Pastor Stan Mons
Sermon Transcription:
Jesus, Lord, we worship you. Who is a Lord like you? Who is a King like you, leaving all things behind to purchase a people like us, who rejected you, who chose against you, who loved sin, and still are so often so difficult to deal with day to day? Yet you've loved us with an everlasting love that does not fail. Lord God, how could we ever praise you in a sufficient way? How could we ever glorify you in a sufficient way? But Father, we pray that you awaken worship in this place, that you awaken praise for your own glorious name in this place, that you take care of your own glory, Father, by your Spirit, that you cause a cry in our hearts that may bless you, Lord God, all the days of our lives. A trust, Father, a calling out to you as a child does to his father, Lord God, a calling out to you that may please your heart, Lord God, born from the blood of Jesus Christ that brought us near, gave us adoption as sons, and gifted us your Spirit who taught us to cry, "Abba, Father, you are mine."
Lord, thank you, Lord God, for the mystery of salvation. Thank you, Lord God, that your Spirit explains it to our hearts when our minds have a hard time understanding it. Thank you, Lord God, that your Spirit explains it to our minds when our hearts begin to forget. Thank you, Lord, that you walk with us and that you never leave us, Lord God, no matter how hard we run, no matter where we go, no matter what we do. Thank you, God, that we cannot outrun you. Thank you, God, that you have loved us. For what would become of a people like us, Lord God, left to our own devices? Yet you've given us a hope and a glory in the name of Jesus Christ. Lord God, all we can do is say thank you, all we can do is say glory to your name, all we can do is say Hallelujah to the name of the Lord. Blessed be your name, Lord. You are worthy, Lord God, of our trust and our praise. And we ask you, Lord, today, as your Word comes forth, would you give us hearts that are able to receive? Would you give us minds that are able to see your Word? And would you give us a willingness, Lord God, that is ready to let the Holy Spirit do what he so desires to do in your church in this day, Lord God? Father, would you lead us by your strength, by your Spirit, by your love? In Jesus' name, Amen.
Today, we're going to get into the Word, and the title that the Lord has given me—and changed shortly before the service—is this: A Church Who Stopped Passing the Grace. A church who stopped passing the grace. Now, this word may not be for you today. You may simply be here to pass it along. You may be here to post it somewhere online and to share it with other people. If it is for you, the Spirit will let you know. If He does, hear Him. Allow Him to speak to your heart because this is the cry of the Lord Jesus Christ to parts of the church that have made some turns and ended up in a place, unable or unwilling in every case, to pass grace always—to all people, at all times, in all situations.Let me read to you, and we will start in Galatians chapter 5. We're going to start in verse 1: "Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage."
Here in one verse, we see the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ as it is given to the Galatian church, as well as to you and me. There's a cry in the heart of Paul, and he says, Stand fast. Don’t move, don’t advance from this place. Become rooted in this place. Don’t be shaken. Stand fast in the very freedom that Christ made you free for—that He set you free from. And don’t again—Paul says clearly it is very possible—don’t again be entangled in a yoke of bondage.
The Lord had come into this world and by His own blood, bought freedom for the unredeemable, set free those that had chosen bondage in their own decisions, undeservingly giving the most amazing freedom, the most amazing relationship with the Father that had never been possible until that moment. For the church, for those that honored the Lord and sought to serve Him, never hearing from Him personally, never really feeling or experiencing that they were right with Him. Yet, the Father gave all of that to the church through His Son, Jesus Christ, undeservingly. He gave these grand gifts that nobody was asking for, nobody was thanking Him for at the moment. Yet, He gives and keeps on giving to the church.
And here Paul says, "You need to stand fast in this liberty—this freely received freedom that you received in Christ from God—so that you don’t again get tangled up, so that you don’t again get stuck."
