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Source: https://www.sermonindex.net/speakers/bruce-rodgers/grace-part-1/
And this morning I'm interested in speaking a little bit about grace, the subject of grace. So we're going to notice a number of verses in the Bible, and I guess the first aspect that I want to really think about is really defining grace.
And one of the things that I was kind of startled to discover when I started doing this study was that very often when the word grace is introduced, it's introduced with a but. And so that shows that grace comes into a context, and it's a contrasting context.
So we're going to notice first of all in Genesis chapter 6, and we have the first mention I think of grace in the Bible, Genesis chapter 6 and verse 5. And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the Lord said, I will destroy man, whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast and creeping thing and fowl of the air, for it repenteth me that I have made them.
But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God. Now when we think of grace, the word itself suggests loving-kindness, goodwill, that is arising from the heart of the one showing grace.
And we nearly always use the definition undeserved kindness. That seems to be a character of grace that is very, very prominent. It's something that flows out of the goodness of God rather than our deserving of his kindness or favor.
So it was kind of startling when looking at it and seeing that the very first reference to grace is in an almost opposite meaning in the sense that it's not just that God had pity on Noah, but that Noah found grace in his eyes.
And this is actually almost an opposite idea in the sense that it is that God saw something good, something that brought favor in his eyes. So really the emphasis that I want to notice here is divine favor.
And I don't think there's any question in our minds today that we are in a very parallel set of circumstances to Noah's day. God must be pretty well fed up. He sees wickedness overflowing today. No restraint.
There is such an overflowing of evil and it's evil continually, non-stop. And so I want to just encourage you, if you're a believer in the Lord Jesus this morning, to realize that you could be and can be, and I trust you are, for God a bright spot.
And that you might be one of the reasons why God hasn't blotted out man from the face of the earth in our day. Because God in his character is long-suffering and he wants to manifest his grace and sometimes he looks for an excuse to be able to show it.
And Noah was for God this reason to show mercy. And through Noah and his righteousness and his walking with God, God spared a little, little remnant of humanity and has endured how many thousands of years more of human sin.
He spared the world from absolute judgment, although he brought almost total judgment upon the earth. But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. And so I want you to think of another couple of examples and I'm just going to refer to this one in Exodus where Moses, in a somewhat similar context, when Israel had failed and they had worshipped the golden calf at the bottom of the mountain, and in Exodus 33, you have Moses interceding with God for the people.
And Moses says, you have said that you have found favor in my sight. And the Lord responds and he says, yes, you have found favor in my sight and I will spare the people for your sake. I will bring them to the land of promise.
So again you have, you might say, the fate of a nation hanging on the favor that one man has with God. Now let's go to Ephesians chapter 1 where we see where we fit in, in the place of favor that we have graciously received through the Lord Jesus, and of course he's the ultimate example of this, of God showing favor to others because of one man.
Ephesians chapter 1, we have the wonderful expression of God's blessing to us. Verse 3, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.
According as he has chosen us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blame before him in love. Having predestinated us unto adoption of children or sonship by Jesus Christ to himself.
You notice how it's all in Christ, by Christ. According to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace wherein he has made us accepted in the beloved in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace.
Now when we look at this expression, to the praise of the glory of his grace wherein he has made us accepted in the beloved, this again is that idea of favor. In fact, the word or the expression made us accepted is actually the word grace as a verb.
He has graced us in the beloved. The very same word, I believe, is found in Luke chapter 1 in reference to Mary when the angel Gabriel comes with the message and he says, fear not, thou art highly favored.
So here we have the idea of being highly favored of God, brought into a place of love and nearness. And we can readily appreciate that we come into this blessing because of the Lord Jesus and that he has brought such pleasure to God.
It's in him that we have a place of favor. And of course, it is forgiveness, it is being made as sons of God, it is inheriting everything that God has and all of that is in the beloved one. So do we appreciate that we actually hold the favor of God today, but not just on our own goodness, but upon what Christ is for God.
And so divine favor and acceptance is the first emphasis that I enjoy in thinking about the reality of God's grace. Coming over to John chapter 1, and I'm just going to be looking at these and making a few comments on each one as we go through it.
John chapter 1, we have another interesting connection back to that incident with Moses. But in John 1, and we'll start at verse 16, John the Baptist is born witness of him in verse 15, and then we have this testimony concerning Christ.
And of his fullness have all we received and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him.
So what we have here is what we call, what I would label as divine fullness revealed. He's placing a contrast. The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. And this is the fullness of God being made known to us.
God's fullness. Thinking back to Moses, I've already referred to him as one who actually became a beautiful foreshadowing of Christ in that incident at Mount Sinai. God was going to blot out the nation.
And God said, I'll make of you a great nation. But Moses, instead of accepting that honor of God starting all over with him as being the foundation stone of it, he says, oh no Lord, you can't do that.
