Amazing Grace: Salvation Through God's Unearned Gift

Salvation is through God's unearned gift of grace.

The hand of the Lord was with those who shared the gospel.

Grace changes hearts and lives, altering lifestyles.

Salvation is a free gift from God, not earned through good deeds.

Thank you. Acts 11 further talks about the way this works. And the hand of the Lord was with them, talking about the guys who shared the gospel. And it says, a great number believed and turned to the Lord. Notice how grace is connected. When grace is released, people's lives are changed. Simple as that. When grace is released, people become Christians. Not in word, but in action. They're altered in their lifestyle. That's true. We call it sometimes used the word revival. But the point is God's grace changes hearts and lives and it alters them. Then it says the news of these things came to the ears of the church in Jerusalem and they sent out Barnabas to go and basically check it out. They wanted to see what was happening at Antioch. They heard things were happening, but they didn't have television like we did or satellites or email. So they sent a guy there to check it out. And he got there. And when he came, it says, he saw when he had seen the grace of God. Notice it's very clear. What grace of God did he see? He saw the people that turned to Jesus by a huge number and loved him. He got to the city and found all kinds of Christians loving Jesus. He saw the grace of God in action. See what that is? the grace of God in action is when you're different and people can come and see you're different. You're different than the others. There's something fanatical maybe. They might not understand it all, but they see you're changed for the better. You're a better man. You're a better woman. You're more patient toward others. Your life character is like Jesus. Things you're interested in are things that are different. It's seeable. See that? He saw it. He could see the grace of God by seeing the people's lives that were different. That's the activating power of salvation because it mixed with faith and it was real. Everybody with me still? Peter explained this grace connection in Acts 15. He said, but we believe that we are saved through the grace. And notice that it's saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus just as they are. They saw the change that happened in them in Antioch and they believed they were changed in the same power by the grace. Notice grace is always connected to true change of life style. Remember, you can convert somebody into thinking differently. Think of a cult. Now, they don't have the Holy Spirit in them, right? So yet many people join them. So what have they joined them with? Their mind. They've agreed in their mind with their thinking. But they're not connected by God's grace, so they're not life change. It's a mental change. They now think they're following the things of God and they agree with what they say and so forth, but it's not a change of grace or heart change, is it? It's still only a mind change, and there's a big difference. Grace gives us the power to believe in Jesus. Acts 18 says, He greatly helped those who had believed through grace. God's power causes people to believe. And the kind of believing is the kind that changes and alters your lifestyle. free gift from God. And I know sometimes it sounds like I'm preaching to the choir, but I have found in research now, most people that are asked that in America do not give the right answer anymore. So I'm not preaching to the choir necessarily. Make sure you understand this. Romans 4 basically says if you're a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay. We don't call your wages a gift. When you work, you get paid for it. That's wages. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it's something only God can do, and you trust him to do it for you, you could never do it for yourself, no matter how hard and long you work. Well, that trusting him to do it is what gets you right with God. It's a sheer gift, a sheer gift. If you didn't do anything to do it, just like the car. If I came to you and gave you the keys and said this is a gift, if you turn around and gave me a check for $20,000, I can't go around saying, hey, I gave them a car. I sold you the car. That's not a gift. That's an earnings. I made a transaction. That's not what we're talking about. You cannot do that with salvation. Your keys are free from Jesus. The price you could not afford because of simply the law of God. Grace and faith provide true salvation. Notice what it says in Romans 4. This is why the fulfillment of God's promise depends entirely on trusting God in His way and then simply embracing Him and what He does. God's promise arrives as a pure gift. That's the only way everyone can be sure to get it. Those who keep the religious traditions and those who have never heard of them won't have a hope because you can't do anything by tradition to get God. Right? Why not? Why can't you do that? Why can't you? Like if you go to, even if you go to, I know some Catholics will even tell you the way to get to heaven is you've got to go to Mass so much time, give so many of this, and there's a list of things they have to do and they're told that will get them into heaven. That's trying to do it by works or gaining salvation. That