Anchors | Part 4: God's Grace Is Great

We've been in a series of talks, this is actually week four of a series of talks we've been in called Anchors. And so each week has been incredible and this is the scripture that's kind of been the driving force for this whole series. It's in Hebrews 6 and it says this. So God has given us both his promise and his oath. And these two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can live with confidence as we hold to the hope that is before us. And this hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. Now this scripture, it's speaking about confidence that we have for a future time when we place our hope in Jesus for eternity. But it's not just talking about that. It's also talking about a hope and a confidence that we can have today in our everyday life. It's not just a future hope, but it's also a here and now hope. We are in uncertain, stressful, chaotic times, right? We can't deny that. It just takes one little scroll through Instagram or Facebook to see the chaos of the world that we find ourselves in. So where do we find our peace in that? Where do we find our stability in future days of uncertainty?

Because this isn't gonna be the only time where the world is uncertain, right? We're gonna walk through, or maybe even personally, when life is uncertain, where do we find our peace and our stability and our hope and our strength? What can we trust and lean on that will serve as an anchor for our soul and an anchor for our mind during these difficult times? Are there some things that we can settle in our hearts that we should settle in our hearts that will give us confidence no matter what trouble life throws our way? The answer, of course, is yes. And in this series, we've been looking at four different truths that we are convinced are indispensable for us to know and settle in our soul that will anchor and secure us no matter how crazy life gets. Things we can believe on and place all of our trust in. These truths that are anchors for our souls. And in week one, we talked about how God's word is true. Week two was God's heart is good. And week three was God's power is real. And then today, in week four, we're gonna be diving into anchor number four, which is God's grace is great. So let's pray and dive into this. Jesus, we thank you for the opportunity to just be able to grow and learn in this way. We ask that you would open up our souls,

open up our minds. Let us hear from you. Speak to us, Father. And it's in your name we pray. Amen. It was the year 2001. I was 13 years old in middle school. And looking back, I somehow was more confident then in life about what I knew than I am now. I knew more at 13 than I know now. At least I thought I did. I mean, you know, if you have a middle school kid, you're like, yeah, come on. And I thought I knew all this stuff about life. And on this particular hot summer Florida day, I was gonna be hanging out with my dad. And so we're about to go get some lunch, and so we walk outside. And he does something he had never done before. He looks at me and he flips me over his truck keys. And I grab him, I'm like, yo, dad, I don't know if you remember this, but I am only 13. And he's like, yeah, Rob, why don't you back the truck up over here? And I'm like, heck yeah. That's like, I would love to back the truck up. Because in my mind, I'm like, I can't wait for the story I'm gonna tell my friends.

I'm gonna tell them all that I drove my dad's truck. I'm not gonna say it was just in the front yard. I mean, they don't need to know that part of the information. I'm just gonna tell them, I drove my dad's truck, it was awesome. So I run over there, I jump in the truck, crank it up. I check my rear view mirror, my side mirrors, which was kind of pointless because I've never been the tallest person in the world. And that held true when I was also 13. So I'm looking in the mirrors and I can't see anything. But really, it's not that big of a deal. Because my front yard is just open. There's nothing there. Like, I'm gonna be fine. Well, there's one little tree off to the side, but there's no way. Like, that tree's way over there. I'm gonna be good. So I crank it up, throw it in reverse, and I start driving. I'm going in reverse. I'm like, this is awesome. I got the music cranked, looking around. I'm like, dude, this is incredible. I'm so pumped. I look over at my dad. He's watching me. I'm going, I'm going, I'm going. And then, bam!

I hit the one tree that was in my yard. The one tree. There's only one. And I crushed it. And I'm thinking, that's it. I'm done. Like, I'm somehow, I'm gonna probably go to jail for this. Like, I'm definitely not getting my driver's license when I turn 16. I can't even back up a truck. Like, what am I gonna do? Oh, man, and my dad's gonna kill me. He watched the whole thing go down. I'm like, glancing over there. He's starting to walk over to me. I'm like, oh no, this is it. I'm gonna get in so much trouble. At the very least, I'm gonna have to pay for all the damage that I've done, which is a problem, because I'm 13. I don't have a job. Who's gonna hire a 13-year-old? I need, like, six jobs to pay for the damage that I did. and I'm freaking out. And I glance over and my dad's walking up to the truck. And he walks up, he opens the door. He reaches over and throws it in part because in my panic it was still in reverse. And then he turns the key off and he just looks at me and goes, Rob, that's why we only ever back up

