Grace and Peace

[00:00:01] Hey, guys, guess who's back again? [00:00:06] It's like, you know what? One cc midweek. Let's do it again. [00:00:12] Honestly, though, one of my favorite parts, there's a lot of lovely things I love about working at the church here. But working with my best friend Sarah is probably one of the best things ever. And what her and the midweek team have done to build this service and how cool it's been. I love being here, and I'm super thankful to be with you guys tonight, so I'm gonna pray for us. Dear Father, I love you so much. I am so thankful for what a wonderful God that you are. I'm thankful for this night that you've invited us here to draw nearer to you. I pray, Father, that you would please be at work in our minds and our hearts, connecting us to you in the awesome grace of Jesus Christ. Help us. I pray. In Jesus name. Amen. [00:00:59] So one of the things I found interesting in reading the Bible over the years is all of these new things that you can discover. And what's interesting is I didn't see it my first time reading through the Bible. I didn't see it my second time reading through the Bible. Not my 3rd, fourth. I won't tell you how many times I've had to read the Bible to see some things that I see now. It's one of the reasons we're always talking about, like, why reading your Bible regularly again and again is so valuable, because you're gonna come across ideas that God is gonna use to teach you something so great about who he is and about yourself that you didn't know before. And the power of the Bible is in different places and in different times of your life. God's gonna find you right there on the pages and speak a truth to you that you desperately need. So I'm gonna share one of those ideas with you tonight. It's one of those things that, like, again, I won't tell you how many passes it took me through the Bible to find this, but there's themes and there's ideas that pop up, and I want to share one of these ideas that I've been interested in, in discovering tonight. It actually comes from the apostle Paul. And when you study the life history of Paul, he was this man that Jesus Christ found and called to be apostle and to share the good news of who Christ is and what he had done. And Paul was this, like, boldly courageous tough guy, and you can read about all these journeys he went on in the book of acts, and he would just go to these new towns and start talking about Jesus. And people's lives would be changed, and churches would build up, and even in, like, persecution and troubles, they'd kick him out of a town, he'd go to another town. He just was so compelled by Christ, he couldn't stop talking about him. So then he went on these trips, revisited new towns, old towns, went to new towns. And then in the New Testament, we read these letters that Paul writes to these churches, and these are churches of people he knew. He saw them start. Some of them are churches he'd never been to. Some of them are just friends who are young leaders trying to figure out, like, I love God, how do I lead in the church, and how do I figure this out? And when you unpack these letters of Paul, some of them are just this, like, great instruction and theology about Christ and life with God, and what does that look like? Some of them are real specific. Like, hey, we're having this really specific problem here in the church. How do we work on that today? And so Paul writes these letters, and they would receive them, and they'd read them out loud in the church, and they'd share them with other churches to grow in their faith and their knowledge of who God is. But what's interesting is when you read Paul's letters with that context, he genuinely cares about these people. These are specific people in specific places, and Paul genuinely cares about their lives and their hearts and their faith. And he's so invested in this work that Christ has called him to do. He wants more and more things for his friends and for the churches. [00:04:15] We all know what it's like to want something, don't we? Like, when we're little kids, we all have those wish lists. Remember, like the Christmas wish list, the birthday wish list. And then even if you get everything you want, there's, like, a friend who shows up with the thing you didn't know you needed but you really wanted. And you're like, oh, now I want that even more. [00:04:32] When I was a little kid, I wanted something called a caboodle. Have you ever seen a caboodle before? Okay, I was younger. This was a long time ago. To me, this was like the epitome of you. It's such a big deal. I wasn't allowed to wear makeup. It carries makeup. I just thought it was the cool thing. My friend got it for Christmas. You guys, I was so mad at her, I didn't believe her. I'm like, you're lying and making that up. We don't get caboodles in my head, in my imagination, this was like the epitome of fanciness and coolness. [00:05:04] She really did. And we got in a fight about it. I'm