taken time. It's been a long process since 1992 to almost 19, almost 20 years later. You know, that it takes time for these things to sink in. And I found out too is that many of these people who are Sabbatarians now, that when they came to adopt the Sabbath, there was a very slow process too, not 20 years. But some people were very unconvinced. Many of them were either Pentecostals before that or they were Baptists. And so they didn't come just out of the world. Some few did. But most of these Sabbath keepers were people that usually a whole congregation would come over. And it would just take time for these people to accept the Sabbath. So one thing that we did find is that God is working in the lives of people in ways that we don't know.

We can't just feel like we're the only ones that unless they come through us, that that's what the only way that God works. God has worked through the hearts and minds of people. We have come to a point in our lives to where we're not going to be the ones who will save the world. God has a much, much bigger plan in how he works in the lives of individual people.

But what I do and have appreciated is that we have been able to cooperate and to work with and have a friendship now that's been ongoing for the past 20 years. And we work with various people who think in various and different sundry ways. And it's been wonderful. So just to answer that question, there was also a question about the Ukrainian refugees from Tajikistan that were... This is the first time I heard the word Taliban.

The word Taliban everybody knows now. But this is the first time I heard the word Taliban was in 1996, where the Taliban had risen up in the former Soviet Union in Muslim countries. This was particularly in Tajikistan. And that's where there were quite a number of Sabbath keepers in Tajikistan, which is close to Afghanistan. And it's a long story about how they got there, but I won't cover that here. But they had to evacuate because the Taliban were pressing on these people. They were persecuting them and even threatening them with their lives. And so these people had no place to go to. They looked for asylum in Australia and other places.

But the only place that took them was Ukraine, because they were Ukrainians that had several generations before had been moved there. And their children now had grown up in Tajikistan. And they moved to Ukraine. And they established their church. And they've actually become one of the Sabbath keeping, or the Holy Day keeping, groups. Well, since that time, they've been able to also emigrate many of them to, of all places, Missouri. And a group of them bought a section of land. The first building they put up was a church.

And they lived in little trailers all around. And then, as they were able to get more resources, they were able to replace their trailers with homes. And actually, I went to visit them there in 1997 when they first started settling there. And some of our brethren who went to the feast in Branson actually went over and saw them and met with them. So I actually feel like I need to go there sometime when I can to visit with these people. But the question was, what about the Sabbatarians there? Well, they kept their own piece of tabernacles, which was a couple hundred people just outside of Branson, Missouri.

And they do it in their style. And we can provide them with literature. And that's one thing that they do ask us for. And that's how we have cooperated. Just a few statistics about the United States. I'm operation manager for the ministry in the United States and also for a number of areas outside the country.

But in the United States now currently we have 282 elders, of which 82 are pastors in the United States, 70 which are full-time, and six which are part-time, and six who are volunteers. We actually have six pastors in the United States who are elders that said, as long as there are services here, I'll provide a live service. Some of them are very happy to do this. Others ask me from time to time, well, when is my job going to end? When are you going to find some relief for me?

But considering what has happened and the challenges that we've had in the past year, we feel like we have the United States fairly well covered. We have a few areas that desperately need to have a pastor over them, some places out in the eastern part of the United States, and we're looking for people who could fill these roles. But we have 12 people, again, who are part-time or volunteer pastors.

We also oversee what are called the senior pastors for international areas, and that includes East Africa, John Elliott in that particular case. He's pastor of Phoenix, but also is pastor over three, four hundred people in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda.

Then also we have senior pastors over Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa. I'm actually senior pastor also over Zambia and Malawi, and also over the Eastern European areas. Sounds like a lot, but we do have a lot of good people that we work with who have given of their time and resources, and we've been able to keep churches going and keep our literature going into these areas. The sermonette was so inspiring to me today. I brought tears, because we've gone through so many trials in this past year, wondering how in the world are we going to get past whatever challenge that we have.

Mr. Luca and I look at each other and say, God has always delivered us from every single thing that we've had in ways that we don't even realize. A year ago at this time, we were wondering about ourselves, about our existence. God has delivered us in a very, very mighty and wonderful way. We're very, very happy to see the goodness and graciousness of God direct His church.

