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[0:00] We'll have two scripture readings tonight from Romans 1 in chapter 5 and 1 in chapter 6. We're saved by faith in Jesus Christ.

[0:33] So he says, Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand.

[0:48] And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance.

[1:00] Perseverance, character, and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

[1:14] You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man.

[1:25] Though for a good man, some might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this. While we were sinners, Christ died for us.

[1:37] Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God's wrath through him? For if when we were God's enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life?

[1:57] Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we now have received reconciliation.

[2:07] And then over to chapter 6. What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?

[2:18] By no means. We died to sin. How can we live in it any longer? Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

[2:30] We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead, through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

[2:45] If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin, because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

[3:09] Now if we died with Christ, we believe we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again.

[3:20] Death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

[3:38] Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer parts of your body to sin as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness.

[4:04] For sin shall not be your master because you are not under the law, but under grace. Let's hear the word preached. Pastor Jason. Do you know who Francis Schaeffer is?

[4:21] Maybe some of you do. Hopefully most of you do. He was a very influential reformed theologian of the last century, so the 1900s. He wrote and thought piercingly about the Bible and about culture.

[4:37] He was an American, but he lived in Switzerland where he had a home and he had all kinds of people who would come in and talk with him and live with he and his family.

[4:48] And I want to begin with something that he said. We're surrounded by a world that says no to nothing. We have a society that holds itself back from nothing.

[5:02] Any concept of a real no is avoided as much as possible. Isn't that true? So when we are surrounded by this sort of mentality, then suddenly to be told that in the Christian life there is this strong negative aspect of saying no to things and no to self, it must seem hard.

[5:28] So the world has no concept of saying no to itself. The very idea of saying no to what it wants is a foreign concept.

[5:41] But in Titus, and that's where we are going to be looking at, so Titus chapter 2, that's exactly what the grace of God teaches us to say no. To ungodliness.

[5:53] So Titus chapter 2, we're going to just be looking at this passage between 11, beginning in verse 11, and going to the end of the chapter.

[6:05] And today I sort of am taking just a first stab at this chunk of scripture. I tried to have some idea of getting through the entire thing, and it became clear that that wasn't going to happen, and to be honest, it is so deep and so important that I felt sort of like I couldn't even get my, both of my arms around the whole passage.

[6:32] And so today I'm just sort of taking a first stab at it. But Paul begins with this idea that part of the Christian life is saying no, saying no, and actually meaning it and actually carrying it out.

[6:50] Verses 11 and 12, the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, and that means older men, younger men, older women, younger women, masters, slaves, any sort of gender, any sort of ethnic class, any sort of societal class, none are ruled out.

[7:10] None are disqualified from the grace of God. It has appeared to all men, and it teaches us, all of us, to say no to ungodliness. So to put it succinctly, grace teaches us, it trains us to say no to godliness and to say yes to living upright, self-controlled, God-fearing lives.

[7:38] Grace teaches us to say no. And that is something. That's something amazing, just given what we just talked about.

[7:49] Everyone in the world is not saying, no one in the world is saying no. They're saying as much yes to what they want as they can get. And no one likes no. No one likes to hear no.

[8:01] No one likes to experience no. I'm sure that you can think of a time in your life when there was something that you really wanted and you heard no.

[8:12] And I'm pretty sure all of you took it. And it was hard. It was hard to accept. It was a hard pill to swallow. Children, you begin to experience it early on.

[8:23] You're in Walmart and you want to look at the toy section and mom says no. And that's hard. When you grow up, it doesn't get any easier to hear no.

[8:37] We don't want to look at the toys in the toy section. But we have things that we want and we get denied. We hear the no.

[8:48] Husbands, we don't like it when our wives say no to us. Wives, you don't like it when your husbands say no to you. We don't like to say no to ourselves. Lying there, all cozy, in our bed, comfortable, wanting to sleep.

[9:00] And our alarm clock is not saying no literally, but it is saying no. It is time to get up, no more sleep, and we're not happy. No is hard. But that's what grace actually teaches us to do.