like, it's so unfair. I want a caboodle. My daughter has this exact caboodle right now, because what I didn't get, she gets right. That's how, okay, we know what it's like to want things. And then we get older and our wants change, right? The things that we want. And then we have relationships where we want things for people. We have a significant other, and we want them to succeed, and we want them to do well. And you have kids and your wants change from stuff and things to, like values and characteristics and life experience and purpose, these things that you want so desperately for your people. What's interesting is when you read Paul's letters, we get to see a glimpse into his heart and what he wants for his friends, what he wants for the church. [00:05:53] So Paul writes all these letters, and he follows. He's a letter writer, so he's got a little formula, right? Like it would be if we sat down and put the date in the corner and said, dear sarah. And we had this little, like, love me at the end, right? So he always starts these letters with, this is who I am, right? I'm Paul, an apostle called by Christ to share the gospel. And then he says, who am I writing to? I'm writing to the churches in Galatia. I'm writing to the church in Rome. My friends in Ephesus, he tells you who he's writing to. There's a greeting, and then he goes on to say, here's how I'm praying for you and why I'm so thankful for you. And sometimes we read this, and if you read them again and again, you kind of, like, pass over it. You're like, okay, what's he going to talk about? What's the big deal? What's going on here? And there's so much great language in there. [00:06:41] It's more than just a greeting. It's more than just words. They're not throwaway. Every one of them matter. And so what's really, really interesting is every letter that Paul writes, I want you to go home and check this. If you don't have your bible with you today, Romans first and second, Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians. Like all of them, he has a greeting, and you can usually find it in the first couple of verses. I'll give you an example. It's Ephesians chapter one, verse two, he says, may God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace. Every letter he says this first and second Timothy, he says it, but then he adds, mercy, because Timothy needs some help and he wants some mercy in there, too. But this idea, this greeting, may God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace in his heart. What he most wants for the church, for his friends, is the grace and peace that comes from God through Jesus Christ. Now, these words, again, it's a sentence that's easy to look over, or it's words we've heard in church, and they kind of pick up. Like they're words that get used, but we don't really know where they came from. We don't know what they mean. Like, it sounds really good, but it doesn't really impact our lives, or we don't really spend a lot of time wrestling with it or thinking about it in any way. So we're going to dig into these, like, why does Paul want grace and peace? Why is that the first thing that he leads with when he writes these letters? Now, it's interesting because grace was a common greeting used in the greek culture. And Shalom, which is the hebrew word for peace, was a common greeting in jewish culture. So he takes these two culture greetings and he puts them together to give us this deep level understanding of Jesus Christ. So when we look at something like this, these significance, we have to say, like, what does it mean? Right? So we're gonna start with grace. What does grace mean? [00:08:39] Where do we see grace? And then if we're really living with it, like, what are the results of a life of grace? So let's start with, what is it? It's more than our beautiful grace. I mean, her name is lovely. That's amazing. But what does it mean in what Paul's context is here? Okay, if you look it up in a dictionary, if you do, like, a commentary or a Bible study, you get things like goodwill, loving kindness, favor, a gift. It's used to describe how God treats his people. Sometimes you see that free, unmerited favor of God or his unending goodness towards his people. But at everything that you read about grace, it's something given, not earned. Philip Yancey wrote a book called what's so amazing about grace? He said, we live in an atmosphere choked with the fumes of ungrace. Grace comes from the outside as a gift and not an achievement. How easily it vanishes from our dog eat dog. Survival of the fittest, lookout for number one world. We all know what the opposite of grace looks like, but we've all been treated in that way. And he actually uses a professor in psychology, and he says there's really three common sources of crippling shame. And what those look like are culture, graceless religion, or unaccepting parents. Those are the top three places that we feel crippling shame. So culture tells a person, you have