Grace that Sets Free

Well, last week we started a new series called / / Amazing Grace. We’re looking at what Grace is and why it is so important.

Last week we simply looked at the definition of Grace, or really, one of, if not the most common or most referenced definitions of Grace, and that is, unmerited, undeserved favor. I won’t go through breaking all of that down, but will give you…let’s call it Rob’s Expanded Version:

/ / Grace is being approved of, supported, loved, 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.

The whole idea of grace, the foundation of it, is that there can NOT be a condition on it. Because as soon as you put a condition on it, it is no longer grace. If grace is truly unmerited, then we’ve done nothing to deserve it, nothing of good enough quality to receive a reward, OR nothing bad enough that someone is like, “Wow, this person really needed this grace.” No, that’s not how it works, We ALL get grace extended toward us because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 2:8-9 says, / / God saved you by his grace WHEN you believed. [For by grace you have been saved through faith.] it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of you can boast about it.

That’s what we talked about last week, right? Grace that saves. Salvation is not a reward for good works. We don’t get to boast in God’s grace, we get to be thankful for it!

Now, here’s something that can easily be missed. There’s two things in those verses that show the access we have to this grace.

/ / Grace is a gift

verse 8 says; ...it is a gift from God. God’s grace and His Salvation are a free gift. But what does every gift have in common?

/ / Choice. You can choose to accept it or not. Any gift someone wants to give you, you have the right to refuse. In fact, what do we teach our kids from the earliest of ages? If someone you don’t know comes up to you wants to offer you a gift, you say no. Someone says, I’ve got a puppy in the car right over there, do you want to see? You say no. Why?

Because as a society we question free, don’t we? And we question motives. See, Kids don’t, and we need to teach them that. Tell a kid you’ve got a gift for them and see their eyes light up. They don’t ask why, they just jump at the opportunity. And it’s something we need to teach them, which is really unfortunate, because it’s the wonder and awe of children that access things we as guarded, protected adults miss out on.

Jesus actually said in Matthew 18:3, / / “I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven. So anyone who becomes as humble as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.”

My guess is because kids accept things easier. If God says you can access this, you can access it. It’s not until we are given reason not to believe something, or that something isn’t possible that we tend to be directed by our beliefs.

The other reason is that kids, before a certain age, need everything done for them, and as they grow they learn from watching, and from doing with someone, which takes humility. So Jesus says, if you can learn to humble yourself and become like a child - humility & trust. Basically, recognize you can’t, but I can.

So, #1, grace is a gift, but you have to accept it. You can’t play like you don’t need it. You can’t live like you’re perfect and then access God’s perfection. You have to admit you can’t, and accept that He can.

/ / Believing is Receiving

If there was another way, Jesus would’ve told us, but over and over again this continually comes up, believe. The greek word, which it was written in, is / / pistis, it’s what we use for faith and to believe. It means conviction of the truth of anything; to have assurance.

John 3:16, / / For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.

Same root word.

The early church continued this teaching in Acts 16:31, / / Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved...

So, Grace is a gift, but you must receive it, AND to receive it, you must believe. Humble yourself and believe. Not by my works, but by the work of Jesus Christ.

So, this week we’re going to look at another aspect of Grace, or, what grace leads us to. See, Grace may be the thing by which we are saved when we have faith, but it doesn’t stop there. Grace isn’t just the moment of our salvation, but it’s the gift of God to carry us into freedom. So today we’re looking at a / / Grace That Sets Free!

This is the process of shedding our humanity for our eternity. What do I mean by that? Jesus invites us to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him. But without a serious measure of freedom and grace, that would be impossible.

Think of it this way. We talked about this last week. There is no human effort great enough to make us right with God. The only way we find true salvation is in the acceptance and belief in Jesus Christ as the only way to heaven. This was the definition of Grace, it is undeserved, unmerited, there is nothing we can do.

So, if that’s the road INTO salvation, what do you think life on the inside looks like? There continues to be no way, shape or form our works could deliver us. / / If our works can’t get us saved, what makes us think our works can get us free? Now, that doesn’t mean we are meant to do nothing. That doesn’t mean that this is work free. No, but it is the understanding that God’s grace may be free, but it’s not cheap. It costs us everything, just like it cost Him everything.

I’ve been talking recently about this willful self-denial that Jesus invites us in to. We don’t like talking about it, but Romans 8:17 says, / / And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering.

