Grace: God's New Lifestyle - Grace for Today, Pt. 6

We'll be right back to It's Supposed to Be So. In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. Next on In Touch, grace, God's new lifestyle. Do you make up rules for yourself in order to discipline yourself and find yourself breaking them? And do you sort of harshly criticize yourself when you don't live up to your own standards and your own expectations? Do you feel distant from God when you're not serving Him or doing something that you would consider sort of spiritual? And do you feel close to God when you're doing something that you think is religious or spiritual? And I wonder if oftentimes you feel driven by such phrases as these in your thinking. I must, I should, I ought to. And I wonder if oftentimes you entertain very accusing feelings of I'm not sure I'm saved and I'm not sure I have done exactly right. And those feelings that cause you to feel insecure, inadequate, and not certain of your salvation. Well, if that's true, more than likely if these things happen to be the lifestyle that you're living, you're living in an old lifestyle that God never intended. Because you see, Jesus talked about a new lifestyle. He called it a new covenant. And that's what I want to talk about in this message. Grace, God's new lifestyle. And I want you to turn, if you will, to Luke chapter 22. And if you recall this 22nd chapter of Luke,

this portion of it relates the account of Jesus with his apostles in the upper room. And they're observing the Lord's Supper, the Last Supper. And I want us to begin, if you will, at verse 19, reading 19 and 20. And Jesus here, breaking bread, said, And when he had taken some bread and given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And in the same way he took the cup after they had eaten, saying, This cup, which is poured out for you, is the new covenant in my blood. A new covenant in my blood. What he's saying to them is this. Something new is about to happen. Now, they grew up under the old law of the Old Testament and all the sacrificial system and all the rest. And now Jesus is saying, Something new is about to happen. And this new thing that's going to happen, he says, I'm establishing a new covenant. Now, the next day, here's what happened. The next day, Jesus was crucified. And in the shedding of his blood, he established this new covenant relationship between God and mankind. And that is that sin would forever be forgiven on the basis of his crucifixion, the shedding of his blood at Calvary, because he was the final lamb prophesied through all the Old Testament and the shedding of the blood of bulls, goats, lambs, sheep. All of these were only a foreshadowing of the coming of Christ

and his crucifixion. So when he said, I'm establishing a new covenant, there was going to be a new lifestyle, a whole new way. Now, when Jesus said a new covenant, what was he referring to? He was referring to a new relationship based on a whole new idea. And secondly, he was referring to a new personal relationship that you and I could have with him. The Bible says that you and I have been saved by the grace of God. For by grace, God's unmerited, undeserved favor, his kindness and goodness and graciousness toward us, not regarding our worth or our merit, but in spite of what we deserve, God has acted toward us in grace. Through the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, he's made it possible for God to remain just and holy and at the same time work among us as sinners in such a way that God looks upon us as absolutely and totally redeemed from all sin, past, present, and future. It is purely an act of grace. It has nothing to do with what we deserve. And so when we talk about grace, God's new lifestyle, we're talking about the way God deals with us today. And so instead of being under the bondage of I'm not sure I'm pleasing God and I'm not sure that, you know, God really loves me today and I don't feel it and sometimes I do and sometimes I don't, most believers, I'm afraid, most believers have real questions about their relationship to God. How do I know when I'm pleasing him and how do I know when I've done enough and how do I know when I've prayed enough? If it's a matter of rules and regulations and living up to an impossible, invisible standard, you will never have any peace and never know when you've pleased God and never have any contentment in your life.

That's Old Testament living. That is not New Testament grace. So what are we talking about? I want to give you seven words that I really believe sort of summarize. and sort of capsules this whole life that we call a life of grace. And the first one is acceptance. In the Old Testament, their acceptance by God was based on their performance. It was based on living up to rules and regulations. When they didn't live up to those rules and regulations as they should, then they felt unaccepted by God. And so they lived under the bondage of law. Their offering of their sacrifice was absolutely essential to their getting God's acceptance. When Jesus Christ went to the cross, he settled once and for all the basis of our acceptance. Our acceptance in the eyes of God is based not on behavior, not on conduct, not on performance, but it is based on a condition. And that condition is that Jesus Christ, having died at Calvary and having taken all of my sin and my receiving him as my personal savior by faith, settled once and for all and forever the very basis of my acceptance in the eyes of God. It has nothing to do with conduct, nothing to do with behavior, but a condition. You and I have become the children of the living God, not based on our goodness or our righteousness or our promises or our hopes,

