I'm going to talk to you about the grace of God and this I
taught a course on this topic before you were students at
Rheem. I taught it from 88 to 94.
I taught and we rotated courses and taught different courses at
different times, but I first taught on the topic of grace in
a single sermon in 1986. And the first time that I taught
on grace, it was kind of a the result of a journey.
I got filled with the Holy Spirit in 1977 and I was raised
in a mainline traditional denominational church.
To be honest, I didn't love church a lot.
I had church services were quite boring to me.
I respected God. I respected, you know, I'm, I'm
thankful for the things I learned.
Don't misunderstand me. I'm glad I learned the 10
commandments. How many of you think the 10
commandments are good? I mean, we're not saved by the
10 commandments, you know, but how many of you want your
neighbor to believe in the 10 commandments?
How many of you want your, you know, society's better if people
say, you know, God doesn't really want us killing each
other, stealing from each other, you know, lying to each other
and things like that. They they set a standard of
conduct and things like that that reflects certain godly
standards. But you're never going to get
saved by keeping the 10 Commandments.
I know when I was a little kid, before I even knew what the 10
Commandments were, I had three older brothers.
And before I even knew what Thou Shalt not covet meant, I'd
already coveted my brother's candy bar.
Before I ever knew what Thou Shalt not steal meant, I had
already eaten or stolen his candy bar in order to eat it.
And before I really knew much about what thou shalt not lie
meant, I'd already lied When my mom said did you at your
brother's candy bar, I said no. I'd broken three of the 10
commandments before I even knew what they were.
And so nobody, you know, I don't care how good you think you are.
You know you may be a good moral person by society standards, and
that's great. You know, I'm glad you're a good
person, but nobody's good enough to make it into heaven because
the Bible says we've all sinned and we've all come short of the
glory of God. And you say, well, I've kept
most of the commandments. Well, the Bible says if we keep
all the commandments and yet offend in one point, we're
guilty of the whole thing. You say, well, I don't like
that. Well, that's too bad.
That's that's that's how it works.
You may not like the law of gravity, but you know that it
works. That's how it is.
And so that's one of the reasons we're going to talk about the
grace of God. But I got spirit filled in 1977,
three weeks after I graduated from high school.
Friend took me to a meeting. People were acting a little bit
like they're acting here in church today, which is real
different than the way we acted in, in our church growing up.
I mean, you, there's just no emotion.
No, I mean, we're ultra conservative, ultra reserved.
You know what, what hopping, bouncing.
I mean, we didn't sway, we didn't do nothing.
We just stood stiff as a statue. And and and that's I'm not, I'm
not here to get on anybody. But, you know, but to see people
raising their hands in church at this friend took me to a
meeting, People were raising their hands.
I mean, people did this outlandish thing that we didn't
even do in our church at all. They smiled, I mean, they
actually smiled in church and I thought, I don't think I've ever
seen anybody smile in church. I mean, just we were that,
that's how, you know, conservative we were and that
type of thing. But, but Long story short, I got
filled with the Holy Spirit that night that was June the 9th,
1977 and got healed from a back condition supernaturally
instantaneously. My, I'd had a back condition for
two years, sports kind of type of thing.
I, my parents had sent me to three different types of doctors
trying to. And they all just said, you
know, that we, we don't know exactly why your back hurts like
it does. We can't do anything for it.
And in one instant, God healed my back.
And you know, in that night, my friend said, did you receive the
Holy Spirit tonight? And man, I'd heard of the Holy
Spirit, you know, because every, every time we left church, we
sang the doxology and every time we were in church, we recited
the Apostles Creed. I'm grateful for all these
things. I'm I'm great, but but somehow
these things I don't know. They stayed up kind of just
merely intellectual. And he said, did you receive the
Holy Spirit? And and to me that was just the
Holy Spirit was just somebody that we mentioned in a creed,
you know, have a relationship with him, receive him.
And I said, well, I don't even know exactly what that means.
And he took me through the book of Acts and showed me and showed
me how the people spoke in other tongues when they received the
Holy Spirit. And so I said, well, if that's
kind of anything related to the power that came into my life,
when because I felt the power come into my body when my back
got healed, I said, if that's him, I want all of him there is.
And that night received the infilling of the Holy Spirit,
spoke in other tongues. And that radically changed the
course of my life, radically changed the course of my life.
And so that summer, my, my parents didn't quite know what
to do with me because they literally, you know, they, they
had battled getting me to church.