to look good, feel good, and make good. And if you don't, you're not enough. Well, then what does graceless religion say? Follow the rules. And if you don't get the letter of the rules right, you're a failure. Eternal rejection, right? Fire and brimstone, we've heard that before. [00:10:27] But what about the unaccepting parents? [00:10:30] Have you ever heard this before? Aren't you ashamed of yourself? I can't believe you would do something like that. You're never going to meet my approval. There's a standard. No matter what you do, you can't get there. In every one of these areas, we don't experience grace. We experience the opposite of it, shame. And it lingers inside of us so much that it goes into this feeling of not good enough, undeserving. And we felt this way in different places, in different times. And we carry this into our expectation from God. We carry these feelings with us, into what we expect from God or how we think God sees us. And what happens is we miss Grace. [00:11:19] We miss what God tells us about grace, what Paul's heart of grace for the church is supposed to look like. And we miss all of these lovely words of a definition of a word that gets tossed around, but maybe not necessarily experienced. So let's repackage that. Let's put a new image, a new picture. Grace means period. There's nothing I can do to make God love me more, but also, there's nothing I can do to make God love me less. [00:11:50] God is loving because of who he is. Grace doesn't depend on what I can do for goddess. Grace is fully dependent on what God has already done for you and I. [00:12:04] And here's an image I want you to cling to in all spaces of your life. God will never run out of grace. He has more grace than I have sinned. [00:12:14] Just sit on that for a second. Right. Because some of us are like, I don't know if you know. [00:12:19] Oh, I promise I don't. But God does. Right? And he still has more grace than my entire life accumulation of messing up and not getting it right. See, at its core, grace is a gift because the gift isn't a paycheck that I earned. It's not the time that I put in and the results that I see because of it, right? Like, I worked out. I got muscles. I put that time in. I'm just joking. That doesn't actually happen in my case. But other people, I hear, it happens to them, okay? It's completely undeserved. It's a gift. And at the core of the gift that God gives us, it's not about what we deserve. It's about who he is. And so he treats us better than we deserve, not because of anything. We're done. Does that make sense? When we talk about grace, these are the words that go through our mind. When I think about what grace is, I know what shame looks like. I know what graceless religion feels like or unaccepting parents or, you know, authority figures, but that's not God. Grace is this beautiful thing that God gives his kids because he's loving and he wants to. So where do we see this most clearly? If this is our idea of grace, where do we look to see God's grace on display most perfectly in the person of Jesus Christ? Here's what we understand. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. [00:13:52] And this again, it's a verse that we hear, but sometimes it, like, loses the power of the language that it means. Before we even knew God existed, God was already acting. Before it even occurred to me, like, hey, maybe God could help me and I should go find him, and maybe I could seek after God. God was actively seeking after us. [00:14:14] There's not this place where God's like, well, I'm just gonna wait for you to get it all together, clean up your mess, stop doing those things. Start doing some of those things. When you're finally in a good spot, then we'll talk, right? [00:14:28] That's not what God does. Right in the middle of the mess, Christ steps in. In fact, Christ came into this world and took our part. He joined the story. He lived the life perfectly that none of us could have ever lived. And he died this death that took everything upon himself. [00:14:53] Not just what had been done, not just what was happening, but for everything ever, for the future of eternity and history, until he comes back again. Christ took that all on himself, on the cross, and he did it on purpose. [00:15:12] He did it with a plan and an intention, not showing up, waiting for people to serve him. But Christ came to serve and give his life as a ransom so that in him we know life, we know grace. We know love. We know acceptance. We know forgiveness. He shared this incredible act of service. He showed the greatest act of service through his love and through his sacrifice. But think about when you read the life of Christ. When Christ gave his life, he hung on the cross. And right there in those moments, there were people who didn't believe in him. Christ gave his life for the people yelling at him, who didn't understand him. He gave his life for his friends who betrayed him. [00:16:02] He gave his life for the