Grace that Saves!

Well, today we are starting a new series, actually, we’re starting a sort of split series. The first part is called / / Amazing Grace! where we will spend the next few weeks on the topic of Grace. And then we’re going to switch and take a few weeks on the topic of Mercy. These two, Grace & Mercy are very close friends and essential to the Christian life! There is no point without either of them. There is no salvation without them. Both grace & mercy are absolutely necessary.

So, for the next three weeks we’re going to look at Grace. What is grace? What does it do for us? Why is it so important? And how far does grace go? Does grace run out? If we as humans say things like, “My patience is wearing thin...” Does God’s patience wear thin? Does God run out of grace? Does his love have boundaries to our actions?

So let’s jump right in this week!

When we read the bible and we’re reading through the Old Testament, we might now think that Grace is much of a topic God cares about. Grace is mentioned / / 135 times in the ESV translation of the bible - ok, that’s the whole bible. But of those 135 times, only 11 are in the Old Testament and / / 124 of those times are in the New Testament. And of those 124, The Apostle Paul, who has the nickname, / / “The Apostle of Grace” mentions it 86 times.

Paul, in his writings offers a master class in the topic of Grace, so you’ll be hearing a lot from him in the next three weeks.

Today I want to ask the question, / / What is Grace and why is it so important?

So, to start, What is grace, how do we define it? Well, the standard, probably most well known definition of Biblical grace is simply, / / unmerited, or undeserved favor.

Let’s break that down a little bit:

Unmerited means not having merit, which is the quality of being particularly good or worthy, especially deserving praise or reward.

So, / / “UN”merited means you DON’T have the quality of being particularly good or worthy, and you DON’T deserve praise or reward for your actions...

/ / Undeserved, same thing, - not warranted, merited or earned.

To / / deserve something is I did something or I’ve shown some sort of quality that is worthy of a reward, OR a punishment.

Where merit is kind of reserved for good things, deserving can go either way, I’ve done something and deserve praise and recognition, or I’ve done something and deserve punishment.

So, again, take that and add that “UN” to it, / / “UN”deserving means that what I’ve done, regardless of how good, how bad, the extent of it, how big the thing was, just doesn’t deserve any credit or praise, or discipline for that matter.

OK, now let’s look at the last word here, / / Favor - approval, support, to be liked… Overgenerous preferential treatment… An act of kindness beyond what is due or usual.

Put those three things together and what do you get?

/ / Grace is being approved of, supported, loved, liked, looked after, receiving the most outrageously generous treatment, beyond reason, and has nothing to do with anything I’ve done right or wrong, who my family is, where I come from, my financial status, my race or gender or any other thing.

Because, / / as soon as you have to put a condition on grace, it’s no longer grace. Why? Because by putting a condition on it, you’re saying you must do something of merit to get it, you must do something deserving of it, and we’ve just established that grace is favor that is unmerited and undeserved.

So, whether you do it right, or do it wrong, doesn’t matter in this case, because how God chooses to love you, and how much God loves you are not dependent on what you have done, right or wrong. You can’t earn His love.

But what about sin, and salvation, and repentance and forgiveness? All have their place.

So, let’s look at it. If you think of a word like sin, it can almost sound dirty, but sin is pretty simple, it’s the great leveler for humanity. It means we’re all the same. If there’s a category we could all be put into, regardless of where we come from or who we are or what we believe, that category is sinner… we all miss it sometimes! None of us are perfect.

In fact, Romans 3:23 says, / / For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.

That right there is a great definition of / / sin - falling short of God’s glorious standard.

The word used for sin in the original greek is / / hamartano, and it means to miss the mark, and as a result, not share in the reward.

To miss the mark…Falling short of God’s standard.

/ / What is God’s standard?