[9:15] It actually does that. It actually so changes us that we say no to ungodliness. Grace powers godliness. Grace and godliness go together.

[9:27] And really, that's the main idea I want you to get this evening. Grace and godliness go together. Now, how important is this that you understand this?

[9:39] That it is both grace and godliness. Grace leads to godliness. Grace powers godliness. Godliness is inevitably and always connected to grace.

[9:51] Now, how important is it? Well, look at verse 15. Paul says to Titus, these are the things that you should teach. As opposed to what the false teachers were teaching, they were teaching something totally different, and Paul says, no, Titus, this is what you are to teach.

[10:08] This is what you should teach. Encourage, rebuke with all authority. Do not let anyone despise you. And so, what are we to teach? This message of chapter 2, which was this life that comes out of sound doctrine.

[10:23] Grace and godliness. Grace that leads to godliness. And Paul says, Titus, pastors, elders, teach it. This is what you are to teach.

[10:37] Encourage. That's the positive. That's part of my job is to encourage. Encourage this in you. But it's not all positive. It is rebuke.

[10:49] If these things aren't there, it's my god-given responsibility as a pastor, as an elder, to rebuke you. Now, that's not fun for you, and that's not fun for me, but that's what I have to do.

[11:06] And I have to do it with all of my god-given authority. And I'm to do it in such a way that no one can get around it.

[11:17] No one can despise Titus, me, the elders. No one can despise it. You can't ignore it. You see a speed limit on the road.

[11:28] It says 55. And sometimes you despise it. Don't you? Not that you have any sort of harsh, hard feelings about it. Not that kind of despising.

[11:38] It just means you ignore it. It's saying, do this, and you say, forget it. I'm not doing that. I'm going to go 75. But that's what I can't let you do in this regard to godliness.

[11:50] It's too important, too vital. I can't let anyone ignore this connection, this message, this message of grace, this message of godliness.

[12:03] And so, if the big idea is grace and godliness go together, my first point under that is this. It is grace, not law, that leads to godliness.

[12:16] Grace, not law, that leads to godliness. Godliness. Now, we're going to talk about the place of the law, but I want you to see, in this place, we read it in Romans, and it's all over the Bible, in Galatians, in Ephesians, it is grace that leads to godliness.

[12:37] It is what God has done in Jesus Christ that is the motivation, it is the power, it is the direction, it is the shape of godliness, and it is grace, it is not law that leads to godliness.

[12:53] And this is so important for pastors and for parents. And so, if you're a parent with children under your care and you are still training and teaching them, this is so important for you.

[13:07] This is for Sunday school teachers, this is for counselors, if someone comes to you with a spiritual problem, it's so important for you to understand. So we read Romans 5 and 6 and I put those passages together because Paul makes it clear there that we who have come to Jesus, and that's you, that's a lot of you, we who have come to Jesus have come into this place of grace, into this place of God's favor.

[13:47] So, Romans 5, 1, since we've been justified by faith, we have peace with God. Now, I want you to notice that that is not a command for you to do, that is a truth that you are to live upon.

[13:59] If you have had faith in Jesus Christ, you do have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom, it's a personal thing, through Jesus Christ, we have gained access by faith, into this grace in which we now stand.

[14:14] And then in chapter 6, he is talking about what, now, does that mean if we have peace with God, if we've been reconciled, if we've been justified by faith, if we are living in this grace, do we now just like play fast and loose with obedience and fast and loose with sin?

[14:34] No, in chapter 6, sin shall not be your master because you are not under law but under grace. So, under law in Romans 6 here, it means that under law here is being in Adam.

[14:52] So, you're either in Adam or you are in Christ. Right now, that's the great division in this room. There are people who are still in Adam, fallen, separated from God, apart from Jesus Christ.

[15:08] and Paul says they're under law. They're still in this system of if you are under law, then what God is telling you in this system is, okay, if you want eternal life, you have to obey the law perfectly.

[15:26] You haven't, so you're condemned. Under law here means being in Adam under the simple system of obey and live, sin, and die.