will never work. You can't burn enough candles. You can't say enough prayers. you can't give enough money to get your way into heaven. Right? That's impossible. That's not the way you get to heaven. Why not? Why won't those things get you to heaven? Romans 6.23 The wages of sin is eternal damnation and hell death. Now, the first time you give a sin, so whenever you first sinned back when you were six years old and lied to your parents or whatever, The moment you broke through and whenever that was in your life and you sinned, you earned eternal damnation to hell. Now, how could you work that off? How are you going to pay for death? The only way you pay for death is by dying. Think about it if you went to court. If you're a convicted murderer and could you go before the judge and say, Judge, I know I'm a murderer. You convicted me. Can I wash your car a hundred times? and you drop the charges? No. How about if I steam clean your house 100 times? No. No matter what you tried to do to pay off the judge would he let you No You would go to prison or even death in Florida for what you did You can pay for it by washing somebody car Well you can insult God and say, listen, I'll burn a hundred candles, say 300 this and that, and if you let me off on my death sentence, would he let you do it? No. The payment for it is eternal damnation. You've already earned eternal damnation. You can't do anything to pay it off except for die and go there. So you have no way to afford to pay. Is this making sense? You can't pay your way out of this. So then how and only way can you get out of it? Some of the things we talked about. Somebody has to pay for it. Since you can't because you'll go to hell to pay for it, who can pay for it? Jesus. Jesus came to this earth. He's the only person who never sinned. So he doesn't owe anything. He doesn't owe God anything because he never broke the law. He never sinned. Therefore, he's free. Therefore, he's the only one who could say, well, wait a minute, then I will trade my life for them because I never sinned and they did. I will give up my life. In other words, I will give the eternal death for them. I will give it. And God said, I accept your death, but instead of eternal, therefore I will raise you up higher than ever before. And instead of him having to go to hell, instead he was exalted because he surrendered and gave up his whole life for you and me. He paid the full charge against us. Completely. He's the only one who could pay it because you can't pay it. Does that make sense? Therefore, when people ask, can you earn your way to heaven? In fact, listen, look at number one. you cannot do something to earn salvation. Surveys today in America have proven that most people actually think that you can work a way to earn your way to heaven. And basically what they come down to explain that means is their good deeds outweigh their bad deeds. Now think of how stupid that even is. Think about the guy who I just talked about who got condemned for murder and was convicted and proven to be guilty. Can you imagine him going to the judge and saying, Judge, before I murdered, I always brushed my teeth. I never did anything wrong. So all those years, I'm 50 years old. So for 50 years, I did nothing wrong. Can I trade those 50 good years for my murder? What would he say? No, I don't care how good you were for 50 years. I'm talking about the murder. That's the only thing I'm focused on. And the only thing God focuses on is your sin. No matter, you can tell God all you want, how nice you were and you were a good boy scout. You You help people across the street who needed you help their pets. You can tell them about all the good things you help people with over your period of time. And God will say, I'm talking about the lie you did when you told that person this. I'm talking about the time you committed adultery. I'm talking about the time you committed lust. I don't care how many things you did before that. Here's where you broke the law. You're guilty. You're condemned. You're going to hell. What do you have to say for yourself? Well, Lord, after that, I was real nice for three weeks. I don't care if you were nice for three weeks. See, all that's stupid. You can't trade, balance, work with God and say, I've done 500 times more good things than bad things. Therefore, you can't judge me, Lord. You're condemned to death. You're condemned for the one sin you did if you only can admit you did one. And if you're a liar that bad, you better repent for lying because I know you did more than one sin. I've done more than that. And you know you have too. And so the sin costs you. You can't buy your way out of it. America has heard too many lies to think that they keep saying they can earn their way for eternal life and balance their good to outweigh their bad and they still get to go to heaven. People think by good work, salvation can be earned and that's a lie from hell. You will never earn your way to heaven. You've got to stop this and admit who you are. You know, when a guy gets to prison who's committed a murder, he's not called after that. He's always known for being a murderer. Right? A person who has committed sexual deviant stuff, no matter what happens, even if they've reformed, when they get out of their home, they're classed by the state as a sexual predator. No matter