people who turned his back on him in fear and ran away. He gave his life for those who denied him. [00:16:12] Insulted, mocked, rejected and abused. Christ did not back away from the cross. [00:16:19] What makes me think that Christ is going to back away from me today? [00:16:23] He's seen the worst of humanity. He wasn't surprised 2000 years ago. And friends, he's not surprised today. [00:16:32] Christ was part of God's incredible plan to find us and save us and bring us home. [00:16:40] I love Dane Ortland. He's helped me think about the love of Christ probably better than I ever could on my own. He said, in going to the cross, Jesus didn't retain something for himself the way we tend to do when we seek to love others sacrificially. He doesn't love like us. We love until we're betrayed. Jesus continued to the cross despite betrayal. We love until we are forsaken. Jesus loved through forsakenness. We love up to a limit. [00:17:09] Jesus Christ loves to the end. [00:17:11] If you want to see what Grace looks like, you see it in Jesus Christ. [00:17:17] Christ didn't come to shame us. He came to save us. [00:17:22] He didn't come to demean us. He came to lift us up. He didn't pull out this measuring stick and say, let me show you how much you're not measuring up. And while you're never going to be good enough, he said, let me show you my love, that in knowing me, you get to know just how much more than enough you actually are. [00:17:43] See, when we understand what grace is, we get to see it and live it and experience it in the person of Jesus Christ. You can't see grace like that and be unaffected by it. See, people saw Christ and they were drawn to him and amazed by him. And he had compassion and he healed and he taught, but he treated people with dignity. [00:18:05] He never treated people as less than him or below. He's king of kings and lord of lords. He can put me in whatever lower rung I need to be there. And he's probably, probably really right. But that's not how he treats humanity, friends. It's not how he treats you and I. He looks at us and reminds us that everybody was made in the image of God, that you have an innate quality and dignity in you because you were made in that image of God. It has nothing to do with anything you've ever done and everything to do with the personhood, the love, the grace and the awesomeness of Jesus Christ. [00:18:43] That's grace. [00:18:45] We have words that help us picture it. We see it when we look to Christ and we read about Christ and we understand him more. And then as we take this into ourselves, here's the thing about grace. [00:18:58] Grace is free, but it never leaves you unchanged. [00:19:02] Grace shows up in your life not expecting anything. But I'm telling you right now, when you spend time in this grace of Christ, you can't walk away not being affected by it. [00:19:16] You can't walk away without it doing something in your mind and your heart and your attitude and your values and your character. Because you have to start thinking, man, if Christ could treat me this way, what does grace look like in my life? Right? What does grace look like in how I do life and how I treat people and what I'm doing? [00:19:34] We have to ask ourselves, does anybody look at me and see grace? [00:19:38] Does anybody ever spend time in brown with me and be like, wow, they really must love Jesus. They're so gracious. [00:19:46] One of I think the biggest problems is just go to Google and say, why are christians so you don't see gracious? [00:19:55] Isn't that sad? [00:19:57] If this is who Christ is and how he loves us and how he treats us, shouldn't what comes out of us reflect the beauty, the love, the joy, the goodness, the grace of Jesus Christ? But unfortunately, the world sees a lot of graceless religion, and they think, if that's who God is, I'm out, right? If that's what it looks like to follow Jesus, I'm good. I got enough of that. Don't need any more. I got a backpack full of my own problems. Don't make me feel worse. [00:20:27] See, if this really is what Grace means, we see it in Christ, then we have to take ownership of what does Grace look like when I'm living in it. Because here's the absolute truth. Grace doesn't lead to pride. [00:20:41] It doesn't lead to, let me show you how much better I am than you. It's not a pedestal we stand on to diminish people around us. Grace isn't. I'm right, you're wrong. Get over it. [00:20:57] Grace should come out of us with humility and confidence. [00:21:02] Humility is, I'm so messed up. Christ had to die for me. I can't escape that. See, grace is free for me, but it costs Jesus Christ everything. [00:21:14] But also, I'm so loved that he wanted to. [00:21:20] When I look at Christ in that way, it leads to humility. [00:21:26] I'm not somehow better than somebody else. I'm not somehow up here because I go here, do these things, and follow these rules. I am where I am because of the grace of Jesus Christ. And my posture towards