Grace - Simple Gratitude

I don't know how far we got last week, but we have been going through William Newell's discussion in the middle of his commentary on Romans. Those of you who have a copy of that commentary, it's after chapter six. And it's titled, A Few Words About Grace. And I think there's probably, let's see, There's about 26 statements he makes about grace. And they really, really are profound. And we went through some of them last week. I'm going to quickly go down, go through a couple, and then we'll stop and talk about some.

The first group is called The Nature of Grace. And he says, grace is God acting freely according to his own nature as love with no promises or obligations to fulfill and acting, of course, righteously in view of the cross. That's a great definition. And so because of that, he says, grace, therefore, is uncaused in the recipient Its cause lies totally and wholly in the giver, in God. I think that's a hard lesson for us to learn. That's a really hard lesson. That grace is God's uncaused blessing to us. You couldn't get him. We're gonna find out the minute you try to increase it, turn up the faucet of grace, it goes away.

Grace is also sovereign, not having debts to pay or fulfilled conditions on man's part to wait for. It can act towards whom and how it pleases. It can and does often place the worst of deservers in the highest favors. So you can get in line behind me as one of those worst deservers. So the first three statements put man in a position where he's helpless to do anything about God's grace.

You can't trigger it. The sin nature that controls us is so self-centered that if there's any environment that we're in, that we can't somehow sneak some responsibility for, we are not comfortable there. Well, grace is the place. We are not comfortable with grace at the beginning because we didn't have anything to do with it. The cause is a settled position. That's right. So grace can act where there's either deserving or desert or ability. Grace does not help. It's absolute. It does all. Pretty cool, huh? There being no cause in the creature why grace should be shown, the creature must be brought off from trying to give cause to God for His grace.

Okay, that's 20 years, or 30. Isn't it that if you have a malady in your life, the first thing you do is you think, Lord, what can I do to stop this? Or what can I do to increase your favor towards me? Or say you're sick, or you're in a financial situation, or don't have a job, or I don't care what it is. You always go at it from, what can I do? And God says, I don't need I in my grace.

I'm going to, you know, you just need to receive it. That's it. Sometimes it comes at us not like we expected. But the discovery of the creature, that he is truly the object of divine grace. And here's where it gets really interesting. works the utmost humility, with the receiver of grace is brought to know his own absolute unworthiness and his complete inability to attain worthiness, that he finds himself blessed on another principle outside of himself." Wow. That's amazing. It is amazing.

You know, I have a paper that I included in this, but I don't have time to go through it. But the nature of the paper is God's character. What is God's character? God's heart and His eternal purpose. Not a great title for a paper. You know what God's heart and eternal purpose is?

Number one. You know what it is? Union. Huh? Union? No. God is a blesser. That's the number one thing He is. He blesses. Why did he create man? So he could have an object that he could bless. Why does he do everything he does? So he has situations where he can bless. That's what he loves to do. So when you look at it from that perspective, you realize that whatever the circumstances are in your life, living under this umbrella of grace that God, through all those circumstances, has one goal in mind, and that's to bless you with Himself. How cool is that?

This last one in the first part is, therefore, the flesh has no place in the plan of grace. We've learned that from studying Romans 6. that the whole reason to be co-crucified with Christ is so that the flesh has no place. This is the great reason why grace is hated by the proud, natural mind of man. Well, for this very reason, the true believer rejoices, for he knows that in him that is in his flesh is no good thing, and yet he finds God glad to bless him just as he is.

When you're a lost person, a sinner, and the gospel message comes to you, how does it come to you? If it comes to you graciously, there's a two-fold reaction. One is, oh boy, this doesn't fit. But two, it's so attractive, maybe there's something to it. See that? So that's the nature of grace. Now the next part is called the place of man under grace.

He has been accepted in Christ who is his standing. And it's awful to think that I have to go stand before God and I have nothing in myself that allows me to be there, that my entire standing is in somebody else. Number two, I'm not on probation. As to his life past, it does not exist before God. He died at the cross and Christ is his life. So everything you were before you were saved isn't there anymore before God. He never looks at you that way. He looks at us as being in Christ only. I think that's a very big key for a lot of people. I think a lot of people are dragged down by their past.

And when you explain to them... I mean, they had a rough life. They did whatever. And they're always kind of thinking about that. I think this is critical. I just think of ministries and stuff to different people. I think this is where all your past is gone. When I was down at Camp Elam, and we were doing the adventure-bound thing, and I was with a bunch of all the kids who were falling off their bikes on the long ride, and I was hauling them and getting time with them. And this one kid had a real hard pass, and we were talking about it. And all I kept thinking and eventually told him in one of our breaks was, you know, that's all gone. It's all gone.

