Grateful (3)

Hold up wait a minute

Good morning CHURCH!

Are you ready to be equipped today?

Let me see your Bibles. (Start my timer)

Let’s go to the book of Titus for this week’s wisdom Vaccination.

This Week’s Wisdom Vaccination

Titus 2:11-12 ESV

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, 12 training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age,

(The grace of God which brings salvation.)

By bringing salvation for all, it means it is available for all. (Jew, Greek, Slave, Free etc.)

This passage says the grace of God trains us to say no to ungodliness and yes to godliness.

But to understand how it happens for us we have to understand what the author means by the grace of God and what all that entails.

Hear is a hint. It doesn’t mean a license to live any old kind of way and still be right with God.

But because we art in right standings with God we have the power in us to live a godly lifestyle.

Grateful (3)

Today’s message title is:

Hold up wait a minute

I thought we’d have some fun today and also learn or remind ourselves of some things we can be grateful for.

Point #1

I’m grateful for the ram

God told Abraham to sacrifice his son.

But before he actually thrust-ed the knife in him, the Lord told him to hold up wait a minute let me put some grace up in it.

Genesis 22:9-14 ESV

When they came to the place of which God had told him, Abraham built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son. 11 But the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven and said, “Abraham, Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am.” 12 He said, “Do not lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him, for now I know that you fear God, seeing you have not withheld your son, your only son, from me.” 13 And Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns. And Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called the name of that place, “The Lord will provide”; as it is said to this day, “On the mount of the Lord it shall be provided.”

God put some grace in action.

He had a ram in the bush to sacrifice instead of Abraham’s son.

This miracle mirrored what happened later in the New Testament.

We were to be slaughtered, like God told Abraham to do to his son Isaac.

Why?

Because the wages, of sin is death.

Romans 6:23 ESV

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The payment for sin is death, but God said hold up wait a minute let me put some grace up in it.

1 John 4:9 ESV

In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.

God sent his only son to die as a ram in the bush for hour sin.

And if you remember what John called Jesus in:

John 1:29 ESV

The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!

Just as Abraham was willing to spare his son:

Romans 8:32 ESV

He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Point #2

I’m grateful for the heart

The Israelite’s were such a disobedient Nation. God made covenant after covenant with them to be their God and in return they were to be his people.

Deuteronomy 29:1-4 ESV

These are the words of the covenant that the Lord commanded Moses to make with the people of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant that he had made with them at Horeb.

2 And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them: “You have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, 3 the great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders. 4 But to this day the Lord has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear.

Deuteronomy 29:10-15 ESV

“You are standing today, all of you, before the Lord your God: the heads of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, all the men of Israel, 11 your little ones, your wives, and the sojourner who is in your camp, from the one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water, 12 so that you may enter into the sworn covenant of the Lord your God, which the Lord your God is making with you today, 13 that he may establish you today as his people, and that he may be your God, as he promised you, and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. 14 It is not with you alone that I am making this sworn covenant, 15 but with whoever is standing here with us today before the Lord our God, and with whoever is not here with us today.

But as we know, they kept mingling with other nations that served other God’s.

Judges 2:1-3 ESV

Now the angel of the Lord went up from Gilgal to Bochim. And he said, “I brought you up from Egypt and brought you into the land that I swore to give to your fathers. I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you, 2 and you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall break down their altars.’ But you have not obeyed my voice. What is this you have done? 3 So now I say, I will not drive them out before you, but they shall become thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you.”

God gave them his commandments written on stone tablets. But they couldn’t keep them.

There were consequences to their disobedience.

But God would remember his covenant.

So, God said hold up wait a minute let me put some grace up in it.

Ezekiel 36:26-27 ESV

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

God said they had hearts of stone.

God said I’m going to change their hearts of stone into hearts of flesh and I’m going to put my Spirit within you.

Point #3

I’m grateful for righteousness

It appears that a large number of Christian’s today are no better off than the Israelite’s of the Old Testament when it comes to following our God.

With all this teaching we have today.

With all of the scholars of old mixed with the scholars still alive.

With us studying to show ourselves approved unto God.

We don’t seem to be much better off than the Old Testament Israelite’s that struggled to follow God.

Romans 3:20 ESV

For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin.

Many Christians live like they are still under the law.

But God said hold up wait a minute let me put some grace up in it.

Romans 3:21-22 ESV

21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction:

The righteousness of God through faith in Christ Jesus is what you need to believe.

Stop believing you are unworthy, you are bent towards sin, not even that you are all that and a bag of chips.

Believe that God has made you righteous through Christ Jesus’ death burial and resurrection and that you didn’t do anything to deserve it.

God did it for you because he loves you and it makes his name great.

No man can boast of this righteousness, and no one is better than anyone else because none of us deserved it or earned it.

It was a grace gift from God, and we should be grateful every day that God put some grace up in it.

If you’re watching online or here in the room, I have a very important question to ask you.

What is Holy Spirit saying to you right now?