This is the original English version of a sermon preached in Portuguese on the 11th July 2010 at Sao Miguel Paulista Corps, Sao Paulo. It has been simplified a little for greater ease of translation.
(All the bible readings are from the New International Version.)
Sao Miguel Paulista Corps Salvation Meeting 11/07/10
Bible Reading: Romans 3:21-26
Theme: A Church of Grace
Our reading tonight is from Romans 3:21-26
21But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, 23for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. 25God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— 26he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
Introduction
Tonight, I want to talk to you about being a church of grace; a church that is full of God’s grace; a church that lives and breathes and acts out the grace of God. I believe that God wants this church to be a church like that – a church that is full of his divine grace.
But of course, we often talk about God’s grace, but perhaps the truth is we don’t understand it so well. And maybe that is because grace is something that is much easier to show than it is to talk about. And indeed, sometimes we are better at talking about things than we are at living them out.
But let’s spend some time tonight thinking about God’s grace, what it is, and what it means to us.
To help us we are going to return to the Salvation Army’s statements of what it believes, our doctrines, and we have reached number 8.
Please, let us stand and read this doctrine together:
8. We believe that we are justified by grace through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ and that he that believeth hath the witness in himself.
I want to use this statement to explain what I think God’s grace is, and I’m going to use three headings. These three headings all describe who we are as Christians; who we are as members of Christ’s church. Firstly, we are sons and daughters of God. Secondly, we are recipients of God’s grace through faith. And finally, we are those who are touched by the Holy Spirit.
1. Sons and Daughters of God.
1 John 3
1How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!
The first thing I want to say tonight is that when your receive the grace of God, you become a son or a daughter of God. Now all human beings are children of God. This is true. God is the father of every human being, in that he created them in his image. They are his children. And he loves them all. The bible tells us this. It tells us that he loved all humanity so much that he sent his son to die for them.
But not all his children love him back. This can be for different reasons. Some of them don’t know that he is their Father. Some of them know that he might be their father but are not interested in having a father because they want to be free to do what the want with no accountability. Some of them do know with certainty that God is their father but have rejected him; they have rebelled against him.
But those who have believed that God the Father sent his son to save them, to die on a cross and rise from the dead so that they might be forgiven for their previous disobedience, those people become sons and daughters of God; they are loved by him and they love him in return.
In the passage we read, Paul is using the image of being found innocent before God because Jesus has paid the penalty for our sin. Our belief that this is possible for us - our faith - makes this innocence possible. But once he has proclaimed our innocence in his eyes because of our faith in Christ, God the Judge doesn’t leave the coutroom, and we go back to our normal lives, never to hear from him again. Once Jesus has stood in our place and received our punishment, he doesn’t just wave and say, no problem, and walk away and we never see him again. Once the Holy Spirit has convinced us of our need for salvation and brought us to the point of faith, he doesn’t just pat us on the back and say ‘good luck’ and we never feel his presence again. No. God becomes our Father again, Jesus our brother and Lord, and the Holy Spirit our companion and constant helper. We return into the heart of the family of God.
To be justified by God is not a legal transaction. To be justified by God is to return to a correct relationship with God. It is to stand before God and know and feel that you are his child and that he loves you. It is to begin to live one´s life in relationship to God.
The other day my son Andrew and I were playing together and he smacked me in the nose with a piece of toy railway track. It was an accident, but he knew he should not have been waving it around dangerously. He said sorry, and I think he meant it because he saw that he had hurt my nose. And so, because I love him, I forgave him, but of course I also added a word of warning about doing it again.
And so it is with God. Because we are all sinners, we have all done some damage to ourselves, and to others, but worst of all, we have broken our relationship with God, because all sin, everything we do wrong, is disobedient to God’s law and will. But if we are sorry and want that relationship to be restored, then God as our Father finds a way to forgive us through our faith in Jesus. God graciously forgives us and through his forgiveness his relationship with his us is restored. There is no longer any rebellion or disobedience or sin that can create a rift between us and God. That is what it means to be justified.
