It is Well with my Soul
Pastor Ted Danes
Sermon • Submitted • Presented • 50:25
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His grace alone.
The abundance of grace
Reigning in Life
“Sometimes God is angry with me, sometimes He is happy with me.”
This is what many people are believing today: Sometimes God is good, sometimes He is not! Sometimes He is happy, sometimes He is not!
God said emphatically
“If you don’t preach grace radically, people’s lives will never be radically blessed and radically transformed.”
I want to talk about being radically transformed by His grace
—- His grace alone.
This morning I want us to discover the secret of God’s way to reigning in life!
Our part is to believe on Him and receive all that He has accomplished on our behalf.
Sounds ridiculously simple, one-sided and unfair?
Well, that is exactly what makes grace, grace!
Grace is only grace when it is undeserved, unearned and unmerited.
“Sometimes God is angry with me, sometimes He is happy with me.”
This is what many people are believing today: Sometimes God is good, sometimes He is not! Sometimes He is happy, sometimes He is not!
Destined to reign
Destined to reign
you are destined to reign in life because Jesus is Lord of your life.
When you reign in life,
you reign over sin,
you reign over the powers of darkness,
and you reign over depression,
over poverty,
over every curse,
and over every sickness and disease.
You REIGN over the devil and all his demons and devices!
Then He called His twelve disciples together and gave them power and authority over all demons, and to cure diseases. He sent them to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick.
Jesus summoned together his twelve apostles and imparted to them authority over every demon and the power to heal every disease. Then he commissioned them to preach God’s kingdom realm and to heal the sick to demonstrate that the kingdom had arrived. As he sent them out, he gave them these instructions:
Acts 1:8 (NKJV)
But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you;…
“power and authority over all demons”
That's what He gave us
I mean you and me!!
I did an extensive word study on that phrase and it means that you have power and authority over all demons
power n. — δύναμις, —- dynamis - possession of controlling influence; often understood as manifesting influence over reality in a supernatural manner.
authority n. — ἐξουσία —- exousia - the power or right to give orders or make decisions; a supernatural power having some particular role in controlling the destiny and activities of beings—‘power, authority, lordship, ruler
all — kol — all - the whole quantity or extent of. - any whatever. - the greatest possible. - everything.
So first I want us to look at our key verse this morning.
It's in Romans 5:17.
Romans 5:17 (TPT)
Death once held us in its grip, and by the blunder of one man, death reigned as king over humanity. But now, how much more are we held in the grip of grace and continue reigning as kings in life, enjoying our regal freedom through the gift of perfect righteousness in the one and only Jesus, the Messiah!
And just as sin reigned through death, so also this sin-conquering grace will reign as king through righteousness, imparting eternal life through Jesus, our Lord and Messiah!
The word "REIGN” used in Romans 5:17 is the Greek word basileuo`
Many Greek Dictionaries says…
Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament based on Semantic Domains (βασιλεύω)
‘to rule, to reign as a king,’ to be in control in an absolute manner—‘to reign, to control completely.
Lexham Theological Wordbook (βασιλεύω)
Furthermore, those whom Christ raises from the dead will reign (basileuō) with him, reflecting again how God delegates authority to mankind
Theological Lexicon of the New Testament (βασιλεία,
Reign” is the exercise of royal power, domination, either absolute personal power or dominating influence
Biblico-Theological Lexicon of New Testament Greek (Βασιλεύω)
to denote their participation in the royal glory of Christ, at whose feet all opposing powers must lie
Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words (βασιλεύω)
to possess regal authority, be a king, reign; to rule, govern, to be in force, predominate, prevail,
So to reign in this passage is to reign in life as a king, it means to have kingly rule and to possess kingly dominion.
Based on the authority of God’s Word, you are destined to "reign in life" as a king, to have kingly dominion over all your challenges, circumstances and sin.
We are called to be above them all and not be trampled by them.
The time has come for us to stop abdicating our right to reign in life!
In Romans 5:17 we read very clearly that we are to reign in life through Jesus Christ just by receiving two things from Him:
The abundance of grace and
the gift of righteousness.
His way is not about achieving, but about receiving. He promised that when we receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness, we will reign in life.
The secret of reigning in life lies with receiving everything that Jesus has accomplished for us on the cross.
We have been taught to focus on achieving, on doing and on relying on our self-efforts. We are driven to “do, do, do”, forgetting that Christianity is actually “done, done, done”.
What we do is we take the system of the world and apply it to our Christian life. Instead of depending on God’s grace for His favor and blessings to flow, we depend on our self-efforts to try to deserve God’s favor and blessings.
there is nothing that you can do to deserve His blessings, for they are based entirely on receiving Jesus, and through His finished work, the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness.
Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not! Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves 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 though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.
He cried out with a loud voice, “It is finished!”
Everything that you and I require to reign in life was accomplished at Calvary on our behalf.