where they live, they're marked. Anytime something happens, they go to their house first to see if they were around, because it never leaves them. They're marked for that, and they can't make an excuse and say, listen, for 22 years after that, I never did anything. Why do you keep coming to me? They'll come to him for all his days. won't they? It doesn't matter what his good days were. The bad day that he had was what marked him for the rest of his life as a predator, a sexual, a murderer, whatever. And the same with you, your sin, no matter what it is, was the day that marked you and you're marked that way by God's judgment forever, except for forgiveness through Jesus. Does that make sense? You can make all excuses and say you're so much nicer and it doesn't matter. Your opinion is wrong. You know, when they go to prisons, that's what the prisoners tell you? I've seen it on TV. Interviews. I'm a good person. They sit there in jail, convicted of crimes, and they say, I'm basically a good person. And they're in there for rape and murder, and they're sitting there telling them, and they honestly believe they're a good person. They're not a good person. They're a rapist. They're liars and murderers and cheats and whatever. That's who they are. by law and by God's viewpoint. It doesn't matter what your viewpoint is. You can say you're a nice person. You'll never do that again. You're still a sinner before God. Justice is brought by God's laws. You will face eternal damnation unless you've begged Jesus to forgive you and accepted His death in your place. Period, right? Isn't that true? You understand that? You cannot weasel out of this. You can't earn it, trade it, or do anything else about it. You must come to this place in your life where you truly see who you are. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus the Lord. It's only a gift because you can't buy it or trade it to get it. It has to be free. It has to be a gift. And you have to respond or else you're in great danger to go to eternal judgment before God. and it will never change unless you've fallen before Him and accepted His forgiveness. Does that make sense in your minds? The connection between the power of God's grace for eternal salvation and personal weakness then is very important. You must see how weak you are. Now, we don't like to hear that. We try to do what God wants. We try to do things better. January is a famous month for what? What do they do in January Making promises What do they call them Resolutions Yeah I resolve that I won do this which lasts for three weeks And then they do it again Resolving is not going to make a difference in who you are because no matter how strong people are it overhangs over their life Talk to people who are alcoholics or on drugs. It's marked them. And they think they're free for 20 years, and one day they'll go buy a bar or something, and next thing you know, they're in there. And they thought they were free, and the next thing you know, it's grabbing at them to destroy their lives again. That stuff just doesn't go. your resolve isn't good enough. Only by a miracle of God's grace will you be free from that. Humans can't do these things. These things are powerful influences on mankind. And it's just not going to stop without miraculous activity from the holy God who has all the power that's necessary to absolutely change your life, right? And that's something you have to come to believe and experience. One thing is to have it in your head and shake your head. The other thing is to experience when you go home all day long and all week long and receive and experience that mighty surge of God's grace in your life. And when you see that, man, that's the reality. Now, listen here. Romans 6.23, remember we talked about the wages, but look at Isaiah 64.6. It talks about all good works are filthy rags to God. Now, think about that. When we talked about that, and the kind of idea is the same thing when you go to a judge and say, Judge, yeah, I murdered and raped your wife. Sure. But listen, here's a new basketball I want to give you. Can you forgive me and let me not be punished? I mean, it's personal to a judge when the guy that did the crime killed his wife. You think he's going to be enraged and want justice? You bet. Well, God is personally involved every time you sin and hurt other people because he loves every person on this planet, doesn't he? And when you do something in sin that's hurtful, and you understand that's what sin is. It's the opposite of love, right? You understand that? That's what the Ten Commandments talk about. All the commandments are how to love God and love your neighbor, right? We've talked about that a lot. When you follow the Ten Commandments, you're either showing how you love God or how you love your neighbor. And he defines what it is. If you love your neighbor, you don't steal from them. But if you don't love your neighbor, you will steal from them. Right? I mean, that's as simple as anything. And so when you come before God and say, God, here, I'm going to give you six trading cards. These baseball cards are really worth a lot. Will you forgive me? He'll say, no. Anything you do, even if you help a thousand people become Christians, you cannot use that to buy off God's judgment. Anything you do is so nasty. When they talk about filthy