2. Recipients of God’s grace through faith.
But this can only happen because of God’s grace. We are unable to demand that God restores the relationship between him and us. We are unable to do something which means that God will be obliged to restore this relationship. Some people think that if they try to be good, then that will bring them to God. But we all know that being good without God’s help is very difficult. Jesus and Paul both make this point clear in the bible. No, God in his amazing love, is the one who comes to us. He speaks to us through the bible, through the witnesses he has put in the church throughout its history, and he says, if you believe in my son, I will forgive you everything, and you can be my son, my daughter again. It is all God’s initiative, and his forgiveness and love is a gift he offers completely free, no strings attached. We just have to believe that his offer is genuine, that his words are true. We have to have faith.
Consider the story in John’s gospel about the woman caught in adultery. Let’s read together
John 8:1-11
1But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. 2At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. 3The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group 4and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. 5In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?" 6They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.
But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her." 8Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. 10Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"
11"No one, sir," she said.
"Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."
Now this is an incredible example of the grace of God. Jesus is quite right to point out that none of these men have any right to condemn her to death given that they themselves are guilty of sin and deserve to be punished. Jesus himself does have the right to condemn her sin of adultery because it is against God’s law, and after all, he is the Son of God. But he doesn’t. Essentially, he forgives her. Perhaps he thinks that she has suffered enough because of her public humiliation. But he forgives her and warns her against sinning again. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law did not act out of grace but out of anger and hatred against Jesus and against a sinful woman. But Jesus gave this woman grace, a second chance, an opportunity to try again. She didn’t deserve it. She probably didn’t expect it. But that day, she met the grace of God.
A few weeks ago, some of our young people organised and hosted an evening of cinema here at the church. The film was based on a true story about a young American boy who was a talented athlete but he was very poor and not well educated. A rich Christian woman, who had a child at the same high school as this boy, met this boy and decided to befriend him and look after him, and eventually she adopted him legally because his own mother was a drug addict and couldn’t look after him. This rich woman was also white and this young boy was black, which in the United States is still very significant. The story has a happy ending because this young boy went on to be a big star in American Football.
But this was a story all about grace. Why should this woman who had everything, wealth and family and status, why should she offer kindness and help to this poor, uneducated, awkward, black boy from a troubled and deprived background? I’ll tell you why I think she did it; the grace of God. I think she believed in the grace of God. She believed that she had received God’s grace when he forgave her, and she believed that she should show that grace of God within her to others.
And so it is for us, if we are Christians here tonight. We have received God's grace. He has shown his love to us by sending us the gospel of Jesus Christ and asking us to believe in him. He has shown his love to us by forgiving us when we repented. He has shown his love to us by giving us his Holy Spirit to help us to be his obedient children. He has shown his love to us by responding to our prayers.
We are recipients of the Grace of God, because we believed that this offer of grace, provided to us through Jesus, was true. We believed it, we had faith. And the grace of God was given to us. And friends, once you have experienced the grace of God, really experienced it, really felt that your sins are forgiven, that God loves you and cares for you, and that Jesus walks by your side on your life’s journey, then you find you have a deep hunger to see others experience this grace, this forgiveness, this love. You have a deep hunger to share your experience of God’s grace. You have a deep hunger to see other people reconciled to God their Father. This is because the experience of the grace of God is simply the best experience that life can offer.
Have you had that experience? Do you know the grace of God? Have you felt his forgiveness and love and care? Do you want to? Then believe that Jesus brings the grace of God to you, through his sacrifice for you. Believe that his sacrifice has dealt with the sin that separates you from God, and then you will experience the grace of God in your life.
3. Touched by the Spirit.
But you may say to me, Pastor, I think I have done this. I want to believe in Jesus. I have prayed to him. I have asked him to forgive me. I want to believe that Jesus' death and resurrection means that God has forgiven me and now accepts me as his obedient child. But how do I know for sure that I have received God's grace; how do I know that he accepts me as his obedient child? How do I know?
We find the answer to this question in the bible in several places. But we are going to look in Acts 15:7-9. In this passage, we find Peter speaking to the council of the church in Jerusalem. They have been discussing the question of whether those in the church who were not originally Jews should become Jews by keeping the Jewish laws before they can be Christians. This is what Peter says:
7After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: "Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. 8God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. 9He made no distinction between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith.
There you have it. What was the proof that the Gentile, the non-Jewish Christians had received God's grace? God gave them the Holy Spirit!
Now if we look at the history of the church, this giving of the Holy Spirit can have two meanings. Firstly, the Holy Spirit was clearly seen acting upon these Gentile believers by witnesses. And secondly, these Gentile believers themselves felt the Holy Spirit. In this sense, the proof that someone has faith and receives the grace of God is that the Holy Spirit is within them. And if the Holy Spirit is within them, then both they and others will be able to perceive him, to experience him.