That doesn’t mean we all need to suffer crucifixion, but it does mean we are all on the same journey of willful self-denial. In Matthew 26:38, Jesus is in the garden of Gethsemane, right before they come to arrest him and take him away to be crucified. And he says to his disciples, / / “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

And then he goes off to pray. Now, if he’s in such grief, what do you think he’s going to pray about? Probably WHY he is in such grief, right?

The next verse says Jesus prays, / / “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”

Is it possible that the cup of suffering, the suffering that we have to join in with Jesus so that we can also share in his glory, is the constant denial of ourselves for God’s way? Listen, I know God’s way is going to be better, but I’m also quite convinced in the moment that my way is quite fine. In fact, even when I know that my way is a way of destruction, I still want my way.

Trust me, I know this first hand from dealing with addiction. I know full well that what my mind is telling me I want, is NOT what my body needs. There is a better way, and to succeed and find life, as Jesus promised, I HAVE to choose the path to life. Problem is, it’s not the easy path. right?

Jesus actually says in Matthew 7:13-14, / / The highway to hell is broad, and its gate is wide for the many who choose that way. But the gateway to life is very narrow and the road is difficult, and only a few ever find it.

So, we’re saved by grace through faith, and that’s pretty simple, isn’t it? We believe in the one God sent, who is Jesus Christ, the one and only savior of the world, and because we believe we receive eternal life. But freedom, life, fullness of life, that’s a bit trickier isn’t it?

Why? Why is it not easy? I was watching an interview with Brian “head” Welch, who is a guitarist and founding member of the metal band, Korn. If you don’t know his story, it’s pretty incredible. He’s part of this band, traveling the world, selling more albums than a musician could dream of selling, and all the while horribly addicted to drugs, lost his wife, about to lose his daughter if he doesn’t change, and someone invites him to church, and he gets introduced to Jesus. And in this interview he says that when he got saved he just thought everything would be fixed, better, all problems solved. But that wasn’t the case. He found that he had found the grace of God that saved him from a life of destruction, but he also found the invitation to walk with Jesus into healing.

Listen, sometimes we hear stories of people being miraculously set free. Addiction leaves in an instant and they never deal with it again. I have friends that have said in church services they have seen people prayed for and weight has literally melted off their bodies and they walk away having to hold their pants up.... Why not me Lord?

And I’ve said this before, but this is my approach to a life of freedom and miracles. I will continue to pray for a miracle, but I will not stop walking towards the destination I am praying for that miracle to take me. Because if God gives me a miracle, and I haven’t learned how to LIVE in the miracle, who says I keep the miracle? So, my goal is always to learn to live like I’m free, because through Him I truly am, so that when I come into that freedom I know how to live there.

I can hear it now, Wait, so, are we free, or aren’t we free? How can we be both? Let’s just talk about Israel for a second. Not the modern nation, but the Old Testament biblical nation of Israel.

Do you want to know what their greatest issue was In the wilderness, and even as they approached the land that God himself had promised them? See, they had been in captivity for 400 years in Egypt. 400 years of slavery will damage the best of minds and hearts. And when they got to the edge of their promise, and crossed over the river to check it out, they saw giants in the land, and their response was, “We can’t ever do this, it’s too big for us.” And they looked at Moses and said, “Why did you even take us from Egypt, at least there we had our meals and a roof over our heads… Now you’ve taken us out here to die in the wilderness.”

Were they free, or weren’t they? They were most definitely free. God had wiped out the armies of Egypt as they crossed the Red Sea. If you remember that story. As Israel leaves Egypt, Pharoah sends his armies after them and Israel is pressed up against the Red Sea, and behind them the army is approaching. Moses stretches out his hand over the water and it parts, I mean, wall of water on the left, wall of water on the right, and all of Israel, a million people, walk across to the other side on dry ground. And the armies of Egypt follow them, and while they are crossing and in the bottom of the sea, and Israel has crossed over on the other side, the walls of water come crashing down. And all of Israel sings, “I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; he has hurled both horse and rider into the sea.”

Israel is free. There’s no doubt about that. So what’s the problem? They don’t know how to live free.

/ / You can be set free, but if you don’t learn how to live free, you’ll still live like you’re in bondage.

They were so used to living as slaves in the land of Egypt that they couldn’t even perceive a world where they deserved or could obtain a land like the one they were standing in front of. They sent 12 spies into the land and 10 of them said, “No way, we can’t do it.”, the other two said, “Of course we can, God sent us here for this very reason. Don’t be afraid, but trust in God.” And the people’s response was to stone them to death for trying to get them to go into the land God had promised them.