[15:37] Now, the law is the demand of God. It is his expectation and his demand for righteousness in all of his, in every person's life.

[15:47] His demand for holiness, his demand for obedience. And under law, if you are going to live, then you have to do that perfectly, completely, forever, for good.

[16:00] That's the only way that you can have eternal life. To live under the law is to live naked without any sort of mediator before this demand where God has his finger and his eye pointed at you saying, this is what you must do and if you do not do it, you are condemned.

[16:20] So, is the demand right and good? Is it wrong for God to have these expectations of us? Is it wrong for God to say, no, this is what obedience is?

[16:32] Of course not. In the things that God commands, Paul says, the commandment is holy, righteous, and good. The problem with this whole system is not that the law itself is bad or that God is telling us to do something that we shouldn't do.

[16:50] No, the commandment is righteous, holy, and good. Here's the problem. Demand doesn't create desire.

[17:03] Demand does not create desire to obey. In fact, it does the exact opposite in a sinful heart. That is important to see and to understand.

[17:17] So, if you give the Ten Commandments to a sinner, they will not take those Ten Commandments and have this great, overwhelming heart desire to obey them and do it gladly and do it joyfully.

[17:34] And this is so important to see and understand. It's so important to see and understand in our everyday lives as parents, as pastors, as counselors, as friends, that the expectation and the demand is right in and of itself.

[17:49] And there is a place and there is a time to make those demands and expectations known. But the speed limit can say 55 all day long. But it doesn't do anything in here, in my heart, to make me want to obey it, to go 55.

[18:08] I might do it because I have to. I might do it because the law is on me. But I will not submit to that law willingly if that is something I really want.

[18:23] Because the ungodly don't say no to themselves. They might only restrain themselves. Remember last week I talked about the 10-10-80 rule that 10% of employees will never steal, 10% will always steal, and 80% they'll steal if they're given the opportunity.

[18:43] So what is constraining those 80%? Well, they don't have the chance. They're afraid. But if they can get away with it, they'll do it. And so this is important for parents and pastors and counselors and friends.

[18:58] This is where we get in trouble because sometimes we think that more law will do. More law will do the trick. it will bring about the righteousness that God requires.

[19:10] And it's important to see that that's not the biblical picture. The problem is maybe we say, well, the problem is they don't know what they're supposed to do.

[19:21] And you know what? Sometimes that is true. That they need to be informed. Or we think the problem is they're just not taking the expectation, the law seriously. And of course that's true.

[19:32] They're not. not. And so what do I do? If I'm saying the problem is they're not doing what they're supposed to do and the thing that they need to realize is that I am being very serious about this and so what do we have the tendency to do?

[19:46] We turn up the intensity so we begin as parents or we begin as spouses or we begin as whoever. We begin to harp.

[19:56] We begin to raise our voice. I speak louder. I command more vehemently. I insist more vigorously as if I can turn up the expectation and the demand that that will create something in that person's heart.

[20:14] But it won't. That's something that God has to do. That's something that grace has to do. And that's what Paul is teaching. You have to teach what's in accord with sound doctrine.

[20:26] And then he says the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It's what teaches men. to say no to ungodliness. I think of our sister Jackie.

[20:41] She's doing her ministry at the ministry at the Women's Care Center. And Jackie can try to help a lady get her life together.

[20:51] And she could cajole and demand all she wants. But it won't change a young lady's heart. That won't help her to obey from a glad heart.

[21:09] It won't necessarily even change her mind about God. Jackie can't say do the right thing or I'm done with you. Because in that situation that kind of demand would drive that lady further away.

[21:27] fear of condemnation does not create glad obedience. Loving obedience. Only grace can win that young lady's heart.

[21:41] And that's what Jackie and all the other ladies who are working in that ministry are trying to do. They're showing God's kindness and God's grace. Because that's the way you win a sinner's heart.

[21:52] Paul says in other places the law actually stirs up evil desires in the sinful heart. Don't touch that plant. And the three year old all of a sudden wants to touch that plant.

