Introduction:
A. Did you hear the story about the Sunday School teacher who wanted to teach her class about being saved by grace?
1. She asked the class, “If I sold my house and my car and gave all my money to the church, would I get into Heaven?”
2. “NO!,” the children all answered.
3. Again she asked, “If I cleaned the church every day, mowed the yard, and kept everything neat and tidy, would I get into Heaven?”
4. And again, the answer was “NO!”
5. “Well,” she continued, “then how can I get to Heaven?”
6. One of the children spoke up, “To get into Heaven, first you gotta be dead!”
B. Christian acting groups have done this skit for years. We did it back when I was in the acting group Ambassadors at N.C.J.C.
1. A man dies and goes to heaven.
2. Of course, St. Peter meets him at the pearly gates.
3. Peter says, “Here’s how it works. You need 100 points to make it into heaven. You tell me all the good things you’ve done, and I give you a certain number of points for each item, depending on how good it was. When you reach 100 points, you get in.”
4. “Okay,” the man says, “I was married to the same woman for 50 years and never cheated on her, even in my heart.”
5. “That’s wonderful,” says St. Peter, “that’s worth three points!”
6. “Wow, just three points?” he says. “Well, I attended church all my life and supported its ministry with my tithe and talents.”
7. “Terrific!” says Peter, “that’s certainly worth a point.”
8. “Only one point?” the man begins to sweat, “How about this: I started a soup kitchen in my city and worked in a shelter for homeless veterans.”
9. “Fantastic, that’s good for two more points,” Peter says, “You are up to 6 points. You only need 94 other points.”
10. Flabbergasted, the man cries out, “At this rate the only way I get into heaven is by the grace of God!”
11. Peter says, “That’s all the points you need. Come on in!”
C. Do you know what is one of the most spiritually dangerous ideas? It is the notion that we can save ourselves.
1. That we can somehow be good enough or do enough good to merit our salvation.
2. A person who thinks that way doesn’t think they need God’s grace nor anyone else’s help, they can do it on their own.
3. Where in the world would a person get that idea?
4. It believe it is one of Satan’s earliest and greatest deceptions.
5. Human kind has been buying it “hook line and sinker” ever since.
6. We find this philosophy in numerous self-help books, and most rags to riches biographies.
7. It flourishes in academia.
8. It feeds our pride, fuels self-centeredness, and pleases our flesh.
9. In many ways it is a religion of its own called HUMANISM.
D. In some respects the ideas of humanism sound so good and right. Humanism says:
1. “You can make anything of yourself, if you believe in yourself.”
2. “You can make it on your own – you don’t need anybody or anything.”
3. “The sky is the limit. Nothing is out of reach for you. So press on and climb high.”
4. “Just reach down real deep and pull up hard on your bootstraps.”
5. But what sounds so right and good is, in fact, heresy - and perhaps it is the most dangerous one on the earth.
6. Why is it so dangerous? Because it takes God completely out of the picture. It makes a person their own god.
E. Unfortunately, these humanistic ideas don’t just stay out there in the world.
1. We are very prone to carry them into the church, and they effect our relationship with God and with others.
2. You might hear a person say that their favorite verse of Scripture is “God helps those who help themselves.”
3. Where is that found in the Bible? Actually, it isn’t in the Bible. Rather, it comes from Ben Franklin’s “Poor Richards’ Almanac”.
4. The truth is, God helps the helpless, the undeserving, and those who don’t measure up.
5. If we are not very careful, we begin to emphasize and exalt what we do for God, instead of what God has done for us.
6. That is the heresy of self-sufficiency and the pursuit of salvation by works.
F. A first important step in approaching God is admitting our need for his grace.
1. Instead of striving for a manmade ticket to heaven based on high achievement and hard work, for which we get all the credit, and in fact is an impossibility, I suggest we openly declare our own spiritual bankruptcy and accept God’s free gift of grace.
2. My main point today is that we are saved by grace, and that God’s offer of grace is a gift.
3. Let’s spend a few moments looking at an example, and then at two attempts of the apostle Paul to give an explanation to us about God’s gift of grace.
I. An Example
A. Turn with me to Romans chapter 4.
1. One of the great men of the Old Testament was Abraham.
2. He had made quite a name for himself and had become wealthy.
3. But when it came to his being righteous before God, he had nothing in himself that earned God’s acceptance.
4. All this is clearly stated in Romans 4, let’s start reading at verse 1, “What shall we say that Abraham, our forefather, discovered in this matter? If, in fact, Abraham was justified by works, he had something to boast about - but not before God. What does the Scripture say? ‘Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.’ Now when a man works, his wages are not credited to him as a gift, but as an obligation. However, to the man who does not work but trusts in God who justifies the wicked, his faith is credited as righteousness” (Ro 4:1-5).
B. Most people that I know look forward to payday. You do too, right?
1. For a week, or perhaps a two-week period, you give your time and effort on the job.
2. When payday arrives, you receive a hard-earned, well-deserved paycheck.
3. Now when you receive that paycheck do you think or say to your boss, “Thank you for this wonderful, undeserved gift?”
4. I doubt it. Your boss would likely faint, or wonder why you think you don’t deserve the paycheck. Then you would be in trouble.
5. Your paycheck is not intended to be a gift. You’ve earned it, you deserve it. Cash it , spend it, save it. After all, you had it coming.