When you accept Christ, all of your past is gone. And all of your future sin or future whatever is paid for. All you see, all God sees you is in Christ. all that past is gone. That's so freeing to some people who've had a rough life, well, all of us, but some who've had just a real rough life, and they think of all the bad things they've done and all this, and God, and when you really let them know that, that it's gone. What drags them under is knowing that there's consequences. Well, there are consequences, but you know who took them all?

Yeah. Right. They haven't found that out yet. Well, you know, some people have a rough life. Some people just are really good at sinning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, you ever think about that? When you were five years old, your parents didn't say, well, it's time for you to go to sinning academy. No, you knew how to sin. It was built in. And they built, and they built. You know, even as a young person, you would think about, oh boy, I better be quiet about that. I can't think about that, or I can't tell anybody about that, or whatever it is.

And the older you get, the bigger the sins get, and the more callous you get. And then comes the grace of God, and you get saved. But then from there for a while, you're not really sure that it's all gone. And the Lord takes it upon himself to persuade you that on the cross, the cross of my son, your history is over. Well, that takes a long time.

Well, and you know, I know in my life, I got saved at 35, so I've been saved 45 years or so. And still, sitting at my desk doing something, and here comes the thought in my mind, do you remember when you did? Yeah. Yeah, I wish I didn't remember that.

But the assaults never stop. Well, and I was, you know, we're fighting an inner the beast of our flesh, which is always reminding us. Always. Do you remember that? You need to take care of that. When those things hit you, that's the flesh going after you. That's exactly right. When you get to a point, you start realizing that that's your flesh. It's not who I am in Christ, it's not who God sees me, but it's always the flesh that's going to bring that up.

And you know what else, Courtney, is about that? It's that if you look at the Temptation of Eve, it's always the same program. That God somehow didn't tell you the whole truth, or he didn't really tell you that you wouldn't be thinking about this if God really meant that your past is gone. You need to doubt God. That's really what the temptation is. Well, in flesh one's relevancy. Absolutely. You know, the only way he has relevancy is if he keeps reminding you that, and that you have to do something. Okay, good. The next one fits this.

Grace once bestowed is not withdrawn, for God knew all the human exigencies beforehand. His action was independent of them and not dependent upon them. The failure of devotion does not cause the withdrawal of bestowed grace as it would under law. For example, in 1 Corinthians 5, 1-5, and also those in 1 Corinthians 11, 30-32, who did not judge themselves and so were judged by the Lord, that they might not be condemned with the world.

I want to attack that a little bit. There's a sense within Christianity today that you're saved by grace, but you've got to get devoted. You've got to get committed. You have to walk the walk. You have to obey. And there's going to come a judgment seat at the Bema where your failures are all going to be exposed. And that you're going to get rewarded for being the receiver of grace. And so you start to worry about, am I doing enough? What's the subtlety of that?

You're not. You moved right out from under the umbrella of grace. Right out from under it. Raise your hand if you went this week without sinning. Well, God's going to point his finger at you when you get to the beam of judgment. No, he's not. You know why? It all went away in the cross. All of it. Every single shortcoming. And what's interesting is that God has found ways through that cross and through the resurrected life to bless us even though we don't deserve it.

That's amazing. That's amazing. So if you read The Hungry Heart this morning, it said exactly that. Okay, now this third part, how am I doing time-wise? Oh, good. This is my favorite part of it, the proper attitude of a man under grace. So here's where you can get convicted. To believe and to consent to be loved while unworthy is a great secret.

You know, have you ever thought about that? You have to consent to let somebody love you. You know that? I've done enough marriage counseling that I see sometimes in one or the other party, the party really loves party two, but party two has not let them love them yet. Isn't that interesting? But that's really, you know, why? Because, well, maybe they don't trust them, maybe this, I'm willing to marry you, but do you really love me?

And what's really happened is that they build a little bit of a stair step of, you can show me you love me by A, B, C, D, and then maybe I'll accept your love. Now, here's God's grace and his love towards us. Am I willing, although I'm unworthy, to be loved by God?

Will I let him do that? I think that's a huge question. Well, God loves me. Will I let him do it? Am I okay with it? Can I just consent to believe him and trust him, no matter what? I think it's a big question. To refuse to make resolutions and vows, for that's to trust in the flesh. I'm going to get better. I'm going to try harder. How is your New Year's resolution going? What New Year's resolution? I vowed I wasn't going to make a New Year's resolution.

To expect to be blessed, though realizing more and more your lack of worth. Now, under that heading comes the discipline. You know, every circumstance in a believer's life, especially the trials and suffering, is a blessing. Is a blessing. Because God is maneuvering circumstances so he can bless you more. He can love you more and you'll be more receptive. To be certain or to testify of God's goodness at all times, all times. That comes under the heading of thank you, Lord. To be certain of God's future favor, yet to be ever more tender in conscience towards him. As you grow in the knowledge and grace of the Lord Jesus, your conscience becomes very tender towards the Lord Jesus and it stops being so much about sin and becomes, oh boy, I don't ever want to do anything, sin or otherwise, that would offend Him. Because look, He loves me. He gave His life for me. I don't want to upset Him in any manner. But that's a growing thing, to rely on God's chastening hand as a mark of his kindness. That's huge.