You know, I just always wanted not to go to church until it's
boring. I don't understand it.
And all of a sudden, I'm going to multiple Bible studies a
week. And they didn't quite know what
to do with it. And so I was with my mom back in
her hometown in southern Indiana, visiting a friend of
hers she'd grown up in church with.
And this lady, very sweet lady, she's and my mom said she didn't
know how to describe it. So she just said, well,
Marjorie, she said Tony's really gotten interested in the Bible
in the last few months. That's all she knew how to say
is I've gotten interested in the Bible and this lady that my mom
had grown up with said, well, Tony, maybe you can help me with
something. She said, I've been in church
all my life and she said I, I, I don't know.
They always talk about grace. She said, what is grace now?
I don't know. I was 18 years old.
I've been spirit filled a couple months.
I wanted to think I was smart, you know, because I've been,
I've been, you know, speaking in tongues and reading the Bible.
And I was really, I mean, I was learning and growing and really
in love with Jesus and really excited about the Lord and, and
things like that. But I didn't want to admit that
I really didn't know what it was.
And she said, can you help me understand what grace is?
And because I wanted to sound smart and because I wanted her
to think I knew things, you know, because of my deep
experience now of two months, I said, well, yes, I can help you
with what Grace is. And she says, well, what is
grace? And I'd heard somebody give a
definition. So I said, well, grace is
unmerited favor. And I thought I'd just really
hit a Grand Slam. I just thought I'd really just
like, she was just going to change her life and all that.
And then and then she said something I wasn't expecting.
She said, yeah, but what's that? And now I'm stuck because I'd
heard somebody. How many of you know, just
because you hear somebody say something and you can repeat
what somebody says doesn't mean you really grasp anything about
the magnitude or the depth of what it is.
And so I went from feeling pretty good about myself to
realizing I'm in trouble now because she's asked me to go
beyond the standard definition of grace and unmerited favors a
fine definition, but it's not it's it's not a real profound
deep definition, she said. So I said grace is unmerited
favor. And she said, yeah, but what's
that? And I said I didn't want to tell
her. I don't know.
Should have, but I just said well, well, that's that's favor
that is not merited. And she said, yeah, but what's
that? And I was I pretty much had had
reached the depths of my understanding at that point.
And so that I, I, I lived with that, not that that was some
tormenting. I didn't wake up at night in a
cold sweat thinking, I can't define grace.
But but every time I'd read the Bible, I'd start looking.
I, I, I'd like to know what grace is.
How, how many of you have heard the song Amazing Grace?
You know, and that's what most people know about grace.
They know the song Amazing Grace, beautiful, beautiful,
beautiful song. And they know the definition
that grace is unmerited favor. But from that point on, over the
next several years, you know, ended up going to Bible school
and ended up even stepping into ministry and beginning to teach
and preach a little bit. I just still lived with that
fact. I don't really understand much
of what grace is, but I want to learn.
And I didn't teach on it. That was 77 when that happened
with that Lady asking me that question.
I didn't actually teach on grace until 1986, and I did a single
session. I felt like I'd learned enough
to teach at least one sermon, one full message on grace.
And then by 1988 it had turned into a 14 part series.
Tuesday, Thursday for eight weeks at Raymond.
And but I'm going to give you an understanding about Grace that
is not based on some theological, deep, profound
philosophical thing. How many of you as a kid, I, I
know we got people all different ages here, but how many of you
as a kid, maybe you're kind of toward my generation or
something. You know who Dennis the Menace
is? He was a cartoon character when
I was growing up. And we have a slide here with
Dennis the Menace, and that's Dennis and his little buddy
Joey. And in the background, that's
not his mom, that's his neighbor lady who who knows his neighbor
lady's name, Missus Wilson. She was the sweet, grandmotherly
type of neighbor who knows who Mr. Wilson is.
He was the cranky, grouchy, irritable old guy.
But Missus Wilson was the sweetest lady.
I mean the the epitome of the ideal next door neighbor for a
little boy because she is always making cookies for Dennis.
He's the blonde haired kid and that's his little buddy.
What's his little buddy's name? Joey.
And they're eating cookies because Missus Wilson has made
them cookies, which she was prone to do.
And in another cartoon, not this one but another cartoon, they're
actually leaving her home with handfuls of cookies.
And Joey in that cartoon says to Dennis, Dennis, I wonder what we
did to deserve all these cookies?
