Three
weeks ago, as we entered 2024, I brought a message from the 20th
chapter of the Book of Acts, specifically verses 17-24. The text gives us St
Luke’s account of Paul’s message to the Ephesian clergy. Here is part of what
he told them:
“I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that
was profitable, and teaching you publicly and from house to house, solemnly
testifying to both Jews and Greeks of repentance toward God and faith
in our Lord Jesus Christ. And now, behold, bound by the Spirit, I am on my way to
Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there, except that the Holy Spirit solemnly testifies to me in
every city, saying that bonds and afflictions await me. But I do
not consider my life of any account as dear to myself, so that I
may finish my course and the ministry which I received from the Lord
Jesus, to testify solemnly of the gospel of the grace of God.” (Acts 20:17-24)
We’ve spent the last
two weeks looking at some of the elements of the ‘gospel of God's grace’ – such
as His unchangeable holiness, His forgiveness, His defeat of Death itself and
why He does not give us what we deserve for our sins – which is eternal death.
I want to conclude this
series today by looking today at only three more aspects of God's grace: His
grace to spare us from the wrath He will inflict on all humanity at the
Judgment Seat of Christ; His grace that results in the reconciliation of
ourselves with His utter holiness; and finally, He grace that has moved Him to
prepare for us an eternal dwelling.
First, it is His grace
that will spare every faithful Christian from His wrath of eternal Judgment
resulting in an eternity in the Lake of Fire.
I need to say that
again as clearly and as unequivocally as I can: If you are a child of God
through your faith in the sacrificial atonement Jesus purchased and SECURED for
us with His death and resurrection, then you will NEVER experience even a
moment of God's wrath that He brings on a humanity that has rejected His
salvation.
Why not? Because God spent His wrath in full on Jesus.
No wonder Jesus cried out from the cross: “My God, My God, why have You
forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46). It was at that moment that Jesus BECAME sin
– your sin and my sin. It was at that moment that Jesus experienced the
rejection of the Father – the rejection that you and I now will never, ever
experience.
It was on that cross
that Jesus fulfilled for all who call to Him as Lord the prophecy of Isaiah 53:
“But he was pierced for our
transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the
punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his
wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has
turned to our own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all . . .Yet
it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer, and
though the Lord makes his
life an offering for sin . . . the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.”
Listen: There
IS a final Judgment for the wicked. And those whom God judges to be damned will
spend eternity in that Lake of Fire – regardless of what some theologians,
clergy, and people in the pews might like to think otherwise. And as to the Judgment Seat,
here are only a few of the many, many warnings to humanity:
John the Baptizer
warned the hypocritical clergy coming to him for baptism: (Matthew 3:7-10) “You brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath
to come? Therefore bear fruit in keeping with repentance . . . The axe is already
laid at the root of the trees; therefore every tree that does not bear
good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
St
Paul warned the Christians in his first letter to the Christians at Corinth: (1 Corinthians 6:9-10) Or do
you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of
God? Do not be deceived; neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters,
nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor
those habitually drunk, nor verbal abusers, nor swindlers, will inherit
the kingdom of God.
In his second letter to
that church, he wrote: (2 Corinthians 5:10) “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ
. . .”
But on the other hand, listen
for a few moments to a few texts in which God PROMISES that the Christian will
be spared God's wrath: (John 3:36) “He
who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does
not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides
on him.”
(Romans 5:8-9) “But
God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet
sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been
justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of
God through Him.”
(1 Thessalonians 5:9-10) “For God has not destined
us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus
Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are
awake or asleep, we will live together with Him.”
The gospel of God's grace – the good news of
God's grace – informs us that the Christian has nothing to fear from
God's wrath because through Christ, He has reconciled the Christian to
Himself.
The New Testament
defines reconciliation as the restoration of harmony between people who are at
enmity with each other. I’ve preached on this subject of reconciliation in
recent weeks, and I do it again now for both emphasis AND reminder of what our
merciful and gracious God – who is ALSO a Righteous Judge – what He did on
Calvary to execute His justice against the sinner while at the same time
embrace that sinner in His mercy.
First, this reminder: Our
sins put us at enmity with God. Our sins create an irreconcilable barrier
between us and the Holy God. He tells us through Isaiah 59:2 – “But your iniquities have
made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have
hidden His face from you so that He does not hear.” And through James 4:4 “You adulteresses, do you not know that
friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore whoever wishes to
be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.”
But because God
CHERISHES you and me, He provided for the execution of His sinless Son to be
our sacrificial atonement – to take our place as our substitute. If we will
believe in that atonement with obedient faith, the unbridgeable gap would be
bridged, and the obedient follower of Christ would have everlasting life. We
become RECONCILED with our Creator. We are placed now and forever in a state of
harmony.
Listen to Romans 5:1, 8-10 “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with
God through our Lord Jesus Christ . . . But God
demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ
died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we
shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while
we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much
more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.”
Is it any
wonder the hymn writer cried out in worship: My sin—oh, the bliss of
this glorious thought!— My sin, not in part but the whole, is nailed to the
cross, and I bear it no more, Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!
And finally for this
point, listen to Ephesians 2:1-6 – “And you were dead in your trespasses and
sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course
of this world . . . and were by nature children of wrath, even
as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy,
because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us
alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised
us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the
heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
Listen, please. We must remember that ALL Christians are each
a ‘temple of the Holy Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 6:19). And with that truth
in mind, we must also know that we cannot be at any more harmony with Christ,
than to have his Unchangeable, Immutable, Pure, and Perfect Holy Spirit living
inside of us.