Read the bible lately? It gives us a very good definition of God’s standard. What to do, what not to do. How to live. How to conduct our lives. What is right and wrong. And let’s just forget about the consequences we read about in the Old Testament for just a minute, simply think about the instructions. There’s a lot. But let’s just say we took the 10 commandments. I think we can all agree that this is a good place to start as far as God’s instructions for what he wants us to do or not to do, right?…

The Ten Commandments are found in two passages of Scripture, Exodus 20:1-17 and Deuteronomy 5:1-21, but we’re going to focus on Exodus.

It starts with this, / / Then God gave the people all these instructions: I am the Lord your God...

/ / You must not have any other god but me.

I mean, that’s pretty straight forward, this is don’t worship anyTHING or anyONE else. Don’t have idols to other gods. Don’t put shrines in your homes that represent other gods. And this can get pretty heavy, we have to remember this was written at a time where there was child sacrifice to some of these wacked out “gods”.... But this is true today. Why would we have a depiction of another god around us when we have decided that God is our God? That’s be like carrying a picture around in our wallet of another girl when you’re married. Resolve in your heart and your world that, “I only have eyes for you...”

/ / You must not misuse the name of the Lord your God.

You may have heard, Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. Ok, this is an interesting one, and I want to clarify this, because I think it’s been dumbed down and misrepresented. That word, / / vain, means emptiness, vanity, falsehood. So, I want to look at those and see what God is really instructing us in.

/ / Emptiness - don’t use the Lord’s name as an empty word. Because it’s not. The name of Jesus is above ever other name. In Jewish culture they have such a reverence and respect for God’s name that they wouldn’t even say the word Yaweh outloud, which they considered to be the most holy of God’s names, and it was so holy that they didn’t even say it. The bible says on multiple occasions that the beginning of wisdom, or the beginning of knowledge is the fear of the Lord, and what that means is not to be afraid of God, but to have a reverence for who he is. And if I have a reverence, a love for who He is and His name, I am not going to reduce it to being an empty word that replaced the “F” word. Think of how people use it. They stub their toe and some say, “Aww snickerdoodles”, while others say, “*BLEEP* *BLEEP* BLEEP*” and some say, “Jesus Christ...” or “AH, G** D*** that hurt!” We’ve just / / reduced His name, the name of our God that we worship, to the lowest words of our society...

I think if we actually thought about that for a bit, it would change how we view His name, and change how we use it.

/ / Vanity - excessive pride in or admiration of one’s own appearance or achievements.

What could that mean? Maybe it’s don’t use the name of God to gloat, to think you’re better than someone else. Being a Christian, someone who has given their life to following Jesus, does not make someone more important than anyone else.

Maybe it’s don’t use the name of God to conquer. Look at the crusades. Gosh, they needed to hear this. You can’t force people to follow God, it’s about relationship, it’s about seeing His goodness and experiencing His grace. So those of us who have found that, gives us no right to think of ourselves higher than, or any better than someone else. Don’t use the name of God like it gives you some right to be better than someone else. It doesn’t. We are all the same, requiring the same grace, needing the same God.

/ / Falsehood - lying

Don’t lie about the name of God. Don’t lie about his character. About who he is.

We do this by our actions more than anything else. I think of that every time someone does something, or says something like they have the authority from God, or like they know he was the one doing it.

Listen, Has there ever been a storm that God used to teach someone a lesson, yes. Has there ever been a hurricane that resulted in someone turning back to God. Probably. Does God send hurricanes? No, God created a world with a pretty intricate natural system that does some pretty intense things.

So every time a storm starts heading towards a city, island, group of people, and someone says, “It’s the judgement of God.” I have to wonder if they’re using the Lord’s name in vain, because they’re speaking falsehoods, they’re lying. Because it’s not like God just gets cranky every June 1st - November 1st… I’m not saying judgement isn’t real. But it’s not like clockwork that God gets angry at the same time, every year, to the same area of the world. But the snow storm that hit my family in Canada wasn’t God’s judgement because it’s not a big nasty hurricane with a name.

The name of God is beautiful. The name of God is powerful. Jesus said, Whatever you ask in My name, I will do it. John 20:31 says, …by believing in him [Jesus] you will have life by the power of his name.