other people should not be pride and arrogance. I should never use my faith in Jesus Christ to try to assume power over anybody, to squash them. [00:21:54] In fact, grace in me should show up as humility and be like, you know what? You probably are a better person than me. Amen. Right? Not going to argue with you there. You've got facts. All right? Humility is the reality. I'm not saved because God's like, wow, you're so good, and you did enough good girl things today. I'm going to check you off my list, give you two gold stars, right? We've talked about this. That's my own self righteousness. It's not justification by faith. Instead, in the loving goodness, kindness of Jesus Christ, I am saved by grace, not because of my work, but because of the work of Jesus Christ. [00:22:34] And this humility shows up in confidence. See, what happens is I'm not out trying to fight and prove to everybody I'm worth something. Right? I'm not trying to hustle to show everybody, like, I am a good person and I do do right things. And you should like me, and you should invite me to be on your team. Anybody never get picked to be on teams. Leaves you feeling a little fomo, doesn't it? [00:22:58] Or maybe I'm just a middle kid and I always feel left out. I don't know. All right? We don't have to be out in life hustling to say to people, I'm good. I'm worth it. I deserve it. You should. Right? Everybody wants to be seen. Everybody wants to be valued. Everybody wants to be loved. But what we miss out in the world, we already are. Christ sees you. Christ loves you. Christ values you. Christ went to the cross not for an idea of you, an idea of sin, but you, specifically, your heart, your life, where you are right now. Christ had that in mind when he went to the cross on our behalf. [00:23:41] He loves you and values so much you that he was willing to give his life for you. [00:23:49] And can I tell you something. [00:23:51] Christ doesn't make mistakes. [00:23:54] He doesn't mess up. [00:23:57] He doesn't get it wrong and be like, oh, need a do over there, right? No. Christ always gets it right. God's promises all find their yes in Jesus Christ every day. Yesterday, today, tomorrow, he remains right and true. He didn't get it wrong about you, which means you have nothing left to prove. [00:24:19] You get to live in the freedom of grace, that weight that you've been carrying around with you because somebody made you feel less than, because you never measured up to that standard, you couldn't see because it kept moving when you got close. You get to let go of all of that and live in the freedom and grace of Jesus Christ. Do you know how much space that will open up in your heart if you let it? Do you know how much space that will open up in your mind that is just rolling over and over and over again? Every hurtful thing that somebody said that made you feel not good enough, replace it with Jesus Christ, who looks at you and says, I know you. I see you. You're mine. [00:25:01] I love you. I'm for you. [00:25:04] I'm fighting with you because I want you to succeed. I want you to do well. [00:25:12] We have this humble confidence in Jesus Christ, but we also have a heart of gratitude. [00:25:20] Can I not just pause for a moment and say, if Christ would not have done that, where would I be today? [00:25:27] If Christ wouldn't have found me where he found me, where would I be right now if Christ wouldn't have done what he did in my life and intervened in the places where I couldn't intervene for myself? Fixed what was broken that I could never fix on my own, heal what was damaged, that I never had power on my own to heal. Who would I be today without Christ? [00:25:51] But how many times do I just stop and say, God, thank you. [00:25:56] Thank you for Christ. [00:25:58] Thank you for the cross. [00:26:00] Thank you. That right now, in this moment, everything is okay. [00:26:04] Because not every moment is okay, is it? But this moment is. [00:26:09] This. Gratitude compels us to say, yes, there's so many things to be grouchy about. I know there's so many things to complain about. There's so many problems in the world, and it's this person's fault. I know there's also a lot to be thankful for. [00:26:25] There's so many things, guys, if we just pause and look for it, we'll see it some days. You might not have a lot of hallelujahs in your heart. That's fine. You can still say thank you to Christ that I get to be here in this moment. Thank you that the sun is shining. Thank you for the people that I'm with. Thank you for the church. [00:26:45] Thank you for moments that are so inexplicably connected to you. I don't have any other definition for them. [00:26:54] When's the last time you told Christ? Thank you? [00:26:57] When's the last time you just paused and spent some time with God and you just said thank you? You wrote a couple of things down. You thought about your life, you thought about your day, you thought about your people, you thought about your