I’ve shared this illustration before. When you have a dog who has been wearing a shock collar for long enough, they know their boundaries and stay within them. And if you come and turn it off, or remove that wire, they are free, but they don’t know how to be, so they still stay in their limited space because it takes LEARNING to be free, even though we have already been set free.

And this is literally the life we live. I saw this great post online by Dave Ramsey the other day, it said, / / “God feeds the birds, but he doesn’t throw the worms into the nest. Rise and shine, hustle and grind.”

Those are some pretty true words. And if it weren’t so, Jesus wouldn’t have said, the road to life is narrow and hard and not many people find it.

See, here’s the thing. We know this, we talk about it a lot around here because we need to remember it. God gave us free will and the right to make our own choices. But He also gave us ACCESS to His presence, ACCESS to His Spirit, ACCESS to His grace.

So, how does that work? What are we talking about, Grace that Sets Free.

I mentioned addiction earlier, and in recovery we often pray what is called the Serenity prayer. And it’s not a recovery prayer, that’s not where it started, but the 12 step world has kind of adopted it as their own.

This prayer was originally written by a man by the name of Reinhold Niebuhr in 1932. He was a professor at a theological seminary and had a habit that on weekends when he would go preach at any given church he would write down a prayer that he would use as his opening prayer when he was about to preach. The Serenity prayer was one of those prayers. It’s assumed there were hundreds of these unique prayers, and he didn’t see any of them as particularly noteworthy. He didn’t try to popularize the Serenity prayer, but it was one of his seminary students that took note of it and started using it in in her writings for the YMCA, and over the years it went from an opening prayer in a sermon, to being used in obituaries and eventually printed into devotionals and shipped overseas to American servicemen during world war II and used to encourage our troops. And now today it’s said probably thousands if not millions of times a day by people all over the world.

Now, there have become really three versions of this prayer. There is the version that’s read in most meetings now, which is only a part of it, then there’s the full version and then there’s the original full version. I am going to read the original full version this morning.

/ / God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it, trusting that You will make all things right, if I surrender to your will, so that I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with You forever in the next.

/ / God, give us grace...

I like that. God, give us grace to accept WITH serenity. Grace being what we need, Serenity being the result of our receiving God's grace. Serenity by definition is the state of being calm, peaceful and untroubled. That's what we want, we want to be able to go through life and get through the hardships and the struggles with a sense of peace and calm. But Serenity IS those things, but that's now HOW we get them. We become serene, or find serenity because of something else...God's grace.

I have noticed in my life, that when we ask God for something in particular, what we often receive is the opportunity to be that something. Have you ever prayed that God would make you more patient? And suddenly you notice that you’re encountered with all these opportunities to BE patient. And you’re like “No, no no… I’m not patient yet, Lord, hold off until you give me patience.” And I believe God’s response is, “Learn....and you better learn quick, because you’re in it now!”

So, we pray for serenity, we ask God to make us calm and peaceful in the midst of our storm, and he says, “Invite my grace!” take time to seek me. Jesus said to his disciples in John 16:33, / / I have told you all this so that you may have peace IN ME. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.

Where do we find peace? IN HIM.

I mean, what if we took that approach? For whatever we are going through in life, what if we started every day with, “God, give me grace.”

I want to read from Romans 5 this morning. As I said last week, Paul writes a masterclass on the topic of grace throughout his writings, and Romans 5 & 6 are no exception. They tie what we talked about last week, the saving grace of God, to what we are talking about this week, the grace that enables us to walk a life of freedom.

Starting in vs 1 of Romans 5, / / Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege [ESV into this grace] where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory.

So, God, give us grace, teach us how to live in this undeserved privilege!

I don’t want to be like Israel, set free but living like I’m in bondage. So, what’s the next step?

/ / 2. The courage to change...

One of the reasons I like this prayer is because it rightly separates what we can control and what we can’t. What we can do and what we can’t. To say it a different way, “Do what you can, and let God handle what you can’t.” Give me the grace to accept with serenity the things I cannot change, and the courage to change the things which should be changed... There are things in this world we can’t do anything about. And there are things in this world we absolutely have the power to address. Again, when I pray for patience, I receive opportunity to be patient.