But also, we have to, as Rob and Mr. Hines, we have to keep working at things ourselves. We have to find new pastors. We have to develop new pastors. We have to encourage our current pastors. We have to keep doing the work that we have. But overall, I have seen God's graciousness and goodness lead us through one thing. Lead us through one trial after another.

Well, I'm told by Mr. Demore that we have to end by 12, and then we've got to be out of here by 1215, and drive up to, down to, down to Midland Odessa, another new area. Again, I've never been here. I've been through Amarillo twice, driving from Los Angeles to the east. Two times! But I've never actually been here. So it's a great honor for Bev and me to be here. But I wanted to... Yes? 1 o'clock. What did I say?

12? Okay, so I'm not overtime, then. Okay, very good. Okay, very good. Well, I want to talk about one of two subjects that I absolutely love speaking about. Because every time I speak about these subjects, I learn more, and I want to learn more about these two particular areas. One is the Kingdom of God. I just simply love the concept of the Kingdom of God.

I feel if there's anything distinctive about the Church of God, about God's people, that one of the greatest distinctions from almost everyone is the Kingdom of God, and the knowledge of the Kingdom of God. But that's not what I'll be speaking about today. I'll be speaking about another subject that has really gripped me, and has fascinated me, and has encouraged me about more than anything else.

And that is the grace of God. Grace. You've heard that word. You have your idea of what grace is. In fact, people might have different nuances and different levels of understanding about what the grace of God is. But how much do we know about God's grace? And the fact that we don't know everything about it is good, too, because the Apostle Paul says, Grow in grace and knowledge.

What that implies is that a person doesn't know everything about what grace is. And it's an area that a person should continually expand and deepen his or her knowledge. In Ephesians 3 and verse 17, I'd like to start there.

Because the Apostle Paul, to me, who is one of my big heroes, I have been reading and rereading the book of Acts in different translations. And actually, over this, been my Bible study here of late. Because I tried to look to see what the Apostle Paul did under almost impossible conditions. Wherever he went, he was met with opposition. When he started a new church, there would be people that would try to undermine him. When he'd leave a church, there would be people who would undermine him. When he'd go someplace else, there would be people waiting to meet him and to put him into prison. He was stoned, he was shipwrecked, he had one trial after another, but continued on.

But there's one operative word that he uses a number of times. It's the grace of God, the work grew, and the work continued, irrespective of present conditions and what he had to go through. But take a look at Ephesians 3, verse 17. Paul says that, Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints. And here's the next passage, the next words that I want to focus on.

What is the width and length and depth and height? What is the full dimension of Jesus Christ? Do we understand every dimension of Jesus Christ? Hopefully, we don't know everything, because we need to have room for growth to understand about who Jesus Christ was, why he came, what he did for mankind, and what he is doing for you right now and what he's doing for the church right now. To know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

And I want to apply this to grace. Do we know about a word that appears and starts being spoken of in the book of Genesis? It's referred to in the book of Psalms, the book of Proverbs, in the New Testament, and goes all the way to the very end of the Bible. It's not some New Testament side doctrine. It's a very important aspect of God's attitude, of God's disposition towards mankind, and something that we need to rely upon for salvation by grace that he saved.

Do we understand what that means? There are a number of terms, religious terms, that can become so overused and so murky because of either overuse, that we just hear them said, but we don't really know what they mean because of overuse. Again, in the book of Ephesians, in chapter 1, in chapter 1, Paul writes that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, will give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.

One thing that he's wishing for the Ephesians, that these people have their minds open to what God is showing, and the spirit of wisdom of understanding more deeply what God is showing them may be upon them. The eyes of your understanding being enlightened, that you may know what is the hope of his calling, what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what is exceeding greatness of his power towards us who believe, according to the working of his mighty power.

Do you really know those things? He behooves us to say, do I? Are my eyes and is my mind open to the revelation of God? Or have I been stuck in one phase of understanding and haven't gone on beyond that? Understanding God's grace is vital for our spiritual well-being. Already I said this, that by grace are you saved. What does that mean? Grace has been a subject that's been controversial at times, and even a feared subject. Feared that, well, grace, we've got to be careful about that.

Does this mean promisiveness? Does this mean taking some easy way out? Does it mean something contrary to established norms, to the law of God, to the order that God has set, and grace being something which does away with concepts and values that we've had?

