LIVING BY GRACE
Essentials for 21st Century Living
01-22-12 Sermon
Complete these common American phrases:
If it sounds too good to be true…. It is.
We make money the old fashioned way, we … earn it.
There’s no such thing as a free… lunch.
There is no gain without … pain.
God helps those who … help themselves.
Everything about the American way of life teaches you get what you earn in life. You get what you pay for. We value work, sweat, effort, performance. It is called the American Work Ethic. And it’s good. The only problem is it causes a difficulty in us relating to God because God does not relate to us on performance. God does not relate to us based on our effort, our work, our ethic of how much we try. The Bible says that God relates to us and everything God does in our lives, every blessing we have in our lives, comes by grace as a free gift. You don’t earn it, you don’t deserve it, you don’t work for it. It’s just a free gift of God. And the Bible says that everything in your life is a gift of grace.
The Bible is very clear about this, that God saves us by grace, God blesses us by grace, God teaches us by grace, God uses us by grace, God keeps us saved by grace, God takes us to heaven by grace. Everything in my life that’s good is a gift of God’s grace.
Notice these verses: 1 Corinthians 15:10 says “Whatever I am now, it is all because God poured out such kindness and grace on me.” It’s all because of His grace. John 1:16 says, “From the fullness of His grace we have all received one blessing after another.”
Last week we started this series Essentials for 21st Century Living. Remember I talked about how there are five essentials you have to have in life in order to really live. You could exist without them but you can’t really live without these things. You need power to live on. You need people to live with because you’re made for relationships, not to be lonely. You need principles to live by. You need a plan to live out. And you need a purpose to live for. These are life’s essentials. If any of these are missing in your life, you’re not living. You’re just existing.
But I need to say before we even get into those details that all of these things are gifts of grace. You don’t earn power to live on. God just gives it to you. You don’t earn the right people to live with. God just gives them to you. You don’t deserve a purpose or a plan to live for and to live out. It is a gracious gift of God’s grace.
There are many, many definitions of grace. Grace is like a multi-faceted diamond. It has many different sides and shapes. No one definition could adequately describe it. Let me read a couple of definitions, though.
Grace is God’s love in action.
Grace is when God gives me what I need, not what I deserve.
Grace is anything that I desperately need that I don’t deserve, that I could never repay but God gives it to me anyway.
Grace is the face of love and forgiveness that God puts on when He looks at my failures, my faults, and my mistakes.
Many people confuse grace with mercy and they’re two different things. Mercy is when God doesn’t give you what you deserve. That’s mercy! Have you ever done anything wrong and gotten away with it? Yes. You’ve gotten off scot-free on a lot of things that you deserve justice for, that you deserve punishment for. When God doesn’t give you what you deserve that’s called mercy.
On the other hand when God gives what you don’t deserve that’s grace. All the good things in your life you didn’t earn, you didn’t work for, you weren’t given. They were just gifts of God’s grace to you.
I want you to not just understand grace today. I want you to feel it. I want you to really feel it, maybe for the first time in your life. To feel loved by God, to feel the unconditional grace of God. In order to help you remember this, there’s an acrostic G-R-A-C-E.
There was a professor at Yale who was invited to speak to the Yale student body so he decided to do a little acrostic on YALE about what is a Yale student. He talked about Youth and Attitude and Loyalty and Enthusiasm. The only problem was he spent thirty minutes on each letter of the acrostic. When he was through, he walked down to a student on the front row and said, “What did you think of my lecture and my acrostic?” The student answered, “I was just glad I didn’t go to Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”
I promise you that it’s not going to take that long to go through these five letters. What is grace?
G – GOD’S GIFT TO ME
It is a total gift of God. If you were to go out and ask ten people, “How do you get to heaven?”, you’d get the same answers most of the time. “Just work real hard and try to do your best… Be sincere and be nice to people… just try to do good and make sure that you do more good in your life than you do bad because maybe God grades on a curve and if your good works are better than your bad works maybe He’ll go, ‘You’re a good guy, sincere. Just come on in.’”