And Dennis says back, now listen to this because if you
understand this, you, you, you've got the rudiments of
grace. Dennis says, Joey, Missus Wilson
doesn't bake us cookies because we're nice.
She bakes us cookies because she's nice.
Did you catch that? Missus Wilson doesn't bake us
cookies because we're nice. She bakes us cookies because
she's nice. Now I can take you to all kinds
of theological dictionaries. I can take you to all kinds of
commentaries. And I don't know that I've ever
found a better definition of grace than that.
It's, it's doesn't, it doesn't involve God, it doesn't involve
Jesus. That's an earth.
How many of you know Jesus used earthly things to illustrate
heavenly principles? So if we want to make that
spiritual, which is certainly fine, we could say it this way,
God doesn't give us his blessings because we're good.
God gives us his blessings because He's good.
Everything that Jesus did for us on the cross, it wasn't because
we were good. Actually it was because of the
opposite. God did all that because He is
good. Now for most people, if people
know one Bible verse in the New Testament, I'm talking about
Christians, non Christians alike now.
Now for the whole Bible, a lot of people know Psalm 23, right?
Because they hear the 23rd Psalm at funerals and things of that
nature. If you're watching television
and there's a funeral, you know, they're standing out at a
gravesite or something, They'll often have the preacher saying
the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not beautiful, beautiful Psalm.
But if there's one New Testament verse, I mean, how many of you
watch football games? I don't think they don't do it
as much or they don't show it as much.
Used to be there was always people in the end zone with a
sign that said what? John 316 And what a beautiful
verse that is. For God so loved the world that
he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever would believe on
him should not perish but have everlasting life.
And we're in Florida. So I think this is an OK
illustration to use. Didn't Tim Tebow when he played
for the Gators, didn't he used to have John 316 and his, I
don't even know what would call that black stuff under the eyes,
but so people know John 316. But if there's a second verse
that most Christians know about grace, it's Ephesians 28 and 9.
Let's look at this on the screen, Ephesians 28 and 9, and
we're going to be unwrapping this.
We're going to be unpacking this.
We're going to be expounding on this because so many times
people become content to have a really superficial knowledge of
something when God really wants us to have a better, deeper
understanding of things. I put some letters and caps
underline one word, Paul says, For by grace you have been
saved. How many of you know that it's
good to be saved? You know, people don't even know
save from what say, you know, people here saved and they
think, well, do you save your money?
Do you have a bank account where you're saving money and things
of that nature? But if, but if you've ever, for
example, had a near drowning experience and somebody came and
rescued, you know what it is to be saved.
And people many times, because they're in darkness and they're
in blindness and they're in deception.
They don't realize that what it is to be lost, separated from
God and, and, and how much they need to be rescued with
forgiveness and mercy and things of that nature.
So many people, they're just, you know, kind of living life
oblivious to the fact that without God in their life,
they're lost and without hope. And then sometimes people will
have some kind of experience where they realize, I, I need
forgiveness. I need mercy.
So, so everybody needs to be saved in, in a spiritual sense,
in an, you know, we understand temporal sense.
You know, if somebody has a, you know, they're choking on
something and somebody, they're about to die, pass out and, you
know, die of asphyxiation and somebody comes along and gives
them the Heimlich maneuver and they, you know, spit out
whatever was they're choking on. You saved me.
You know, people can be saved in a physical temporal sense, but
the ultimate salvation being saved that everybody needs is to
be saved from eternal separation from God.
And just looking at this one verse, we really should just
look at the whole chapter. But just for this morning.
Paul says for by grace you have been saved through faith and
that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God.
It is not of works, lest anyone should boast.
All of that is so I mean, we could take each and every single
one of these words. Somebody said that grace it is
can be, you know, spelled out as an acrostic, an acronym that
grace is God's riches at Christ's expense.
God's riches at Christ's expense.
So Grace, if you remember back going to the dentist, the menace
story illustration, Dennis said Missus Wilson doesn't bake us
cookies because we're nice. She bakes us cookies because
she's nice. Meaning that God's grace is that
God did things for us not because of how good we were, but
because of how good he is. Not because we earned it, not
because we deserved it. Got enough brownie points, got,
you know, enough attendance check marks for church.
Got enough gold stars. You know, I've actually heard of
people who think that if they're going to go to heaven when they
die, it's because they did more good works than bad works.