Verse 2:"Indeed I, Paul, say to you that if you become circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing. And I testify again to every man who becomes circumcised that he is a debtor to keep the whole law. You have become estranged from Christ, you who attempt to be justified by the law; you have fallen from grace. For we through the Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love." He cries out, "You have become estranged, removed from Christ—you who attempt to be justified by the law. You have fallen from grace." He cries out to them, asking, "What has happened to you? What has happened that you have known the grace of God? You’ve experienced the power of the grace of God. You’ve experienced God giving you undeserved gifts when you had absolutely nothing, hardly knew how to say 'sorry.' All you did was believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of Almighty God and that God raised Him from the dead. And all of a sudden, God showed up in your life, became your Father, started walking with you, began giving gifts unto you. You didn’t do a thing and you knew it. And you were so grateful!"
All of a sudden, forgiving others came like second nature. It didn’t cost any effort. Serving people was an honor. Waking up in the morning, excited, happy, and ready for the day: What is God going to do today? The grace was just so tangible. The undeserved gifts in every area of life began to affect and touch you and flow out of your life. He calls to them and says, "What happened to you? You have become estranged from Christ—you who attempt to be justified by the law." Now, that sounds like very big words. He tells them, in other words: You knew a time, the Galatian church. You knew a time when you stood and you walked and labored, worked by the grace of God. But now, you have fallen from that grace.
In other words, you received gifts from God that you did not deserve every day. You did things that made you undeserving, yet God gave you the miracle power. God gave you the ability to open the Word and just understand it. God gave you the desire to go and pray. God gave you the strength to go say "sorry" to somebody you never said sorry to before in your life because you were always right. God gave you all of these things. And here Paul says, "That ability, that power, that undeserved gift that was always just there every morning, every day, in every situation—you have fallen from that. Now you are walking again by your own standard, trying to keep a standard, trying to walk by a standard, and no longer walking in the power that you started in." But you knew a time where you walked in it.
To live in the grace of God means that you receive from God what you don’t deserve. So God always responds to your opposite—what you can expect you don’t get. You get the opposite. God always gives you what you do not deserve, and you're going to get it consistently, unconditionally, and indefinitely. That's what it means to walk and live in the grace of God. You're always going to get the opposite of what you truly deserve, and it's going to be a constant, unchanging thing. We see this in Paul and the other apostles and figures in the Word. They speak so much of this grace. It is mentioned time and time again. Let me just give you Titus 2:11: "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men."
In other words, the very grace that is able to change the biggest problem in your life—the grandest problem of eternity—you caused it, and you're stuck with it. But the undeserved gift that God gave has come to all people. The grace is present to perform the impossible work, and through that, salvation has come to all men. Whoever believes on the name of Jesus may receive life and not death, may receive newness and not stay stuck where they are, may become transformed and a whole new creation. The greatest problem you've ever carried—God gave a gift for it. How much more will all the smaller ones be dealt with in that same grace? Living in that grace, time after time, we see the apostles pray that blessing too. When they start their letters in the Word, we read again and again, "Grace to you, peace to you," Grace and peace to you. The grace is always spoken of and called to remembrance.
First Peter 5 calls God the "God of all grace"—all undeserved gifts. Ephesians 2 tells us the famous verse: "For by grace you have been saved through faith." By grace, you have been saved. Faith is what got you in it. You believed that Jesus was the Son of God, and that grace of God, which appeared to all men, saved you from sin, set you free from your failures, set you free from all the disappointment, set you free from not liking yourself, set you free from any reason why you thought God would never be able to use you. Set you free. By grace, you have been saved. First Corinthians 15, Paul cries out, "By God's grace, I am what I am." So what happens when a church—or you as a person—falls from that grace? Paul says, "By the grace of God, I am what I am." Who are you when that grace is no longer what you stand in or live in? What happens when you fall from the grace that was your salvation? What happens when you fall from the grace that brought salvation to all men? What begins to happen?
Paul was speaking to the Galatian church. He wasn't speaking to a people who had received the gospel and then rejected it, saying, "I'm going back to where I came from. I'm going back to the synagogue. I'm rejecting Christianity. I'm rejecting following Jesus. I'm rejecting all that came into my life through Jesus." That’s not what happened. He wrote the letter to the churches in Galatia. They didn’t run back; there wasn’t a grand outward change that you might notice at first glance. What does it look like when a church or a believer falls from grace? It may look much smaller, much more inconspicuous than we expect. They may still be at every service, giving, baptizing people, taking communion, speaking of Christ in the workplace, reading their Bible, and taking time to pray.
