You In Christ and Christ in You

OK, we are studying paper number twenty three. Mike, before you get started, follow up on our discussions with grace. Thirty six. So please, if you have any thoughts about, you know, identification of grace, anything. Do you understand what grace is right now? Or are we afloat in a big ocean and you still don't understand where grace is? Or any of those things. Let us know about that.

You know, teaching it, you're talking about this, I still think that I've only opened the window a little bit on what grace is. But sometimes I think we get focused and we go down this little focused road, but then we kind of don't understand where everything fits in.

So give us some thoughts on where we are in grace and before we get into position and condition and those types of things. Let us know some feedback. I always think if you're living in grace at 3.30 today, you know what that means. We've kind of been through all this and you really know and can understand where we're living in grace and that kind of stuff is.

So let us know about that. We like to review a lot just to make sure we know where we've been and where we're at and that kind of stuff. So let us know your thoughts about if you really understand what race is, would you watch more in a certain manner and things like that. Sounds good. And the other thing is, I think we'll probably spend the last couple of weeks reviewing December. No more or less than 23. I think so. Twenty three. All right. I also need one. I think we left off, we were finishing up on question six, and it's probably a good place to start.

And the question was, why doesn't grace appear in the immediate divine dealings with the sins of the unsaved? And seven is, why doesn't grace appear in the immediate divine dealings with the sins of the saved? Well, I'll let the question just say that. Why don't you see grace appear when God is dealing with the sins of the unsaved?

It's a really important principle. What's that? He didn't have to give it to us. He didn't have to give it to us? We talked about it being a judicial problem. It's a judicial issue, not a gracious one. The best way I think to look at that is when the Father and the Son are dealing with the sin issue. Is there any grace going on there? Any grace between the Father and the Son, or the Son and the Father? No, none. So when God decides to forgive, He does not do it out of the bigness of His heart, does He? What's the reason He does it? What gives Him the go-ahead? Why can't He do it? Only through the cross.

Yeah, he paid the penalty. He took care of all the impediments to forgiving you your sins. So when you're dealing with the salvation of the lost, it's important to emphasize as much as what it costs God to bring salvation to you as it is to give them the faith message, the grace message, it did cost God a lot, cost Him the most valuable thing He had, which was the Son. So how about the sins of the unsaved, or how about the sins of the saved?

Same issue? Yeah. It's exactly the same issue. The cross is for all sins, all time. Any sins left out of the cross? What do you think? How about the sin of unbelief? Is that left off the cross? Well, if you accept the cross, what the purpose was... We're just from God's perspective now, not yours. How about the sin of unbelief? Did God take care of that too? Sure He did. Sure he did. The problem is, is that the reason, why is unbelief the unforgivable sin?

Because that's what separates you from your true nature. Okay, it's much more practical than that. If God comes to you with the remedy for your sins, and you don't believe him, where are you? You haven't availed yourself of God's provision, have you? So therefore you're not forgiven. Your sins are paid for, but you're not forgiven.

It's my buddy across the street who isn't a believer, right? His sins are paid for. Including the fact that he doesn't believe the Gospel? Sure. But he can't avail himself of the remedy for his sins because he doesn't believe. That's why it's not forgivable. Does that make sense? Pretty simple, really. We touched on the next question a little bit last week. Let's see how good your memories are.

What's the greatest demand placed by God on the saved, on the unsaved? Let's do it one at a time. What's the greatest demand that God places on the unsaved? Well, first of all, does He place a demand on the unsaved? My friend across the street, has God given him a demand? How many say, yeah, he has? How many say, no, probably hasn't? Most of you voted. That's pretty good.

What's the big demand that God places on my friend across the street? That he believes. That's a demand placed by God on every single human being on the planet, that they believe in the person and work of Christ. Now, in John 15, There's a statement that Christ makes about the Holy Spirit, that he's going to come and convict the world of sin. Think he's convicted the whole world of sin? What do you think? I mean, he's going around telling everybody about this sin deal? I mean, he says he is. How he does it is his business. He may use you, he may not. And the reason he's convicted in the world of sin is why? What does he say there?