And hopefully you'll leave the sermon today saying that none of that is true. None of that is fact, that it is something which is contrary to what we have believed or to what values are that should be important to us. It is feared because some people feel that it is and could become compromised to God. So what is your understanding of grace? And if we were to go around the room and say, well, what do you understand about grace?

We would find that there are probably nuances that are quite different from one another. It doesn't mean that they're contrary to one another, but people have different views of what grace is. For some, grace is unmerited pardon. To others, grace is the forgiveness of sins. Is that true? Absolutely. Absolutely. Grace is unmerited pardon. It means where God has pardoned your sins, has released you from prison before your full term, and you didn't deserve it.

That is absolutely true. Is grace the forgiveness of sins that you have committed? Yes, it is. Absolutely. That's grace. But is that all grace is? No, not at all. Grace is far more and far greater than just those two concepts that are true but aren't the whole story. Now, the good news about understanding grace is that it's not a complex subject. It isn't theological rocket science.

It isn't something that you have to study this word out, to study these concepts, and understand what it was in this period of time and what this theologian and what this great man has to say about the subject. It's actually quite a straightforward subject from both Old and New Testaments that tied themselves together very beautifully to give us a full meaning of the subject of understanding.

The first reference to grace is in the book of Genesis, actually in the early chapters of the book of Genesis. Grace is not some snappy New Testament concept that again, once and sometimes, is put against the law of God and against what God had previously said before Christ's time. Grace appears right in the book of Genesis in chapter 6, in verse 8, in a very simple verse. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Now, what does this word grace mean here?

There's actually one word for grace in the Old Testament, and actually only one word for grace in the New Testament. So we don't have a lot of theology and a lot of Greek and Hebrew to go through. But since there's only one in the Old Testament and one in the New, we're going to have a very simple lesson on the origins of the word.

In the Hebrew, the word is hen, C-H-E-M, which means kindness, favor, means to be pleasant, to be well favored. It means graciousness. A gracious person is a person who is full of grace. That's what the word hen means.

Let's go back to what this relationship and how this word applies to God's relationship to Noah through grace.

Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Noah was well favored with God. God liked Noah.

Was Noah perfect? Of course not. We know he made mistakes. Even after the flood, he got drunk. The story is told, and will be told for all eternity in the Bible. In fact, it was drunk and worse. He made mistakes.

But he was well favored because he feared God. He walked with God. He was on God's side, and God was on his side.

The word grace in this particular case, and a very important component of the word grace, is to be well favored.

To have God like you.

The church that I had grown up in, Orthodox Church, similar to the Catholic Church, had icons in our church that showed God as being very stern. He looked like he was mad.

He looked like he got up before his time, and was just ready to judge the world.

He was holding the scepter. It was not a friendly relationship. It was a relationship of fear, of rule, of control, of putting down.

And our job as Christians coming into church was to bow down to this icon, which we imagined to be God, as a person to whom you were not very well disposed to.

But do we realize that we could also have a God who is very happy to see us, who favors us, who considers us to be friends?

Abraham was a friend of God.

The only people who are your friends, who are truly your friends, are people that you like.

The people that you sense kindness. Because once you stop liking somebody, they're no longer your friend.

I have people that I like very much. I have people that I don't like so much.

There are people who are your friends, and people who are not your friends.

But Jesus Christ talked to His disciples that, you're my friends. I like you.

God the Father, or should say, God in the Old Testament, said to Abraham, Abraham was a friend of God.

You know what friends are like? You come together, you immediately start talking. You are on the same wavelength.

Are your friends perfect people? Of course not.

Do your friends know your faults? Yes, they do. They know when you misspeak. They know when you say something you shouldn't.

They know when you do something that you shouldn't. They know when you say dumb things. But they're your friends.

They can overlook quite a number of things.

God was not pleased with the world in Noah's time, believe me.

In fact, He was so displeased that He said, I've got to start all over again. This is not going right.

And here we have Noah, who was faithful, who worshipped God, and really held the banner of truth and proper values.

God says, Noah, you're my buddy here. I want you to build this ark. Noah said, okay, fine, great.

And for a hundred years, he built an ark. He found grace in the sight of God. He was his friend.

