When we think of the things that keep us from the good life
God has for us, it’s usually us. It may
be about our thoughts, habits, actions, and inactions. Hebrews 10:26-27 is often misunderstood. We need to understand the concept of grace
before we go anywhere else in this series.
In this verse, the author is speaking to Hebrew people, who lived their
life under law and obtained their justification through the law. This was a big struggle for the early church.
“If we deliberately keep on sinning”—let’s look at that part
first. Is there any sin that’s not
willful? We are created by God as a
Spirit, which has no desire to sin, but our flesh has a great desire to
sin. In the middle is the will. If we feed our will with the Word, then the
Spirit can convince the will. The flesh
has arguments that feel and sound good, so we have to make the Spirit strong. If sin is willful, there’s no hope for any of
us. The point of this is that sin is no
longer cleared up by sacrifices any more.
This is treating Christ’s
sacrifice as insignificant. Remember that
just sinning without caring expecting to be forgiven later in a way closes our
access to grace. Romans 3:23 talks about
falling short (which implies we tried).
Grace is there to bridge the when we desire to do right but willfully
(sometimes VERY willfully) sin regardless.
When we live in condemnation we live in fearful expectation
of judgment. Conviction helps us become
better. Condemnation tries to beat us
down. We get dealt certain things in
life, but grace says that hand is not ours.
Our reaction needs to be that we don’t deserve it (even if it’s a
consequence of our own actions) because we have a new nature from the Spirit of
God. We have to exercise in this grace
and refuse to accept. Romans 10:23 says “Let us hold unswervingly to the hope
we profess, for He who promised is faithful.”
In Romans 5:5, the word “hope” is the Greek word elpis, which means to
anticipate, usually with pleasure; expectation of good; joyful and constant
expectation of salvation. This sounds
like the opposite of fearful expectation of judgment.
Fear is the natural response when trouble comes our
way. Fear is based on circumstantial
evidence. CSI proves that circumstantial
evidence does not hold up in court. Sometimes
we do have natural consequences for mistakes we’ve had. Often, God’s mercy keeps us from getting the
consequences of our sin. Eventually, if
we keep making the same mistake, mercy runs out. Grace NEVER runs out.
Romans 8:16 and John 15:15 emphasize our status as friends,
children and heirs of God instead of servants or employees. The word “friend” in the passage is best of
all friends, such as maid of honor or best man in your wedding. A servant or employee can be fired, but
family/children can’t be fired. That is
eternal. The only thing we’re required
in a parent/child relationship is the desire
to understand. The child is not
responsible for understanding. The
parent is responsible to teach them to understand. God never uses the tools of the enemy to get
our attention. He is always speaking to
us. We have to simply have the desire to
hear.
We always say we need to learn how to hear from God. In the parent/child relationship, does the
child have to learn how to hear Mom’s voice?
It has nothing to do with their behavior; they know Mom’s voice without
working at it. When God looks at us, He
doesn’t see us but Jesus. The blood of
Jesus washed our sin away. He will never
turn His back on us. He did that with
Jesus only for a moment when all our sin was upon Him. When we seek to follow God because we love
Him rather than to try to earn His love, grace fills the gap between our desire
and our ability. We insult the Spirit of
grace and everything Jesus did, if we still try to make it on our own.
In Romans 5:20-21, the word “abound” in the scripture is two
different Greek words. The one referring
to sin means increase, exist in abundance.
The one referring to grace means to abound beyond measure, overflow, to
enjoy abundantly. There is never sin
there is not enough grace for if the heart is right. Remember the feeding of the 5000 when
everyone took as much as they wanted, and then the supply stopped. Grace always exceeds the need. Grace has already paid our debt. This is important because you’re never
comfortable around someone to whom you’re in debt. In Matthew 7 and Luke 11, “knock” actually
means to beat on the door. We need to be
able to boldly go before God.
To listen to the entire sermon go to http://ahwatukeechurch.com/ and click on
online media. To learn more about Living
Word Ahwatukee, visit http://ahwatukeechurch.com/.
