SPEAKER_00: Good morning, church.
SPEAKER_00: It is awesome to be with you this morning as we continue in the sermon series of the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to be in Acts 15 this morning.
SPEAKER_00: And again, if I don't know you, as Pastor Justin said, my name is John.
SPEAKER_00: I am a mission group leader here at SMC, and it is such a joy to be able to worship with you today.
SPEAKER_00: In the early 16th century, there was a young monk by the name of Martin Luther.
SPEAKER_00: Luther was a brilliant scholar, he was a skilled professor, and he was deeply devoted to his religious convictions.
SPEAKER_00: Luther's life was one that was marked by absolute self-denial.
SPEAKER_00: When Luther prayed, he prayed intensely.
SPEAKER_00: There's actually some records of other monks who were with him who could hear him shouting at the devil.
SPEAKER_00: When he studied the word, he studied it rigorously.
SPEAKER_00: And one funny fact about Luther is that he grew up in the medieval Roman Catholic Church.
SPEAKER_00: They go to confession.
SPEAKER_00: He would spend hours at a time in confession to the point where he would annoy his priest.
SPEAKER_00: And he would inflict physical pain upon his body in order to subdue himself and to cast sin away.
SPEAKER_00: Luther was an extreme guy, but he was deeply devoted to his religion.
SPEAKER_00: But Luther had a problem.
SPEAKER_00: He says this.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I hated the righteous God who punished sinners.
SPEAKER_00: I think that's one thing that we all love about Luther is what he was just honest.
SPEAKER_00: He was raw about what he felt.
SPEAKER_00: And here's the point all in all of his devotion, all of his sincerity, in all of the religious discipline that he practiced, Luther recognized one thing that his life was insufficient to satisfy a God who is perfectly holy and perfectly righteous.
SPEAKER_00: And this fact tormented Luther.
SPEAKER_00: But beyond Luther, I think you and I still have that struggle today.
SPEAKER_00: I think we still feel that same tension in our own hearts.
SPEAKER_00: It becomes more obvious for us in today's world, maybe when we're going through a crisis of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe if you're in a season of doubt, maybe a season of unbelief.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe this is you this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're someone who for the millionth time you've fallen back into the same exact sin that you promised God you were going to be done with.
SPEAKER_00: And in these moments, I think what happens, what we're tempted to do, is that we're tempted to reach out and grasp onto anything that will make us feel righteous.
SPEAKER_00: And when we do that, we start to build a case for ourselves that we are righteous.
SPEAKER_00: We can say things like this Well, I pray a lot.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe not as much as Luther, but I still do it.
SPEAKER_00: I study the word.
SPEAKER_00: I'm a good dad.
SPEAKER_00: I fasted once for like six hours.
SPEAKER_00: Certainly, all of this has to add up to something.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the problem is that when we start to build a case for our own righteousness, eventually all of the evidence is going to get admitted.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we do pray, but how often do we pray distracted?
SPEAKER_00: We do study the word, but sometimes we still have doubts.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, maybe you are a father, maybe you're a mother who provides really well for your family, but you're still impatient with them.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe you're someone who is extremely generous with your time and your finances, but maybe you secretly like it when people notice it.
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly these things that we start to reach out to for our own righteousness begin to condemn us.
SPEAKER_00: Because the moment that we start to look to ourselves as the source of righteousness, we're looking in the wrong place.
SPEAKER_00: And this is the controversy that we find in Acts chapter 15.
SPEAKER_00: This is 1,500 years before Luther.
SPEAKER_00: This is 2,000 years before us, and the church was facing the same question.
SPEAKER_00: Where do the guilty find their hope?
SPEAKER_00: And so we've moved into the first few verses, and we call this the dissension.
SPEAKER_00: And what we see, there's some men who are coming down from Judea into the church of Antioch, and others in the church of Jerusalem, and they're preaching a false gospel to the Gentile people.
SPEAKER_00: They're saying things like this in verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: But some men came down from Judea and were teaching the brothers, unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.
SPEAKER_00: And later in verse 5, we read of the Pharisees.
SPEAKER_00: They say this.