Let's take a look at it. It's a very interesting verse because it's one of those verses that you think, well I see it and I read it but I don't see any practical evidence of God doing... What's your reference again? I think it's... John 15. But I might be where I might be. Fourteen. Let's see. I think. Oh, I'm sorry. It's sixteen seven.

And the Lord Jesus speaking, his disciples says, nevertheless, I tell you the truth, this is your damage that I go away for. If I don't go away, the helper will not come. But if I depart, I'll send him. And when he comes, he will convict the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment. Of sin, for what reason?

Because they don't believe on me. There's the demand. The Spirit of God does that. Well, what if you said to me, well, gee, not everybody's heard the name of Jesus, have they? Are these questions too hard for you? If they haven't heard of Jesus, they don't have God consciousness, and it depends on how they respond, and then it's God's responsibility. Who is taking the responsibility here for getting the Gospel out? God has, right? So you may, there's certainly no human being on the planet that lives here that has not experienced Romans 1 about that God is God and he's sovereign and he demands that we be honored as God and that they be thankful.

If they'll do that, he'll get the gospel to them. But the reason, what's the reason why that there's a conviction of sin? Because they don't believe on Christ. That's the reason. Now, I'm not here to give you the chapter and verse about how the Spirit of God carries out this mission, but he certainly does. We wouldn't have been told about it if it didn't happen.

Of righteousness, because I go to my Father and you see me no more. Of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. The righteousness that the judgment The righteousness that everybody is judged about is because Christ has gone to the Father. What's the significance of that?

God now has a man who is acceptable to him, who is Christ. Okay? and he is accepted in the presence of God. He's a human being that's now accepted there. God now can deal with humanity based on this man, rather than all of Adam's race that have turned against God.

So, there's no greater demand imposed on the unsaved than they believe. How about the demand that God places on the believer? What's the greatest demand He places on the believer? Are you supposed to believe also? Is that the big demand? What's that?

Confess. The big demand placed on you and I as believers is to confess. So what does confess mean? It means to say the same thing. What are you supposed to say the same thing about? That God has dealt with your sin issue. When you confess your sins, oh it's too bad, what's his name, his inheritance?

Why wouldn't you say believe first? Because you already are a believer. But the demand is that you believe who you are in Christ. The demand is that you confess it. The underlying that is to believe in who you are in Christ. that recognition of who you are in Christ. If I'm a believer like Courtney and I'm cruising down the boulevard and I leave my position of Christ and begin to sin and then the Spirit of God convicts me and he says I'm placing a demand on you. What's the demand?

To believe or to confess your sins? to confess. Now you would not confess unless you did understand and believe the underlying principles that have to do with confession, right? Because if confession is to say the same thing as God says, what does he say about you? What does he say about you?

Who is Courtney? We're driving down the boulevard. Who is he really? He's a new creature in Christ. His sins have been dealt with. He's been crucified, buried and resurrected in Christ. He has been functioning and living inconsistent with who he really is. Spirit of God convicts him. He confesses that God was right about him. He didn't change his position at all.

Is there faith involved in that? Absolutely there is. But it's not the same demand placed on an unbeliever who has put it this way, who doesn't have the object of faith that will save him? Once he believes, he's got the object in play, and so now the demand is confession. Now, Schaeffer says that God wrought on behalf of the sinner and the saint in bearing the sins of the world, and every requirement of infinite justice is met for all the finished work of Christ. In one case, there's nothing left to be done but to believe, while in the other case, there's nothing left to be done but to confess. Do you pick up on that? There's nothing left for us to do as a non-believer than believe. That's it. Everything else has been handled. Under grace, for the believer, the only thing left for us to do is to confess.