but based on the work of Jesus Christ when he died at Calvary. His death settled once and for all the basis of our acceptance. Now, what does that do? That means when you and I wake up in the morning, we go about our day, we don't have to be looking to think, I hope I did enough, I hope I prayed enough, I hope I read a Bible enough, I hope I didn't say anything wrong. I don't wanna have to go down beside my bed tonight and pray and hope God loves me. Friend, love forever through the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. He paid your sin debt in full and you will never be free of the bondage of fear, of wondering if you have done enough, wondering if you've lived up to it, wondering if you've reached his standard. What is the standard? Listen, God says it is grace, God's unmerited, undeserved favor, because listen, the truth is, we cannot deserve what God has done for us. You can't. Now listen, if you can't and he's already provided for it, then you can relax. It's acceptance based on him. He is the perfect Lamb of God

that died to take away the sin of the world, your sin and mine, all on him. So what's the life of grace? The life of grace is this, that God has accepted me on the basis of what his son did for me, not on the basis of anything I'll ever do for him. Now here's our problem. Our problem is pride. We think, well, I gotta do something to deserve it. No, you can't. Listen, that's the flesh. You will never be able to deserve the love of God. It is acceptance based on what Jesus did to the cross. The second word is assurance. Assurance. What is the basis of our assurance? The basis of our assurance, he says, for by grace, God's undeserved love, God's graciousness and kindness toward us, God's forgiveness toward us based on not what we deserve. For grace, by grace you're saved through faith. That's not of yourselves. It is not of works, he says, lest any man should boast. And there's so many believers who are not sure of their salvation. And I wanna say to all of you dear folks, and I say it as loving as I know how, who have been taught that you can be saved today,

sin tonight and go to hell tomorrow. My friend, there is no peace in that. There's no joy in that. And I wanna ask you a question. Whatever happened to grace? That is, if grace is God's undeserved favor, undeserved, if it is something he does for me I cannot do for myself, then whatever happened to grace, the love of God poured out and poured out and poured out upon his children. Listen, through his son Jesus, he paid the penalty for my disobedience. He paid the penalty for my doubts and my frustrations and anxieties in life. I don't have to pay the penalty for that. You see, we forget this. That's the most important thing Almighty God ever did, was to give his son to you and to me. So the word is assurance. The third word is availability. Think about this. Before in the Old Testament, only the high priest could go into the Holy of Holies and be in the presence of the Ark of the Covenant. The very presence of God was symbolized there. And some priests could go in other areas. But just think about the people on the outside, all the hundreds and thousands and millions of them, they couldn't get anywhere close to that.

Jesus said, I'm coming to establish a new covenant. And the next day when that veil was split from top to bottom, that was like God opening the door and say, hey, new relationship. Listen to this, a personal, warm, intimate relationship with Almighty God, not just Jehovah God, the omnipotent one who thunders out of Sinai, who sends lightning and clouds and thunder and roar and power, but what? Loving, gentle, heavenly Father. That's the difference between grace and law. And you and I have the wonderful privilege, listen, when Jesus came and died on the cross, and the Bible says he came to live on the inside of us, what did he do? He came to make it possible for you and me to live in this wonderful, intimate relationship with him and the Father. This is why he says, with boldness, with courage, come to the throne room of God. And he says, make your petitions there, and you'll find mercy, he says, you'll find grace and mercy to help in time of need. This is, you see, the God you and I serve, isn't this distant somewhere out yonder? Omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, he's all of that. But in Jesus' coming, listen to what he said, he says, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. How did Jesus act? Don't get close to me, you'll drop dead.