SPEAKER_00: And one thing that's sort of challenging to decipher in this passage is so some of these Jewish men, they're outright heretics, some are believers who are confused, and I'm not going to parse all that out right now.
SPEAKER_00: But the main point is this is that there's two major issues that are facing the church right now.
SPEAKER_00: The first one is this.
SPEAKER_00: In order to be saved, and we're going to talk about that word, saved, in order to be saved, you must be circumcised.
SPEAKER_00: So any access to God, if you want entrance into the kingdom of God, you must first put your faith in Christ, but you have to add circumcision to it in keeping of the law.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first issue.
SPEAKER_00: The second issue is this once you are saved, you should live under the Mosaic law and observe the traditions exactly as the Jewish people had observed them.
SPEAKER_00: And this is a bold thing to do for these men who are not connected to this local to these local churches to come in, and actually in verse 24, it says that they were not instructed by the elders of their churches.
SPEAKER_00: They were working autonomously.
SPEAKER_00: But they come in and they start to try to redefine the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: They try to create these new doctrines as if they had the authority to do so.
SPEAKER_00: But there's a reason why these Jewish men are targeting the Gentiles with this false message.
SPEAKER_00: There's a long-standing frustration over the pagan nations who are now flooding into local churches.
SPEAKER_00: And where does this frustration come from?
SPEAKER_00: I would say it comes from this.
SPEAKER_00: At the time in the first century, the time of Acts 15, Christianity was still largely seen as a sect of Judaism.
SPEAKER_00: Why do they think that?
SPEAKER_00: Because the earliest believers were Jewish.
SPEAKER_00: The apostles were Jewish.
SPEAKER_00: The scriptures that they used were Jewish.
SPEAKER_00: The Messiah was Jewish.
SPEAKER_00: They had lived under all the ceremonies, all the commands, all the dietary restrictions, all the brutal sacrifices that they had to make.
SPEAKER_00: And now they're coming into these churches and they see the Gentiles in the back of the church getting drunk on communion line.
SPEAKER_00: They were frustrated.
SPEAKER_00: They're saying, This, this, it doesn't work this way.
SPEAKER_00: And the argument that they were making was persuasive.
SPEAKER_00: They were saying things like this.
SPEAKER_00: Well, didn't Jesus keep the law?
SPEAKER_00: Didn't Jesus keep the dietary restrictions?
SPEAKER_00: Don't you want to be more like Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: If you can remember a time back in the 90s, there was this phrase, it was called, What would Jesus do?
SPEAKER_00: We're all still trying to recover from that.
SPEAKER_00: But this was their version of what would Jesus do?
SPEAKER_00: You're not acting like Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You don't look like Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You don't look like us, and we are the representatives of the Jewish community.
SPEAKER_00: The frustration was real.
SPEAKER_00: And now the gospel was rapidly advancing among the Gentile people.
SPEAKER_00: And the Gentiles, they didn't grow up keeping the Torah.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't grow up observing dietary laws.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't carry the covenant sign of circumcision.
SPEAKER_00: And many of them had spent their entire lives worshiping false gods, worshiping idols, and living lives of debauchery that was common in a pagan society in the first century.
SPEAKER_00: And now they hear the gospel, they believe, and all of a sudden they're granted entrance into the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing else?
SPEAKER_00: All of the riches of heaven, all of the riches of Christ poured down on them.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't understand it.
SPEAKER_00: Surely there had to be something else that these Gentiles had to do.
SPEAKER_00: And we know that this is false.
SPEAKER_00: In chapter 14, verse 27 of the book of Acts, it says this, the Lord gives us a really good illustration.
SPEAKER_00: He says that he opened a door of faith to the Gentile people.
SPEAKER_00: But what these men are doing, these Judaizers, what they wanted to do is as God opened up the door of faith to the Gentiles, they wanted to add a screen door.
SPEAKER_00: They wanted to add a qualifier before they can actually enter into the kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: But Peter confronts this directly in verse 10.
SPEAKER_00: He says, This, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear?
SPEAKER_00: And think about what Peter's saying.
SPEAKER_00: He's saying, look, the reason why we're in this mess to begin with, with Rome, is because your fathers couldn't keep the law.