as much as we need to. Now scoot over. And I was like, all right, and I slid over and he gets in the truck, cranks it up, and we go get lunch. I'm like, what? The whole time we're driving to lunch I'm thinking, he is about to say something, right? We have to address what just happened. And he never did. We got lunch and that was it. And I'm thinking in my mind, I did not deserve that kind of interaction. At least I should have gotten in some trouble. At the very least, what I deserved was the talk of, now we're gonna have to figure out a way for you to pay for this, Rob. I don't know what to tell you, but you're definitely gonna have to figure out a way to pay for this. That's what I deserved. But what I got instead, it wasn't what I deserved at all. What I got instead was a calm response, filled with love, and some lunch. I also got some lunch out of it. And that is not what I deserved. I deserved to be in so much trouble. I deserved to have to pay for what I did. But I got what I didn't deserve in the best possible way. And in my mind, that is one of the best definitions of grace

that I could possibly think of. Because that is exactly what grace is. Grace is you get what you do not deserve. That is the definition of grace. And in this moment, that is exactly what happened to me. And I want us to look at a story. A story in the Bible, a snapshot of Jesus's life 2,000 years ago, and a story that has truths in it about God's grace that were true 2,000 years ago, but are still true for us today. Things that we can hold onto in our lives about the grace of God. And it's a story found in the book of John. In John chapter eight, starting in verse three, it says this, as he, so this is talking about Jesus. As he was speaking, the teachers of religious law and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in the act of adultery. And they put her in front of the crowd. Teacher, they said to Jesus, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. And the law of Moses says to stone her. But what do you say? And they were trying to trap him into saying something they could use against him. But Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust with his finger and they kept demanding an answer. So he stood up again and said, all right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone. And then he stooped down again and wrote in the dust.

And when the accusers heard this, they slipped away one by one, beginning with the oldest, until only Jesus was left in the middle of the crowd with this woman. And then Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, where are your accusers? Didn't even one of them condemn you? No, Lord, she said. And Jesus replied, neither do I. Go and sin no more. This story, this is a beautiful picture of the grace of God and what that grace means for our souls, how God's grace is an anchor for our souls. And I want us to look at three things this morning, three truths that we can pull out of this story that were true then that are still true today about the grace of God. And the first thing is this, that God's grace is not fair and that is good. God's grace isn't fair and that is good. This story, the woman caught in the act of adultery. You guys, she was caught in the act of adultery. That means exactly what it sounds like it means, like caught in the act. And I hear this and I'm like, where was the dude, right? Why did they only grab her and drag her out to be murdered in this scenario? Where was the guy? Because you know there was a guy, right?

There takes two to tango. And it's like, why was there only the woman dragged out? But that kind of has nothing to do with this, but it's just something I wonder about. Maybe, I don't know what was going on in that. But they bring her to the foot of Jesus. They're like, all right, this is what she did. She deserves to die. And the crazy thing about that is that the law and the culture and the context of the time, they were not wrong in what they said. They were actually correct. These people were strict religious people who followed the law of the Old Testament, the law of Moses. And in Deuteronomy 22, it literally says, if a man is discovered committing adultery, both he and the woman must die. Like that is what their law stated. The law said they must die for their actions. You could argue that this was technically fair because of that. That was the law. They broke the law. Here are the consequences for the actions of breaking the law. It's kind of like if you touch a hot stove, your hand's gonna burn and it's gonna hurt. That's the consequences for touching a hot stove. It's simple.

It's black and white. There's no gray area there at all. That is what is fair. But then there's God's grace. And God's grace enters in to the situation. It enters in to the equation. And God's grace, that operates on levels that we can't even really, fully, truly comprehend. Because it's not fair. And again, that's good news for us. It's something we do not deserve, something we cannot earn. And it is a part of who God actually is, not just what he does or what he shows, but who he is. I mean, have you ever had that thing in your life that you just had to do? It's like deep in your bones, deep in your soul. Maybe it's a hobby that you have, or maybe you're one of the lucky ones who works a job that you would do for free because you love it so much. That thing in you that's like, you wake up in the morning, that's what you're thinking about. It keeps you up at night. Just that driving force deep in your bones, deep in your soul of who you are. That thing. That's the closest I can imagine

of how the grace of God works, because it's a part of who he is. It's almost like he can't help it. He just has that, he is grace, he is love. And it's not a switch you can turn off. It's always there. And you can't really explain it. But it's there. And that is the grace of God. And it's not fair in our eyes, right? Let's put ourselves in this moment real fast. Let's just say, for sake of the argument, that we were all there 2,000 years ago. And we're all standing in a big circle, we're standing in a crowd. And more than likely, we would be the ones, if we're not the one in the dirt in this situation, we would be the ones probably holding a stone, right? Because we follow these laws, we follow these rules and traditions. So we would be standing there like, yeah, they broke the law. This is the consequences. Tell me when to throw it, and I'm throwing it. But God's grace, it operates at such a different level. Our grace, it comes with stipulations because we put our own lenses and our own filter over top of it. But the divine grace of God is not that way. And it's so hard for us to wrap our minds around.

