Limitless Grace

Intro

This is our third week in our series called limitless life, where we are looking closer at how each of us can experience the full, abundant, eternal limitless life that God offers to each of us.

Pastor Jeff and Identified 4 things that we need to receive for us to live a life like that. the first thing we talked about was a limitless faith, last week a limitless wisdom and this week a limitless grace.

I want to make clear again that these are not things we have to achieve and if we put the four puzzle pieces together you achieve this perfect life you’ve always dreamed of. No each of the four faith, wisdom, grace, and love are given to us by the one who is the source of them all. the source of life itself Jesus. and when we are receive life through the death and resurrection of Jesus. He doesn’t just save our life he gives us the ability to experience life the way he intended us to. a full rich limitless life anchored in the limitless of Jesus.

Here the truth that we are going to unpack today in scripture when it comes to God’s grace.

God’s Grace is not just the starting line. It is not just the means through which you receive salvation and then you don’t need it anymore.

God’s Grace is not just the starting line it is the power for every step.

Ephesians 2:1–10 CSB

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient. We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace! He also raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavens in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might display the immeasurable riches of his grace through his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—not from works, so that no one can boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.

This passage is one of the best summaries of how Jesus provides salvation. Paul makes it very clear that without Christ we were dead. Jesus did not come to make bad people good, he came to make dead people alive. and without him we are spirtually dead. without Jesus we are dead now and stay dead by being eternally seperated from the source of life God the father. But thank God for verse four. After Paul paints this picture of how bad we have it. He begins the good news part with two incredibly powerful words. But God.

your only option was to receive all of God’s wrath cause of your sin, but God. We had to live by what our sinful desires told us to do, but God. You were dead, but God.

1. Grace Saves You.

This idea is at the very core of Christianity. If you don’t believe that you are saved through the grace of God to put it simply you arent a Christian. We can disagree on a great number of things and still both be Christians. We can disagree on personal convictions around a specific sin, baptism methods, interpretations of revelation prophecies, church government styles, but if we disagree on this you aren’t disagreeing with me you are disagreeing with God’s word.

It makes it very clear. We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

There is no room for astriks in there, parentheses with things added in there. no but this or but that, because God’s word already declares you were dead,

Christian Standard Bible Chapter 2

But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us, 5 made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace.

Mercy is when we don’t get what we deserve. Grace is when we get what we don’t deserve.

God is so good that he extends mercy by saving our lives, he doesn’t give us the punishment we deserve when we turn to him. But he is so good that he doesn’t stop there he then pours on us his grace, which we don’t deserve by providing for us the faith, wisdom, and love we need to live a limitless life.

We got to be careful of thinking of our salvation as a transaction between God and us in which he contributes the grace and we contribute the faith.

If it was a transaction that it wouldn’t be grace. He shows his grace towards us and we respond with faith. The reason our faith can be limitless is because his grace is limitless. Its all from him, through him and for him.

Paul makes it clear we dont earn it when he says in verse 8-9

Christian Standard Bible Chapter 2

8 For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—9 not from works, so that no one can boast

grace is a gift. you can’t earn it. you can’t be good enough to earn because again grace isn’t about becoming good it is about becoming alive. if you can earn it, it isn’t grace. because that means we would deserve it and you would be proud of what you accomplished instead of the greatness of the gift giver.

2.Grace Points to the Giver

Have you ever been given a gift that you could never have gotten for yourself that every time people notice it, you can’t help but point to the one who gave it to you.

We all like to receive a thoughtful gift, we all like to receive an expensive gift. When we receive a gift that is both. its so thoughtful that its obvious the person knows you and care for you, and its so expensive there is no way you could have ever afforded it. if you receive a gift like that, and someone see it and says wow thats really nice, how’d you get it.

You’re not going to say yeah I worked really hard and I earned it. If you work a minnium wage job and your driving a Ferari people are going to know either something shady is going on or someone gave them this. its obvious you could never earn enough for it.

No if someone gave you an incredibly thoughtful, incredibly expensive gift. All you can do when people notice is point people to the one who gave you the gift.

That is the position that we are in as believers the grace we have been given it is so far and above what we could earn, so far above what we could achieve. It isn’t just expensive it is unaffordable. There is nothing in this world that is as valuable as a single drop of the blood of the son of God. and he spilled all of it for us,

not only is the gift expensive it is thoughtful in a way none of us can comprehend. he knew we would need his grace before he created us, and still planned to give it to us. Before those mountains outside existed he had already thought out how he was going to show his limitless grace to you Specifically.

The gift of his grace is so limitless that the only response we can have to it is to give all glory, all praise, all honor, to the gift giver.

His grace his not a bonus for us that we earned because we were good. His grace was given to us when were dead and the only thing we could earn was more death, and his limitless grace made us alive.

You cannot have a limitless life without first believing in and experiencing the limitless grace that only comes from God.

But this begs the question now what? if we recieve the limitless grace of God of God that he offers us through the limitless faith that he offers us, what now? How do I know it’s taken root. How do I know its real.

By showing others a reflection of the limitless grace you’ve been given.

You’re life cannot be full, abundant, and limitless in the way Jesus promised us in John 10 If you only receive grace without showing grace.