SPEAKER_00: They were the ones who were committing adultery with pagan nations.
SPEAKER_00: They're the reason why we were dispersed across the world.
SPEAKER_00: They're the reason why we're in this situation today.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't keep the law.
SPEAKER_00: You don't keep the law.
SPEAKER_00: But now you're placing this yoke on the neck of others.
SPEAKER_00: Why would you do this?
SPEAKER_00: Because at this point, what was clear is that the covenantal structure of the Mosaic law was passed.
SPEAKER_00: Christians were no longer bound by the law.
SPEAKER_00: Because roughly a decade earlier, in Acts chapter 10, so between the events of Acts chapter 10 and Acts chapter 15, about 10 years had passed.
SPEAKER_00: And God poured out the Spirit on Cornelius.
SPEAKER_00: God poured his spirit on the Gentiles, and he declared that they are no longer under the restrictions of the law.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter took this information, he took it back to the churches, and that became the standard teaching of the church is that the Gentile people come to Christ by faith alone, not by keeping the law.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, years later, here we are.
SPEAKER_00: Some people are still troubling the Gentile believers, still placing burdens on them, still insisting that they become more like them.
SPEAKER_00: God said the door was open.
SPEAKER_00: And the Jews said, yes, but first you need to be circumcised.
SPEAKER_00: You need Moses, and you need to look exactly like me.
SPEAKER_00: And boy, I think we still have these same tendencies today.
SPEAKER_00: We see God doing amazing things in the life of the church.
SPEAKER_00: We see the Spirit gifting people.
SPEAKER_00: We see the Spirit pouring Himself out on believers.
SPEAKER_00: We see people maturing, coming to faith.
SPEAKER_00: And immediately, what our response is that we want to add the screen door.
SPEAKER_00: We want to put our own qualifiers on believers.
SPEAKER_00: And this happens so often in church cultures.
SPEAKER_00: Churches develop their own little cultures, and before long we start confusing church culture and equating it to Christian faithful living.
SPEAKER_00: And then we want others to start assimilating to our own traditions in our own preferences.
SPEAKER_00: What does this look like?
SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe it comes in how we discipline our kids.
SPEAKER_00: We think that the way that we do it's right, and everyone else must assimilate to the way I raise my family.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we want others to dress like us, to have the same sense of humor as us.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's this, this is a big one.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's the style of worship music that you listen to.
SPEAKER_00: That's always a big conversation in the life of the church.
SPEAKER_00: Because I know that when I was a kid growing up in churches, the churches I grew up in had a pretty simple philosophy when it came to worship music.
SPEAKER_00: The hymn either had to be 200 years old or written by Bill Gaither.
SPEAKER_00: That was it.
SPEAKER_00: I like Bill Gaither, by the way.
SPEAKER_00: I like some of his stuff.
SPEAKER_00: Homecomings go a little far for me.
SPEAKER_00: But the point is that we disciple others to look like us and we forget to shape them into the image of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: We take our convictions and we turn them into laws and we become experts at building screen doors.
SPEAKER_00: Why do we do this?
SPEAKER_00: Why do we need so badly for Christians to look exactly like us?
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think Paul says it really well in Galatians chapter 6.
SPEAKER_00: He says of the Judaizers, but they desire to have you circumcised that they may boast in your flesh.
SPEAKER_00: If I can convince you that the way that I discipline my kids is faithful, that the way I dress is the best way, and please don't dress like me.
SPEAKER_00: I dress like a dork, that the way I worship is the right way, that I want you to abstain the things that I abstain from, then I begin to look at myself as the standard of Christian faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: Because everyone else around me, I'm able to convince to look like me.
SPEAKER_00: And then as a result, I can begin to boast.
SPEAKER_00: But Peter clears this up for us.
SPEAKER_00: Moving into verse 6, we see the decision that the church makes.
SPEAKER_00: So we have this dissension.
SPEAKER_00: Paul and Barnabas are disagreeing with the claims that the Judaizers are making.
SPEAKER_00: They are in Antioch, they travel down to Jerusalem, and we have the first council to decide this matter.