rags, the translation is like taking a dirty, pussy band-aid off of a sore on a person. That's what it's talking about. It's the most putrid revulsion to God to try to buy him off by doing something good and thinking that's going to change the fact that he's going to bring justice and judgment to your life. You cannot do anything good enough to make God let go. He will bring you to justice because if your sin is so evil, it's harmful to him and others. And he won't let it go until you've repented and then he drops it. Anything other than that, it's not dropped. And he will bring you to justice. And if you think people get out of paying their due, they will not. Believe me, if they've gotten through court and they've cheated their way through and lied their way through and paid off a judge or whatever, and you think they got away with something, they did not. They will face God, and God's judgment will be so harsh, you won't believe how harsh it will be. It will not be anything easy for them. So don't fear the fact that justice does come to mankind. Now, then the whole issue here is connecting to you. How do you really experience God's grace? Especially because you can't buy your way. Only by admitting your total weakness and your absolute inability to earn salvation will prepare your heart to be offered those free keys to that brand new car of God's power. Without honestly coming to a place to admit that you can't do anything to change God's mind will be only dirty rags and continue to anger God with what you're doing. The moment you finally get it, I'm stuck. My place is going to be eternal hell. I have no hope. I have no way to get around it. The only thing I've gotten for being a liar and a cheat or disobeying my parents or whatever is that I'm doomed and I'm going to face God with it and I'm going to suffer greatly for what I've done. What will happen? Well, if you admit it and finally say, I can't do anything about it, now you're in the perfect place. Finally, you can get help. Think about that. Have you ever think about it when you saw how they do rescues for people in the water, drowning? If a person keeps trying to save themselves, they get tired. If they try to grab onto the rescuer, they'll try to drown both of them when they're done. The only way a rescuer can help a drowning person is what? when they give up knowing they're in absolute trouble and there's nothing they can do to save themselves. The moment they do that, the rescuer can go in there, grab that person, and take them to safety. As long as they're continuing to struggle to try to save themselves, they don't do it, do they? It can't happen. You can't save yourself from sin. You can't save yourself for eternal life. You can't do anything. As long as you keep trying, you're only keeping yourself from the free grace of God. You must come to a place in your life where you absolutely admit, I am doomed. Nothing I'll do will make anything different. I am lost forever. God have mercy on my soul. That's the only place. The moment you get there, you're at the right place. You must be willing to turn from your sin, believe Jesus by hanging on to Him. In fact, the word believe in Greek means to trust in, cling to, and rely upon. Just like I'm talking about a drowning person, the moment they stop fighting to save themselves, trust in, cling to the raft or whatever they were given, and hold on to that for safety, the person with the extra power will bring them out of their lost condition and save them from their problem, right? That's the only hope. It's when they trust in and cling to that person to do it instead of themselves. That's the only help. That's exactly what faith is here. Until you accept the true gift of eternal life and find the energy of God pouring through you, you'll never experience God. Titus 3 says, He saved us not because of any works of righteousness that I have done. Period. No matter what you think you've done, stop talking about it. It's worthless. It's not getting you anywhere. So don't even keep bringing it up. Don't keep telling you you're better than your neighbors. You're not like them. You're so much nicer. Who cares? You know, it's not going to work. You can't do anything about it. But because of his own pity and mercy, by the cleansing bath of the new birth and renewing of the Holy Spirit, which he poured out so richly upon us through Jesus Christ the Savior the one who saved us from drowning And he did it in order that we might be justified by his there the word again justified by his grace by that powerful release of God's power is how you were saved, by his grace, that we might be acknowledged and counted as conformed to the divine will and purpose. Notice that the power to save us is the power to change us Again, desire and the power to do God's will is right there. The divine will, He transforms us to desire and do His will. That's salvation. Until you're doing the will of God, you have no evidence that you're going to heaven. But as you do the will of God, that's the proof you're alive. Because the energy of God is flowing through you, and it's giving you a change in conformity to the divine will, thought, and action that God wants. And it says that we might become heirs of eternal life according to our hope. It's not just a false hope. It's a real hope when you have God's grace