And there have been people, intelligent people, seemingly
intelligent people, who actually, at the end of every
day, if they felt like they were pretty nice, you know, like they
braked instead of running over a cat or a dog, that's a pretty
good thing. They didn't run over the dog.
And they were nice to somebody at work or something like that.
And they didn't, you know, do something horrible that day.
At the end of that day on their calendar, they would give
themselves a Gold Star. I'm not talking about a
kindergartner. I'm talking about an adult.
But if they were bad that day, like if they cussed and chewed
somebody out, oh man, I shouldn't have done that.
So they wouldn't give themselves a Gold Star that day.
And they literally felt that at the end of their life, if they
had more gold stars on their calendar than not, they would go
to heaven because they were better most of the time than
they were worse. But if they had more days
without a Gold Star, then maybe they wouldn't go to heaven.
See, that idea is my going to heaven is entirely based on my
performance. What did I do?
And see, that's the antithesis. That is the opposite of grace.
Grace means it's not about what you do, it's about what he did.
And so Paul says, for by grace, by God's riches at Christ's
expense, you have been saved through faith.
And again, we're not going to take time to teach all this in
depth, but I love the song we sang earlier.
Yes, Lord, Yes Lord, Martin Luther said this faith is the
yes of the heart. Now I know, I'm sure your pastor
and other people here, guest people and different ones have
taught on faith and wow, what an important topic.
We're saved by faith, we walk by faith, we live by faith.
We're justified by faith. Without faith, it is impossible
to please God. So faith is huge.
And, and again, we all went to a school that has a 20 foot faith
shield up on top of the main building.
We, we have a background in faith.
Faith, what Martin Luther said is simply the yes of the heart.
It's when your heart says yes to God.
Now you can amplify that. You can teach many different
facets and angles of it, which is all great.
But by grace, which is basically God reaching out to you, you've
been saved through faith, which is you're saying yes to what
he's offering you for. By grace, you've been saved
through faith. And that not of yourselves.
It's not of your initiation. It didn't start with you.
You didn't generate it. You're not the alpha.
It's not of yourselves. It is the gift.
Everybody say gift. If you want to understand grace,
you have to understand gift because a gift is not something
that you earn when when you go to work and you work all week.
And what Can you imagine if your boss called you into the office
and said, I've got a gift for you?
And you say, oh, that's so nice. And you say, what is it?
And he says it's a paycheck. And you're thinking, that's not
a gift I earned that. See, so many people think that
salvation being saved or really receiving any blessing of God is
something that we earn that is based on our human effort and
human performance. So if your boss gives you your
paycheck and says I have a gift for you and hands you the
paycheck, in your mind you're saying, you know, I'm not, I'm
not going to get an argument with you.
But that's not a gift. I earned that.
A gift is something that somebody gives you that you did
not work for or earn. There's a difference between
compensation wages versus a gift, a gratuity.
OK. So by grace you have been saved
through faith and that not of yourselves.
It is the gift. Everybody say gift again, it is
the gift of God. It is not of works or human
effort, lest anyone should boast.
So let's establish this, that when you and I stand before the
Lord and you know he has said well done, thou good and
faithful servant, and so on, enter into the joy of the Lord.
None of us are getting into heaven based on our works or our
efforts here on earth. It's a gift.
Now there's a second dimension of this, and this is where many
people become confused. There's a separate, separate
dimension of this where people are rewarded and there are our
works do play a role there. The Bible says multiple times we
will be rewarded according to our works, but we are saved by
grace through faith that not of ourselves.
It is the gift of God. You're not going to meet anybody
in heaven who says, hey, I got here because I did so many great
things for God. Everybody in heaven is going to
say, hey, I got here because even though I was a Sinner, even
though I had sinned and come short of God's glory, I'm here
because of what Jesus did for me, because of what Jesus did on
the cross. I'm here because of the grace of
God. Grace was God reaching out
through Jesus on the cross, dying, shedding his blood, and
so on, being raised from the dead.
And faith is our saying yes. Faith is our accepting a gift
from God that is not based on our works or our human effort.
OK, so I want to tell you a story here.
This is just a couple weeks old. I told Pastor Earl and Marcy
this last night I've got a brand new story that I think
illustrates grace really nicely. My wife and I just a few weeks
ago, we preached in England and Netherlands and Switzerland, and
while we were there we popped into Scotland.