If you notice the commonality between these three things, emptiness, vanity and falsehood, what they do is misrepresent the name of God. They misrepresent who He is. His character. And what is the biggest issue the church of today has when it comes to interacting with people who do not believe what we believe? God has been so misrepresented that when they hear we are a Christian, it actually puts a bad taste in their mouths rather than a hope in their hearts.

/ / When we choose to represent God well by honoring His name with our words, our actions and our lives, people see a God who is loving, kind and gracious.

/ / Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

God instituted the Sabbath as a day of rest. A day where you did nothing. You weren’t allowed to work, and you weren’t allowed to do anything that would even be considered work. If you read some of the stories in the gospels of the New Testament about the ministry of Jesus, the Pharisees, who were the religious leaders that prided themselves in obeying everything the law said, would give Jesus trouble for healing someone on the Sabbath. They gave a man a hard time for carrying his bed roll - it was a bed mat, a yoga mat type thing. That was considered work. Didn’t take much!

And when they really pushed Jesus about it, this is what he said, it’s in Mark 2:27, / / “The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath.”

What he’s saying is, / / The Sabbath isn’t a rule to control you, it’s an instruction to sustain you!

If you don’t rest you’re gonna struggle. If you don’t give your body and mind what it needs life is more difficult, we know that. Science, the medical industry, the psychologists and therapists have been trying to tell us this over and over again.

Listen to this, the American Institute of Stress says...(we already know we have a problem if we have an institute for it):

/ / Roughly 33% of people report feeling EXTREME stress.

77% of people experience stress that effects their physical health

/ / 73% of people have stress that impacts their mental health

48% of people have trouble sleeping because of stress / probably why they have issues with their physical health too.

And this isn’t just effecting adults, / / Stress is the number one health concern OF High School Students!

And for about half of all Americans, / / Levels of stress are getting worse instead of getting better.

These are the types of things we need to remember when we think of the instructions God gives us, they aren’t to control us, they are to benefit us. Just like Jesus said, / / The Sabbath [day of rest] was made to meet the needs of the people...

/ / Honor your father and mother. Then you will live a long, full life in the land the Lord your God is giving you.

This one has the blessing and the action all rolled up in it. Honor your parents and you’ll live a long, full life.

We could get into a very big and very long discussion about what that means to truly honor our parents, especially when from the outside it doesn’t look like they deserve it… But that’s for another day.

/ / You must not murder.

some translations say, thou shalt not kill. But the word murder is more appropriate for the original word that was used. to murder, to slay, to assassinate. This is a premeditated issue of the heart that is followed by actions in violence.

/ / You must not commit adultery.

Pretty straight forward, go to bed with your spouse, not the spouse of someone else.

/ / You must not steal.

Last Sunday, after church, we were driving by Cutler Bay Middle, where our friends Village Church meet, and one of their signs is on the corner of Marlin & Gulfstream, and Kelley and I commented that that must be the sign they had to replace because the one they had there had been stolen. A plastic a-frame sign. And Kaylee is in the back seat and says, “Why would anyone steal a sign…I’d rather steal a cat.” .........I think you’re missing the point sweetheart...

Simple, right? If it’s not yours, it’s not yours. Don’t take it. Don’t convince yourself it’s small. Don’t convince yourself it will be better off with you. Don’t convinced yourself you deserve it. It’s not yours. Don’t take it. That’s stealing. No matter how small, no matter how big.

But, I also think this goes beyond just taking what isn’t ours in what we would picture as stealing. This isn’t just taking what’s not yours. If you read the book of Proverbs, you will notice over and over and over how much it says that God absolutely detests uneven scales. So, anyone that has any sort of business, or decision making in businesses, or simply any transaction we engage in, be that business or not, remember this: Shady business deals go directly against what God has said we are meant to do. Don’t be corrupt. Don’t be crooked. Don’t convince yourself you deserve it. Be honest, upstanding, do what is right and let GOD look after you!

/ / You must not testify falsely against your neighbor.