If you were part of the Galatian church, you may even know Paul personally and still have fallen from grace. I want to suggest to you today that when a church falls from grace, one of the first ways it is noticed is in how well you are able to pass grace to others—to continue passing grace to undeserving people. Not just to those who are nice, who love you, and put in the work to fit properly into your life. It's easy to get along with people who are in agreement with you—amen? Some of them may be our spouses. When we are in agreement, it is easy. But it is the people in our life that absolutely do not deserve it. They have not put in any work. In fact, they’ve done the opposite, and now they are undeserving. How easy is it for you to pass along the very grace that God gives you in Christ Jesus—the grace that builds you up, keeps you, guides you, and teaches you? The grace of the Spirit, the grace of the blood, the grace of the church around you—everything that God is pouring into your life—how easy is it for you to pass it on to that undeserving person? The one who sought to wound or hurt you, talk behind your back, come against you, or begin to look a little more like an enemy—one of those enemies Jesus said to love?
How easy is it for you to receive that grace and pass it on to others? You see, when you fall from grace, nothing really changes on the outside or in your day-to-day life. But something changes in the heart. What changes is the relationship between the law and grace. The heart begins to lean a little more it may just be one area of your life but it begins to be more attracted and lean a little bit more toward the law, and not toward grace. Grace becomes offensive to the heart, and the heart begins to go out to the law. We get wounded, hurt, and abused sometimes. People speak evil of us, come against us, stab us in the back, or make promises and keep none of them. Our heart begins to cry out, "There have to be consequences!" But grace won’t give you the right to expect consequences for the wrongful actions committed against you. Grace doesn’t let you have the hope of a tiny bit of revenge in situations where you were hurt or wounded. When the heart begins to lean back toward the law, saying, "There have to be consequences for evil works, at least in my life," you begin to fall from the grace that was freely poured into your life to flow from your life. Suddenly, it becomes harder. You stop passing grace to those around you who are so undeserving. The law becomes friendly to the flesh in the sense that it promises that there is going to be consequences for wrongs. It tells you that the person who hurt you or the group that wronged you will be found guilty. The law promises that somehow, justice will soothe the pain and protect you in the future. But with grace, people just get away with it. It’s not fair. And your heart is tricked into shifting some of its trust back to the law.
You stop passing grace—not to everyone, but just to the undeserving, the difficult, and some others. You do it to your enemies, whom Jesus called you to love. You do it in your professional relationships when people don’t perform or keep their word. In your family, in your circle of friends, you knew you didn’t marry a perfect person, and you gave grace upon grace. Then, one day, you look at your enemy, your colleague, your friend, or your spouse, and a feeling arises in your heart: "You have abused my grace. You haven’t lived up to the amount of grace I’ve shown you. You don’t deserve it anymore." You stop passing grace. You shut it down. The river of grace that once freely flowed from your life is dammed up, and you keep it all in. You justify it, and you’re at peace with it because you’ve become an officer of the law, a parole officer to those who’ve broken it.
Verse 6 again says, "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love." You still have your faith. You still trust God, believe in Him, and pursue Him. You still honor the Word, read it daily, and pray. But what happened to the love?
The Word tells the church that love holds no record of wrongs. For love, it’s always the first time an offense is committed. The first time someone speaks rudely of you. The first time someone breaks your trust or doesn’t keep their word. For love, it’s always the first time. Love gives grace without measure. It covers, as the Word says, a multitude of sins. It covers them. What happened to the love of the church, the church of the living God? Still having faith, but now faith mixed with a little law. Faith and a little reason why certain things are unacceptable to continue in your life. We look at Jesus Christ, how He kept His mouth shut, never defended Himself, even though He was wronged in every possible way. He had every right to speak up, every right to put up a boundary, every right to defend Himself. But He kept His mouth shut to make a way—to stand in between you and justice, you and accusation, you and offenses, you and all that was wrong.