I didn't preach in Scotland, but I wanted to visit some historic
sites. I love history and I went to
Scotland because I wanted to explore some of the sites
related to John Knox. How many of you were anybody
here raised Presbyterian? Anybody here raised
Presbyterian? Not a single Presbyterian here.
You were raised Presbyterian. Thank you.
We have one former. We have two.
Is it 22 Presbyterians in here? Actually, we have three.
I was raised Presbyterian. John Knox.
Let's look at him. He's the guy that founded
Presbyterianism. And I went there.
These are two pictures I took. One's a stained glass window.
One's actually a statue. The one on the right is a statue
of John Knox. And he was the founder of
Presbyterianism. And I, I really, even though I,
I was raised in that denomination, I really didn't
know a lot about him. But he had a real, I think he
had a real relationship with God and he had a real consecration
and dedication to God. And he had been a Roman Catholic
priest and had switched into what we call the Protestant
movement. And back then how that would
have been in the 1500s. How many of you know, church
history gets pretty rough at some places because it's not
just a history of what God did, it's a history of what people
did in God's name. And sometimes the lot there are
a lot of people were very misguided and misdirected and,
and so people would kill each other for believing differently.
How many of you know, we don't need to kill each other if we
believe differently And but people, I mean, they just killed
each other left and right. They had wars over these things
and so that's a sad part of it. But John Knox when when he
really understood some truth and embrace this Protestant faith
that we are saved by faith alone through the grace of God and not
by religious works, church works, etcetera.
He, he was, he was mentored by a guy, another preacher named
George Wishart, and they burnt him at the stake.
They they burnt his mentor at the stake for what he believed
and then they made John Knox a slave prisoner on a French
galley ship rowing a a galley boat for 19 months.
Can you imagine being a galley slave at all?
But for 19 months he had to row a boat chained to oars as a
slave. And all this because of his
faith in Jesus. And then when he finally got
out, there was an English queen who burnt 278 Protestants at the
stake as Bloody Mary and, and, and John Knox spent 12 years in
exile out of his own country, you know, to stay alive.
And then at a certain point he was able to come back into
Scotland and lead what we call the Protestant Reformation in
Scotland. And so he lived for Jesus.
He saw his closest friends burnt at the stake for their faith in
Jesus Christ. He was exiled from his own
country for a dozen years because of his faith in Jesus
Christ. And and I read about his last
hours and when when he was getting ready to pass away, he
asked his wife to read him two passages of Scripture.
He said, I want you to read to me First Corinthians chapter 15.
And that's all about the the dead being raised.
How many of you know we celebrated resurrection a couple
Sundays ago, right? Not only is Jesus raised from
the dead, but guess what, because he was raised, we get to
be raised and, and not just in the future, but we get to live a
resurrection lifestyle even now. We get the power of the
resurrection before the full resurrection.
And then he asked his wife to read to him John chapter 17.
And both of those passages were a great comfort to him.
And, and they knew he's just hours away from dying.
His life is slipping away. His physical life is ebbing
away. And then they said that he kind
of sort of went kind of unconscious, but, you know, kind
of half conscious, half not conscious.
And they said he was struggling, he was moaning.
He was, they said it was like he was in a battle of some kind
and, and like he was fighting something, like he was resisting
something. And they, they just kind of let
him alone. But then when he came to, they
said what, what, what just happened.
And this is what he said. He said, I'm quoting him.
So it's kind of that flowery old English.
He said I have indeed sustained many contests in this frail life
and many assaults from Satan, but now the roaring lion has
most furiously attacked me and and he kind of describes some of
the different temptations and challenges he had faced in life.
And he said, But now he just attacked me in a different way.
For the cunning serpent has endeavored to persuade me that I
have earned heaven itself and a blessed immortality by my
faithful discharge of the ministry that has been committed
to me. And, and he, and, and what it
boils down to is that Knox, what he really described as his
greatest temptation in life was to believe that he had earned
heaven by his own good works. And the enemy was trying to
persuade him at that last moment that it was his efforts, his
human efforts that had earned him a place in heaven.
And, and it's just amazing that he would be attacked by that at
probably what was his most vulnerable moment.
But he had to come back. And one of the verses he came
back to at that point was by grace We are saved through
faith, and that not of ourselves.
It is the gift of God. It is not of human works or
human merit, lest any of us should boast.
So I want to take you back to my early study.
When I began to study grace in earnest.