SPEAKER_00: Where do the guilty find their hope?
SPEAKER_00: And what does Christian living look like?
SPEAKER_00: The church gathers to decide this matter.
SPEAKER_00: How is a man saved, and what keeps him saved?
SPEAKER_00: Verse 7 says this but God made a choice among you that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe.
SPEAKER_00: So Peter is saying that God chose him to preach the gospel to the Gentiles and that they would believe.
SPEAKER_00: See, the inclusion of the Gentile people was always part of God's unfolding plan, part of his unfolding plan of redemption.
SPEAKER_00: Israel was never meant to hoard the blessings of Abraham.
SPEAKER_00: They were never supposed to be close-fisted about it and keep the blessings within the confines of their own border.
SPEAKER_00: The earth belongs to the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: The earth is his.
SPEAKER_00: And God called the Israelites to be a light to the nations.
SPEAKER_00: And in many ways, we can actually understand it like this Israel was one of God's missionaries to go and be a blessing to the nations.
SPEAKER_00: So this is rooted in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what James does.
SPEAKER_00: In verse 17, he quotes the prophet Amos to show the Pharisees that no, this is not new.
SPEAKER_00: This isn't just because of what happened to Cornelius.
SPEAKER_00: We're not making this up.
SPEAKER_00: This comes from hundreds of years ago.
SPEAKER_00: He says that God will rebuild the tents of David, and the remnant of mankind will seek the Lord, and the Gentiles will be called by my name.
SPEAKER_00: So James roots all of this in the prophets.
SPEAKER_00: So this promise is unfolding right in front of them.
SPEAKER_00: Peter reminds them that he was chosen to preach the gospel to them.
SPEAKER_00: Those Gentiles that heard the gospel, they believed, and God gave his affirmation on this.
SPEAKER_00: How did God give his affirmation?
SPEAKER_00: By the pouring out of the Spirit on the Gentiles.
SPEAKER_00: Peter preached the gospel, and God affirmed this by the pouring out of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: Just as he had done on the Jewish believers.
SPEAKER_00: And then Peter goes on in verse 9.
SPEAKER_00: He says this, that God made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith.
SPEAKER_00: So we know that there aren't two classes of Christians.
SPEAKER_00: There's not rich Christians, there's not the poor, there's not the slave, there's not the free, there's not the Jew, there's not the Gentile.
SPEAKER_00: Every person who is saved comes through the same way by faith in Christ alone.
SPEAKER_00: But this raises an important question.
SPEAKER_00: Faith in what?
SPEAKER_00: But before we get into more, before we get into the faith aspect, I want to ask a different question.
SPEAKER_00: And I think that this question is really going to clear up the entire argument.
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to be saved?
SPEAKER_00: You probably hear that word a lot.
SPEAKER_00: We see it quite a bit in the book of Acts.
SPEAKER_00: People are getting saved.
SPEAKER_00: You heard that in your churches probably growing up.
SPEAKER_00: You need to be saved.
SPEAKER_00: Brother so-and-so got saved last week.
SPEAKER_00: We're familiar with this language.
SPEAKER_00: But oftentimes when we hear those words over and over again, they can start to lose their meaning.
SPEAKER_00: So let's think about for a second.
SPEAKER_00: What does it mean to be saved?
SPEAKER_00: And actually, let's ask this what are we being saved from?
SPEAKER_00: Are we saved from a bad life?
SPEAKER_00: Are we saved from sadness?
SPEAKER_00: From purposelessness?
SPEAKER_00: Are we saved from the consequences of our bad decision making?
SPEAKER_00: I would say that Christ delivers us from all sorts of things.
SPEAKER_00: But fundamentally, the great danger that is facing humanity is this: it is the righteous judgment of a holy God.
SPEAKER_00: What we are saved from is the wrath of God.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Luther understood.
SPEAKER_00: His problem wasn't that he needed greater self-esteem.
SPEAKER_00: Luther didn't need to pick up a book and read about how to make his life better.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't need to look in the mirror and tell himself that he was beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: He didn't need to forgive himself.