What happened to the love that the Spirit of God pours into the hearts of those who call on the name of Jesus Christ and receive all things in Him? The Word tells us that you and I have received all things in Christ. There’s nothing you lack, church. But for the church that has stopped passing grace, it doesn’t make sense anymore to give it to the undeserving. It doesn’t make sense that the moment you see someone who is undeserving, your reflex should be to pour grace, give gifts, bless, and hold no record of wrong. It doesn’t make sense anymore when our hearts begin to lean toward the law and away from grace once more. Here’s what Matthew 10:8 says in Jesus’ own words: "Heal the sick, cleanse the leper, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give." Jesus says, "My Spirit is freely given to you, my grace is freely given to you, and you’re going to be able to walk out the impossible." Today, you may say, "It’s impossible for me to forgive, to trust, to get past my obstacles, my struggles, my trauma, and everything I carry with me." You might think, "You don’t know what’s been done to me, what I’ve been through." But the Word tells us that’s why God gave you His grace and His Spirit, so that by His grace, you can walk out the impossible. What does the Word say? Faith working through love. Faith at work in you and I through you and I by love. Love holds no record of wrongs, church. It holds no record of wrongs.
Verse eight of Psalm 52 paints a picture of the church: “But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God. I trust in the mercy of God forever and ever.” This is a picture of the church and of you. As much as you may be struggling with this today, you may be realizing that there is a record of wrong that has gotten into my heart. That record of wrong stands firmly because I cannot help it—my heart has gripped onto the law, and now it sees all the wrong that has been committed. I am not full of grace, and you can't simply see grace over the person who is undeserving. I can see the record, and it has stuck in my heart. When I run into somebody of a certain denomination, I can feel the record. When I meet someone who votes differently, I can feel the record in my heart. When I run into that family member, I can feel the record—the wounds of their words are so deep, and they’ve never apologized or acknowledged what they said or did. I feel the record when I come face to face with that person. Here comes the voice, ready to give up on a church that has stopped passing grace.
Jesus tells us a parable in that very place. Verse 6 of Luke 13 says, “He also spoke this parable: A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, ‘Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and found none. Cut it down; why does it use up the ground?’ But he answered and said to him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. And if it bears fruit, well. But if not, after that, you can cut it down.’” Here you have a people, here you have a person. They still believe in the mercies of God, they still trust God in some measure, and they still try to honor Him. But those in charge of keeping the vineyard—maybe some church people, maybe a pastor, maybe a spouse—comes into the vineyard, looking for some fruit. They seek evidence that you are still handing out and passing grace in every situation. They say to the keeper of the vineyard, "Lord, it’s been a long time. For three years, I’ve been coming here. For three years, I’ve waited. Three years, I’ve put up with this. Three years, I’ve come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I’ve found none. Cut it down. Why does it use up the ground?"
"Why don’t we shift our attention to other people?" they say. "Why don’t we forget about Israel and shift only towards hope in your church among the Gentiles? Why don’t we shift away from hope for this or that denomination? Why don’t we make more room in your kingdom for the Pentecostals, Lord? Why don’t we use the ground differently? I don’t see any fruit here. I don’t see this person passing out grace. I don’t see this person full of love. I don’t see this person bearing the fruits of the Spirit. I don’t see this person freely receiving and freely giving." And all of that may be true for your situation today. But then the keeper of the vineyard steps up to your corner. He stands in the gap for you. He answers the accusation. He answers one more time in your life to the consequences that the church has brought upon itself, and maybe you’ve personally brought upon yourself. It wasn’t the offender, the one who wounded you or came against you. It wasn’t the devil. You received the grace of God freely, but your heart said, "No, I want my case to be fair. I want the wrongdoers in my life to be held accountable, and I won’t give them grace." As small and slow as that journey may have been, it has brought people in the body of Christ to a place where they love those who love them, but those who spitefully use them do not receive a flow of grace full of joy.
But the keeper answered, “Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and fertilize it. And if it bears fruit, well.” You see now even at this point, Jesus is seeking for the church, for Him to pour even more grace on its life. He wants to give more grace to you than you have ever consumed, used up, or partaken in. It is a humbling thing to receive more grace later on in your journey from Jesus Christ than you ever received when you first became saved. He says, “Why don’t I give this all of my attention? I’m going to dig around this person. I’m going to place fertilizer. I’m going to bring the right people into their life. I’m going to pour my living water on them. They don’t have to do a thing. I’m not going to ask them to do a thing. But why don’t you let me get my hands on this person one more time and see if fruit doesn’t show up? See if they don’t begin to flow with that fruit of grace they were once so filled with.”