This is also called, bearing false witness. Again, the book of Proverbs mentions a good few times not to convict an innocent person, and let a guilty person off. It says not to lie about someone, set them up for failure. False Witness is a person who deliberately gives a false testimony. You lied about someone. Misrepresented them. And if you’re wondering who your neighbor is, go read Luke 10:25-37, I’ll give you the cliffs notes - it’s everybody! Everybody is your neighbor.

/ / You must not covet your neighbors wife.

covet- to desire, to want. OK, It’s like God was like, “Ya, ya, I know I already gave you #6, but I foresee this being a bit of an issue...”, so, #6 is don’t commit adultery, which is basically saying, IF you find yourself wanting to commit adultery, don’t do it. If someone comes to you and makes the offer, don’t do it. Let’s be real, it’s not like these things don’t happen. Of course they do. So, God adds #9, “Let’s just make this a bit easier, don’t even let yourself want her. Don’t play games with your own mind. Don’t entertain what you can’t have. Don’t convince yourself it’s ok to flirt, as long as you don’t act on it. That’s foolishness that is just begging for trouble.”

It may seem old fashioned. It may seem like the world has moved on from the traditions of marriage. It may seem like because everyone does it and it’s just the normal thing to do, that it’s not all that bad.

God hasn’t moved on. God’s standard has not changed.

Marriage is sacred. Sex is sacred. And it deserves respect, and the people involved deserve respect. Remember, we are talking about God’s standard. Not the world’s standard. OR not just trying to be slightly better than the world. We don’t let the world set the bar, and then live above that. We let God set the bar, and allow His work in us to bring us there.

/ / You must not covet your neighbor’s stuff.

This one goes on for a bit. Exodus 20:17 says all of this, / / You must not covet your neighbor’s house. You must not cover your neighbor’s wife, male or female servant, ox or donkey, or anything else that belongs to your neighbor.

This is almost like #9 in it’s repeat of #6. God has already said don’t steal, don’t talk bad about your neighbor, don’t lie about them, and now, don’t look at their stuff and want it. Don’t desire what someone else has when you can’t have it.

This has got to be one of the biggest issues we have in this world right now. Looking at someone else’s life and wanting what they have and letting it make us discontent with what we have.

Social media hasn’t helped, it’s made it all worse because people put their best selves out there on their feeds and the rest of us look at it and go, “oh wow...”

I caught myself one day. I was scrolling through feeds, wasting time, and I saw someone’s pictures of their vacation to this wonderful beach with palm trees, and something in me went, “ugh, I wish I could go there...” and suddenly, it’s like the Holy Spirit gave me a wake up call, “You live there dummy!”

Now, that is a bit of an easier one because we actually do live in a place with nice beaches and palm trees.

But what about the things people post that we don’t have. The new car. The new house. The new job. The new girlfriend / boyfriend. When it looks like their life has no problems. When it looks like their life is all roses.

What about when it looks like their kids are well behaved and their lives are all put together.

How does that make us feel. Do we covet? And remember, that’s just a fancy word for desiring what someone else has, for wanting it. This is not to say that you can’t want things, and it’s not to say that when you see that someone else has something you’re not allowed to think, “Wow, that’s awesome, I’d love one of those one day.” or “Cant’ wait til I can take my wife and daughter on a vacation like that, it looks like they had a great time...”

This is about how it affects you, and remember, God’s instruction is to protect you and bless you, not to cramp your style or give him opportunity to discipline you. Think of how these things make us feel, and how it affects us, rather than thinking about whether we are doing something wrong or not.

/ / Does it make you feel discontent with what you have?

/ / Does it make you jealous, feeling like you don’t have enough, or won’t ever have that?

/ / Does it make you feel sad?

/ / Does it make you resent the person?

Or maybe cause you to say things like, “ya, but you know they probably can’t afford it.” or “what kind of debt did they have to go in for that?” or any number of other things we might say to try and protect ourselves because what we see or hear effects us on the inside.

This commandment is so important because this is the heart of God trying to protect you from your life being affected like that. Because it’s just not worth it.

