Sermon Tone Analysis

Please open your Pilgrim’s Guide to page 42 and pray with me at the top of the page.

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in us the fire of your love.

Send forth Your Spirit and we shall be created, and You shall renew the face of the earth.

Oh God, who by the light of the Holy Spirit instructs the hearts of the faithful, grant, that by the same Holy Spirit we may be truly wise and ever rejoice in His consolations.

Through Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Good Morning!

My name is Pastor Chuck Benway, I made Western North Carolina Via De Cristo Mixed # 20 in the Fall of 2004, where I sat with my brothers in Christ at the table of St. Mark.

This time I am blessed to be seated at the Table of the Spiritual Directors.

My wife, Diane and I reside in the Baton Community of Granite Falls, NC.

We serve and worship at Faith Community Church in the small community of Connelly Springs, North Carolina, in between Hickory and Morganton.

We have two grown children, Melissa and Erik.

We both enjoy being “Empty Nesters” but, at the same time, miss our children dearly.

You just never really realize what you have until they are no longer around!

I am happy to say that we evidently did something right with them as they choose to make time to spend with us! Praise the Lord!

In the previous talk you were introduced to the concept of Ideals.

We should be endeavoring to live our lives by a set of ideals that we have pre-determined and hopefully reflect our values.

In this talk, I want to introduce you to another ideal, God’s Ideal, which we can adopt as our own as well.

One we SHOULD adopt, I might add!

The title of this talk is:

The Nature of God’s Grace

You will want to write that down.

I will repeat it, “The Nature of God’s Grace”.

Grace is a wonderful word, but it is not one we use every day, right?

Except possibly when someone suggests we give thanks for a meal.

So we say Grace.

We’re even doing that this weekend with the “Blessing Before Meals and After Meals.

As a pastor and mentor of mine also said, “Grace is not the name of a beautiful blonde woman either”.

We do, however, hear it a great deal more in church, don’t we?

For example,

“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God.....”, or, “Grace to you and peace from God our father.....”, or even, “.....the Lord be gracious to you, and give you His peace.”

Although the word is used often in the Bible, you won’t find a concise definition of it there.

But, like so many other things in the Bible, you will find it described - everywhere; especially in the life of Christ!

In the 1st chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus is referred to as being “full of grace and truth”, and that we all, from his fullness, have “received grace upon grace”.

Later (1 John 4:9), God’s Ideal is spelled out this way: “In this the love of God was made known among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we may have life in him.”

Let’s explore together, [God’s Ideal, GRACE]!

<Once again> There will be some write-downs during this talk.

I will try to emphasize them for you, repeat them and give you time to write them down.

I’ll give you a hint: anytime I enumerate something, such as a Roman numeral, a letter or a number, that’s your cue to start writing!

I. GRACE - God loves us, always has, always will.

And how do we know that?

Well…

A. History reveals it

- God is the Initiator, God always keeps promises

1) Creation/Fall

- Genesis 1, Genesis 3:8-9

From the beginning God has been pursuing a relationship with humankind, with us.

When God created the land and seas, the forests and the wetlands, the mountains and valleys and all of the animals, the creeping things and those that swam in the water, He stopped and said that “it was good”.

But, after He created the first human, Adam, He said that “it was very good!”

And the Bible describes their relationship in this way, “Adam walked with God.”

As you read through the Bible, you will come to understand that‘s how the Bible describes an intimate relationship with God.

Some walked so intimately with God, like Enoch Genesis 5:18-24, that God took them home alive!

Wouldn’t that be a trip?! Come, Lord Jesus, come!

One thing I have noticed within my own life, is that when I am walking with God, things seem to go way better than at other times.

Now, that’s not to say that things are all peaches and cream.

On the contrary, the world keeps coming.

But, I am not misled, I am not overwhelmed, I am at peace.

God is bigger than the world - He has overcome this world - and He’s stronger than my problems!

Even after Adam and Eve had disobeyed God’s command to not eat from the tree in the middle of the Garden, the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and were hiding from God, God pursued them.

God came walking in the Garden in the cool of the day and called out, “Adam, where are you?”

Is He calling out to you today?

2) Abraham’s call and covenant

-Beginning in Genesis 12

In the story of Abram / Abraham in Genesis, God calls Abram to leave what he knows and to follow God into a foreign land with the promise that He will make of him a great nation, even though his wife, Sarai, is barren.

For a woman to be barren during these times, it was considered not only to be an embarrassment, but a withholding of blessings from the Lord.

So, Abram and Sarai were taking a great leap of faith.

Even though, when God promised an heir of their own when Abraham and (now) Sarah were beyond child-bearing years, they never wavered.

But, there’s more!

After Isaac is born, Abraham obeyed even when God called him to take Isaac to a remote place and sacrifice him to God.

His faith wouldn’t allow him to waiver.

God, again, fulfilled his promise by providing a ram to be offered instead.

Then, from Isaac we have Jacob and Esau; from Jacob the nation of Israel!

God always keeps His promises!

3) The Incarnation

- This is the life of Jesus.

Jesus models God’s gracious invitation, and confronts humanity at its worst (“Father, forgive them”)

From the 3rd chapter of Genesis, we receive this promise from God, “The Lord said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all the beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat all the days of your life.

I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.”

This is the foretelling of God’s salvation plan incarnated through the person of Jesus Christ and His act of tremendous grace upon the cross of Calvary, asking the Father, “Forgive them (us) for they know not what they do!”

The entirety of the Bible is God’s salvation story of grace through His Son Jesus Christ!

My experience watching Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of the Christ”...

Movie came out in 2004...

Our sin nailed Jesus to that cross; His love for us kept Him there!

B. The Scriptures proclaim it

1) Grace in the Old Testament

a.

The trials and tribulations of David

- Psalm 51 “To the choirmaster.

A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.

1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.

2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! 3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. 4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.

5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.

6 Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart.

7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have broken rejoice.

9 Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.

10 Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

11 Cast m…”

2) Grace in the New Testament

a.