He says, Lord, you made a promise. You made a promise to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And now you're fulfilling that promise by bringing the people of Israel into their inheritance. You've got to keep your word to them.
And so he appeals to God's faithfulness, to his promise. And then he presents himself as one willing to accept the judgment of God. He says, please forgive them, but if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book.
And so Moses becomes a wonderful foreshadowing of what the Lord Jesus would actually accomplish in intervening between us and God and giving his life, bearing the curse of God in judgment. And God blessed Moses.
And God revealed himself in grace to Moses personally up on the mount. But when Moses came down from the mountain a second time, he still brought the same set of laws, the same covenant. He was not able, even though he rose, you might say, morally to that character of being the mediator and the redeemer.
He couldn't be that because he himself was yet a sinner. So we have that God in all his greatness longs to make himself known to us. And now he has a perfect channel through which he can reveal himself to us.
Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. And that is in the character of being God's son. As eternally in the bosom of the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ, coming from the presence of God, is able to tell us in completeness, in fullness, what God is like.
And so grace and truth then is the complete revelation of the character of God and the bestowal of blessing to us. Now I'm going to take a little glimpse in Romans chapter 5 where we have the emphasis on the undeserved gift.
And that's what we so often associate with the idea of grace, the undeserved gift. Romans 5 and 15 says,. But not as the offense, so also is the free gift. For if through the offense of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace which is by one man, Jesus Christ, has abounded unto many.
And then at the end of the chapter, verse 20 says,. Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound, but where sin abounded, grace did much more abound, that as sin has reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.
So we are introduced to this reality that there is sin against God, there is offenses that abound in their rebelliousness and wickedness before the face of God and yet His grace flows out and overflows all of that wickedness and He still shows His love, His goodness instead of dealing with humanity according to sin.
And so we have grace reigning, an undeserved gift. Now in Ephesians chapter 2, I'm just going to make a very brief reference to this because the focus of this is again more in the Gospel and I want to show that the grace of God means salvation to the sinner, but then it also means strength to the saint.
We have the grace of God, God moving toward us in His power and His love and that's what is emphasized at this point in Ephesians. At the end of chapter 1 it has made reference to the exceeding greatness of His power in verse 19, to usward who believe according to the working of His mighty power which He wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and set Him at His own right hand.
And then in chapter 2, it's related to us and in God reaching us to save us, it says in you, verse 1, has He quickened, made alive who were dead in trespasses and sins wherein in time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience among whom also we all had our conversation or behavior in times past in the lusts of our flesh fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and whereby nature, children of wrath even as others, but God.
As I mentioned, I'm sort of giving you a very, very extended definition of grace by covering these different expressions. This might be the best definition that there is for grace, but God. You have a portrayal of an abject hopelessness of condition.
People who are dead in sins. People whose lives are alienated from God and they can't come to God and make the connection on their own. They can't overcome the condition that they are in. They are dominated by a spirit power that is just leading them down to destruction.
They're following the course of life that the rest of the world is going. And we've already made reference to that course, it's like a flood of wickedness and it carries people along a pathway towards more and more disobedience.
And what are we doing? Well, within ourselves, defiled, following our own desires, our own independence, our own disobedience. It looks pretty hopeless, but God. And this is the wonder of God's salvation and the wonder of the grace of God in his moving toward us.
We have God in his power doing what is needed for us to come into blessing. God in his love, in his mercy, overcoming all the enmity, the hatred that is within us. And it says, but God, who is rich in mercy because of his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, has made us alive together with Christ.
And then the little phrase that explains it all, by grace you are saved. And you go further to the rest of those verses, you have God's intent is that it might be in the ages to come that he will pour out upon us the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through or in Christ Jesus.
So, so far we've been looking at really the grace of God moving towards mankind despite what we are. But now I want to focus on the idea of his grace that has entered into our beings, his power within us, his life within us, the grace of God at work in the saint.
Now let's notice Galatians chapter 1, and there's several references I want to draw attention to of the divine sovereignty and strength. Paul refers to his own behavior, his life before from verse 13 and 14, about being a zealous Pharisee and persecuting the church of God and wasting it.
Verse 15 says, but when it pleased God who separated me from my mother's womb and called me by his grace to reveal his son in me that I might preach him among the heathen. It has been acknowledged that the conversion of Saul of Tarsus is one of the most powerful evidences for Christianity, for the supernatural aspect of life that there is in the message of Christ.
Because here is a man who was absolutely determined to blot out the name of Christ, to oppose, to destroy that which represented Christ, and yet God, when it pleased God, God moved. So we have the sovereign working of God intervening in a life.
Every one of us who are saved have experienced God sovereignly moving. Ours may have been very undramatic, but it was still a work of divine sovereign grace working towards us in the circumstances of our life until there was that connection made when he revealed Christ to us.
And then you notice that it is also not only to reveal his son to me, but to reveal his son in me. This is the purpose of our life, that the Lord Jesus Christ might not only be revealed to us and that we would embrace him as our Savior, but that he would be revealed in us.