Now what exactly do I mean by experience the Holy Spirit?
Well, let me tell you my own experience. I believe that the Holy Spirit is with me all the time, but I don’t always feel him or experience him. However, when I do feel the Spirit, the sensation for me is sometimes a physical tingling. At other times, I feel the Spirit is acting because I experience an unexpected rush of emotion. But this is not the only way that the Spirit can be experienced. Different people have different kinds of experiences of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit also brings to mind thought and ideas and images which I believe could only have come from him. The Holy Spirit gave me a premonition of my Father’s death and of Andrew’s recovery from illness and of one or two other events. To me, this is God telling me, that I am his child and that I am justified before him by his grace working through my faith in Jesus.
And other people can possibly testify to the Holy Spirit at work in me. I am fairly sure that those who have known me a long time could say that I have changed and am a better man than I was. Others could perhaps testify to the fact that God has given me prophetic words, that God has used me to heal people, that God has used me to give guidance to people; that God has answered my prayers.
Again, there are millions of others who have demonstrated publically that the Holy Spirit has been at work in them to do miracles, to lead churches and organisations, to evangelise, to help the poor and so on. And this is proof that they have received the grace of God through their faith in Jesus Christ.
Now of course, we must be careful. The bible is clear that there are false prophets and false messiahs, and people who look like they are ministering in the power of the Holy Spirit whilst in fact they are ministering in the power of the devil. And we need the Holy Spirit to help us to tell the difference. And he speaks through the bible about this. The Holy Spirit says clearly, I do not give gifts without also giving fruit, I do not give power without also giving love, without giving grace.
And this is the vital truth. Some churches have become drunk on power: obsessed with power. The Holy Spirit does not demonstrate his power amongst us to show how powerful he is. He does not show his power to excite us and thrill us and entertain us; so that we can say, hey look at us, our God is more powerful than yours, our God is more powerful and amazing than you; we are cool because we are with God and you are not. No, the Holy Spirit comes to us and touches us with power to demonstrate God’s grace; to show how much loves us; nothing more. The manifestations of the Holy Spirit, both the gifts and the fruit, are his way of showing how much he loves us. The Holy Spirit shows himself to us and works through us for two reasons only – to show us that he loves us, and to love other people through us. God the Father chooses to love his children through us by means of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit loves others through us. The Holy Spirit gives his grace to others through us.
This is what it means to be a Christian. A Christian is a bearer of God’s grace, we experience and we carry to others God’s love, God's favour, his kindness and goodness and mercy. We bring his grace to others. And because the Spirit chooses to give us different gifts, often according to our different personalities, we can bring God’s grace to others most effectively when we work together as a church.
I believe that God wants churches that are full of his grace; that is, full of the kind of forgiveness and tolerance and patience and love that he shows to his children. The question we must ask tonight is this: is this church a church full of grace? Am I, are you full of the grace of God? Do we fully believe in Jesus Christ? Do we fully accept that God has forgiven our sins and accepts us as his children? Do we experience the Holy Spirit as evidence that we are forgiven and redeemed? Do we feel an overwhelming desire to share our experience of the grace of God with others?
Dear friends, tonight the grace of God can be yours. If you have no experience of God’s grace then you can experience it here at this place tonight. If you have struggled to believe in Jesus as your saviour then you can believe tonight, by the power of the Holy Spirit. If you have not experienced the Holy Spirit, and so confirmed your forgiveness by God, you can experience this tonight.
You can experience all these things; grace, faith, the Holy Spirit’s power and presence, here tonight at this place of prayer: just by praying. If you find this difficult, then someone will come and pray with you. Please do not miss this opportunity. On Friday, I had the immense privilege of participating in the funeral of a pastor at another church here in Sao Miguel. He was only 55 years old. But he had experienced a lifetime of the grace of God and the presence of the Holy Spirit through his faith in Jesus. I thank God for the grace he gave to this pastor and the way this filled his life. And I thank God for the grace he has shown me, because it has been better than anything else that I have experienced in my life.
If you want to experience God’s grace, if you want to have faith in Christ, if you want to receive the Holy Spirit, please come forward now and kneel here and ask God in prayer to give it to you.
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