The relationship was one of graciousness.

You know, the person that I want to find grace with, probably next to God, more than anybody, is my wife.

You know, when you're in good graces with somebody like your mate or your boss, everything else goes right.

If I know that I'm on my wife's bad side, believe me, no matter what I say or do, it's wrong. It's just not right.

She's irritating. I'm irritating. And so forth.

But when you're in somebody's good graces, little things are overlooked.

Little things are forgotten or minimized.

When you're not in somebody's good graces, if you're not in good graces with your boss, hey, you're two minutes late.

Hey, you made a mistake here. I mean, the guy will be badgering you because he doesn't like you. He wants to get rid of you.

But if you're in your boss's good graces, you come in ten minutes later, it's not noticed. He likes you.

You're doing a good job. You're fine, but you came in late.

Or you may have asked for something that you have wanted as a special favor. If he likes you, sure, fine. Take a couple days off.

We find that those who get time off for the feast, whether it's school or job, oftentimes the question is not the law.

The question is oftentimes how well the boss likes you. If you do a good job, you're an employee that is really doing a great job.

He likes you. I've got to go to the feast, and I need to take this time off. Sure, go ahead. Fine, have a good time.

If you've been a bad employee, if your boss doesn't like you, and on top of that you ask to go off someplace for ten days, for two weeks, he's going to hound you, he's going to bad for you. He says, no, of course not. It's not a matter of your religion.

It's a matter of the relationship that you have with your boss.

So, Noah was on God's good side. We want to get to be on God's good side. We want him to be on. We want a good relationship with him.

That's fundamentally one of the definitions of the word grace. Noah found grace in God's sight.

In the New Testament, the word is charis, which means love. It's the root for charisma.

One of his biggest uses, explanations, or definitions is the word gift.

The word charity comes from charis, you know, to a charity. What is a charity? It's an organization that gives.

It gives to those who have needs. It means to also be acceptable, to be favored also as a New Testament meaning for it as well.

In the Russian and Ukrainian language, the word grace has special meaning for me.

I don't use Russian and Ukrainian that often, but the word immediately tells me what it's all about.

Again, in English, we use the word grace, and it has all kinds of baggage, maybe from our former religion, from some concept, or some minimal explanation or definition.

But the word in Russian for the word grace is blagodats, and it just literally means the giving of good.

So you talk about God's grace, when you hear that word, because it comes across in that language, it's God's giving of good. That's simply what it means.

The problem with our definition of grace is that people have pitted the word grace against other concepts, and one of the most severe has been the pitting of it against the law of God.

In fact, the question has been, are we under the law, or are we under grace? He goes, oh, the two are totally divergent concepts.

When you have the law, you're not under grace. When you have grace, you know, certainly minimize or do away with the law.

That has led to a lot of theological contention. At times, we have also been very cautious to say, we've got to be careful about God doing away with the law.

But you know, you can have, and you should have, both law and grace. You should have both the graciousness of God and rules to life.

You ought to have graciousness and also compulsory attitudes of behavior of what's expected.

And one of the definitions and one of the conceptions of law ought to be that law is part of God's grace, is part of God's goodness, when you take a look at it that way.

But people oftentimes, by the simple use of or or and, create unnecessary conflicts. Do you believe in law or do you believe in grace?

Do you want a car with a transmission or do you want an engine? You know, oh, I don't know, I'm so mixed up.

Now, you need both. Both are important and both are very necessary to make things work.

So let's be careful about minimizing grace or fearing it, because it may lead to permissiveness of somehow doing away with the law. It should not.

And a Christian who's matured, he understands the fullness and all dimensions of Jesus Christ, sees, understands what Christ said about the law, but also sees the fullness of wanting Jesus Christ to be our friend and to be in his good and kind hands.

We could go through a whole list. You could do a concordance study very quickly by looking up the word grace in a computer concordance or in a paper concordance.

But let's just take a look at a number of passages in the Old Testament, Psalm 45 verse 2.

And again, I'm just cherry picking a few of these because one is not more than important than the other, but there are numerous places.

Psalm 45 verse 2, you are fairer than the sons of men. Grace is poured upon your lips. Therefore God has blessed you forever.