And the very life of the Lord Jesus would be reproduced in our lives and that we would become gospel messengers by life as well as by testimony. Over in 2 Timothy chapter 1, you have a similar idea where Paul is emphasizing to Timothy to not be ashamed.
Verse 8,. Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner. Be not thou therefore ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, and so on.
Again we have the emphasis of the sovereign call of God, the sovereign purpose of God which was from before the world began, according to his own purpose and grace. Now, maybe we can take a quick look at 1 Corinthians chapter 15 where Paul refers to that grace working in his life.
1 Corinthians 15, he speaks about the testimony of the resurrection of Christ, and he speaks about the fact that the Lord Jesus was seen by different ones who were witnesses of the Lord Jesus risen from the dead.
And so in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 8, Paul says,. And last of all he was seen of me also as of one born out of due time, for I am the least of the apostles, and am not made to or not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God, but by the grace of God I am what I am.
And his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. Therefore whether it were I or they, so we preach, and so you believed.
What is Paul getting at here? He's talking about the reality that the gospel that he preached included the resurrection of Christ, and that it was an essential part of the gospel message and its power.
Christ died for our sins, he was buried, he was raised again the third day according to the scriptures. But as he speaks about the grace of God which was bestowed upon him who had been a hater of Christ, a persecutor of the church, but the grace of God was shown to him.
And now he's referring to the reality of that grace having worked in his life as a Christian. And he says his grace was not in vain. Now notice what it says in verse 10, but by the grace of God I am what I am.
Now could you say today that you are what you are by the grace of God? That what you are in your life today is the fruit of, the product of the grace of God at work. And what I gather from this is that even though it's good to be able to understand the character of grace and to know, to be able to define grace in some fashion, it's an even better thing to be defined by grace.
That what you are in your life is the grace of God at work. Because there's a day coming when every Christian is going to be perfect, is going to be in the presence of God in the ages upon ages to come in the mercy of God.
And what we are going to be then is not what our mother or father made us or the influence of those around us, or even what we tried to do in our individual lives, but rather what God has accomplished, the workmanship of God.
Wouldn't it be a wonderful thing even now to be able to say, as Paul did, by the grace of God I am what I am. That my life would be defined and would be a definition of grace. You notice then he talks about the fact that he labored more than the rest of the apostles.
He gave his life to serve God fully, but he won't even take credit for that as arising from his own goodness, but by the grace of God. He says, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. Turn over to 2 Corinthians chapter 1, and again this would express what I call divine simplicity and sincerity in the grace of God.
2 Corinthians 1 and verse 12, he says, For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but with the grace of God. We have had our conversation, and of course that's Old English for our behavior, our way of life, by the grace of God we have had our behavior in the world, and more abundantly to you, Lord.
Here's Paul as an older Christian who has served God and preached the gospel of God to these people at a previous time, and now he's writing to these Christians and he is saying that the testimony of my own conscience is that I have lived according to the grace of God.
This gives us another element of the character of the grace of God, and that is what we could call transparency in goodness. God is good. God is all good. There is no corruptedness. There is no evil contaminating the purity of the goodness of God, and it's a beautiful thing when the life of a Christian expresses that transparency, that simplicity, as he says here.
You know, if you're honest, and you live your life honestly, transparently, you don't have to worry about the stories you tell, and you don't have to remember if what you said to this person is the same as what you say to that person.
But if you're trying to create impressions, and you're trying to manipulate people, and trying to use people, and so on, well then you're always trying to cover up, and you've got hidden motivations that you keep hidden from other people.
He says that's not the way I have lived. I have lived in absolute genuineness and transparency in the grace of God. In other words, my love for you has been genuine. It's been sincere. It's been true.
And if you know the context of the letter, it's because some of these believers who should have had such an appreciation for all the goodness and all the care that Paul the Apostle had had for them, some of them were disdaining him.
Some of them were questioning his motivations. And his heart is broken as he thinks of these people that he has so cared about and loved. But here he is trying to open up his heart to them and help them to understand that the very character of God in the grace of God is what has ruled in his life.
Not with fleshly wisdom, but in the grace of God, we've had our behavior in the world and more abundantly to you, Lord. Now, my time is gone, so I'll close in prayer. Our Father, we thank Thee for the wonders of Thy grace, that love that has flowed out toward us in such mercy despite our sinfulness.
We thank Thee that Thy grace is abundant, that it overflows our greatest evil and our greatest need. And we would look to Thee today that Thou would bless both in the preaching of the Gospel and in the encouraging of Thy people that we might rejoice in the grace of God.
We thank Thee that it comes to us through the Lord Jesus who has manifested Thy love in such a complete way by giving His very life for us at the cross. And we thank Thee that there is for us the gift of eternal life through Him.
And we acknowledge Him in Thy presence and bless Thee for Him in His worthy and precious name. Amen.