But that is the beauty and the messiness that is God's grace. We get what we do not deserve. Grace isn't fair. Love isn't fair. There's a story that Jesus tells in the Bible about vineyard workers. And to just kind of summarize it, he tells this story. So let's just say there's three different people that work at this vineyard. One shows up in the morning, works all day. One shows up at lunch, works half a day. And then the last one shows up at the very end of the day. There's only an hour left before they clock out. He works an hour. And then all three of them go and show up to the vineyard, the guy who owns the vineyard. And they all get paid the same exact wage. They all get paid the same thing. And in that story, the point of the story isn't how to run a vineyard. The point of that story is that fairness is not the goal. The workers all get paid the same because you cannot divide the divine. You cannot divide what is infinite. You cannot divide God because God's love, God's grace is equal for everybody. It's not like, well, they're gonna get this much grace, that person's gonna get this much grace, and this one over here is gonna only need this much grace.

No, it is the same grace for everybody. The same love for all of us. Thank God that his grace is not fair because none of us would have it. I'm not good enough. I can never do enough. I'm sure you're the same way. Don't kid yourself, you're not that good. None of us are. Not when it comes to God and his grace. Thank God that it's not fair. God's grace isn't fair and that is good, which leads us to number two. God's grace is greater than our mistakes. The lady in this story, right, she was caught in the act of adultery. Her mistake, you can say, is pretty clear. She committed adultery. One could argue how serious that was in this time, right? We just talked about it. In this culture, that was grounds for death. It's a very serious thing, but God's grace, God's grace is greater than those mistakes in our lives. Look at any person used in the Bible. All the great heroes of the scriptures, they all represent the truth that God specializes in using imperfect people and imperfect situations to do his perfect will. All throughout the Old Testament, there's story after story.

All these heroes of the faith had huge mistakes in their life. Look at the disciples in the New Testament. They were full of mistakes, failures, doubts, sin. They're full of it all. And yet, they were the ones that Jesus chose to walk with him. It is impossible for us to cover up God's grace without it. our mistakes, we can't do it. We don't have enough because God's grace is so much greater. And the life change recorded in the Bible is proof of that. The life change of the people sitting around you right now is proof of that. The life change of me standing up here is proof of that. If you would've known me pre-Jesus, this is literally the last thing you would have thought I would ever be doing. And some of you in this room knew me pre-Jesus. Like we went to school together and you would say like, yeah, if you would've asked me 15 years ago, what's Rob gonna be doing? It's not this at all. And you're like sitting back there right now, like nodding your head like, yeah, I know. I think about that all the time. It is the proof of the grace of God. His grace is greater. Yes, our actions do have consequences. Don't misunderstand me here because actions do have consequences.

I did not say that God's grace is an excuse for us to sin or an excuse for our mistakes. You can't go break all these laws and just do whatever your soul is telling you is right to do and then be like, I'm just gonna do whatever because God's grace. It's okay. That misses the entire point of the grace of God. It misses the heart behind it. His grace is not a how can I cheat the system type of thing. But when we surrender our lives to Jesus, he covers us with his grace to the point where our souls are actually finally able to live free like they were intended to do. And we think that things disqualify us from the grace of God or from being used by God, right? Like we think about our, I know I've done this. I'm sure you've done it too. We think about our past. We think about mistakes we've made, things we've done, people we've hurt. But yeah, God could never use me because of whatever, fill in the blank. My past is too bad. We can't let the mistakes of our past imprison our current circumstances to the point where then we can't step into, then even greater bravery also arises from that. When we surrender our lives to God, we surrender what we do not do.