Here's what I did. There were no such things as
computer programs. How many of you pastoral, do you
remember the old Strong's Concordance?
It was about that thick and it listed every word in the Bible
and every place that was used. I maybe I'm kind of glad we
didn't have computers back then because it really made us, it
forced us just to dig in. It's so easy today to study and
I'm, I'm all for that, but I just went through and found
every time that grace is used in the Bible because I realized I,
I know that grace is unmerited favor, but I don't really know
what unmerited favor means. And, and so I went through and
began to study everything I could find.
And, and this, these are all the references I found.
Well, some of them, it's not all, but I, I found out and
there's a scripture for every one of these.
The Lord is gracious. He is the giver of grace.
He is the God of all grace. His throne is a throne of grace.
The prophets of old prophesied of the grace that should come to
us. This grace came by Jesus.
Every single one of these is a Bible verse.
He was full of grace, and it is from His fullness that we
receive 1 grace after another. The grace of God was upon him,
and gracious words proceeded out of his mouth.
It was by grace that He tasted of death for every man.
The Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of grace.
We are told to continue in grace, to abound in grace, to be
strong in grace, and to grow in grace.
The Bible talks about great grace, the abundance of grace,
the exceeding grace of God, the glory of His grace, the riches
of His grace, the gift of grace, the grace of life, the manifold
grace of God, the true grace of God.
Our message is called the Gospel of the grace of God and the Word
of His Grace. We are saved by grace and
through grace. It is through grace that we
believe. Grace builds us up and gives us
an inheritance. We are justified by grace.
We have access by faith into the grace of God in which we stand.
Grace reigns through righteousness.
Didn't you tell me you're doing something on reigning here
recently? The Bible says that grace reigns
through righteousness and produces eternal life.
We are under grace. We have gifts differing
according to the grace of God. It is the grace of God that
makes us rich. God's grace is sufficient for us
and causes us to reign in life. We are called by grace into
grace. Grace enables us to preach the
unsearchable riches of Christ. Grace is given to every
believer. Our words can impart grace to
other people. We are partakers of grace.
We are to sing with grace in our hearts.
Our words are to be seasoned with grace.
Grace gives us everlasting comfort and hope.
Grace brings salvation to us. Grace helps us in the time of
need. Grace enables us to serve God
acceptably, and grace establishes our hearts.
Every single one of those is a, is a scripture phrase, a
scripture, a statement in the New Testament.
I think one or two might have been Old Testament at the very
beginning. And, and when I began to realize
this, I thought, I thought I didn't know what grace was.
I really didn't know what grace was.
Grace does so much more than I could have ever imagined.
And one of the things I realized I kind of understood, and I
think most believers understand that God saves us by his grace.
That's God's nature, his disposition, which results in
his actions. God is gracious toward us
because of his gracious nature. It's not some theory that God
has. It's not like some passive
attitude that God has compassion on us, but he doesn't do
anything compassionate. It's both his attitude and his
actions. I'm going to use a really
natural illustration to illustrate what Grace is.
And let me just tell you this right now, every illustration
fails at some point. OK, it falls short at some
point, but it but it also conveys a message.
How many of you appreciate electricity?
How many of you are glad you live in the 21st century and and
that you weren't born in 1800? Can you imagine living in 1700
whenever and in St. Augustine, FL and not having
electricity? Even some of the countries that
I'm sure Pastor Earl's been to, I've been to their electricity
even now isn't dependable. You know, it'll go out
sometimes. You know, they have brownouts
and blackouts and some states in the country, you know, the power
grid gets overwhelmed and that type of thing.
And I know when you guys have had hurricanes in Florida,
different parts, you know, that get hit sometimes.
What what are some of the places that have been hit in recent
decades? How long are they without
electricity? A week or two sometimes, you
know, we had a, an ice storm in Tulsa back in 2007.
We were without electricity from a Sunday to a Thursday.
And I could not, I, I really felt ashamed of myself.
What a whiny. I mean, it's just kind of like
this is the end of the world. And, and I know, I remember the
night that the electricity came back on.
We didn't know when it was going to come on and it came on that
night, Thursday night and it was cold in the house because the
heater wasn't working. And, and I told my wife, I said
it has to be 38° in here. And you know, I was complaining
and everything. Well, the, the electricity came
on and I immediately went to the thermostat to see because it's
all electric. You can't, it doesn't do
anything if the IT was 58 in the house, you know, sure, yeah,
that's a little chilly, but you know, you know, couple
sweatshirts and you're not going to die in 58°.