because it's proven. Final thoughts then. Ephesians 1, 5-7. Look carefully how this is worded. For He foreordained us. In other words, He destined us. He planned in advance in love for us to be adopted as His own children. In other words, before we were even born, before we were even here, God had already pre-planned it. Wow! How cool is that? Talking about coming from the, how they say that you're a glimmer in your mother's eye. Well, this was a glimmer in God's heart before you even came about. It was already a glimmer in His heart for you. Preordained that you would be destined to be an adopted child of God in accordance with the purpose of His will so that we might be to the praise and to the commendation of His glorious, there's the word again, His grace. His grace. His favor and mercy, which He so freely, there's the word free, bestowed on us in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption. There's the next part. We're moved and trained and born again by His grace and power. In other words, we have deliverance from our life and sin and salvation is an absolute transformation of who we are through His blood, the remission or the forgiveness of our offenses because he gave the death penalty for us. In accordance with the riches and the generosity, again, of his grace, his gracious favor, his grace, there again, which he lavished upon us in every kind of wisdom and understanding, he made us different. So before you leave here, can you remember the idea that grace is not an opinion or an attitude? Grace is an energizing reality from the living God that if you've got it, you'll know it. Your life is moved and rocked. Your world is changed. Your heart is different. Your desires are bubbling different. You get God throwing things at you you're not used to before. He starts putting desires in your heart that you never knew were there to do His will. And you get to find yourself able to do them. Able to do them. because God's will is that you walk a different life. Honestly, before God right now, can you say that what you call Christianity is the Christianity I'm talking about? There's a lot of opinions, remember. A lot of people believe they're going to heaven. But is the Christianity you have the kind that you've found God invading you, insurging into desires you didn't have before? Are you finding Him pushing you to levels you never tried before? Do you find that righteousness is a new hunger you're having? Do you find that God wants and is moving in you so that you do want to do His will? You struggle with sin. You don't want it any longer. And you cry out to God and find He gives you more and more strength and change, that you find yourself being a different person, and that others can see it like Paul and Barnabas did when they sent people to Antioch and could see the grace of God. Do you have that kind of grace? Are you a real Christian? Or are you a phony, a Christian Pharisee, a hypocrite that just says you believe, but you're no different than the rest of them? Well, don't stay that way. If you see that sin is still your boss, bow your head right now before God and beg Him to change you. Tell Him, I don't want this sin. I'm sorry. I know that it's wrong. I know that I deserve to be cast into hell for it. I don't have any excuses. My mouth is stopped. I give up making excuses. My sin is evil. You said it was wrong. I don't care what other people say. You said it's evil and I don't want it. Please forgive me. I beg you to change me. I plead before you that I accept Jesus. Make me the kind of person you want me to be. And I'm willing as your disciple to go wherever you want. That's the kind of Christian that God says is real. Is that the kind you are? Would you bow your heads with me for a moment? I want you to face to face before God and wrestle with Him over these issues. I don't want you to come to this church and visit or come for a while and think that you're in just because you said you were. You're in because God says you are and He says you are because He gives you evidence to tell. And it's the real act of grace of God. Is God's grace real in your life? Do you find your heart being moved and changed? Do you find you're struggling? You don't want to sin any longer. Do you find the desires growing to please God? Do you find yourself hearing the voice of God speaking to your conscience saying, stop doing those things? Do you hear Him? Do you know He's there? If not, in the privacy of this time when no one else hears you, speak in your heart, God hears your thoughts, and say to Him, God, forgive me. I am a sinner. I have done these things. I have lied. I've cheated. I've done whatever different things. You know what you've done. Confess them. Admit them to God. and beg God to forgive you now. And then when you get done, say, God, I don't have the power to change. I know that I deserve judgment for these things. I accept Jesus' death in my place. Please forgive me. From now on this day forward, you are my Lord. I'll do what you want. I'm not boss any longer. Pray those thoughts in your own words if you haven't before. Seek God while you can, while you're hearing it. You don't know what tomorrow's going to bring. Today is your day of salvation. Cry to Him for forgiveness. Ask Him for forgiveness. Thank you.

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