This is the life of freedom, this is the journey, the following of Jesus we experience in the Christian life. Romans 12:2 says, / / Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.

The ESV says by the renewal of your mind. / / Renewal there means a renovation, a complete change for the better. But a renovation takes work, it takes deconstructing what is there - tearing down what was, cleaning out the mess and the past, and then building the new.

So, we ask God to change, and he says, “Ok, look at your life, you believe this, you believe this, and you believe this. We need to get rid of all of that so that you can then believe this, this and this.”

Before Kelley and I were together I believed I was unlovable, unworthy of relationship, unacceptable. As God did the work of grace, granted me undeserved privilege - trust me, I did nothing to deserve feeling any different than I did, but because of HIS grace I learned to allow Him to change my heart. I asked Him to remove what I held as truth, which were simply lies, and replace them with His truth. Because if all I believe is that I’m unlovable then when Kelley says, “I love you...” My response is going to end up being, “I think I love you, so what am I so afraid of...”

For years Kelley and other friends of mine would with all sincerity say to me, “You’re going to be a great husband...” and in my heart I would truly, honestly think to myself, “you’re lying to my face. That will never happen.”

Because until the lie is dealt with, the truth can’t take hold. Israel was so beat down by the bondage they had been in that they were ready to stone the two guys that were telling them God’s truth!

I’m a big fan of home improvement shows, and I would venture to guess that a good contractors biggest pet peeve, or at least in the top few, is when the last guy who says they fixed something simply just covered over the problem. I remember one project Juan was working on, and it was like he was dealing with franken’floor… it was so bad, layer after layer, none of them done properly, not even the foundation, and he said to the owner, “Listen, if you want me to do this right, I have to undo what they’ve done.”

And by God’s grace, undeserved favor, we find the courage to trust him AND put in our own work to change...

Let’s keep reading Romans 5, vs 3, / / We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead us to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love.

Courage to change… Because / / It’s in the effort of change that we build who we are.

Everybody who’s ever gone to the gym understands that it is resistance that builds muscle. It’s endurance that builds our ability. I’ve been doing these breathing exercises since I was in the hospital, and I continue to do them every night before I go to bed. And I’m amazed that over time I have been able to breath longer, and deeper, and more controlled. The capacity of my lungs has increased. What I can do today is vastly different than what I could do 5 weeks ago as I lay in that hospital bed. In fact, the first day I used this little breathing tool I could barely hit 500, and it was sloppy, quick and uncontrolled. But, last night I was nearly at 3000, slow, calm, controlled breathing.

Courage to change… Because it takes courage to be persistent. And it is that resistance, the trial and problems in our lives, the things we want to change, whether it’s dealing with sin, or learning a better way, that resistance requires endurance. And Romans 5 promises that that endurance will develop strength of character.

You know what character is? The dictionary defines / / Character as The mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual. The original word in the greek means proof, or trustiness. It’s what shows that you are you. You say you’re something, but your character proves whether that is true or not. It shows me I can trust what you say.

Your character is only as true as the life you live to back it up. Your character is what proves you are who you say you are. Actions speak louder than words! This is why I often say that God is who He says He is, and will do what He said He will do, because God’s character never changes, and HE IS GOOD and He’s proved it time and time again. So, even when I am experiencing something that I don’t like, or I don’t understand certain things, God’s actions have proved His character, and I am able to trust him with my heart because I know that He truly is who He says He is. He’s proved it.

So, what we experience in life, the hardships we face, the sin we struggle with, the character defects we want to change, when we are met with resistance, as we push through, as we rely on God for His grace, and allow him to work in our hearts, doing the work in our minds of removing the lies and giving ourselves the truth, over time we literally change.

And the last part of that statement is that character produces hope. And Paul says that this hope does NOT put us to shame. why? Because God has shown how dearly He loves us by giving us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with His love.

/ / Hope - a confident expectation in a positive outcome.

The more we learn to endure, the more our character becomes built up and consistent, the more we can expect the outcomes we desire because our actions are backing up what we say we believe, right?

And the same is true the more we lean on God, or endure in our relationship with Him, the more we learn of His character, the more we give Him place to move and work in our lives, the more we expect that He will do what He’s said.

And as we pray in the Serenity prayer, grant me the wisdom to know what I can change and what I can’t. Because we waste a lot of time trying to change things we can’t, and we waste even more time complaining about the things that we can so easily change ourselves, if we simply asked for God’s grace to start, and to endure, so that our character would be changed, so that we would have hope and expectation of His power at work in our lives.