Psalm 84 verse 11, for the Lord God is a son and shield. The Lord will give grace and glory.

The Old Testament God is going to give friendship and kindness and glory.

And no good thing will he withhold from those who walk uprightly. No good gift will he give to those who do things right.

Proverbs 3 and verse 32, For the perverse person is the 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.

The Old Testament God gives grace to the humble.

Proverbs 4 verse 9, Wisdom, this is a reference to she, will place on your head an ornament of grace.

The person who has wisdom, the person with a gift of wisdom, the person who prays for wisdom, the person who obtains wisdom is like having an ornament of goodness. It's a great gift, a phenomenal gift to have wisdom.

A crown of glory she will deliver to you.

Zechariah 12 verse 10, And I will pour on the house of David, and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and supplication.

This is a prophecy for the future. But nonetheless, this is what God wants to do. God wants to pour out His kindness and goodness. God wants to give gifts.

God is so thrilled at being able to just give of Himself and give of His family name and give us salvation.

It's by grace that you're saved.

And the concept to understand is that we can't be saved by ourselves. We can be saved by God's grace.

But do we walk uprightly, which means to obey the law? Absolutely, we do those things.

Do we obey Him in every single way we possibly can? Do we put Him first in our lives? Do we honor and respect Him?

Do we keep His law? Yes, yes, and yes.

I will pour upon the house of David the spirit of grace and supplication.

Then they will look upon Me whom they pierced. Yes, they will mourn for Him as one mourns for His only Son.

Jeremiah 31, verse 2, talked about the New Covenant. Thus says the Lord.

Jeremiah 31, verse 2, The people who survived the sword found grace in the wilderness. This is a reference to Israel's history.

You know that Israel being wrenched out of Egypt and being thrown into the wilderness and to the Promised Land?

That was God's grace. That was a gift for the people. It wasn't something they earned, certainly something that they just naturally didn't deserve.

But the people who survived, the tumult in Egypt, found grace in the wilderness. God was very kind and good to them.

When I gave Israel, when I give Him rest.

Let's jump to the New Testament, Luke 2, verse 40.

Luke 2, verse 40, the first reference to grace in the New Testament. Now we're working with the word charese.

Talking about Jesus, the child grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.

New Testament grace. Jesus Christ obviously was on God the Father's good side.

And every kindness, every protection, every specialty, special attention was upon Jesus Christ.

This is certainly not a reference to the forgiveness of sins.

And this is not a reference to unmerited pardon.

Believe me, those are very limited definitions of grace as stand-alone definitions.

The definition of grace is a wide expanded one. That's why we should be growing in grace and knowledge, understanding more, questioning more. How is the grace of God working in me and in my life?

And I thank God for being forgiven my sins. I'm thankful for being pardoned.

We're also thankful to Him for being well favored. I'm very thankful for Him for being delivered.

I'm very thankful for being delivered as we are from trials, as was brought out in the sermonette today.

We should be thankful for those great gifts that God gives Him.

Don't have time to go through all the examples in the book of Acts, but the book of Acts has been so inspiring to me from the standpoint of what Paul had to face and what he lived with.

All those horrible trials that he did as God's chief apostle, but how God delivered him time and time again.

And Paul said that this was done through the grace of God.

First of all, I'll just give references to so you can study them yourselves. Acts 6 and verse 8, Stephen.

Stephen, the first martyr, who was actually martyred under the auspices of Saul, who became Paul.

Stephen is described as a man full of grace.

A man full of grace.

He was a special person. You could see that he was just a good guy.

And that he was benefited and he was given so much by God.

He's a person of faith, a real belief, a very positive person full of grace.

Acts 11 and verse 23, what God's grace has done. That's what I'll turn to. Acts 11 And verse...

This is the chapters he was entitled, subtitled in the New King James as Peter defends God's grace.

With the hand of the Lord, verse 21 was with them, a great number believed and turned to the Lord.

Then news of these things came to the ears of the church of Jerusalem.

They sent out Barnabas to go as far as Antioch.

And we had come and he had seen the grace of God. He was glad.

And they saw these conversions and they saw people coming into the church.

They gave credits to God's grace for the calling, the working with.

And encouraged them with all that they had purpose of heart, they should continue with the Lord.