We surrender our hope in the heavenly reign of the son of God. We surrender all that God has for us. What's in your past that you've done that you think is too bad for God to love you. When we surrender our lives to Jesus, we're made new in his eyes. The old is gone and the new is here, just like the songs we sang about God's grace is this, our dirt doesn't detour Jesus. Our dirt does not detour Jesus. Back to our story. The woman caught in the act of adultery, right? She's caught, she's drug out, she's thrown down in the dirt at the feet of Jesus. And the picture that is painted for us here is just so wild to me, right? Like she's there at the feet of Jesus. And everyone, I just kind of picture this moment where she's like there in the dirt, Jesus is standing there and there's all these people around and they're all just waiting, right? Like we talked about, they're all just standing there with stones waiting on what Jesus is gonna say. Like this is what this person did, what do you say? Because we know what we're about to do. And it's this picture that's painted. And what does Jesus do? They ask him a question and he doesn't say anything. He doesn't even respond to him.

At first he doesn't say anything, he simply gets down in the dirt and he writes something. What? I think maybe we hear this story and we kind of, it's power loses, like we just kind of glaze over on that part. But how crazy, he actually got down in the dirt with her and he wrote something down. This is so crazy, this is so symbolic to me. Yes, he physically got down in the dirt, but also what that represents and means for us today, that he would lower himself to be where she is at. That Jesus, the son of God, the divine, he actually lowered himself to be where she was, to meet her at her lowest point, to meet her in her pain and her embarrassment and her failure and her mistakes and stress and anxiety and depression, whatever it may be, Jesus met her there in that moment. When she was facing death, Jesus gave her life. That same thing is true for us today. No matter what you walked into this place with, no matter the mistakes that you've made in your life, no matter the dirt that you may find yourself in in this life, Jesus is there to meet you there in those messy moments because his grace is so much bigger than it. Our dirt does not detour Jesus. And I think a lot of times we can read a story like this and maybe we automatically just put ourselves

as the woman, right? Which I think at times throughout our life, we are all that person, right? We have all made a mistake and we are the woman in the dirt. But there's some times in our life where we play one of the other characters. Maybe you have a loved one, maybe you have a friend. or a family member, that's just going through it. And there, I mean, there, you would say like, yeah, they are actually like in the dirt. They're in a messy point of their life. What's our response to that? Because I don't wanna be, I know in the past, I've been the one who's holding the stone of condemnation. Where it's like, yeah, you know what you did is wrong, and I'm here to tell you about it. Are we that person in this story to the ones we love? I would much rather be like Jesus. He didn't do that at all. What did he do? He got down and he just was with her. The power of presence. Maybe someone in your life is just going through it and you don't need to say anything. You just need to be there. You just need to be with them so they know that they are loved. Jesus got down in the dirt. He is not afraid of it. Our dirt does not detour Jesus.

He didn't say, hey, why don't you clean yourself up a little bit and stand up so I can do my thing. He didn't say that at all. In fact, he didn't say anything at first. He got down in the dirt right where she was. What did he write? I always wonder that reading this. We don't know. But I wonder what he wrote in the dirt. In my mind, again, we don't know what he wrote, but how I see it is that he got down and he started writing, maybe just in front of her where she's the only one that could see it, but started writing truths about her, like you're loved, you're accepted, you're cared for. I believe the best for you. Maybe he was writing those kinds of things down in the dust right in front of her, these truths about how he sees her. And there's a truth shown to us here that we cannot miss. He writes in the sand, yes, and then he finally does speak, whoever has sinned, throw the first stone, and everybody starts leaving one by one. But then Jesus asks the woman, where are your accusers? Did any of them condemn you? And she says no, to which he replies, neither do I. Now go and sin no more. In that one statement, go and sin no more, Jesus is the perfect embodiment of both grace and truth.

He does it like no one else has ever done before, grace and truth, that his love cannot be stopped, that his grace is who he is, but it doesn't just end there because Jesus sees the best version of us. He knows our future, he knows what he's created us to do, he sees the best in us, the best for us, and he shows us a truth about his character that we have to hold on to through every season, through every part of our lives. And it's this right here, that Jesus loves us right where we are. He loves us right where we are, but he loves us too much to allow us to stay there. Yes, he loves us right where we are, but he loves us too much to allow us to stay where we are. His love is here, his grace is here, but he wants more for us, he wants the best for us. When we surrender our lives to him, we unlock the power of Jesus in our lives. In this statement, this is not a statement talking about perfection, that is not this at all. This is not a condemning statement. Jesus said, where are your accusers? Has any of them condemned you? And she said no, to which he replied, neither do I condemn you. That's what I'm saying, this is the perfect mixture of grace and truth. The grace of I love you right where you are and the truth of, but I believe the best for you.