That’s the way most of the world thinks. Most of the world thinks they’re going to get into heaven by being a pretty good person. Most of us think we’re pretty good or good enough to get into heaven but bad enough to be fun. We want to carry those balances.
Here’s the problem. There isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell you’re going to make it into heaven on your own effort. No way. You can’t be good enough to go to a perfect place. There’s no way you’re going to ever work, earn or buy your way into heaven. You can’t be that good. It’s not going to happen.
The Bible says the exact opposite. The Bible says there’s only one way you’re going to get into heaven. It’s a gift from God. By God’s grace. You could never earn it, you could never buy it, you could never work your way into it or deserve it or get enough brownie points or credits to get into heaven. There’s no chance you’re going to make it into heaven except by accepting God’s free gift of grace. You can’t be good enough. You stopped batting 1000 a long time ago.
The Bible says this in Romans 11 “If it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works. Otherwise grace is no longer grace.” This just means it’s God’s gift. It’s a free gift to me.
This is the fundamental difference between Christianity and every other faith or religion. If you were to study all the other religions of the world you could summarize every other religion in one word – “do”. Because you have to earn your way to God, if they even have a personal god. Depending on the religion, there’s a different list of do’s. The lists differ but every one of them have one thing in common. You have to earn God’s approval, you have to earn God’s credit, you have to earn your way into heaven by doing certain things. And if you do these certain things then God says, “OK! You’re all right!”
That is in stark contrast to what the Bible says. The Bible says the exact opposite. The Bible says that the way you get to know God, have a relationship with Him, have your sins forgiven and get into heaven is by accepting what’s already been done for you. Who did it? Jesus Christ. You accept what Jesus Christ did 2000 years ago on the cross. And if you were to summarize Christianity in one word it would be the word “done”. It’s already been done for you. “Do” versus “done”. Jesus did it all. That’s the difference. And it is a free gift to you. You just accept it.
After a service a seeker came up to the pastor and said, “What do I have to do to be saved?” The pastor said, “You’re too late.” The pastor was just having fun with him. But he was a little shocked. He didn’t expect that answer from a pastor. He said, “What do you mean it’s too late?” The pastor said, “What needed to be done was done 2000 years ago. And it was done by Jesus Christ. Now all you need to do is just accept it. There’s nothing else you can do to add on to what was done in order for you to get into heaven.” Grace is God’s gift to you.
Romans 3:24 “All of us need to be made right with God. How? By His grace which is a free gift through Jesus Christ.” That is the best gift you’re ever going to be offered. There is no better gift than that. You may get a Rolls Royce and win a lottery but this free gift goes on for eternity and it is through Jesus Christ. It is a priceless gift and you will never be offered a better deal than that.
R – RECEIVED BY FAITH
Grace is received by faith. You don’t earn it, you don’t work for it, you don’t deserve it, you don’t do a bunch of things to get God’s grace like “If I take communion I get God’s grace… If I'm baptized I get God’s grace…” No, no. Grace is received by faith. Ephesians 2:8-9 “For it is by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not from yourselves…” That means even the faith you have is a gift from God. God gives you the faith to believe in Him. Even faith comes from God. “… it is the gift of God not by works so that no one can boast.”
Can you imagine how miserable we would be in heaven if everybody could get there by working for it and earning it? Everybody up there would be bragging. We’d have all these levels of how people got into heaven. There would be the cool people part and then there would be the spiritual peon part and the guys who got in by the skin of their teeth part. But that’s not the way it is; it’s all by God’s grace.
Here’s the point: Ephesians says: “For by grace you’ve been saved through faith.” It’s just a free gift. Romans 4:16 “People receive God’s promise by having faith. This happens so that the promise can be a free gift.” Salvation is not based on my performance. It’s based on God’s promise. It’s not based on my merit. It’s based on God’s mercy. It’s not based on my goodness. It’s based on God’s grace.
The Bible is full of stories illustrating God’s grace. There’s the story of the Good Samaritan who helps the guy who’s stranded on the side of the road who’s helpless and there’s no way he could repay him. There’s no way you could possibly repay God for what He has done for you, what Christ has done for you.