The Word of God declares this about the finished work of Jesus on the cross:
But when this Priest had offered the one supreme sacrifice for sin for all time he sat down on a throne at the right hand of God, waiting until all his whispering enemies are subdued and turn into his footstool. And by his one perfect sacrifice he made us perfectly holy and complete for all time!
Do you realize that under the old covenant,
there was no place to sit down…
And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.
and did you know…
in the holy place of the tabernacle of Moses, there is not a single piece of furniture prepared for the priest to sit on?
This is because the work of the priest was never finished.
But now…
Jesus sat down because the work is indeed finished.
Only Jesus’ work is a finished work. And not only did He sit down at the Father’s right hand, He made us SIT WITH HIM!
But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
we do not labor to be blessed, but rather we have the power to labor because we are already blessed.
Jesus has accomplished everything on the cross. Our part is to trust in His perfect work, receive with open arms the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness, and begin to reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ. Today!
look at the contrast….
Under the law, God demanded righteousness from man.
Under grace, God provided righteousness for man.
Under the law, everything depended on man and his obedience.
But under grace, everything depends on Jesus and what He did on the cross.
The law demands, but will not lift a finger to help,
while grace imparts and has accomplished everything on your behalf.
Because finding fault with them, He says: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah—not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”
The old covenant of law is based on “you shall not… you shall not… you shall not...”
while the new covenant of grace is the Lord saying, “I will… I will… I will…”
It is clear that the emphasis and demand of the covenant of law is on you performing,
while the emphasis and demand of the covenant of grace is on God Himself performing!
He will do everything on our behalf. In fact, because Jesus has already died on the cross for us, He has already done everything on our behalf.
Remember, Christianity is “done, done, done”, not “do, do, do”.
Jesus came to establish the new covenant of grace and under this new covenant, God is no longer angry with you because His anger and wrath have already been exhausted on the body of Jesus on the cross.
Grace imparts righteousness and has accomplished everything on your behalf.
For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
A man came up to me....
He looked very disturbed and said, “You talk about God’s love, but the Bible also says that God is wrath!”
I explained that while God has wrath, the Bible never defines God as wrath. Instead, according to the Bible’s definition, God is love.
He then exclaimed, “But sometimes I see God being angry!”
I explained, “We do see God being angry in the Old Testament, and in the book of Revelation, where His anger is toward those who have rejected Jesus. But for you and me, believers in the new covenant, we are not part of the Old Testament and we will never be punished because we have already received Jesus.
As believers, God is no longer angry with us because all His anger for our sins fell upon Jesus at the cross. Jesus became the Lamb of God who takes away all our sins.
On the cross, Jesus cried out, ‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?’ Why do you think He cried that? He cried that so that we would all know specifically that at that point in time, God’s wrath fell upon Him.
He became our sin offering and the fire of God’s wrath devoured Him completely as He who knew no sin became our sin, so that you and I will never experience God’s wrath again.”
There are many sincere believers today who are like this man.
They believe that God is a God of love, but at the same time, they also believe that He can be a God of great wrath.
When they read the Bible, they get confused because they see an often-angry God in the Old Testament, but a loving God in the New Testament. Is God schizophrenic? Is He really angry sometimes and loving at other times?
Be careful how we read the Bible we need to understand the background, and the reasons the author says what he says
For instance, in it says…
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
John, in this verse is speaking to a group of people called the Gnostics and calling them to believe in Jesus and the confessor sins
And this verse he's speaking to us as believers —
saying that we have continual cleansing by His blood
But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.
Our Fellowship with Him is not broken because our forgiveness is not contingent on what we do. It is contingent on the finished work of Jesus.
We do not confess our sins to be forgiven. We confess or speak openly to our gracious Father because we have already been forgiven.
The continuous washing of Jesus’ blood qualifies you for any miracle that you need in your life right now.
This is what you need to hear.
This is what we need to teach in the church!
The devil’s strategy is to make you feel like you are not qualified to enter God’s presence.
He will bombard you with thoughts of condemnation, accusing you of being unworthy for having wrong thoughts or saying harsh words against someone.
He will give you a thousand and one reasons why you don’t qualify for God’s blessings.
But the truth is that whatever wrong feelings you had or whatever bad habit you had succumbed to, the blood of Jesus keeps you clean.
The blood of Jesus qualifies you to have constant access to the Most High God.
Because you are under this waterfall of forgiveness, every prayer that you make avails much.
But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.
His blood keeps on keeping on cleansing you from every sin. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, His blood is cleansing you.
cease from depending on your own efforts to maintain your forgiveness and begin to enjoy the extravagant waterfall of God’s forgiveness every moment of the day. You’ll find peace for your soul and the faith to reign in life will well up on the inside of you.
You’ll see miracles begin to unfold in your life!
For generations, the church has believed that by preaching the Ten Commandments, we will produce holiness. When we see sin on the increase, we start to preach more of the law. But the Word of God actually says that “the strength of sin is the law”.
It also says that “sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace”.
So the power for the church to overcome sin is actually found in being under grace and not in reinforcing the law.