[22:06] Don't tell your sister to shut up. And now all you can do is think about telling your sister how much you want to tell her to shut up. Again I need you to hear me and I need you to hear me well.

[22:19] The problem is not the law. It's not the demand. It's not the expectation for obedience. It's not even saying this is what you should do. The problem is a sinful heart.

[22:33] The flesh will not be controlled. The closer you hold it in the more it stirs up and more it demands and wants freedom.

[22:45] It won't be subdued. Now demand doesn't create desire for godliness. It doesn't teach it teaches what a godly life would look like but it can't train someone a sinner to love godliness and to actually live it out.

[23:04] If it could then the law would be enough and Jesus himself would be an extra. That is not the picture of the whole Bible. The picture is that we need Jesus.

[23:19] We need Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is essential for godliness. He is essential. And that's Paul's point here in Titus 2.

[23:33] What do our children need? What do our friends need? What do those people that we are trying to help need? What do our spouses need? They need the grace of God that is in our Lord Jesus Christ.

[23:46] That's Paul's point. They need Christ. They need him. Him. I need him not just for forgiveness. I need him for godliness.

[23:57] I need him to help me to say no. I need his life, his power, his promises, himself, his prayers. I need him. I need him to say yes to living self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age.

[24:12] And so look at what it says. For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. So I guess we're moving on to point two.

[24:24] We need him. For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. Now my first point was grace not law. Not law leads to godliness.

[24:35] Now my second point is this. We cannot separate grace from Jesus Christ. The person. We cannot separate Christ from grace.

[24:49] And so I just said what do I need? And I said well I need the grace of God. And then I changed it to I need Jesus Christ.

[24:59] The person. I switched it to a person. Now why did I do that? Because that's how Paul is teaching us to think in this passage. The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared.

[25:12] The word is for epiphany. It's the sudden appearance. In Greek theater when the people had a real big problem and they couldn't get out of it what the playwriters like to do is all of a sudden drop a god into the scene.

[25:32] The god would all of a sudden appear. Sometimes they would lower him right from a crane the actor who was playing the god and the god would save the day. It was an epiphany. That was the word.

[25:43] Now this passage is talking about an epiphany. A sudden appearance of a savior. And then in verse 13 it talks about a second epiphany.

[25:57] A second appearing. And when is that second appearing going to happen? Well when he comes in his glory. Now if you know the bible's picture of what it's going to be like at the very end it's going to be the worst it's ever been.

[26:14] And even the faith of the elect are going to be tried and so that if it was any worse that they would give up the faith. then what happens? There's an appearing.

[26:26] And God Jesus Christ destroys all ungodliness. It's the second appearing. So grace came in the first coming. More grace further grace will appear again when Christ appears again.

[26:43] Grace and Christ are inseparable. You cannot get grace saving grace except in the person of Jesus Christ.

[26:55] So how inseparable? Listen to Brian Chappelle this is how he put it in his commentary. Grace is not some abstract doctrine or theological construct.

[27:08] So it's not just some sort of logical word or thing that we talk about. Grace comes came as Christ does.

[27:19] Grace is as personal as he is. Christ is grace. The unmerited favor of God is what Jesus is about.

[27:30] God is God is also who he is. So when we were sunk in our sin as a race, sunk in our sin, we were ruined in the fall, God did not send down some sort of spiritual particle.

[27:51] He didn't send some theological sentence. grace. He didn't send some sort of spiritual element called grace. He didn't send one of his attributes called his grace.

[28:07] What did he send? He sent his son. He sent his son. He didn't send help, so to speak.

[28:18] He sent a helper. A helper. He sent Christ Jesus, his son, in the flesh. Just what we talked about this morning, he sent his son full of grace and truth.

[28:30] And so there's no saving grace apart from Jesus, apart from Jesus as he is fully God and fully man, Emmanuel. So strictly speaking, God doesn't send mercy or grace because there's no sort of substance out there that's called that.

[28:49] What he does is he sends his son, he sends his son, the God man, four sinners. And through the Holy Spirit, through his ministry, we receive Christ Jesus and his life flows into our lives.