SPEAKER_00: Luther understood that he was a sinner who was standing before a God who was perfectly righteous, and he knew that his life was not satisfactory to save him.
SPEAKER_00: The good works of our lives, his life, could never make satisfaction for the wrath of God that is against us.
SPEAKER_00: How does the Bible describe the wrath of God?
SPEAKER_00: It describes it as dreadful.
SPEAKER_00: It uses the Bible uses sharp language to demonstrate the terrifying nature of the wrath of God.
SPEAKER_00: The prophet Nahum says this.
SPEAKER_00: I also like how the Apostle John writes it in Revelation 6.
SPEAKER_00: He says, Then the kings of the earth and the great ones, and the generals, in the rich, and the powerful, and everyone, slave and free, hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains, calling to the mountains and rocks, fall on us, hide us from the face of him who is seated on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.
SPEAKER_00: For the day of the wrath has come, and who could stand?
SPEAKER_00: So, what this image that John is creating us is creating for us is this is that the unbelievers on the final day they see the wrath of God that is going to pour on their face, and they go run to the mountains and to the hills, and they say, I would rather be crushed by rocks than to face the wrath of a God who is angry with me.
SPEAKER_00: This is terrifying.
SPEAKER_00: And honestly, it should fill our hearts with dread.
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think that we sit on this reality enough.
SPEAKER_00: I think there's a lot of churches, even churches that are faithful, that use wrath as a footnote of one of God's attributes.
SPEAKER_00: But his wrath is real, and his wrath is terrifying.
SPEAKER_00: So mankind's greatest need is rescue from God's wrath.
SPEAKER_00: And when you think about this, I think this clears a lot of things up.
SPEAKER_00: Who could save us?
SPEAKER_00: What can save us from the wrath of God?
SPEAKER_00: It's not going to be circumcision.
SPEAKER_00: It's not going to be being a good enough parent.
SPEAKER_00: It's not going to be praying enough.
SPEAKER_00: It's not going to be studying enough.
SPEAKER_00: It's not going to be through enough religious discipline.
SPEAKER_00: So if none of these things can save us, who can save us?
SPEAKER_00: Well, Peter gives us the answer in verse 11.
SPEAKER_00: He says, but we believe that we will be saved.
SPEAKER_00: Saved from what?
SPEAKER_00: Saved from the wrath of God.
SPEAKER_00: Through the grace of our Lord Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Just as they will.
SPEAKER_00: There it is.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ saves men from their sin.
SPEAKER_00: And why Jesus?
SPEAKER_00: And again, we're looking for clarity here.
SPEAKER_00: Why is Jesus the exclusive way into the kingdom of God?
SPEAKER_00: Because the weight of our guilt requires a Savior who is capable of bearing the judgment that we deserve.
SPEAKER_00: God, or Jesus on the cross took the entire weight of our sin, bore the entirety of God's wrath upon his shoulders.
SPEAKER_00: He died, and then he was able to raise up again.
SPEAKER_00: He was the eternal Son of God who took on flesh to stand in our place.
SPEAKER_00: And yes, Christ died for you, but he also died as you.
SPEAKER_00: And that's why it's Christ alone.
SPEAKER_00: I can remember I was for one of my classes at the seminary.
SPEAKER_00: I had to go to another faith group and just talk to them, you know, learn more about their culture.
SPEAKER_00: So I went to that uh mosque off of I-75.
SPEAKER_00: I was able to meet with their imam.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, we talked for a while, we've talked for about two hours.
SPEAKER_00: He called me to repent, I called him to repent.
SPEAKER_00: Kind of like a weird Mexican standoff.
SPEAKER_00: But one thing happened there that was fascinating when I was when I was talking to him.
SPEAKER_00: There was this lady, you know, she was dressed in what they wear.
SPEAKER_00: She knocks on the door, and you could tell that she was that something she was in a moment of crisis.
SPEAKER_00: And what I saw, I'll never forget, I saw this imam stand up.
SPEAKER_00: He excused himself for a couple minutes.
SPEAKER_00: He went out to the to the lobby, or he went out to the hallway, and I was kind of curious, so I got up, he didn't close the door, so I just kind of stood in the doorway, just kind of see what's going on.