Jesus Christ is not done with the church that has stopped pouring out and passing grace. He is not done with you. He’s not giving up on you. But He is seeking for you to receive more grace than you ever have before. He’s seeking willing hearts—hearts that will accept that He is going to have to dig around them, get on His knees, and get dirty one more time. Just as He did for Peter when He washed his feet, He wants to one more time show that Jesus is on His knees because of me. Jesus is one more time serving me to the highest extent. I have nothing to offer. All He entrusted to me, I wasted. All He gave to me, I did a poor job with. Now, from my life, grace is not pouring out. But Jesus responds, “Why don’t I serve you more humbly than I ever have? Why don’t I get on my knees and dig around you? Why don’t I pour into you more now?” He cries out to you and I. He calls us to let Him serve us one more time. Church, receive the grace.
It will humble you. It is greater than you've used up before. It will mark you as one in need of a servant Lord, not one who is able to serve his God. But if you receive the amount of grace Jesus Christ is so willing to give you, you may produce a fruit that allows you to pass grace to your offenders, pass grace to the undeserving, pass grace to your enemies, and pass grace to those who have worn you out. If you receive it and let it work in you, you'll be able to pass it along one more time. You see, passing on the grace and bearing that fruit of grace is often so hard because we get offended, or we see offensive behavior. We say, "I'm going to stop giving you these gifts; they're too expensive. It is costing me too much. I'm running out—I'm running out of steam, I'm running out of breath. It feels like this is going to kill me. I don't have enough." If that is you today, repent. Let Jesus feed you. Let Jesus strengthen you. He’s standing between you and judgment, and He’s asking you to begin to become a little bit like Him—to begin to stand between judgment and other people and to cover them. Faith working through love. That person may not deserve it, but say one more time, “I want to give this person what they do not deserve. I’m going to pass along the grace, Lord. I’m going to acknowledge grace and not the law over that person.”
It is a choice we have to make. The Holy Spirit will not do this for you. It is a response we make to the truth when we say, “Lord, I trust you enough to jump into your arms because I cannot do this alone. Yet I’m choosing anyways. I’m trusting you, and I will no longer treat this person as if they are under the law. I’m going to treat this person as if the grace of God has come to all men. I’m going to treat them according to the truth. I’m going to pass the grace that has been shown to me.” Church, don’t hold back the fruit. Don’t withhold. Don’t put a dam up in that river of grace that is called to flow from your life. Don’t withhold that fruit from sprouting in your life. Don’t withhold from drinking the living water Jesus is so willing to pour. And don’t hold back from letting Jesus serve you. Humble yourselves. Let Him serve you so that you may find the grace to serve even your greatest enemy—with joy, with love, and with faith at work in you through love.
If you would stand with me for a moment, I want to read to you again Matthew 10:8: “Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.” God has freely poured undeserved gifts on you, Church, that you may pass undeserved gifts along always and never withhold a thing from the undeserving person in your life—an undeserving person God is faithful to place in your life. When you notice the undeserving, that is the time to show that you have learned from the grace God has so freely poured on your life, holding no record of wrong over your life by the blood of Jesus Christ. That by that same grace, we may become ambassadors of peace no matter the situation. I want to ask you if you would close your eyes for just a moment. This may be different for all of us, and it may be different for those of us online as well. What grace is God asking you to release towards that undeserving person in your life? What kind of grace is God asking you to release to that undeserving person? What is He asking for you to believe Him for? What is He asking for you to say yes to?
Whatever it is between you and the Lord, if that is you, I want to invite you to come to the front and say, “Yes, Lord, I’m going to pass the grace.” It may have been years since you’ve done that for that person. It may feel like you cannot. But if today, you take a step of faith and let love move you to say, “God, I’m choosing grace over that person,” you will see the Spirit of God show up and do the impossible once more in your life and through your life. If that is you, and you want to say yes, I want to invite you to come to the front and let the Spirit of God have His way in you.
-Pastor Stan Mons
Comments