And I just, I am such a, you know, so spoiled and and that
type of thing. But so electricity, you know,
you have electricity most likely in your home, your apartment,
your condo, wherever you live and that type of thing.
I just want you to help me out in this message a little bit,
one by one. I want you to name one thing
that electricity energizes in your place of residence.
Name one thing everything coffee.
But I thought you guys were going to say air conditioning.
I guess today coffee is more important than air conditioning.
OK, so who said coffee pot? Who said coffee pot over here?
OK, that's good enough. All right, so electricity makes
your coffee pot make your coffee hot, right?
OK, what's the next thing that electricity does in your place
of residence? AC air conditioning.
OK, what else does electricity produce in your house or what
instrument does it go into telephone.
OK, I got to charge your phone and that type of thing.
Or maybe a landline, I guess maybe.
I don't know if you have to have, I don't haven't used a
landline in years. But what else does electricity
power in your house? Refrigerator, lights, Wi-Fi,
stove. Everything.
What about a ceiling fan? What about a microwave?
What else? Hot water tank, Water heater?
Television. I can't believe nobody said
television until now. You got a really spiritual
church, Pastor Earl? All right, OK, so here, here's
the point. We're we're going to make this
point, we're going to make this point and then we're going to
wrap up and pick up tonight at 6:30 Electric.
What if I just made this statement?
Electricity is electricity. Is that a true statement?
Electricity is electricity. Is that true?
It's true. We also understand that
electricity can power and enable many different results depending
on what receives the electricity.
Did you know that somebody could live, let's just say they'd
grown up, you know, because Can you imagine somebody coming to
America, Saint Augustine, from a, a nation where they lived,
you know, primitively and didn't have any appliances, didn't have
electricity, didn't have any modern conveniences, whatever.
And they show up and they maybe they come into your house and
they notice the temperature so cool and it's so hot outside.
And they say, how is this so cool, so, so cool in this house?
And you say, well, it's air conditioning.
Well, how's that work? And well, you don't know how to
explain unless you're an electrical engineer.
You just say, well, air conditioning works because of
electricity. And they look up and they see a
ceiling fan moving that cool air around.
What's that? That's a ceiling fan.
How does that work? There's nobody spinning it.
Well, it's electricity. And you take them to the kitchen
and you open the refrigerator and wow, it's even cooler yet
and keeps the food cold. I said, how does that work?
And you say, well, it's, it's, it's air conditioning.
And then you pull something out of the oven or, or the coffee,
you give them a cup of coffee. How did this get so hot?
And he said, well, electricity. Can you see how that would kind
of be confusing to them? See, a lot of people, even
Christians, think that electricity only does one thing,
grace. I'm sorry, a lot of Christians
only think grace does one thing, which would be like a person
coming from a an undeveloped nation thinking that electricity
would only do one thing. Let's go to this next slide.
If if we can. When we come back tonight, I'm
going to talk about 5 different expressions of grace, just like
we talked about different expressions of electricity.
You know, heat through an oven, cold through an air conditioner,
motion through a ceiling fan. I'm going to talk about 5
different expressions of grace, saving grace, strengthening
grace, sanctifying grace, sharing grace, and serving
grace. Tonight you see that diamond?
What is that diamond full of facets?
Different, you know the cuts, different surfaces that are all
there. How many of you know it's 1
diamond, but it has many different facets?
Grace is is is like that diamond?
The diamond is 1 stone, but it has many different facets and
the facets of grace that we're going to look at starting
tonight. Saving grace.
What does that mean? That grace saves us from sin,
from separation from God? What is, what is strengthening
grace? What is sanctifying grace?
What is sharing grace? What is serving grace?
Starting tonight, we're going to be examining those things.
So I want you to be back at 6:30 because what we've done just
this morning, as we've just laid a real simple foundation to be
able to build into some deeper and more profound things.
Father, in the name of Jesus, I want to thank you for this time
together, want to thank you for every person that's here today.
And Lord, I just pray that you'll open all of our hearts to
say yes, Lord, not just yes, Lord, to some temporal blessing.
Although we, yes, Lord, we want every blessing that you have for
us in this life. But Lord, we want to say yes to
you in every single area of life, starting with forgiveness.
Yes, Lord, we need your forgiveness, your help in life
to live a strong and victorious life.
Yes, Lord, we need your life in every area.