SPEAKER_00: You know what I saw the Imam do?
SPEAKER_00: He was consoling her.
SPEAKER_00: He was generous with her, he was being kind to her.
SPEAKER_00: And I'm thinking to myself, this is a good man.
SPEAKER_00: He seems to care, he seems to have all of this goodness flowing out of him.
SPEAKER_00: Will that save him?
SPEAKER_00: No.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because he denies Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't have faith in the one man who could save him from his sin.
SPEAKER_00: You cannot be nice enough, kind enough to enter into the kingdom of God.
SPEAKER_00: It is through Christ alone.
SPEAKER_00: And that is Peter's answer to the entire controversy.
SPEAKER_00: The Judaizers point to circumcision.
SPEAKER_00: Peter points us to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The Judaizers point to something that you have to add.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter says, no, it's by the grace of God alone.
SPEAKER_00: And faith simply receives what Christ has accomplished on our behalf.
SPEAKER_00: Nothing else is added.
SPEAKER_00: And I think about the language of receiving.
SPEAKER_00: How should we think about that?
SPEAKER_00: We receive eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: Because here's what a lot of people I think consider whenever or think whenever we consider grace.
SPEAKER_00: We'll use the illustration of opening the door.
SPEAKER_00: God opens the door, but then I have to walk through it.
SPEAKER_00: God gives me the gift of faith.
SPEAKER_00: God gives me the gift of grace.
SPEAKER_00: Didn't I have to reach out and take it though?
SPEAKER_00: And I think at times we are desperate to look for something that we can grab onto when our faith becomes volatile.
SPEAKER_00: We want some part in it.
SPEAKER_00: So whenever things get bad, we can look and we can say, I made a decision.
SPEAKER_00: I actually repented.
SPEAKER_00: Those were things I did.
SPEAKER_00: And did you do those things?
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, you did.
SPEAKER_00: You made those decisions.
SPEAKER_00: And those decisions were real and they were meaningful and they gave you eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: But here's the problem is that yes, God opens the door.
SPEAKER_00: Yes, God opens the door of faith.
SPEAKER_00: And did you repent?
SPEAKER_00: Yes, you did.
SPEAKER_00: But why did you repent?
SPEAKER_00: Romans 2 clears this up for us.
SPEAKER_00: The kindness of God led you to repentance.
SPEAKER_00: And let's even look at the language of the passage.
SPEAKER_00: God made the choice.
SPEAKER_00: God gave them the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: God cleansed their hearts.
SPEAKER_00: And based on the work of God in the hearts of the Gentiles, they believed.
SPEAKER_00: See, faith isn't the one work that we get to sort of sneak in to grace.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because faith receives grace.
SPEAKER_00: Faith receives Christ with empty hands.
SPEAKER_00: And there is nothing that these hands can do to earn eternal life.
SPEAKER_00: So if that's the case, if God begins the work, God sustains the work, and God finishes the work, what participation do we have with grace?
SPEAKER_00: Because we know we're living, we know that we're in this world.
SPEAKER_00: We know that we have to make decisions each and every day.
SPEAKER_00: So I would say, with grace specifically, what is our participation?
SPEAKER_00: I would say that this is what we do with grace.
SPEAKER_00: We get to enjoy it.
SPEAKER_00: I can remember as a young boy, tell you a little bit about me.
SPEAKER_00: I love Christmas.
SPEAKER_00: So October 31st, after we're done trick-or-treating, Christmas music is cranked up at my house.
SPEAKER_00: I love it, I love decorating.
SPEAKER_00: I'm like a girl when it comes to Christmas.
SPEAKER_00: I just, I love every bit of it.
SPEAKER_00: And I can remember as a young boy, uh, we would go to my grandparents' house on Christmas Eve.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we would um we had our candlelight service on Christmas Eve, and then we would drive, after that was over, we would drive right over to my grandparents' house.
SPEAKER_00: And I was always so excited.
SPEAKER_00: I love this.
SPEAKER_00: This is one of the happiest memories of my life being able to get out the door and you felt the freezing cold all over you.