Stay away, I am God's only begotten son. Watch out for the lightning and the thunder and the roaring. He sat down in a boat when they fished. He sat around and laughed with them and had a good time with them. He was their friend, he said, I'm not calling you slaves. He says, you fellows are my friends. Do you see God as your friend or your enemy? You see, most people see him as an enemy. Judge, righteous, condemning. What about loving, tender, heavenly Father? And Jesus said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father. Because if you've seen me, I'm like him, he's like me. And what was he like? Tender, loving, kind, forgiving, generous, sensitive. That's what the Father's like. And you see, the life of grace is a whole different perspective about God. It is a life of acceptance on the basis of what Christ did, not what I did. It is a life of absolute assurance based on what Jesus did, not what you and I did. It is a life with availability to almighty God because Jesus paved the way with his blood at Calvary. It is also a life of adequacy. That means, hey, in the Old Testament, they struggle, they did in their own strength, but when Pentecost came, something fantastic happened. And you recall those disciples, they worked hard trying to do what they should have done,

but they kept on blowing it over and over and over again. And Jesus said to them in that 14th, 15th, 16th chapters of John, he spent a lot of time talking to them about the Holy Spirit. And he said, now, when these things come to pass that I'll tell you about, don't you dare leave Jerusalem. Don't even think about it. He said, you stay right here because something's going to happen. In this new covenant relationship, something's going to happen. Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to send you the Holy Spirit, a person of the Trinity. He's not just going to be on the outside coming and going once in a while as in the Old Testament characters, but he's coming to abide and live on the inside of you. And he's going to live there forever. And everything you need, he's going to supply. You'll never have to do anything in your own strength, anything in your own power. I will do it through the Holy Spirit within you. Is this not grace that God does not expect you and me to do a single solitary thing apart from the Holy Spirit? When I hear people are talking about, oh, have you got the Spirit? When you receive the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, you get it all. Every single thing, you get it all.

Every single person who's ever been saved is now indwelt by the Holy Spirit of the living God. Because he says, if you don't have the Spirit, you're none of his. You can't be saved and not have the Holy Spirit. That, listen, that's grace. That's God equipping us, enabling us, giving us a teacher, giving us a guide, giving us guidance in our life. Assuring us and undergirding us and overshadowing us with the Holy Spirit to enable us to do every single thing he requires of us. That's the wonderful thing about grace. You and I don't have to do anything apart from the Holy Spirit. You see, the life of grace isn't the life of us doing it ourselves. It is the life of God providing for us. The next word is abundance. Because you see, Jesus said, I have come that you and I might have life and have it more abundantly. What is the abundant life? I'll tell you what it is. Listen, the abundant life is life on the highest plane. The abundant life is the life of Jesus being lived in and through me. The abundant life is the life that God intended for all of us to live, and that's why he sent Jesus to make it possible, not in their own strength, but in the presence of Christ living within us.

It is his abundance. You say, well, look, I've been looking for some of God's abundance. My friend, here's what he said. He said that he's deposited to your account and mine every single solitary thing we will ever need. Now, I have to trust him, and as I trust him, then it's gonna flow our way. And you see, some people say, well, you know, I want God to provide for me. Listen, here's what grace has done. By grace, God gives abundance. Wealth to the poor. He gives power to the weak. He gives purity to the dirty. He gives healing to the sick. He gives comfort to those who are sorrowing. In His abundance, He has provided everything. But think about it, when you have the wisdom of God and you know the ways of God, and when God is working in your life and there's a deep, abiding contentment and intimacy with Him, I'm here to tell you, there's not any amount of money anywhere in the world to compare with that. And besides that, there are money, they're gonna have to leave it here, what you and I've got, we've taken it with us. They're gonna leave it all, we've taken it with us. We are much richer than they are.

And the Bible says that you and I are to be rich in the things of God, rich in the Word of God, wealthy in Him. And Jesus came, listen, to live on the inside of you and me, and through His Holy Spirit to do what? Teach us the ways of God, teach us how God operates, teach us how God thinks, teach us to interpret His Word, teach us to walk in His ways. And listen, when you start living in grace, here's what you're gonna discover. No valley, no mountain peak, no difficulty, no hardship, no trouble, no trial, no tribulation, that's not gonna get you down, you know why? Because you'll understand that these are part of the ways of God to mature us, conforming us to His likeness, shaping us up. And you see, He says He came to liberate us, to set captives free. And you and I have the abundance of God. That's what grace is all about. You say, well, you know, I just don't think I would deserve that. Right! Listen, you will never deserve that. The Christian ought to just get that word out of their vocabulary. It isn't deserving, but what? Grace, say it, grace. It isn't deserving, it's grace. Next word is abiding, abiding.