6. But in God’s salvation economy, it is altogether different.
7. There is no wage - relationship with God. Spiritually speaking, you and I haven’t earned anything but death. (Rom. 6:23, “The wages of sin is death…”)
8. Like it or not, we are absolutely bankrupt, without eternal hope, and without spiritual merit.
9. But all of us who hope to be eternally justified must come to God the same way; on the basis of His grace; it is a gift. And that gift comes to us absolutely free.
10. Any other view of salvation is false, plain and simple.
II. An Explanation
A. Look with me at the next chapter in Romans, chapter 5.
1. In this chapter Paul explains how the gift of grace was made possible through Jesus.
2. Let’s start with verse 1, “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.”
a. Notice that we have been justified by faith, not by works, and have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.
b. Where else would you rather stand? Do you want to stand on your own merit and works?
c. I want to stand in grace!
3. Drop down to verse 12, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned - for before the law was given, sin was in the world.”
4. Drop down to verse 15, “But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man’s sin: The judgment followed the one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ” (Ro 5:12, 15-17).
5. Did you notice how many times the words “gift” and “grace” appeared in that passage?
6. God’s order of things is not hard to understand:
a. Sin came into the world because of the sin of Adam, and along with sin came death.
b. Because sin is in the world all men invariably become sinners when they sin.
c. Righteousness and salvation became a possibility because of the grace of God in Jesus Christ, his Son, the perfect sacrifice.
d. Jesus Christ paid the absolute, final payment for sin when he died in our place on the Cross.
e. As a result, God offers the free gift of salvation to all who believe in his Son.
B. Let’s look at another time Paul tried to explain this wonderful truth. This time let’s turn to Ephesians chapter 2.
1. Here Paul gives the bad news of our condition, like a doctor telling us we have a terminal disease, but then he gives the good news that can cure us.
2. “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions - it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith - and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph. 2:1-10).
3. Eugene Peterson does a marvelous job of putting this passage in his own words. He writes, “It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah.
Now God has us where he wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus. Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play a major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing! No, we neither make nor save ourselves. God does both the making and saving. He creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing.”
4. Do you get the message - We are saved by grace.
5. It is the idea of God, the creation of God, and the gift of God.
C. One day, a professor brought doughnuts to class in order to illustrate grace.
1. He asked the first person on the first row if he’d like a donut. “Sure,” said the student.
2. So the professor called a big, tough guy in the class named Steve to come up to the front.
3. The professor said, “Steve, will you do 10 pushups for me, so this classmate can have a donut?”
4. Steve smiled and dropped and did 10 pushups.
5. The teacher did the same thing with the next student – “Do you want a doughnut?...”
6. After about the 4th time of this, Steve was starting to get tired and slow down as he did the push ups.
7. The next student, a girl, decided to have pity. “No, I don’t want a donut.” She said, thinking it would allow Steve a reprieve from the pushups.
8. To everyone’s surprise, the professor said, “Steve, will you do 10 pushups so that she can have a donut she doesn’t want?”
9. By this time, Steve seemed as if he was on a mission. He could have quit, but as if he understood what was happening, his arms shook but he did 10 more.
10. This continued until finally Steve collapsed, exhausted after the final person in the class.
11. The professor turned to the class, and said, “And so Jesus Christ cried ‘It is finished’, and slumped to die, having freely paid the price for everyone’s salvation – whether the gift it is accepted or not.” (Source: SermonCentral “God’s Grace: Absolutely Free!” by Darrell Stetler, II)
Conclusion:
A. One of my greatest anticipations is that some day I am going to be in heaven.
1. In heaven there will be no spiritual-sounding testimonies that call attention to somebody’s supercolossal achievements. No one will be talking about how they earned their ticket to heaven.
2. Rather, everybody will have written across his or her life the word “GRACE.”
3. Everything will be about grace: “How did you get up here?” “Grace.” “What made it possible?” “Grace.” “Why didn’t you quit?” “Grace.”
4. There is one, and only one, password for entering heaven: GRACE!
5. Salvation is a gift of grace. It is a free gift; it cannot be earned or purchased.
6. Before we ever discuss what God wants us to do for him, we must realize and accept what He has done for us.
7. But I like what E. Stanley Jones once said - “Grace is free, but once you take it you are bound forever to the Giver.”
B. Today as we leave this place, I hope we will leave with three simple transforming truths deeply embedded in our hearts.
1. The first truth is that “We are loved by God” – with a love that never ends.
2. The second truth is that “We are forgiven by God” – God forgives and forgets, He makes us white as snow.
3. And the third truth is that “We are Saved by Grace” – the Marvelous Grace of God.
4. Embracing those three truths will fill up our hearts with joy and peace and faith.
5. Those three truths declare our extreme value and set us free from the burdens of guilt and fear.
6. There is no way to truly understand and accept God’s love, forgiveness and grace without it causing us to be willingly bound to God.
7. Because we have been saved by grace, we humbly and thankfully offer our very lives to God in love and service.
8. Next week, Lord willing, we will try to answer the question: “If we are saved by grace, then why isn’t everyone saved?”
C. Where do you stand today in relation to the gift of God’s grace?
1. Have you appreciated it and accepted it? Or are you still resisting it?
2. Are you allowing God’s grace to compel you to a life of deeper spirituality, and greater service?
3. God’s grace should have that kind of effect!
Prayer