There’s the story of the prostitute whom Jesus forgave and then defended publicly. Did she deserve it? Absolutely not. What was He doing? Showing grace. There are examples in the Old Testament and in the New Testament.
One of the most famous ones is the story of the Lost Son or the Prodigal Son. This father has two boys. One day the younger one says, “Dad, I'm splitting. I want my half of the family inheritance right now and I'm leaving.” So he takes half of the family inheritance and leaves and he moves to a foreign country and he wastes his life on wine, women and song (emphasis on the women). And after a series of months he’s blown it all, out of luck, out of money, and he ends up feeding pigs at a farm in a pig trough. There’s no ATM around. He’s hit the skids and he’s down, destitute, broke and busted. Flat on his back he’s thinking, “What am I doing here? I know I blew it and it’s all my own fault but the people who work for my dad as servants, they live better than this.” So he says to himself, “I'm going to go back home and say, ‘Dad, I know it. I blew it. I admit it. I wasted half the family inheritance. I do not deserve to be called your son. But just hire me as a slave, a servant, and I’ll work for you the rest of my life because even your servants live better than I'm living now.’” Yet the Bible says the father was loving and gracious, when he saw the son coming home from a long distance, he ran out to meet him. He gives him a giant bear hug and he kisses him and he smiles and he’s celebrating. “Go get the best robe in the house and bring it and we’re going to put it on this guy.” He doesn’t say, “Go clean up your act. Go get a bath. Repay me first. He doesn’t scold him. He doesn’t lecture him. He doesn’t give him a sermon. “Get everything in shape and then I’ll talk to you.” He just hugs him unconditionally and says, “Bring out the best robe. Put it on his back. Bring the family ring [which you would use like a credit card, kind of a symbol of the wealth of the family. Unlimited credit.] Bring the ring we’re going to put on his finger. Kill the calf we’re going to bar-b-que. We are going to party! My lost son has been found.”
That story is to say that’s how God responds to you when you come home. Did you know the Bible says that they have a party in heaven every time one person accepts the grace of God? The angels in heaven, they have a party, every time one person steps across the line.
If you haven’t accepted the grace of God you do not have a reason to party because you have some serious issues to deal with. They’re called the past, the present, and the future. You feel guilty about the past. You feel pressured about the present. And you’re worried about the future. And you wonder why you’re not happy. But when these issues have been settled by the grace of God, Christians of all people ought to know how to party. So we did. Because it’s God’s gift to us and it’s received by faith.
A – AVAILABLE TO EVERYONE.
It is available to everyone. What does that mean? God doesn’t play favorites. Regardless of your status, regardless of your background, regardless of the sins you have committed God loves you. Unconditionally. And God has His grace that’s available for you.
No matter who you are and no matter what you’ve done God loves you, He wants you to come home to Him. He wants to shower His grace on you. He wants to throw a party for you when you return. It is available to everyone.
Notice what the bible says:“The promise is not only for those people who live under the law of Moses. It is available to anyone who lives with faith, like Abraham.” Who are the people who live under the law of Moses? The Jews. The Jewish people, the nation of Israel, live under the law of Moses – the Old Testament. This verse is saying that God’s grace is available not just to Jews who live under the law of Moses but is available to everybody with faith.
That’s good news. It’s not just for Jewish people. It’s for all of us. All of us can come to God in the same way – through faith in the grace of God through His Son Christ. It’s available to everybody.
“Everyone…” who is good looking and calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Everybody who shops at Dillard’s or Macy’s. No, it doesn’t say that. It says “Everybody who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.” Does that mean ugly people? Yes. Does it mean fat people and skinny people? Yes. Does that include tall and short? Yes. Does that include dumb people as well as smart people? Yes. Does that include rich and poor? Yes. Every ethnic background? Yes. It means everybody. Everybody. Grace is available to you
You can’t understand what it means to have a relationship with God without understanding grace because it’s the only way you can have one. Without it you don’t have any relationship with God. It is the heart of Christianity. It is the heart of following Christ and being a believer. No matter what you’ve done and no matter who you are God’s grace is available to you.
C – IT COMES THROUGH CHRIST.
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