And this is not the best for you. I mean, what loving father would not want the best for his kids? Jesus wants the best for us, he loves us right where we are. It's not a statement about perfection, it's a statement about this soul level purity, that we would focus on Jesus and let him change us from the inside out. We don't have to focus on changing all these different things in our life that need changing. And I think so often we get hung up on that, don't we? We just see like, all right, there's this mistake and this mistake and this mistake and this thing I need to get better at and this thing I need to change and we're only looking at all those different things we need to change. And the problem with doing that is we are not strong enough to make any of those changes. The significant things in life that we need to change about ourselves, we are not strong enough to do. But God is, God's spirit is that strong. And when our focus is just, okay, how can I get closer and closer to Jesus? When we start to do that, and he starts to show us things that are unlike him and we start to live and be more like Jesus, these other things that are mistakes in our life, they start to take care of themselves

and what is produced will take care of itself. Jesus tells her to go and sin no more. We cannot go and sin no more without the. power of Jesus. I need more Jesus. You need more Jesus. We need more of Jesus in our lives. I have a son. He's almost two years old. He'll be two in January. His name is Jude. And Jude is a wild man. Like the kid, he loves being outside. Loves it. So much so, so the way our house is, like our kitchen and back door is right there, and if you're going to walk outside, you have to kind of walk through our kitchen, right? So if you even go that way, he will see you walking that direction. You'll just hear these little footsteps, going as fast as they possibly can to try to get to that back door. And then you kind of sidestep it and you walk to the kitchen. And he just runs into the back door, screams like, ah, because he wants to go play outside so bad. And I'm like, bro, it's thundering and lighting and we can't go out there right now. And he's just screaming.

I'm like, I don't know what you want me to do, man. So we try to go outside as often as we can. We'll go out there all the time and just play. He loves it. In our backyard, it has like a concrete slab and then there's grass and dirt. And we got this little water table and sand table back there. And so this kid, he'll run up to the water table and he'll be splashing in it. He'll be filling up these cups and he's just dumping the water all over him, having the time of his life. He loves it. He runs over there to the sand. He's throwing the sand up in the air and like hitting himself in the face with it. He's eating it, which is probably not good, but he's having so much fun. I don't really want to stop him, but he's taking these big chunks out of the sand. And then he starts mixing the two. He's dumping water in the sand table, sand in the water table. And he's mixing it all up, making this muddy mess. And then he starts throwing that all over himself. And it's just this really chaotic moment of just mud and dirt and water. And every once in a while, he'll just start running. It's like he gets really excited and just starts running on the porch.

And he's not the most like coordinated person yet. Remember, he's not two. He's only like almost two. And so he'll be running and sometimes he'll be going. And then he like trips himself and just face plants it on the concrete. And he'll like skid a little bit. His legs all skinned up, his arms, sometimes his face. One time he got this really gnarly black eye for a long time and he just like hits the ground. And so here he is like covered in sand and water and mud and now blood and tears and snot. And he's just screaming, like crying. And in that moment, I run over to him and I just pick him up and I hold him. I'm just holding him. I don't say a word, just hold him tight. He's screaming, he's crying. I just hold him. And then I look down and now I'm covered in mud and in sand and in water. There's some tears and some snot now on me and some blood from him. Right, I'm just covered in that. I don't let him go. I don't throw him to the side. No, I hold him tighter. And I'm just holding on to my, hey buddy, it's okay. It's okay, you're okay. You're gonna be fine.

I know you're gonna be fine. And I just hold him tight in his pain, in his messiness. I just hold him tight and it doesn't end there. I don't just leave him there. I don't just leave him there in his pain, in his mess, in his dirt, in his mud. I bring him inside, we clean up, get him some fresh clothes, clean his wounds, get him a Band-Aid, maybe an ice pack. And then I hold him and we just sit there. If our love, if the love of our earthly relationships is greater than our dirt, how much more is God's love greater than the mess and the dirt that we find ourselves in? How much greater? Jesus talks about this in Luke. In the book of Luke in chapter 11, he talks about this. If we can love like that, how much greater is our heavenly Father? How much greater is his love and grace towards us if we're able to do that? God's grace is there for us. He loves us right where we are, but he knows and he sees the best in our lives. And he doesn't want us to stay right where we are. He wants to get us to the point where he knows we should be. He wants the best for us. And that grace, that love, it is who he is. It's an anchor for our souls.