Why don't we have to conjure God to be gracious? Why don't we have to beg Him to be gracious? I mean, why? You hear these prayers all the time, Oh Lord, bless me in this and bless me in that. Be gracious to me in this circumstance and that circumstance. Is that an appropriate prayer? If our definition of grace holds true, which is the unlimited and unmerited blessings from God, based on the totally adequate work of Christ. What do you need that? Is there anything that God left out?

I have kind of a twisted mind. People will call me up and they're really upset about a sin in their life. And I like to say, oh, that's right. You know, in study of my Bible, that's the sin that wasn't taken care of on the cross, right? Well, you know, it's so ridiculous the person has to laugh and say, well, I guess it was.

So if it's such a big deal to you and God already took care of it, why can't you walk away from it? You see that? Why do you why do we are always conjoling God to bless us? Why do we do that? Maybe it's a better question. I think it's because a lot of times when I ask for blessings, it's only earthly. and the blessings he has given us are spiritual. Did everybody hear that?

We ask God for earthly blessings and we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies. I think that puts a real onus on us, not an onus, but a real responsibility on us to be heavenly minded. To find out what the blessings are that we have and to believe them as you find out and confess them to be true. And I think it will, if there's anything that's detrimental to spiritual growth, it's the focus on the earth. It's a huge problem. I mean, we start every class by praying for earthly issues, don't we? So and so is sick, such and such is this, and such and such is that.

You know what? One of you guys is going to raise your hand one day and say to me, would you pray that I be conformed to the image of Christ? Would you pray that I could set my heart and affections on things above and not on things of the earth? How cool would that be? Huh?

Because if you're focused on heavenly things, what happens to your care of the earthly things? They dim. They're not that important. Most guys around here, with a few exceptions, are conservative political junkies, right? If you're heavenly minded, what difference does it make? Do you understand what I'm saying? If you're focused, I mean, we live in this environment that God put us in to represent Christ, not to change the government, not to make them conservative.

I mean, the Lord had the same, the very same issues when he was on the planet, and so did the Apostle Paul. He had Sadducees and Pharisees. The Sadducees were the liberals, the Pharisees were the conservatives. Within the Roman Empire, there were so many different factions that you just couldn't deal with them.

So, the issue is that, as subtly as I can say this, we're not from around here. We didn't come from here. We showed up from the starship Enterprise, from heaven, and we're here to manifest the heavenly life that we have in Christ. That's what we're here to do. We're not here to change the planet.

Well, I want one other thing just you know, I think of with a prayer request and things like that That's why nobody ever gives you prayer requests because we're afraid of But but I think I think the other thing though, which is the flip side which I always go back to is the intimacy with God You know it You can go to God with anything and it doesn't matter Even if it's earthly or whatever, you know, he will He will, you know, open your eyes and show you that that's earthly, or, you know, any of that.

But I just, the fear of going to God for something, because it's earthly. I think, you know, it may be that you go to God with something earthly, and He'll say, that's earthly. You know, or point it out that that's an earthly concept. Or, He'll point out, you know, in mine, it's like, you know, I have my health piece, just because He saw it.

And as we've talked, there's no tragedy in a Christian's life, because God's in control. But you can still go to him and say, I'm hurting. You can go to him with anything, even earthly. I talked to him about my cold this morning. Yeah. I mean, that's what I'm saying. So I mean, the flip side to just conforming to Christ's image is also, he's intimately involved with you. He knows about your cold. He knows what's going on. And you can go to him and say, man, I feel great today.

So the flip side of just being, oh, heavenly minded and praying heavenly is the intimacy that we have with him, which is anything. Let's talk about that for just a second. Let's say that you find yourself in a circumstance and you do recognize that heavenly intimacy with Christ and you pray that way.

Do your expectations change as to what God's going to do? I think they do. I think they change from whether God's going to make you feel good to the viewpoint that well, God has this circumstance in place, He's sovereign, I want to be kind of cool to see how He uses it.