So how do you know grace is more than something you believe… but something that’s actually changed you

3. Grace Shows Up in Your Life

John Stott

The Message of Ephesians b. Why God Did It

Good works are indispensable to salvation—not as its ground or means, however, but as its consequence and evidence

We cannot be saved by our good works. but they are consequence of receiving such amazing grace.

Christian Standard Bible Chapter 2

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared ahead of time for us to do.

We are not saved by good works but we are saved for good works.

The Message of Ephesians b. Why God Did It

Formerly we walked in trespasses and sins in which the devil had trapped us; now we walk in good works which God has eternally planned for us to do. The contrast is complete. It is a contrast between two lifestyles (evil and good), and behind them two masters (the devil and God). What could possibly have effected such a change? Just this: a new creation by the grace and power of God

The Grace we receive completely changes our lane from walking trapped in sin to walking in good works. Which God himself created us for before we were even on his team.

Here is where Christians get into trouble. We fall into this trap. We hear about God’s grace. We accept God’s grace. We are saved because of God’s grace, and then we go try and live on our own. If something really saved your life, shouldn’t it show up in your life?

Most people accept grace for salvation but revert to works for daily life.

and that’s just not the way God designed it to work. We act like he is sitting back like I won them over with my grace now now go and do things for me.

We hear about God’s grace, we accept God’s grace, we are saved by God’s grace and we do good works through God’s Grace.

God’s Grace isn’t just what saves you it is what sustains you.

How can disciple my kids when my parents never discipled me? God’s grace.

How can I build my marriage so it is a picture of God’s love to everyone around us. God’s Grace.

How can I help someone in need when the last person I helped took advantage of me? God’s grace.

How can I serve in a church when someone in it hurt me? God’s Grace.

How do I stop compromising at school or work when I know it will cost me relationally or financially. God’s Grace.

How do i keep going when it takes all of my power just to get out bed in the morning? God’s Grace.

God’s Grace is not the starting line it is the power for every step we take. It is the power for every good work we do. It is the power for every interaction we have with people from those in homes to those we meet in our community.

I need God’s grace today just as much as the day I was saved. In fact I have grown more and more aware of much I need it, and how bad things go for me when I try to function without it.

As Christians everything that we do should be a result of the grace we have been given. and when we fail at that it reminds us all the more just how limitless the grace we have been given truly is.

To dilude God’s grace down in our heads to just our means to receive salvation and elevate what our works do for us completely misses the point of what it means to follow Jesus.

We homeschool our girls. I know what you’re thinking, yes we watch a lot of Veggie Tales but teaching them can be frustrating at times. but it is also incredibly rewarding. it’s rewarding when you can see they truly get something cause then we get to move on to something else that it builds on. Leia just turned 7 this week and seeing how far she has come. I was with her when she read a whole sentence for the first time without any help and it was so awesome to see. It’s fun for me to see her doing so great at reading, because I remember when she was struggling with her ABC’s. now that she’s reading we don’t practice her ABC’s anymore. we have moved past it.

If we aren’t careful we will treat our walk with God the same way we treat a school subject. we learn about God’s grace, we believe it, we accept it. and then we try to move past it. thinking ok I got this now. I can depend on God’s grace less because I am better now I can do more things. And when that happens you may be doing more things but they aren’t the good works you were assigned before the foundations of the earth.

We never move past the grace of God as followers of Christ.

We got to move from a mindset that says I need to better, I need to learn more, I need do more. To a mindset that says I need to depend deeper.

because the limitless grace that saved you will sustain you. and as you depend on him and his grace more and more you will do more good works but they will be works assigned my God because of his grace, they will be motivated by his grace, They will be empowered by his grace, and they will show others his grace.

Conclusion

So here’s where this lands for every single one of us in the room this morning.

Because the truth is—you’re not all in the same place.

Some of you are here, and if you’re honest… you’ve never actually experienced God’s grace. You’ve heard about it. You’ve been around it. But you’ve never received it.

And according to what we just read—you’re not “almost alive.” You’re not “kind of okay.”

Scripture says apart from Jesus, you’re dead in your sin.

But then—those two words:

But God.

Not when you got your life together. Not when you cleaned yourself up. Not when you became a better version of yourself.

While you were dead… He made you alive.

And that grace is being offered to you right now.

Not something you earn. Not something you achieve. Something you receive.

So if that’s you tonight, here’s your response:

Stop trying to fix yourself. Stop trying to prove yourself. Stop trying to earn something that is already being offered as a gift.

Turn to Jesus. Put your faith in Him. Receive the grace that only He can give.

But for others of you—you are Christians.

You’ve received that grace… but if you’re honest, you’re not really living from it.

You believed in grace for salvation… But you’ve been living your daily life like it’s up to you now.

And you’re exhausted.

Because you’ve slipped into thinking:

“I’ve got to be better”

“I’ve got to try harder”

“I’ve got to hold this all together”

And God is saying to you today:

“Why are you trying to live without the very thing that saved you?”

The same grace that saved you… Is the grace that sustains you. Empowers you. Strengthens you. Changes you.

So your response tonight isn’t to try harder.

It’s to depend deeper.

To wake up tomorrow and say:

“God, I need Your grace today just as much as the day You saved me.”

To stop striving… and start abiding.

So whether you need to receive grace for the first time or return to living in that grace again…

The invitation is the same:

Come to Jesus.

Because His grace isn’t just enough to save you…

It’s enough to carry you every single step into the limitless life He’s called you to live.