This is the Truth Network. Welcome to Hope in the Morning, turning tragedies and tears into testimonies of hope. Welcome to Hope in the Morning. I'm your host Emily Curtis, and I'm joined by one of our ministry pastors, Carrie Hardy. Pastor Hardy is my pastor, and he's been walking us through Romans now for a little over a year.
Recently, he taught on Romans five, verse twenty, and I felt strongly that it was a message that I wanted to share with you. We talk a lot about grief on hope in the morning and how God provides for us, but there's a unique weight of grief that weighs on each and every soul, and this is a grief that carries an eternal weight.
So, Carrie, thank you for joining me today. Always a pleasure. Thanks for having me. You know, when you when you spoke this sermon, I think it was one of those sermons. I always love it.
All the sermons you preach, and I love going through the Book of Romans, especially. But this sermon just had so much. Comfort in it, um, that I just felt people need to hear this. They need this content, and so I wanted to start by asking you. You know, going back to the introduction that I said, what what grief does every human soul carry?
Well, it has to do with the way we're born, and this is true whether people recognize it or not. It doesn't change the reality of it, and that is that we are all born spiritually dead. Once Adam sinned in the garden, that corruption in nature was passed down to all of us, so we're born separated from God, the very God who created us, the God who can help us and guide us and strengthen us, and we're separated from Him. We are headed for eternal judgment when we die. Because God's a holy God and He's a just God of just wrath, and He must punish sin.
So that condition is real, and it it blinds people then to their real purpose for living. Our purpose for even being created is to bring God glory by knowing Him and loving Him and serving Him and worshiping Him and being totally dependent on Him, but our sin nature blinds us to that, and it blinds us into thinking that we can.
Solve our sin problem by doing enough good deeds or meriting salvation in some way, even doing enough religious deeds. But in this condition, we are totally unable to get God to accept us. And this is a sin burden, is what we should call it, and it's the burden that complicates every other thing we face in life. This sin burden distort destroys true joy in our life. It brings suffering under a guilty conscience.
And again, I don't know that everybody thinks of it that way, but people all around us are suffering under a conscience burden by guilt, and it goes back to the fact of their sin against the very God that created them. Yeah. We, like you had said, we have this this innate desire to worship inside of us because that's what we were created for. We were created to be worshippers of God, so we all become worshippers of something. And it's actually always struck me the fact that the world thinks that we get joy and contentment out of things like power and wealth and fame, but When you look actually at people that have those three things, they're often the most miserable people, and I think a lot of that is because they've attained what they thought would bring them that joy and that contentment and that peace, and yet they don't have it.
Yeah, nothing like that will satisfy the longing in the soul to know the God who created us, and so yeah, those things promise fulfillment and joy, and obviously there are many things that have some sort of positive payoff. You could call it in the short term, but long term, it's never going to satisfy the soul. And the only thing that satisfies the soul is to know the God who created us. Yeah. And C.S.
Lewis, he's one of my favorite authors. Do you like reading his stuff? Oh, absolutely! Yeah, he's definitely one of my favorites. And he says in his book *Mere Christianity*, which if you haven't read *Mere Christianity*, read *Mere Christianity*.
It it will completely change your perspective on things. Like, I love that he takes He takes points and he almost makes them so simplistic that they become complicated again. You know, like you have to slow down and really read what he's saying. But one of the things that he talks about is that we all have this intrinsic knowledge of this moral law that's written on our hearts. And so that, I mean, that goes back to what you are saying as far as what weighs on our conscience, on our conscience, and on our hearts.
and When Adam sinned against God in Genesis, it says that that that was a transgression against God. Because it was a direct act of disobedience, exactly. And God had told him what to do and what not do, what not to do. There was an articulated standard, and so if you violate that standard, then by definition, that is a transgression. You have gotten off the right path to go your own way.
You have violated something God has has said, a command of God. That's a transgression.