I know, that’s a lot of information. And you thought we were talking about Grace, right? But, those are just the 10 commandments, and the bible is full of what God has said about what we should or shouldn’t do, his instruction for our lives.

But if we just look at those 10 as a basic standard of God’s desire for our lives. Remember, we are basing our definition of sin on Romans 3:23 which says, / / For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard.

If this is the standard, and just part of, but probably the most recognizable, or easiest to look at, the 10 commandments, we can see how easily all of us have not lived up to that standard. We’ve “fallen short”. I’m pretty sure no one in here has murdered anyone, but good chance at some point in our lives we’ve lied about someone, we’ve desired a friends possessions to the point of it affecting us negatively, we’ve probably all used the Lord’s name in vain, maybe even without realizing it. Good chance we’ve put something as more important than God, maybe we didn’t worship another god or participated in another religion, but we made the things of this world what we worship. Or simply had idols in our homes, without realizing it was something God says we shouldn’t have. And guaranteed, we’ve all worked on the Sabbath…

Do you remember when stuff was still closed on Sunday. And then when they made the decision to open grocery stores on Sunday. Man, if you didn’t grow up in a Christian home, or if you weren’t a christian at that time, it might have been just like, “about time...” but for some of us. This was a HEAVY topic. We’re going to let society force us to break one of the commandments!!!… It was tumultuous times.

But listen, this is not to point out our shortcomings. We all have them. We all know it. This is to define for us that we are all on the same playing field. I said earlier that sin, or our need for God, our need for Grace, is the great leveler, it makes us all the same. Just like Romans 3:23 says, EVERYONE has sinned; we ALL fall short.

I don’t think there are any exceptions there. And yes, there are a lot of people who are good people. And a lot of us could say that, “Well, I’m a good person. Or, I do my best to be nice to people, and help out where I can.” And that’s all good. It is. But it’s not the point.

The simple truth is that if we believe God created the world and everything in it, and that he created humanity, and that the God of the bible is the ONLY God, that there is no other heaven or afterlife, we aren’t putting our hope in re-incarnation, it’s not up to us, we don’t decide what happens to us after death, then it HAS to be the standard that God sets for us that defines these things. And we can so easily see that we can’t measure up to that standard. And if that standard is what defines sin then we are all guilty of sinning.

Is that a big deal? So what, we’ve sinned. I desperately desired and coveted my neighbors new car and I really dislike him for having more money than me. That’s enough to call me a sinner? So what? Is God that petty?

Again, we HAVE to keep in mind / / This is not about God being against those who sin and for those who don’t. God is FOR ALL OF US. And his instruction is to lead us to freedom, not confine us. It’s to bless us, not to cramp our style. And it’s not even that when we sin God is like, “ok, gotta punish you now”, no, we all know actions have consequences, right?

I’ve used this illustration before, but it just makes sense for my brain. If I’m in the kitchen cooking a pot of mac’n’cheese for Kaylee, I know she’s going to love it. What I’m doing is going to bless her. She comes in and I say, “Don’t touch the pot, it’s very hot! If you touch the pot you will get burned, but guess what, I’ve got something really special in there for you..” .... “What is it, daddy?” “Well, you just have to wait and see...” Her curiosity overtakes her, she touches the pot to try and see. She’s disobeyed, she didn’t listen, the instruction I gave she didn’t follow, and she got burned. Did I punish her for that, or did she simply suffer a consequence from doing what I told her not to do, NOT BECAUSE it was something I told her not to do, but because I knew what I told her not to do would hurt her if she did it. The consequence wasn’t from me because she didn’t listen, it was from the pot because it’s hot.

Romans 6:23 says, / / For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

When we don’t follow God’s instruction, when we fall short of his standard, and try to live life on our own, doing it our way, proving ourselves, the only result from all of that is death. These things don’t bring life, they bring death. BUT, the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.

And here’s where Grace comes in. So, we've defined / / grace as unmerited, undeserved favor. / / If the wages of sin is death… and we are all guilty of sin, because we’ve all fallen short of God’s standard, then the ONLY way to get anything other than death is if someone decides to give us something we don’t deserve!