You have to look this way. The most beautiful way Jesus could ever have described, I don't know of anything else He could have said that He could have been more perfect than this. He said, I wanna show you about my relationship to you. He said, I'm the vine, you're the branch. And He says, now you are abiding in Me, and I am abiding in you. And the life in the vine is now the life of the branch. And the big, luscious, juicy grapes hanging down here from the branch, to refresh the spirit and the soul and the body. What is that? That's the life of the vine, living in the life of the branch and producing the fruit. You see, the Christian life was never meant to be a struggle, frightening, fuming, and trying, and struggling. We've all been through that. But how does the branch live in the vine? It just rests in the vine, and depends upon the vine for everything. When people say, I received Jesus Christ and made Him a part of my life, forget it. A part of your life, which part? And if they were honest, here's what they'd say. The part that I call on when I get in trouble. He's not a part of our life. My friend, He is your life. Jesus is our life. Listen, He is our life.

We don't have any life apart from Him. And this wonderful abiding relationship is the work of God's grace. The last word is accountability. He said, oh, I was afraid you was gonna get to that. Well, would God be a God of grace if I were not accountable to Him? Absolutely He would not. Account, listen, here's the difference. It's one thing to think in terms of accountability of this judgmental, condemning, scorekeeping God. No, we're talking about a loving, gracious, kind, heavenly Father, to whom you and I give account every day. Wake up in the morning, Father, what would you have me to do today? Who would you have me to speak to? Father, would you guide my schedule today because it's yours? Would you just live your life through me today and you know the things that I'm gonna face that I don't have any idea I'm gonna face and so therefore I can't get prepared for them, but you can be prepared because you can prepare me because you already know what's gonna happen. Accountability is not bad. Now, if you die lost without Christ, you got a lot to be worried about. But you see, when you and I stand in the judgment seat of the Lord Jesus Christ,

and we stand before this loving, gracious Father, in those split seconds and nobody knows how long, we're gonna see him as he is and know ourselves as he sees us and agree with his judgment. And it's all gonna be praise. You see, here's what the Lord Jesus' attitude's gonna be at the judgment. One of my trophies, another one of my trophies. You see, he's not disappointed because he knew before you and I were ever born all the things you and I would do wrong in life, all the mistakes we'd made and all the failures we'd experienced. He knew all about that. You know what he decided to say was anyway? Do you think he's gonna be kind to us till we get to the judgment? and then just let the boom fall on us? No. He is a gracious, loving Father. And according to Ephesians chapter two, verse six and seven there, he says, you and I will shine forever in glory as trophies of his great grace. Because you see, angels can't experience it. No angel ever got forgiven of sins and now lives in heaven forgiven. But you and I do. We're trophies of his grace.

Let me ask you a question. Has there ever been a time in your life when you acknowledged your sinfulness and you realized that your sins had separated you between you and God and you realized that you really truly needed him? Maybe you didn't know what to do. And so you just said, God, I hope you'll be merciful to me. That's not sufficient. You see, to be forgiven of sin means that you realize that you have sinned against him and there's not anything that you can do for yourself. You see a lot of folks saying, look, when I clean up some things, I'm coming to God. You'll never get there. You know why? Because the cleaning process is his work. Listen to me. It was the blood of Jesus at Calvary that took care of all the cleaning. You can't clean up anything. Listen, you may be able to stop a few things, but here's what you can't do. Now watch this. Your cleaning up yesterday's sins will never erase from your life, from your heart, from your spirit, the guilt of years of disobedience. Cleaning up today's acts is one thing, but erasing years of guilt,

only the blood of Jesus can do that. And so that's why we say to be saved is to acknowledge that Jesus' death at Calvary paid your sin debt in full. And that when you receive him by faith as a person, as my personal savior, you're saying to God, Father, I do believe that you sent your only begotten son and he paid my sin debt. I receive him as my personal savior and I therefore believe that my sins are now forgiven, not by what I've done, but what he did. And I declare myself as a child of God based on his work, not mine. It's an act of faith. And then step into this wonderful, exciting journey of hand in hand, listen, hand in hand with a heavenly father, not whom you're holding onto through the rest of your life, but whose absolute eternal grip holds you for all eternity. That's the life of grace. And it is available to all who will call upon it.