If that does not demonstrate the faithful Christian’s
harmony with our God, then nothing can demonstrate that joining of
sinner-saved-by-grace and our Holy Creator. And again, this harmony is not
provided to us because WE deserve that harmony. It is given us ONLY because of God's
grace that restores our relationship through the sacrificial death of His son
Jesus.
But we
have to now move on for the sake of time to the next feature of the gospel of
the grace of God. That is: He is preparing a place in heaven for the believer.
We must make no mistake about this point: The unbeliever
is marching toward the grave. He knows he cannot escape it. He or she might
delay the inevitable with modern medicine or technology – but they still know they
are marching inexorably toward the grave.
The Christian, on the other hand, is marching inevitably and
inexorably AWAY from the grave. Listen to the apostle Paul (Romans 6:3-5): “Or do you not know that all of us who have
been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him
through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead
through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of
life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness
of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His
resurrection.”
The Christian – and ONLY the Christian – has already been
buried with Christ. As a consequence, we are now, every day, moving further and
further from the grave and closer and closer to our eternal, resurrected life.
Let me reiterate that point and remind us of the points
already addressed: Because the Christian
has escaped God's wrath because Jesus substituted Himself for us on that cross to
receive the wrath WE deserve; And because God has placed the Christian in complete
harmony with Himself through obedient faith in Christ, THEREFORE, God is –
right now – preparing a home for each of His blood-bought children.
Listen to this familiar text from John 14:1-3, “Do not let your heart be troubled; believe
in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I
would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and
receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also.”
I used to think of that verse as referring to the Lord’s
call for the entire Church to meet Him in the clouds – as St Paul described it
in 1 Thessalonians 4.
I’m not sure why I thought of it that way, because while it
IS true that one day – soon, I hope – the Trumpet of 1 Thessalonians 4 will
sound, and the dead and the living will be all caught up together to be forever
with the Lord – while THAT is certainly true, it is EQUALLY true that Jesus is
preparing an individual home for individuals whom He can call at any moment of
any day – including today.
This promise of the gospel of God's grace in preparing a
place for us in heaven is directed (as with each of the components of God's
grace) only at the faithful Christian. These features of the gospel of
God's grace do not apply to the persistent and willful sinner who lives in
unbelief of the gospel.
For them there is only one destiny after their death toward
which they are all moving. God has included Revelation chapters 19 and 20,
which solemnly warn of the Lake of Fire – God has included those chapters not
only to warn the unbeliever of his terrible destiny, BUT to also PLEAD with the
unbeliever to avoid that destiny by repenting of sins and obeying the gospel of
God's grace. I know I’m preaching to the proverbial choir, but the choir – AND
I, as well – needs to hear this again and again, as do those outside the
church:
Notice God's appeal to ancient Israel: (Ezekiel 18:30-32) “Repent and turn away from all your
transgressions, so that iniquity may not become a stumbling block to you. 31 Cast away from you all
your transgressions which you have committed and make yourselves a new
heart and a new spirit! For why will you die, O house of Israel? 32 For I have no pleasure in the death
of anyone who dies,” declares the Lord God. “Therefore,
repent and live.”
Peter, speaking to the very religious clergy and laity on
the Day of Pentecost, when they asked him what they should do, he responded:
“Repent, and each of you be baptized in the
name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you will receive the
gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children and for all who
are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call to Himself.” And with many other words he solemnly testified and kept on
exhorting them, saying, “Be saved from this perverse generation!” (Acts 2:38-40)
Indeed, the first recorded words of Jesus in Mark’s gospel
were: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of
God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.” (Mark 1:15)
As every faithful follower of Christ knows, ‘repentance’ is not a
one-time action. It MUST be a daily, ongoing humbling of ourselves before our
holy God. As He tells us through St
Jonh’s pen: “If we say that we have no sin, we are
deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us
our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar
and His word is not in us. (1 John 1:8-10)
The gospel of God's grace is so very much more
expansive than I have been able to adequately describe in the messages of the
last three weeks. We have looked only very briefly at His unchangeable holiness,
His forgiveness, and His defeat of Death itself. Today we also looked at His
grace which has spared us FOEREVER from the wrath He will inflict on all
humanity at the Judgment, and at His grace which has reconciled Himself with
sinners. And finally – and only for the sake of time – we looked at His grace which
moves Him to prepare for us an eternal dwelling.
I close this message with this word: ALL the features of the gospel of God's grace
are applicable ONLY to those who are His children through their obedient faith
in Christ. How, one might ask, do we become God's children? Repent. Be baptized. Live a holy lifestyle in accordance with His
commandments.
I chose this song sung by Josh Groban to close today’s message. The
lyrics are applicable to everyone in this sanctuary. Here are some of the
lyrics:
My Confession
I have been blind, unwilling
To see the true love you're giving
I have ignored every blessing
I'm on my knees confessing
I have been wrong about you
I thought I was strong without you
For so long, nothing could move me
For so long, nothing could change me
Now I feel myself surrender
Each time I see your face
I am captured by your beauty
Your unassuming grace
And I feel my heart is turning falling into
place
I can't hide it now, hear my confession
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