And that's really maybe for me, maybe for somebody else. Well, it gives you the peace to know whether the answer is yes, no, or maybe. It doesn't matter. No, it doesn't. song, I think that you know, sometimes he removes me out of the storm, sometimes he calms me in the storm. Both answers are okay.

The one thing he does do, which I hang my head on quite a bit in Philippians, where he says, make all your requests known to God, and what does he promise to give you? Peace that passes understanding. That's probably more valuable than the thing you asked for. Right? What about cast all your burdens upon him very carefully? I'm a son who lives under grace. that all the time there's a problem here's how you can fix it let's get busy see but I don't see you can do that but I think that can be a lot of times it from our side is the other piece that's a matter of you know this is my solution and this guy gives you this solution and the piece doesn't mean that was his solution or he gives it the other is he gives it to you you want it that way it's just like Israel you want Kings here's some Kings for And so I can say, Lord, I would love to have this. I think it's perfect.

Because of the intimacy, I can ask him for anything. But to my pieces, he can say no. He can say, OK, if you want that, here it is. And you get the consequences. And not out of malice, but love to say, OK, I'll draw you back. I still think the intimacy, I just go back to the intimacy. I can ask him for anything. I can even ask him for an answer. Okay, you want that? Here are the consequences.

Because I want you to learn to depend upon me. I just think the intimacy part, if you can ask and do anything, it's just on your part to have that peace that surpasses all. I think you'd probably agree though that intimacy, sometimes, as the intimacy grows, the questions you ask him change. Absolutely, I think that's right. It's like I don't ask Donna to love me. She already does. And I'm comfortable with that, you know, and I know that. Going along Courtney's same lines, I mean, there's an unbelief there.

I mean, yeah, you know God loves you, but it's so overwhelming that sometimes when you cast your burdens on Him, you don't expect an answer back. And it's surprising when, oh, oh, He did answer my prayers. And then you're pointing how much our Heavenly Father does love us.

Yeah. JB Stoney has a little line that Miles quotes a lot. Once you become aware of the intensity with which Christ is interested in you, it frees you up to be interested in Him. Isn't that a cool thing? Because otherwise you're always worrying about me, but once you understand the intensity with which Christ and all three persons of Godhead are myopically focused on your well-being, it does free you up to be interested in them, which is really a cool thing.

Yeah, I do. You don't worry about this stuff down here. Yeah, you stop. It doesn't matter as much. You understand that that love doesn't change. So whatever circumstance you're in, you know he still loves you. And you don't worry about it. You don't sweat the earthly details. Yeah.

It's totally inconsistent with us to coax God to be gracious. That's his nature. Yeah, that's what he is. I think that sometimes We ask God for things and we either get a no answer just by the silence or we get a wait answer. Something that takes place over a long period of time. For instance, I have a friend who is living in a very degrading, I think, situation at home and it's not a situation that can be changed or she can leave. At least we don't know that it can be changed. So asking the Lord. to change it is really where she's at.

But she's growing through that to how I get to the peace. And I think sometimes peace is something that grows. The capacity to be at peace grows. When the pressure is not relieved, we get a little bit of peace the first time, the second time. Instead of getting up off our knees once and we're at peace with the situation forever. I haven't seen that happen to her or to me.

Yeah, I think if you look around at new believers and young believers and immature believers, they'll pray about something and God fixes it. But when you start to grow a little bit, what will happen is you'll pray that circumstances get changed. They don't, but you do in the middle of them.

And that is a much greater effort on God's part than it is just to fix it. So He can fix any circumstance right now. So it comes down to that you can pray for anything or tell God, you know, how it's going to be cool for him to fix it or whatever, but it comes down to when Jesus prayed, when he said, I will be done, that's the attitude.

There you go. If you have that attitude, it's pretty good. And you know what's interesting about that attitude? That is the precise attitude that comes with the life we have. Because it is the life of Christ. And that's the attitude. And you don't have to... You don't study it and conjure it up. It is the attitude of the Son of God. That's right. That's right.