Preaching more of the law to counteract sin is like adding wood to fire! So who has hoodwinked us all this time and sold us a lie?
church, it is time to see that it is the devil who benefits from all this. The devil is the one using the law to bring about death and condemnation, and to put believers under oppression!
God Himself found fault with the old covenant of law and the Ten Commandments. He sent Jesus Christ as our Mediator of “a better covenant, which was established on better promises”.
And indeed, the new covenant of grace is established on better promises and is more glorious than the ministry of death, for it is no longer dependent on us, but is completely dependent on Jesus, who CANNOT FAIL!
God gave the law to bring man to the end of himself, so that he would see his need for a Savior.
The law justified no one and condemned the best of us, but grace saves even the worst of us. Yes, only the blood of Jesus can remove sins. His blood was shed on Calvary so that your sins can be forgiven.
Start believing the good news today!
God will never condemn us because His only begotten Son has already been condemned on our behalf. We can freely partake of His righteousness and live each day without guilt, condemnation and shame.
Overpayment
Overpayment
=============
And now we are brothers and sisters in God’s family because of the blood of Jesus, and he welcomes us to come right into the most holy sanctuary in the heavenly realm—boldly and with no hesitation. For he has dedicated a new, life-giving way for us to approach God. For just as the veil was torn in two, Jesus’ body was torn open to give us free and fresh access to him!
And since we now have a magnificent King-Priest to welcome us into God’s house, we come closer to God and approach him with an open heart, fully convinced by faith that nothing will keep us at a distance from him. For our hearts have been sprinkled with blood to remove impurity and we have been freed from an accusing conscience and now we are clean, unstained, and presentable to God inside and out!
So now we must cling tightly to the hope that lives within us, knowing that God always keeps his promises!
When you receive Jesus as your sin offering, your heart will be sprinkled with His blood from an “evil conscience” because your sins have already been punished on His body.
An evil conscience is a conscience that is constantly conscious of your sins.
And the moment you stop carrying sin-consciousness and condemnation in your mind and heart, and realize that you are washed with the pure water of God’s Word, it will begin to affect your physical body and bring healing to every part that is not well!
“But I have sinned. How can there be no punishment for my sin?”
I do not deny that sin must be punished, but I am declaring to you that all your sins have already been punished on the body of Jesus.
He is your perfect sin offering and we who have received His forgiveness should have no more consciousness of sins.
Remember that when someone brings his sin offering to the priest, the priest does not examine him. He examines the sin offering. The priest is a picture of God.
When you go to Him today, God does not examine you. He examines your sin offering. He examines Jesus, who is completely perfect and sinless, without spot, wrinkle or blemish.
God accepts Jesus as your sin offering, and every one of your sins has been transferred onto His body!
Stop punishing yourself.
Jesus has already been punished for your sins.
Believe it and let your conscience be satisfied!
Start enjoying all His benefits because they are your blood-bought rights.
Closing
Whatever your need is today, your solution is found in a greater revelation of Jesus.
ask Him for more
ask him for a deeper understanding of the truth
Ask God to give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him.
And he chose us to be his very own, joining us to himself even before he laid the foundation of the universe! Because of his great love, he ordained us, so that we would be seen as holy in his eyes with an unstained innocence.
For it was always in his perfect plan to adopt us as his delightful children, through our union with Jesus, the Anointed One, so that his tremendous love that cascades over us would glorify his grace —for the same love he has for his Beloved One, Jesus, he has for us. And this unfolding plan brings him great pleasure!
Since we are now joined to Christ, we have been given the treasures of redemption by his blood—the total cancellation of our sins—all because of the cascading riches of his grace. This superabundant grace is already powerfully working in us, releasing within us all forms of wisdom and practical understanding.
I pray that the Father of glory, the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, would impart to you the riches of the Spirit of wisdom and the Spirit of revelation to know him through your deepening intimacy with him.
I pray that the light of God will illuminate the eyes of your imagination, flooding you with light, until you experience the full revelation of the hope of his calling —that is, the wealth of God’s glorious inheritances that he finds in us, his holy ones!
I pray that you will continually experience the immeasurable greatness of God’s power made available to you through faith. Then your lives will be an advertisement of this immense power as it works through you! This is the mighty power that was released when God raised Christ from the dead and exalted him to the place of highest honor and supreme authority in the heavenly realm! And now he is exalted as first above every ruler, authority, government, and realm of power in existence! He is gloriously enthroned over every name that is ever praised, not only in this age, but in the age that is coming!
And he alone is the leader and source of everything needed in the church. God has put everything beneath the authority of Jesus Christ and has given him the highest rank above all others. And now we, his church, are his body on the earth and that which fills him who is being filled by it!
Dear Father, I thank You for the cross of Jesus. I thank You that today, because of Jesus’ blood, I have been forgiven of all my sins, past, present and future. Today, You are merciful to my unrighteousness, and all my sins and lawless deeds, You will remember no more. You see me as completely righteous, not because of what I have done, but because of Jesus. I am greatly blessed, highly favored and deeply loved by You. Amen.