Extrodinarily Ordinary
Romans: For the Gospel • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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The Means of God’s Grace
The Means of God’s Grace
Nick Batzig defines the means of Grace as “God’s appointed instruments by which the Holy Spirit enables believers to receive Christ and the benefits of redemption.”
The means of grace put simple the instruments God uses to draw men to himself in salvation. This is the natural outflow of Paul’s great work in Romans. In chapter 8, he reveals God’s great love for us as heirs with Christ in God’s great work of preparing for himself a “people whom I formed for myself
that they might declare my praise” (Isaiah 43:21) and how he determines and preserves the salvation of those he loves (Romans 8:28), completing the work he began in us.
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
Chapter 9 and 10 hone in on God’s particular grace. How God himself works out the salvation of men through the working of the Holy Spirit. This is God’s special, particular grace: God working in the individual lives of men and women to bring to faith in Christ. We’ve talked about how God takes hearts of stone and gives them hearts flesh, softening the hearts of those he choses so that they may receive salvation. Romans 9:15
For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”
We see God’s sovereignty in salvation, as he draws men to himself ensuring that men and women are saved. This is like the small end of a funnel, how God saves people by the person and work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of men, drawing them to the father.
No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day.
This is the particular grace of God. But then we see Paul also show our personal responsibility in salvation in the call to confess and believe. How only those who, drawn by the Spirit and quickened through regeneration, respond in faith to the gospel call.
because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
This is God’s general grace to all men. God in his sovereignty ensures that men will be saved, but those that are saved do so by believing the gospel and confessing and repenting of their sins.
So now Paul closes this argument by explaining how God’s grace is given to men, and in general to all men, though not all men will receive the Gospel, and how God draws his people out of the world to himself and calls them to repentance.
Put another way, “What grace does God give to all men so that whosoever will may be called out of sin and into his saving grace.
The answer is his ordinary means of grace. The ordinary means of grace.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism is a catechism written between 1646 and 1647 by the Westminster Assembly, a synod of English and Scottish theologians and laymen for the purpose of laying out the basic beliefs of the Church of England and the Scottish Church.
In question 88 of the Catechism the question is asked:
"How is the word made effectual to salvation?"
Answer: The Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the word, an effectual means of convincing and converting sinners, and of building them up in holiness and comfort through faith unto salvation.
Likewise the London Baptist Confession of 1689 talks about “the administration of Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper, Prayer and other Means appointed of God” as means to lead us to God and to increase and strengthen our faith.
Paul in our text is discussing how the “whosoever will” are drawn to God. What means of grace God uses to lead them to himself.
The answer is simple: God uses the preaching and teaching of God’s word, by God’s people, in God’s House and in God’s World.
The Ordinary Means of Grace
The Ordinary Means of Grace
We like the extraordinary. We love the flashy. We like pizazz. We crave it. We are a culture that craves more, better, flashier.
You can see this in our culture all around us. One place where you can see this clearly is in food.
When I was a kid we had sour candy. In fact, we had sour candy so sour it would make your jaw lock up. One of those that came out when I was a kid was the warheads sour candies. The candy was invented in Taiwan in 1975 and was first imported to the United States in 1993 by The Foreign Candy Company of Hull, Iowa. It was sour. It was terrible, but today, you can hardly find just plain warheads candies. Now it’s Warheads Extreme Sour.
The same is with Hot stuff. Before the early 1990s, there were only two peppers which had been measured above 350,000 SHU, the Scotch bonnet and the habanero. Then a California farmer named Frank Garcia used a sport of a habanero to develop a new cultivar, the Red Savina (C. chinense),[2] which was measured at 570,000 in 1994. Since then we’ve had the Indian Ghost Pepper at over 1 million SHU, the Trinidad Scorpion at 1.5 million SHU, and now the Carolina Reaper at almost 1.7 million SHU.
We like extreme.
It excites us.
But what God gives us is not something exciting or flashy. There is no flow-chart. What he gives us are ordinary means of Grace.
How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?
And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”
What God gives us is His Word.
Hear the Word
Hear the Word
One of the primary ways that we are sanctified is through the hearing of the word of God.
How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?
Hearing the word is essential to our understanding of the gospel and growing in our faith and the primary way this is done is through the ordinary preaching and teaching of God’s Word.
The word for preaching is kerysso. It is a word used to describe the proclamation of a herald. A herald would proclaim to the people the laws of, the decrees of, or the announcements of a king.
While there is great benefit to the our sanctification in the private reading of God’s word, in fact is essential to our sanctification, the primary means of salvation in the New Testament is the preaching of God’s Word.
For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.
but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,
but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
Sing the Word
Sing the Word
A second means of God’s grace is through the singing of God’s word.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart,
We are commanded to let the word dwell in us, and one of the primary ways we do this is through the singing of the word of God.
We can mention only one point (which experience confirms), namely, that next to the Word of God, music deserves the highest praise. No greater commendation than this can be found — at least not by us. After all, the gift of language combined with the gift of song was only given to man to let him know that he should praise God with both word and music, namely, by proclaiming [the Word of God] through music.
Martin Luther
Pray the Word
Pray the Word
Another way that God uses the word to bring men to salvation is through praying the word of God. What do we mean by this. What we mean is that biblical, scripture filled prayer is used by God to draw men to himself and bring about salvation.
What we pray matters, and how we pray corporately matters.
“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.
But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
We should prayer in a way that reflects the words of Christ.
In his High priestly prayer Jesus prayed:
“I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word,
God uses the word of Christ to change hearts. Our prayers should not be wrote rambling, but rather richly filled with Scripture. We should pray God’s words back to him.
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When we pray scripture we are praying God’s Words back to him, not to play gotcha but because we love him and He loves us.
See the Word
See the Word
Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.”
And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you,
for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
Greg Allison notes that “The Ordinances are means of grace by which God confers the benefits of salvation to his people. Rather than infusing grace, the sacraments, in conjunction with the Word of God, offer a promise of divine blessing (e.g., sanctification) to their recipients, who appropriate the promise by faith.”
Let’s not miss this, the ordinances are a way for us to preach the gospel. They are a way that God draws men to himself. They are a display of his glory to men. In fact, rightly understood, both baptism which biblically follows salvation and the Lord’s Supper which is only to be taken by Baptized believers are good and the First Gospel proclamation that a new believer makes to the lost world.
Live the Word
Live the Word
Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ, so that whether I come and see you or am absent, I may hear of you that you are standing firm in one spirit, with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel,
Finally we are to live the word. That means we are to live in such a way that our lives are distinct from the world and show the sanctification that is occurring in our lives.
One of the greatest things a believer can do is be the beautiful feet.
According to a recent lifeway poll, 82% of people would come to church if a friend invited them. But the poll also stated that only 27% of Christians who attend church weekly actually bother to invite someone.
Additionally when as how they started coming to church, new believers stated:
6-8% Walked in by own initiative
2-3% Liked a program offered
8-10% Liked the pastor
3-4% Had a need met by the church.
1-2% Were Evangelized
3-4% Attracted by Sunday School
70-85% Invited by a relative or friend!
The average is 83% came to church because of an INVITE by a friend or relative
Churches die when God