Here’s where grace really plays the greatest role. Grace removes from us the burden of perfection. Grace is the 2nd, and 3rd, 4th and 5th chance at getting it right. It’s the infinite opportunity to try again.

Timothy Keller put it into words and said, / / “God sees us as we are, loves us as we are, and accepts us as we are. But by His grace, He does not leave us where we are.”

And some people ask, “Really? God accepts us as we are? What about our sin?”

Listen, this might be super practical, but you can’t expect someone to have the gift before they arrive to accept the gift, so you have to invite them in before they can receive the gift that you want them to have. Without the invitation to come as we are, the gift of grace is never an option.

And Paul continued to say exactly this in Romans 5:6, When we were utterly helpless, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners… God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners… So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.

What is that but absolute acceptance of WHO we are. / / God accepting WHO we are does not mean he accepts WHAT we do. That’s what love does. Accepts the person. Because the person is what matters. That doesn’t mean God approves of what we do, but he certainly approves of you!

Look at the story of the women caught in adultery and brought to the feet of Jesus. These religious leaders bring her to Jesus and say, “The law says we should stone her, what do you say?” The reason they’ve asked this is because if he says, “I forgive her” then he’s gone against he law. And if he says, “Stone her.” Then what power does this new message that he’s been preaching of grace and love have?

But, instead, he says to all of them, “Totally get where you’re coming from. So, let’s do this. If there are any of you that don’t have any sin, have never sinned, because we all know that if you can’t follow the law 100% , you’re guilty of the whole thing, then, go for it, you can throw the first stone...”

And one by one they leave. And when only the woman is left he asks her in John 8:10-11, / / “Where are your accusers? Didn’t even one of them condemn you?”

“No, Lord,” she said.

And Jesus said, “Neither do I. Go and sin no more.”

I love this. It is the heart of acceptance, it is the gift of grace, underserved, unmerited opportunity to change.

See, this is what Grace does, it removes the burden of perfection, adds the gift of acceptance so we can change by following the God of love.

Jesus doesn’t endorse her sin.

Jesus doesn’t say, Alright, you’re good, go back to what you were doing.

Jesus doesn’t say, See, don’t worry about it.

No, in that one little statement he’s saying, “I won’t condemn you to be stoned for your actions because I accept you for you so that you can receive the gift of grace that will free from the sin that has been keeping you in bondage. Because it’s the sin that’s ruining your life, and I want you to be free.”

Our problem is that we want people to be perfect before we accept them. But that’s just not how it works!

Listen to how Paul finishes up Chapter 5 of the book of Romans, Romans 5:20-21, / / God’s law was given so that all people could see how sinful they were. But as people sinned more and more, God’s wonderful grace became more abundant. So just as sin ruled over all people and brought them to death, now God’s wonderful grace rules instead, giving us right standing with God and resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Remember last week, we saw that sin only produces death, and the grace of God through our faith in Jesus Christ brings life.

One of the big questions is, if God accepts me with my sin, why change? Seems I can do what I want and come to God and He still loves me. Paul continues to say in Romans 6:1, / / Well then, should we keep sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it? Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ by baptism, we joined him in his death? For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.

Remember when Jesus said, deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow me.

What is the cross? It was an instrument of death. It was the thing that Jesus carried, to the top of the hill where they nailed him to it and he died.

This is willful self-denial, putting to death our own desires to choose to follow him.

This is why we value baptism, because it’s an outward expression of this choice to put to death what comes natural to us, sin, and to choose to accept what Christ has given us, life, by his grace.

/ / Grace is not permission to sin without consequence, it is the freedom to not be condemned for our sin so we can change and be free of its consequence.

Romans 6:12 / / Do not let sin control the way you live; do not give in to sinful desires. Do not let any part of your body become an instrument of evil to serve sin. Instead, give yourselves completely to God… Sin is no longer your master, for you no longer live under the requirements of the law. Instead, you live under the freedom of God’s grace… You can be a slave to sin, which leads to death, or you can choose to obey God, which leads to righteous living.

The choice is ours… sin will always be an option. The wrong thing will always be an option. What leads to death will always be an option. Choose to obey God instead. Choose to follow after Jesus.

God’s grace is not just so that we can be saved and go to heaven, God’s grace is available today, on a daily basis, to experience true freedom from sin and death here and now.