This is why sin is the great leveler, because it’s not about how bad we think something is, it’s about all of us needing grace. James 2:10 says / / For the person who keeps all of the laws except one is as guilty as a person who has broken all of God’s laws.

Couldn’t live up to the standard. Doesn’t matter if it’s a little, or a lot, we all need grace. This is a really good thing. This is the good news of the gospel, right here. You might think, “Ya, but I’m not a bad person.” And you might be absolutely right. You aren’t a bad person, You’re really good. You do a lot of good things. But think of it this way, if God held you to a different standard than he held someone else, how would that work? How would that be fair? How could that be something a loving God would even do?

So the standard has to be the same. And the standard is not pass or fail based on a grading system. As long as you get a C or higher you’re good. It’s not about whether you’ve broken 10% or 20% or even 90% of the law, but simply that there is a standard, and if you can’t meet that standard, if you fall short in any way, you are guilty of what we call sin.

Again, this is not something to be ashamed of. There is no one, except Jesus Christ when he walked on this earth, that could, would or would ever be able to keep that standard for their entire lives. It’s just not possible. So, the first thing we need to understand about grace is that it’s something we ALL need, and it’s a gift - Romans 6:23, the free gift of God…

Romans 3:24-26, / / Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty for our sins. For God presented Jesus as the sacrifice for sin. People are made right with God when they believe that Jesus sacrificed his life, shedding his blood…God did this to demonstrate his righteousness, for he himself is fair and just, and he makes sinners right in his sight when they believe in Jesus.

God had a system built into the law. If you broke the law, you could bring a sacrifice and be made right and that sin would no longer be held against you. But that was on you, you had to bring that sacrifice, EVERY TIME to make yourself right, AND THEN try to never sin again. But Jesus said in Matthew 5:17, / / Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose. The ESV says “I came to fulfill the law”. When Jesus gave his life, he became the sacrifice that fulfilled the law. He took all the consequence on himself. He took death itself, the wages of sin, on himself, for all of humanity, for all eternity.

This is why Romans 3 says that God is fair and just. He’s fair - He doesn’t treat any of us any different, the standard is the same, we’ve all failed. And He’s just, there has to be a solution, he doesn’t just leave it untaken care of, but his justice is that the sacrifice of Jesus Christ IS the solution - he fulfilled, or completed the requirements of the law.

Another verse we want to read this morning is Romans 5:15, / / But there is a great difference between Adam’s sin and God’s gracious gift. For the sin of this one man, Adam, brought death to many. But even greater is God’s wonderful grace and his gift of forgiveness to many through this other man, Jesus Christ… God’s free gift leads to our being made right with God, even though we are guilty of many sins…for all who receive it will live in triumph over sin and death through Jesus Christ.

The free gift of grace, the free gift of forgiveness, the free gift of Jesus Christ...

Romans 11:6 says / / …since it is through God’s kindness, then it is not by their good works. For in that case, God’s grace would not be what it really is - free and undeserved.

No longer works. No longer us proving ourselves, but being approved of by receiving a gift we couldn’t ever deserve.

Ephesians 2:8-9 says, / / God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.

Most translations say, / / It is by grace you have been saved, through faith. It’s like Grace is the boat, and Faith is what got us on it.

OK, so wrapping this morning up.

/ / Grace is being approved of, supported, loved, liked, looked after, receiving the most outrageously generous treatment, beyond reason, and has nothing to do with anything I’ve done right or wrong, who my family is, where I come from, my financial status, my race or gender or any other thing.

And the greatest way that God shows his grace toward us is by taking the life of Jesus Christ and His sacrifice as the fulfillment of His law so that what we could never do on our own, we can now receive freely.

There probably won’t ever be a point where we are able to not sin, where we can live up to God’s standard. Not fully. Not 100%. But because of God’s grace, we no longer live under the condemnation that sin tries to put on us because we weren’t aren’t to make it.