Which is kind of cool, which takes the illness off of you. You know, what would Jesus do? So, Chafer says, it's highly inconsistent to plead with God to be gracious or to coax Him to be good. If you understand grace, you understand what that means. Alright, in 1 John 1 to 2-2 there are four vital elements that enter into divine forgiving and cleansing which constitute the restoration of the sinning saint.

So go to 1 John and we'll start with 1 John 1.9 says that if I confess my sins, God is faithful and just to forgive me my sins. The first vital element is that I confess. That's the only condition on my side. To start with, to this, what? What's promised on his side? The second half of 9?

Absolute forgiveness and cleansing. So why would a believer who's positioned in Christ need to be cleansed? Doesn't it seem inconsistent with you that Courtney's driving down the boulevard, he's sinning, the spirit convicts him, he confesses his sin, God is faithful and just to forgive him his sin and cleanse him from all unrighteousness. And all he had to do was confess. Why did he need to be cleansed from all unrighteousness? to return them to fellowship. There cannot be any unrighteousness in fellowship.

With Courtney's memory, he didn't remember all the sins. So the work of the cross is so complete that once you even engage in the confession part, the restoration and the cleansing is done. You can't say, wait a minute God, don't cleanse me now, I've got to get down to seven. No. I don't know if you're like me, I get through half the first one and I'm restored and I'm done. I'm not going out of that fellowship again just so I can insist that he'd listen to all my sins. How gracious is that? Number three, the Christian while sinning has been safe as to divine condemnation.

Why? He has an advocate. Yeah, because we have an advocate. Now what's an advocate? Somebody who stands up and reads your case. Okay, let's set it up. We sin. Pick on Courtney some more. He sins. When he sins in the spiritual realm of things, the first thing that happens is that his sin nature and Satan condemn him. He needs to go to hell.

And the Lord Jesus is our advocate, or we would use the word attorney, but I don't like the attorney word because this isn't an argument that he's got to persuade God about. As an advocate, he always has the solution to my sinning, which is what? He paid for it. It's a paid up account. So, not that knowing that fact would caused me to be really liberal and sin a bunch because I knew I couldn't out-sin the grace of God. But I do have an advocate who is always speaking for me about my sins before God. Every time. And God does not wait for me to do the talking. He looks to Christ, not me. I'm confessing. I'm not arguing.

Do you understand the difference? When you have an advocate, and the advocate is who the Lord Jesus is, there is the Lord Jesus Christ, the righteous one. You okay with that? And the last one is divine forgiveness and cleansing is an exercise towards the believer in unchallenged faithfulness and justice because Christ is what?

This is that 25 cent Christian word, propitiation. Everybody understand what that word means? It's a great word. Who doesn't know what propitiation means? The simple translation of that word is satisfied. God is satisfied about my sins because of what Christ did. He's the propitiation or the satisfaction of my sins. I don't care what they are. He satisfied God's righteousness and justice about my sins.

So, the last question I ask in there is, how does Schaeffer define grace in his conclusion? I'm not the second to last. I thought he did a fairly good job, although it was kind of wordy. I'll read one and then maybe you can pick up on it. It may be concluded that the word grace as used in the Bible in relation to divine salvation represents the uncompromised, unrestricted, un-recompensed, everybody know what that word means?

It means no payback. Loving favor of God towards sinners. It is an unearned blessing. It is a gratuity. God is absolutely Untrammeled. Anybody know what that word means? Untrammeled. And unshackled in expressing his infinite love by his infinite grace. What's untrammeled mean? God is free. He's unrestricted in presenting his grace. Through the death of his Lamb, the Lord Jesus is the Lamb of God, not the Lamb of Mike. Right? He's the Lamb of God, by whom every limitation which human sin could impose has been dispelled. See that?