SPEAKER_00: And I was the first one to run up the steps on their porch, and I would burst through the door.
SPEAKER_00: And the first thing that I felt when I was a kid was just the coldness dissipate.
SPEAKER_00: The heat from the room, they had a really small house, and the heat from the room would just punch you right in the face.
SPEAKER_00: And I can remember seeing all my cousins.
SPEAKER_00: I was the youngest of my entire family.
SPEAKER_00: So that probably explains why I'm the way I am.
SPEAKER_00: We everyone would be laughing.
SPEAKER_00: My grandparents had the best decorations.
SPEAKER_00: They had uh this little uh Santa Claus that sang jingle bell rock and it danced.
SPEAKER_00: I thought it was really cool.
SPEAKER_00: And I can remember there was so much food, so much cookies, and all these things, all the smells and sounds of Christmas.
SPEAKER_00: And you want to know what I did in those times?
SPEAKER_00: I ate the cookies.
SPEAKER_00: I ate the food, I played with the decorations, I opened presents.
SPEAKER_00: And you want to know what I contributed to that night?
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely nothing.
SPEAKER_00: I simply enjoyed it.
SPEAKER_00: That is grace.
SPEAKER_00: Grace is undeserved, grace is unmerited.
SPEAKER_00: God who once saw you as his enemy, now looks at you as his son.
SPEAKER_00: Why is that?
SPEAKER_00: Because you are united through faith to the true son.
SPEAKER_00: And there's actually in times in scripture where we'll hear that, you know, the people of God are the son of God.
SPEAKER_00: Even there's times where women are called the son because you're united to the true son.
SPEAKER_00: There's times that scripture can be kind of awkward like that.
SPEAKER_00: Women are called sons, and men, what are we called sometimes?
SPEAKER_00: The bride.
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of weird.
SPEAKER_00: But we know what they're saying.
SPEAKER_00: We are united by faith.
SPEAKER_00: We are united to God by faith in the true Son.
SPEAKER_00: And when the warmth of the gospel touches your soul, and when you begin to understand what Christ saved you from and what he has freely given to you, we enjoy it.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have to reach around for something that we contribute.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to find something in yourself that makes you worthy.
SPEAKER_00: Christ has accomplished everything necessary to save you.
SPEAKER_00: And that grace doesn't leave us unchanged.
SPEAKER_00: So we go back to the illustrations before.
SPEAKER_00: Well, oftentimes we pray, we we fast, we study, we try to be a good enough person.
SPEAKER_00: We try to love others just to earn God's satisfaction.
SPEAKER_00: And now we see why do we do these things?
SPEAKER_00: What does grace do for us?
SPEAKER_00: It changes us.
SPEAKER_00: The grace that God freely pours down on our heads now pours out of us.
SPEAKER_00: And yes, we will love our neighbors.
SPEAKER_00: We will pray more, we will pray more, we will give more, we will love our families more.
SPEAKER_00: Not because we're earning grace, but because this is the work that God is doing in us.
SPEAKER_00: And that's the difference.
SPEAKER_00: The Judaizers say Christ and something else.
SPEAKER_00: And Peter reminds us that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus alone.
SPEAKER_00: And I would say this church.
SPEAKER_00: I want to end with a quote from the Westminster shorter catechism.
SPEAKER_00: And I think this encapsulates the Christian life that is marked by grace.
SPEAKER_00: It says this glorify God and enjoy him forever.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Our God and Father in heaven, Lord, you are so gracious to us.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, you have given us a grace that is completely undeserved, ones that our hands are incapable of earning.
SPEAKER_00: God, we know you sent your son Jesus to die on the cross, to bear the weight of the wrath that was going to be poured out on us, and Lord, he took that upon his own shoulders.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, in return, he gave us eternal life to enjoy with you forever.
SPEAKER_00: God, remind us of this grace.
SPEAKER_00: Remind us that our hands and our works are completely meaningless, useless to earn entry.
SPEAKER_00: Because God, you look at your son and you are satisfied with what he accomplished on the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, we do love you.
SPEAKER_00: And we give you all the glory.
SPEAKER_00: We give you all the praise.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.