[29:09] And so that happens the very first time we believe in Jesus. We're joined to Jesus, united to him in his resurrection life. And his resurrection life flows into our lives.

[29:22] You can read about that in Colossians chapter 1 and 2, where we were dead in our sin, but God made us alive with Christ through his resurrection, and we are born again.

[29:33] And that's how it works all throughout the Christian life. That's how it works through your entire Christian life. So first time grace is Christ coming to my heart by the Spirit, making me born again, giving me faith, giving me grace, giving me a new heart.

[29:51] And then everyday grace, everyday from then on, is Christ in me, the hope of glory. It's my shared life with Jesus that I live with him.

[30:04] And that's what the Reformation doctrine of in Christ alone means. The Catholic Church had this idea that grace was some sort of spiritual power, like gravity, except it was like godly gravity.

[30:21] And it came through certain acts. It came through what we did at the church, what we did at the Catholic Church. It came through mass, it came through baptism, it came through confession, but it came through those things, through the church, through those acts, and then it came into us and helped us.

[30:41] It helped us to obey. And if we obey enough through our whole lives, at the very end we'll be declared righteous. But the reformer said, that's not how it is.

[30:54] It's in Christ alone. In Christ alone. Grace isn't some sort of substance, it's God's mercy in Christ Jesus.

[31:07] It's embodied in him. So everyday grace in my life is his life, his power, his mercy coming through the Holy Spirit.

[31:20] Maybe Sinclair Ferguson can explain this better. This is what he said. He put it like this. It is legitimate to speak of receiving grace.

[31:32] And sometimes we speak of the preaching of the word, of prayer, baptism, and the Lord's Spirit as means of grace. And that's fine, so long as we remember that there isn't a thing, a substance, or a quasi-substance called grace.

[31:49] All there is, is the person of the Lord Jesus, Christ, clothed in the gospel, as Calvin loved to put it. Grace is the grace of Jesus.

[32:01] If I can highlight the thought here, there's no thing that Jesus takes from himself and then as it were, hands over to me, there's only Jesus himself. It's not a thing that was crucified to give us a thing called grace.

[32:15] It was the person of the Lord Jesus that was crucified in order that he might give himself to us through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.

[32:27] In another place, Ferguson put it like this, one way I think I can put it is to say how important it is for us to realize that none of the following died on the cross for us.

[32:42] Covenant theology, the five points of Calvinism, sin as idolatry, the sovereignty of God and regeneration, the doctrine of justification, the inseparability of sanctification from justification, and so on.

[32:57] Only Jesus Christ, clothed in the gospel, died on the cross for us. God now, you say, why are these long quotes?

[33:12] Because if you can understand what Paul is teaching in Titus 2 here, and what Sinclair Ferguson is highlighting for us, I think it will truly change or help in a wonderful way your sanctification and godliness because, friend, you have been joined and united not to a thing but to a person.

[33:35] He's a person. You've been united to Christ. And being united to Christ means you have been completely and fully united with all of God's mercy and God's love and God's grace.

[33:50] You are in grace, what Romans 5 talks about. You're standing in grace because you are united to Jesus Christ himself. You don't have this thing called grace helping you to say no to ungodliness and yes to holiness.

[34:04] You have a person who comes to you by the Holy Spirit. And yes, he comes through the word. He comes through the preaching of the word. He comes through baptism.

[34:15] He comes through the Lord's supper. Those are the ways that he comes to us. But we cannot miss the fact that he is the one who is having dealings with us. He is the one who is coming close.

[34:26] He is the one who is strengthening our hearts. We have Christ himself what he is and what he has done. And so it's not just you and this thing called grace, this power out here that comes into here when you need help.

[34:44] You have Christ himself. You have the God man united to you. You have him as your prophet to teach you.

[34:54] You have him as your priest to pray for you. you have him as your king to rule over and to defend you. You have him as the fruitful vine to bring his life into your life.

[35:08] And by faith we draw forth from him the vine. We have him as the treasure of the kingdom of God. And so in him we have everything. We have fullness.