Two, through the provision which offers salvation as a gift, by which human obligation has forever been dismissed. Any human obligation in salvation? In terms of merit, you do have an obligation, what is it? That you believe. What's the great thing about believing? It's the one thing you can do that you can't take any credit for. Through the divine decree by which human merit has been forever deposed, now if you come from the religion I did, or you come from any sort of covenant-based, messianic-based, law-based religion, there's always something in there for you to do, right? Give me an example.

How about I need to believe and repent? Do I need to repent? Huh? Do I? You're ready to change your mind when you believe. Yeah, see that's built in with the salvation. My mind does get changed. The easy one is, do I need to believe and make Jesus the Lord of my life? Do I need to receive Jesus into my heart? Do I need to go forward, raise my hand, join a church? I don't need to do any of those things.

Anything that I'm required to do beyond faith makes salvation a works program. Confess before men. Who's it before? Who am I confessing before men? What am I confessing before men? Is it before or after I'm saved? After I'm saved. There's a lot of things, logical imperatives, that I do as a believer, confessing my salvation before men, but it's not a requirement for my salvation.

Grace is the limitless, unrestrained love of God for the lost, acting in full compliance with the exact and unchangeable demands of His own righteousness through the sacrificial death of Christ. Grace is more than love. How is that possible? God so loved the world. How can grace be more than love? How can grace be more than love?

It dismisses things that have condemned us. Yeah, grace is what takes care of the issues between you and God. He never stopped loving us, but he couldn't effectuate salvation to us until his satisfaction was completed. He doesn't love us more now than he did before the cross, he still loves us, but he wouldn't save us until the work of the cross was done, and then he gives it to us based on grace, completed work is done. I hope that's really clear. Doesn't love have to have an object? Grace is way beyond that. Yeah, it is.

God so loved the world. And because he loved the world, what did he do? He gave his son. That whosoever believed on him should not perish. Right? Where's the grace in there? The loving or the giving of his son? It's the fact that he loved us and he gave us his son, which was not a gracious act on his part, but when he extends the work of his son to us, it is gracious. To satisfy his love.

Could you backtrack a little bit and say that? Look at it from the reverse. You can love someone or something, but it doesn't necessarily change anything or take care of anything. It just means that you love them, but it's not actively doing something. But the grace is a further power beyond love. Let's maybe look at grace. Love is not an operating system that we live in, but grace is. Understand what I mean by that?

We live, you know, Kortney's got his Dell open and his computer's functioning on a Windows-based system, right? It's not functioning on a Mac-based system, it's functioning on a Windows-based system. The Old Testament saints functioned on a law-based system. We function on a grace-based system. Grace is a system, it's not a commodity.

Do you understand what I mean by that? It is the environment we live in. It is the operating principle in which our life is lived. Grace is always coming at us from God, non-stop, all the time, because of what Christ did. Right? He's always loved us, but we haven't lived in an operating system of love. We do now, because it's part of the grace. It's like devils advocate, God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son. So if he hadn't been a God of love, then the grace environment wouldn't exist. That's true. That's true. And if you sit down and you think about how you would come up with a plan to take care of the sins of the world, you wouldn't have done it the way God did.

You wouldn't put a few more requirements on men than he does. Whatever requirement that he has, has been fulfilled by his son. So that the only thing left for you to do is believe. And that doesn't change once you become a believer. It's still the same principle.

When we talked a few minutes ago about thinking that we need to coax God into blessing us more now than, say, 15 minutes ago is such a thought that's foreign to the operation of grace. Do you see that? The operation of grace is God is doing everything, and our job is just to receive. We are such doers, you know, we haven't got time to be receiving. But that's what he wants us to do, is just to receive from him. All right, last question. Having examined into the meaning of the word grace, what is the threefold divine ministry and undertaking of grace that should be considered? The very last part of that paper, I think it's the very last paragraph.