weekend, all of the things, and you just paused, and you turned that into prayer and thanksgiving for who God is and what he's done through Jesus Christ. [00:27:18] When you live with grace, you have a heart of gratitude. [00:27:24] It's hard to complain when all you do is feel grateful. [00:27:27] It's hard to criticize when you're so caught up in the joy of the Lord that you just want to see him and point to him and connect with him and spend time with him. [00:27:38] If that is what God shares with us, the grace, the love, the forgiveness. Okay, I really want to get in. Cause I want to not let us off the hook. We got to dig in a little bit deeper. [00:27:51] Am I being good to people around me? Am I showing kindness? Am I showing compassion? [00:27:59] Maybe I'm not supposed to fight with everybody. [00:28:02] Maybe it's not my job to hold everybody to account and judge them for what I think they've done. Maybe it's not my job even to prove anybody else wrong. I know they're really wrong. I know. It's so hard to walk away, especially when you've got three really good facts that they haven't considered, and you could just convince them if they would listen to you. And you have all of the right. I know. But maybe the best way you could show grace is by letting something go. [00:28:35] Maybe the best way that you can show grace is by forgiving somebody else. See, here's where Grace is really, really hard. I want Grace. When I've messed up, there's extenuating circumstances, right? Like, if you only understood what was really going on, you would totally let me off the hook. I want that for myself. But when I'm hurt by somebody else, I don't have the same compulsion. I want justice. I want fairness. Right. Karma is going to come back and get you because you can't live. I want that. But that's not Grace. Grace has nothing to do with deserve. It takes it completely out of the equation. It's not about getting even. It's not about payback. It's not about making somebody else live in the injustice that we've experienced. Remember, it's a gift and it's not anything that we deserved. Which means the best gift we can give to somebody else is Grace. [00:29:30] The person you don't want to be gracious to right now. That might be the very best place you can shine the light of Christ in this world. [00:29:38] The thing you don't want to let go. [00:29:40] Because if you let go of it, who will remember and who will make it right? [00:29:44] You have a goddess, a father in heaven who sees and knows. [00:29:49] And it is his divine imperative to make all things right and whole. You can trust him with it and you can show grace. You can treat somebody else better than they deserve. [00:30:02] You can give somebody the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they really are doing their best. And while it's not how you would do it, and it's not how you want it to be, it is genuinely the best that they have to give. And maybe we can appreciate that instead of trying to tear it down. [00:30:18] Who do you need to show grace to? [00:30:21] Where do you need to be more gracious in your day to day life? Where do you need to stop complaining and start saying thank you? See, when we live in grace, it starts coming out of us in more Christ like ways. I want to encourage you tonight. Let the grace of Jesus Christ fill your hearts, fill your minds, redirect your choices, redirect your thoughts that you might fully live in and experience who Christ is and what he wants for you. [00:30:54] But Paul said grace and peace, didn't he? [00:30:57] I'm not going to go another half hour. I promise. I'm done. [00:31:02] There's more. It's going to come into part two. Not sure what it's going to look like yet. Sarah and I are working on the details. It's going to be really fun. But peace is really powerful, guys, because we live in a world of turmoil and tension and pain and stress. And sometimes peace seems impossible. But when we study the idea of wholeness and rightness that comes in connection to Jesus Christ, here's what we will find. There is a piece of Christ that will stand guard at my heart and guide me and protect me in all that I'm doing. So stay tuned. Peace is coming soon. Okay, I'm gonna pray. Dear Father, we love you so much. I'm so incredibly blessed and amazed in who you are and what you do. Thank you for the gift of Jesus Christ. Thank you, Father. That even when we didn't know it or expected or understand it. You were at work preparing us, leading the way, acting for us to find us and save us. Thank you for the grace that seeks us out. Thank you for the grace that's beyond what I can understand but changes my heart and changes my life. I pray, Father, that as I think about who you are in Jesus Christ, grace would flow out of us. We would be kind and compassionate. We would be humble and confident and filled with gratitude to show others around us the grace that you have so lovingly shown us. Help us, I pray, in Jesus name. Amen.