[35:19] We have riches. We are not poor. We are not isolated. We are not orphans. We are not abandoned. We have riches in him. And he is what comes into my heart by the spirit and helps me live the Christian life.

[35:35] And so his coming, his incarnation, his death, it was the coming of grace. God broke through the darkness. God broke through our isolation and our condemnation.

[35:49] The light of the world pierced the darkness and he saved us and he rescued his people. And you can see, look at verse 14. We're going to come back to a lot of these verses, but look at verse 14. Jesus, he gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness.

[36:06] Redeem means to purchase at a price, at a ransom. So he did that. And what did he redeem us from? All wickedness. He did not just save us, or he didn't save us just from the punishment of our sin.

[36:24] He saved us from the totality of it, from its power, from its slavery. Christ's cross saved us from the slavery of sin.

[36:35] He delivered us, he snatched us out of the hands of wickedness at the cross. And when he comes back, he's going to snatch us completely away from sin's presence.

[36:48] sin's and so it is hard to say no. It's hard even as a Christian to say no to temptation, and we sang it this morning too often, we have said yes.

[37:05] We say no, it's hard. It is hard to say no, but Christ is for you. Christ is for you. you're joined to him.

[37:19] Now, again, why am I going on about this is because we can subtly shift away from the person of Jesus Christ.

[37:29] We can do it very subtly. We can have a lot of the right words, but our focus is not on the person of Jesus Christ. So, Hebrews chapter 12 talks about how we are to run the race looking to Jesus.

[37:48] We're to be looking at him. And so, we can take our eyes off of him and it can be so subtle. I can say, I need grace. And by grace, I mean, I could use a little hope here.

[38:03] And that's okay, so long as we remember we need Jesus. And so, we can say, send me, it's almost like we're saying, send me a bit of spiritual power that I don't have, but I could use.

[38:17] But Paul wants us to look not at some sort of spiritual power. He wants us to look at Jesus Christ. He wants you to make this personal.

[38:29] And he wants you to realize the greatness love. God has done for you. God has worked for you already.

[38:40] And God is working for us. And God will work for us. And it's all through the person of his son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

[38:51] Now, the father's overflowing heart of compassion and love, he overflowed and he brought forth his son. Now, why did he bring forth his son? So that we could lay a hold of him.

[39:04] So that he could deliver us and so that by faith we could grasp a hold of him and hold on to him. And so, and it's not just at the beginning. It's not just at the beginning of the Christian life.

[39:16] It's the entirety of the Christian life. To hold on to Jesus. To take from him what we need. When we're poor, he's rich. And when we're weak, he's strong. And when we've sinned, he's been righteous.

[39:28] So that sin that you struggle with, that hard trial that is so grueling and is so difficult to endure gracefully, it is beyond you.

[39:43] But it is not beyond your Savior. And that's what you need to keep in mind. Christ is bigger. He is enough. He's with you in that temptation.

[39:55] He is with you in that trial. He is with you after you fall. After you sin. Would it be grace if we sinned and then it wasn't there?

[40:09] It's what grace does is in the face of sin shows mercy. And so, but I think that's what we precisely, what we start to think, and I think the devil wants us to think that.

[40:23] So we've sinned, and then that's when we keep our eyes off of Jesus. That's when we fall and we stay down, and we feel like we have to stay down, we feel like we're not worthy, and so we have to stay away, and we have to grovel a while, or we despair.

[40:39] God won't take me back now. God doesn't love me or care for me. Like, after I've done this, there's no hope against the sin.

[40:49] sin, I can never change. But even in the depths of our sin, Jesus Christ is with his people.

[41:01] Isn't that what the cross says with a megaphone? While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

[41:13] That when it meant Jesus Christ himself becoming sin, becoming filled up with our sin, he did not stay away.

[41:26] He owned us then. He was counted among the transgressors. He said, my lot is with them. I am with them.

[41:37] Count me like them. And so, as we look to him, we see we don't have to stay down. We don't have to grovel.