Because we all, I mean you think about it, we've been saved by grace, we're spiritually alive in Christ, we have a soul that's being conformed to the image of Christ, but we've got a dead body, right? Infected with a sin nature. You think that's a problem? It's a huge problem. And so God will even use that dead body with the sin nature to chasten us, to child train us, to use it so that our faith will be increased and we'll walk in spite of it. That's believing Romans 6. 6 and 7. and on into Colossians and Corinthians. That's what it's all about.

A man under grace of like Paul has no burdens regarding himself but many about others. I think that's a telltale statement that one of those ones where you begin to see in your life over the years that you do have burdens about others that you never had before because you were too self-centered to have them. Your burdens about others was how they affected you. Now it's changed.

And the best example I've seen, public example, is the cooperative effort that we all have contributed to Tom Mallinson. Everybody thought about him and not themselves. What can we do to bring Tom out of a bad situation back into our fellowship so we can love him? For Tom's sake, not for, you know. That's what that's all about, you know. And it took a whole year to do it. And lots of people had little roles to play in it, you know. And that's not over. As long as Tom's alive, he's one of us.

Things that gracious souls discover to hope to be better is to fail to see yourself in Christ only. So why do you think a place like Holly Hills teaches so much on what it means to be in Christ and how you got there? Because if you don't see that, your fallback position is to hope to be better. See that?

The ghost of that song I've quoted many times. On my worst day, I'm a child of God. On my best day, I'm a child of God. It doesn't matter. Is that a song? I got a little teared up. That's the whole premise. It doesn't matter about you. You're in Christ. That's right. And this is the one that I've always loved.

To be disappointed in yourself is to have believed in yourself. Oh no, I should have, wait a minute, who are you believing in? The Spirit of God or me? It was me, I'm disappointed. To be discouraged is unbelief as to God's purpose and plan for blessing you, of blessing for you. To be proud is to be blind, for we have nothing, we have no standing before God in ourself. Five, the lack of divine blessing therefore comes from unbelief and not from failure of devotion. That is such a subtle statement because within lots of contemporary theological systems, there is the subtlety of your devotion to God.

What are you doing? Are you living up to what it means to be a Christian? Are you, in some cases, obeying the law? Are you acting, functioning? What was J. Vernon McGee's statement? He said, if you got arrested for being a Christian, could they prove their case? So you, right away, think, well, oh, I better be. I better be.

So who are you relying on? Yourself. Yourself. So the subtlety of that is the lack of divine blessing, therefore, comes from unbelief and not from failure of devotion. It's your unbelief that's the problem. It's not your failure of devotion. Do you see that?

The belief is that God loves me. I live under grace. To be proud is to be blind. for we have no standing before God and ourselves already said that and the last one to preach devotion first and blessing second is to reverse God's order and preach law not grace the law made man's blessing depend on devotion listen to this grace confers undeserved unconditional blessing our devotion may follow, but it does not always do so in proper measure.

What you find is that by older believers, I mean believers who have been walking with the Lord for a long time and have been taught and are Bible-based, understand the quantity of their devotion is not the issue. That's not the issue. The issue is God blesses me no matter what. No matter what. And that alone, in my mind, is the one thing that triggers devotion. You know, the verse that says, we love him because he first loved us. If you don't know that he loves you, how can you love him back?

You can't. Okay, any questions? We're out of time. You know, Mike, I think it comes back, you know, after we taught grace before, it still comes down to, you know, of all the teaching and all that, the only response to grace is what? Thank you. Thank you. I mean, I think that sums it up, you know. Yeah, absolutely. That's the only thing you can do is say thank you. We can't do anything, we can't, you know, there's nothing in our part other than to say thank you, you know. And I go back to how ingrained we are. You take me out to lunch. Well, I've got to take you out to lunch. I've got to pay you back. Can I get the bill? I'll get the tip. Our flesh has always got to repay for something. So accepting grace is so against what the flesh is.

I just smile at it. Paul says, how many times set your mind on things above? These are the things above. They are. I was reading the other day about, well it was last Wednesday, we were talking about physical death as a doorway into eternity. Imagine where we're going. We're going into an environment where there's no sin nature, there's no flesh, And all of God's grace and blessing is full on, all the time, every second. And we're right there in the middle of it for eternity. How cool is that? Let's pray. Father, how thankful we are for your grace. And you, we're thankful that we can grow in the knowledge and grace of your dear son, the Lord Jesus. And we pray in his name. Amen.