The first one is that God saves sinners by grace. By grace you are saved. God keeps, through grace, those who are saved. That's pretty cool. I like that one a lot. Courtney does too, you know, she's driving all the time, singing all the time. God teaches in grace those who are saved and kept how they should live and how they may live to his eternal glory. Can anybody tell me a verse in the Bible that says exactly that? How do you learn about grace? Titus. Titus two eleven. Two verses here.

For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. Kind of cool, huh? The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. And here's what it does. It's teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and godly in this present age. looking for the blessed hope and the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ who gave himself for us. But verse 12 is a very interesting verse. Grace is a thing that teaches us about denying ungodliness and worldly lusts.

How does it do that? How would grace be the tool? Is that the first bell? How would grace be the tool or the means that would teach us to deny ungodliness and worldly lust. Somebody else's version probably doesn't use the word lust, does it? How does it teach us, though? How does it teach us to deny ungodliness?

What is ungodliness, by the way? It's a lot more than Courtney driving down the boulevard. What is ungodliness? Unbelief. It's anything that isn't of God. Anything that isn't of God. So it teaches us to deny anything that's ungodly. Now how do you learn the difference? How do you learn the difference between what's godly and what isn't?

By what? By the ministry of the Spirit. And what is His ministry? What's He here to do? Reveal Christ to the believer. That ministry goes on all the time in grace and as you behold the glory of the Lord Jesus and you get to know Him intimately, you can distinguish between Him and things that are not of Him.

That's what ungodliness is. And the next one is worldly lusts or worldly desires. How does the grace of God keep you away from or keep you from being sucked into worldly desires? I kind of think when you realize, when you sort of understand what grace is, how much God loves you, it's just naturally you want to do His will rather than all the junk. Everybody hear that? The thing that grace does is make the things of God valuable to you.

And they replace the things of the world that used to be valuable to you. It isn't that somebody said, you can't go to the Broncos. The Spirit of God came along and made some issue with something he's got you involved in on a Sunday afternoon that's more valuable to you than the Broncos. Now I know that's tough for some of you to realize that grace is that powerful, but it is. Whatever happens to be your thing, gardening, I don't know, whatever it is, the grace of God, if it is a worldly lust, the grace of God will supplant That strong desire with him doesn't mean you stop gardening, necessarily. Doesn't mean you don't go to the Broncos anymore, necessarily.

But you can take it or leave it, or you probably couldn't leave it before. lapsing in the water make all that happen. It's totally grace. It's grace that makes it happen, yeah. Because it makes your heart right. It makes you dependent on the Spirit of God.

I mean, I gave you the examples. Let's say you have a besetting sin, something in your life you can't overcome. You know, you just can't do it. And every time you're faced with it, boy, you just go right over the bridge, and you are really trying hard, you know?

And here comes the grace of God. And the grace of God teaches you to deny ungodliness, for you know that it is, and worldly lusts, and then that we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present age. And I have to tell you, if you've ever been faced And I don't pick a sin, I don't care what it is. A sin was a real issue with you. And the grace of God shows up. The grace of God will, I was going to use the word rescue, but rescue isn't a good word. The grace of God will lift you above that circumstance. So that you will live righteously and soberly. That you will not be a slave to sin.

Romans 6.14. You're not under law but under grace. Why? sin won't have dominion over you because you are under grace. And it's interesting what grace does, is that it comes and it gets a hold of your heart and you find that intimacy with Christ is a more powerful draw on your heart than whatever the sin was.

So you can walk away from it and leave it behind. Kind of cool, huh? This kind of makes that statement you say every once in a while, greatest motivating factor. And when you realize that this is saying that it's not my self, my self-determination and I'm going to do it or I'm not going to do it. Grace that is the same grace of salvation that is teaching. It's pretty powerful. It really is. It really is.

You can live free from sin because of grace. Father, how we thank you for your grace and how we thank you for your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. We try never to ask you for something that you've already done, but we realize that we are to grow in the knowledge and grace of your dear Son, so we ask for that. We thank you and we pray in your Son's name. Amen.