[41:50] It's not that we don't feel sorry. It's not that we don't have this renewed sense of desire of I am going to obey. It's not that we're taking our sin lightly, but it is that we don't stay away.

[42:02] We get up and we fight on. We can confess and we can find forgiveness and then we can go on because of Jesus. To understand how grace works in our everyday lives and in this fight against sin when we're trying to say no and we're trying to live for godliness and we're trying to live self-controlled lives.

[42:23] To understand how grace works in our everyday lives, we have to remember how it began. Grace didn't find us. Jesus didn't find us when we were whole and strong and healthy and good and obedient.

[42:36] It found us when we were helpless and hopeless and enemies of God. it could not have been a more desperate situation. But that's when Jesus Christ showed up.

[42:47] That's when he appeared. That's when grace appeared to rescue us from our sin and from the world and from the devil. That's the father's heart.

[42:59] It's he who has qualified us to belong to the kingdom of his son that he loves. That's the son's heart for you. He died in order to deliver you from that sin.

[43:13] Is he going to now abandon you when you're fighting it? And that's the spirit's love for you. I really do pray that the spirit would burn this love into our hearts, into your heart, into my heart, because it is real love.

[43:37] it is real, it is true, but I forget it. And I lose track of it, or I belittle it, maybe not purposely, but that's the way I am wired, and that's not right.

[43:54] And so, would you pray with me that God would burn that love into my heart, because when that love is hot, when I know his love for me, when that love for me is hot within me, then my heart in turn is hot for him.

[44:13] Then my love is there. Then my desire is to please him, to live, to obey him. Then I can say no, and gladly say no to ungodliness, and gladly say yes to self-control, being upright, and living a God-fearing life, a godly life.

[44:28] Then my desires are there to live for him, to obey him. grace does what the law can't do. It wins our hearts. It creates desire.

[44:40] It creates desire. It wins our hearts. Then I say, oh, let me run in the way of your commands, for there I find a light. These commands are so good.

[44:52] Tell me more. Teach me. Instruct me in the ways of righteousness, in the ways of your law. Then I want to say no to sin. It's not that I have to.

[45:03] Not that I really should, but I don't really want to, but I want to. I have Christ. I have grace. And he is more than enough for me.

[45:17] He's more than enough for me. And when he's more than enough for me, and when he's more than enough for you, you will say, here's my heart, Lord.

[45:28] Take it. Here's my hands. Here's the instruments of my body. I'm your slave. I want righteousness.

[45:39] I want obedience. I want to obey you. And so that is what I really want you to walk away from and take with you this week is, would you pray that God would open up your heart and your mind and your whatever so that you would know more deeply his love, his grace, that you would be able to see Jesus Christ more clearly.

[46:08] Not just here, but on that afternoon when you're at work or when you're with those kids at home and it's hard and you're in that trial or you're afraid or whatever the situation, but in those moments you would have two eyes looking squarely and completely on Jesus your Savior.

[46:28] And as he comes to you clothed in the gospel, full of grace and full of truth. Well, pray with me. Heavenly Father, these things we need to know, we need to understand, we need to believe.

[46:44] It can be such a difficult thing sometimes and it can be such a tricky thing. The devil is subtle, we are all recovering Pharisees where we just take the law and we think we can obey it and it's all we need and we just, and in doing so we either destroy ourselves in despair or we belittle your law and we become proud because we think we've accomplished it.

[47:16] And so Lord, give us wisdom to see the truth about grace, about the law, about Jesus Christ.

[47:29] And I pray that you would take these things that we've taught, things that are in your word, and burn them in our hearts. Help us to understand and see Jesus Christ.

[47:41] To not depersonalize this, but to make it intensely personal, that we are looking to a person. He is there for us.

[47:53] He is alive for us. He is praying for us. He is there, a real man in a real body, full of grace, full of truth, full of love, full of power, completely clothed in the Holy Spirit and able to save us and help us in everything, in every way that we need.

[48:13] So make much of Jesus, increase our faith in him. I pray this for his sake and for our good, for your glory, in Jesus' name, amen.