Faith Baptist Church
4258 Botetourt Road
Fincastle, Virginia 24090
(540) 473-2325
Titus 2:11-12 Grace provides teaching
We talked last week about grace being a provider of guidance; that the grace of God provides both the indwelling Holy Spirit and the word of God. These two components of God’s logistical grace combined along with sound biblical exegesis offers the believer an equal opportunity to experience a wonderful Christian life for themselves. In other words, you do not have to experience your Christianity vicariously through any one else no matter how impressive their life happens to be. Being close to an alleged great Christian will never make you a great Christian. Being in a popular church will not make you any more popular with God, whether it is a little or a big local church.
Your Christianity does not depend on activity and excitement to validate your personal relationship with God. As a matter of truth, activity and excitement cannot validate your personal relationship with God because your personal relationship with God is not activity/excitement based. Your relationship with God is grace based, that is, it is based on what God does for you, not what you do for God. It is also based on thought, not feelings of excitement. Activities and excitement come and go, but grace and proper thought are constants. There is nothing wrong with a little activity and a little excitement, but most believers would rather over do the activity / excitement thing than learn divine viewpoint.
Your life is just as impressive to God as any other believers life and you mean as much to God as anyone else. God is no respecter of persons though you would have a hard time convincing a lot of believer of this doctrinal fact, Rom.2:11. No one has a voice louder than yours when it comes to the ears of God, but the question becomes, does God have your ear?
You have to want to live the life, and no one can live it for you. All I can do as your pastor is open up the word of God and teach it and preach it and then leave the results up to God and your free volition. I am not going to try to twist your arm, or put psychological pressures on you, or guilt trips on you to get you, as they say, “Fired up for God.”
Heb.4:12 Grace provides accountability
1. Personal accountability-
Grace teaches us that we are accountable to God for our motivations for coming to church and serving the Lord. And indeed, our motivation for coming to church is going to be judged by the Lord at the judgment seat of Christ. If folks go for the wrong reasons, or because they feel pressured to appease someone then their reason for going may not be blessed by God.
2. Group accountability- Eph.4:2-3
When you do not give in to some groups or their denominational rules, or to some folks on certain biblical views they hold, they will give you the cold shoulder and refuse to be agreeable or fellowship with you, even on scriptural things in which they agree with you. They are too rigid to agree to disagree on gray areas. They may withhold their tithes and offerings to the Lord in an attempt to get back at the non-compliant folks in the group. They may bully others telling them they are not good Christians if they do not walk in step with their brand of holiness, and all of this is dumped on fellow believers after Christ has already fulfilled the law.
This is nothing new under the sun, for grace has been contested by legalist ever since the church age began. The Apostle Paul met opposition everywhere he taught grace...
Grace was opposed in ...
1. Rom.10:1-4 - where the Jews supposed religious superiority was based on their national zeal for God;
2. Rom. 14:13-23 - by the type of foods some Christians ate which supposedly made them less spiritual than those who did not eat certain foods
3. I Cor.8:1-13- when believers ate meat which had been offered by others to idols. This food was not eaten in the heathen temples; it was simply the best meat in town.
4. I Cor.12 -when there was competition over certain temporary spiritual gifts with some believers thinking their spiritual gifts were superior gifts. This made some believe they were more spiritual than others. They forgot the gifts of the Holy Spirit were bestowed by the grace of God and no one deserves any spiritual gift. This is also seen in Rom.12:3-8.
It seems like the grace of God is the most readily opposed when believers want to think of themselves more highly than they ought; that they are always the special ones in the room.
5. Gal. - this entire book is an apologetic treatise in defense of ones righteous standing with God which is based solely on grace, not the works of the Law.
All of these are examples of men and movements which tried to enforce a brand of righteousness on others by mixing some truth with a lot of personal taste, old traditions and opinion. We all like to think that God is more impressed with me than he is with you and this is so far from right. Grace is only impressed with God. We are just fortunate to share in his grace.
3. Which brings up another aspect of the grace life and that aspect deals with the spiritual law of liberty, i.e., how does the believer exercise his freedoms in Christ without offending the lost and weaker believers. Obviously the weaker believer thinks he is stronger because he keeps a rigid list of do’s and don’ts. And the lost man may think he is justified before God because he sees a believer do something he heard at one time was non-Christian, like going to a movie or something else.
This series should cause all of us to question our understanding of God’s grace and how we should practice graceful living ourselves. Is our testimony for the Lord limited due to a life that comes short of grace living, and is our testimony for the Lord limited due to an abuse of grace privileges? In truth, you and I cannot effectively and properly live our lives and be used as fully as God wants if we stay knotted up inside (anxious) over the choices others make. Every man stands or falls before his own master, Rom.14:4.
You and I must first watch how we stand before our Master. Do we stand in judgment of others when it is not our place to judge? None of us is called to judge or prosecute others; we have simply been called to be a witness of the life of Jesus Christ.
Occupation with Jesus Christ, which is only made possible as the believer focuses on Bible doctrine, the word of God; guarantees the believer that he or she will get the most out of the grace of God. Being occupied with Christ will help you be at peace with others and their choices even though you still try to reconcile them to God. If they are resolved in their will to not obey the word of God you can still find peace that God can handle the situation; that the world rests on His powerful shoulders, not yours.
If we do not get the word of God as God ordained through the pastor/teacher in the local church then we will miss out on that peace and we will miss out on the grace of God by default. If we fail to be faithful in getting to church to get the word we will fail the grace of God. If we substitute church activity and entertainment based worship for the sound teaching of God’s word then we will never experience the full joy of knowing the Lord on this side of eternity.