So these people were converted, yet Barnabas went out there to keep bumping them and keep them going.

The apostles had their responsibility, the ministers had their responsibility as well.

But they were thanking God for his grace for bringing these people into the faith. Acts 4, verse 33, talking about the establishment of the church and the early stories of what was happening.

With great power, the apostles gave witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus.

The apostles did their job.

And great grace was upon them all.

A great favor of God was upon them all.

One of my prayers right now is that God's grace come upon our church, come upon our people, upon our ministers.

That we can see his greatness and that we can say, God, what else is it that we have to know?

What else do we have to do? What else do we have to prove?

We want the same kind of grace to be upon us as was upon the churches in the book of Acts.

Because we see over and over again how the apostles went out and great grace came upon the churches.

And people turned to the Lord. And people were baptized. And the churches grew in grace.

The apostle Paul admonished them to continue in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ.

One of the dynamics of leading to conversion and deeper repentance is the graciousness of God.

It's always a verse in Romans that has really struck me ever since I was at Ambassador College.

That's Romans 2, verse 4. Again, because this was so different from the God that I was used to in my former church as an angry God.

As a God before my head to quiver and who was overall displeased with me.

But Paul writes to the Gentiles in Rome, says, Do you despise the riches of his goodness, forbearance and long suffering?

I said, do we not pay attention to God's goodness, God's grace, his patience and long suffering?

Not knowing that the goodness of God or grace of God leads you to repentance. We don't want to spank people to repentance.

When you spank people, like spanking a child into bed or spanking a child to tell the truth, you want to be able to have a relationship to where it's through the relationship because they want to obey you.

Because we see that God has been so good to us. He has given us so much.

All the blessings that we can be thankful for.

That as a result, we don't take advantage of it, we don't despise it, and we don't take it for granted.

But we say, you know, he's been so good to me, he's been so gracious to me, that he behooves me to really make changes in my life.

He should lead me to repentance. That God will be good to us for the purpose of leading us to lead a more righteous life.

And not using trials, not using more draconian means to get our attention.

But can God get your attention by the goodness that he does to lead you to repentance?

We have to be careful, though, ever more so, in which we have probably over-emphasized.

But that we don't take God's grace for granted. Or as something that, well, I got to that one, God didn't do anything to me.

Well, I got to that one, nothing happened.

And we say, well, maybe that's the way God is.

No matter what I do, I'm still under grace.

In Romans 6, verse 1, Paul writes, What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?

God's been good to us, nothing happened. And we were sinners. We don't do anything about it.

God's still good to us. God's still good to us.

Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?

Verse 2, certainly not! Don't go there, don't think that.

How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?

Never take God's grace for granted.

So what is grace? I'll tell you a few things that grace is to me.

Certainly it's forgiveness, American pardon, the law of God, the borders, the boundaries.

That's part of God's grace. His kingdom, His salvation, our inheritance.

Now what is an inheritance? It's a gift. You never earn your inheritance.

You get it because it's being passed down to you. That's part of God's grace.

The word gift is inherent in the definition of grace.

Eternal life, family relationship. You can probably have a more complete list than I do. I'm just giving you a few things that I regard as God's grace to me.

All the good things, as it comes across in the Russian, the giving of good, which the word literally means.

The giving of good. Interesting that the word blessing in Russian is блога Слова, which means good word. The word blessing means a good word. The word grace means the giving of good.

2 Peter 1, verse 2. I'll conclude here with two verses from Peter.

Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of our God and Jesus our Lord. You will find also in the epistles of Paul that the Apostle Paul greets congregations by proclaiming grace, God's goodness.

Peter opens as he greets the people in Babylon. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God our Lord.

I do hope that spiritual peace and grace can be multiplied as something that grows, not as something that's static and has no room for expansion, but something that continually expands and you understand all the concepts and everything dealing with it.

I'll conclude with 2 Peter, chapter 3, verse 18.

2 Peter, chapter 3, verse 18. Grow in grace and knowledge of our Lord.

So just as we learn new things, just as we pick up new things, just as we advance in our technical knowledge of God, in the same way are you growing in grace? Do you understand more about grace this year than you did last year or that you did five years ago? Are you going to understand more about the grace of God in two, five, and ten years from now? Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and forever. Amen.