Well, then, just you know, hopefully, I understood this all that you were saying in your sermon. But then, if I understood you correctly, you're saying that basically from the time Adam fell until Moses, when we got the law of Moses, people continually sinned, but it wouldn't have fallen under the same category as transgression because they didn't know exactly from the mouth of God what His What his order orders were for us? Yeah, that's a way of looking at it. In fact, Romans chapter five verse fourteen says that in that between Adam and Moses, yes, people still sinned, and we know they sinned because they died. Death was the punishment for sin.
So Romans five fourteen says that, but they had not sinned. It says in the likeness of the offense of Adam.
Well, what was the offense of Adam? That was violating a clear cut command. God and so yes, people were corrupt. They were born that way, spiritually dead, and of course they sin. But when God gave the law, then all those years later, through the Mosaic covenant, that brought clarity then to what sin actually is, and it it defined the sin for people as being transgression.
One of the things I thought was really interesting that you said in your sermon too, which is so true. And those of us that have kids even know. More so, how true this is, but how the law, in some forms, makes sin increase because now you see we're we're just tempted when we see things that are off limits. That's just our nature, right? We have the propensity to say, "Oh, you don't want me to touch that." Well, I'm not touching it.
You know, kind of like the siblings do. There's a proverbial sign on the bench that says "wet paint." Yeah, something within us. I wonder if that's true or not. Yeah, we want to touch it. Yeah, don't walk on the grass.
Well, what happens if I walk on the grass? Yeah, I walk on the grass to find out.
Well, and that's how it started, even with Eve in the garden, right? That that that's how Satan tempted her, is saying, "Is that what God really said?" Yeah, he cast doubt on God's word. He even lied in there, but he certain certainly got her to to begin to question God's faithfulness and God's veracity. Yeah. So he still does that.
But you're right; it's there is that. Ah, moral code in all of us. We're born with that. It doesn't matter who we are. We believe there is a such thing as a right and wrong.
But with children, and I may have said this Sunday in the sermon, that children are are naturally selfish. You don't have to teach them to be selfish. But somewhere along the way, their parents oppose that, and now they're told it's wrong. Yeah. Now there is a standard that tells them that selfishness is wrong, and there's consequences for that.
Yeah. Well, and there. There's great love, actually, as a parent when you do that, and that's how God is. You know, you've mentioned before in your sermons before that God, if we are children of His, He does not punish us, but He does discipline us, and it's just like parents. You know, you.
We are meant to oppose our children for their good, because we can see how that continuous selfish behavior or these patterns of of lying or patterns of disrespect it's bad for them in the end. And so, God, as a loving father, He does the same thing for us. He will discipline us and He will oppose us continuously for our good. It was a loving thing, even to go back even further. That's all true about God and and how He is faithful to His people to correct us and love us.
But go back in history, what you raise the issue of the law coming through Moses. That was a that was a very gracious thing for God to do. It's a gracious thing for a parent to teach a child that selfishness is wrong. You don't want them to go through life thinking that that's okay, you know. But God gives the law in Romans five verse twenty.
He says the law came in so that transgression would increase, and what that is saying that is the law was helping man understand now the danger of sin, the nature of sin, what sin really is. We have this standard now, and without that, we go on in our blindness, thinking maybe we're okay. Yeah, and we're grateful that law that God gave the law so we would know how He really sees our sin. Yeah, it becomes. Kind of one of those heavy graces, because as you had said in your sermon, it's a magnifying glass on our sin, because we're now we're aware of all the ways that we fall short of God.
And you know, James tells us that if we if we obey the whole law, but we stumble in one point, we're guilty of it all. And so we can't we can't have this moral. Weights and balances, where we feel like, okay, well, I did seven good deeds today. That that outweighs my five bad deeds yesterday, because we've broken his law in its entirety. And even, you know, I love the fact that you brought out the point that when Jesus says that, you know, if you are guilty of of hatred or anger in your heart, you're guilty of murder.
If you are guilty of lust, you're guilty of adultery. And it's because it's the same heart motivation. Exactly. I mean, murder starts, you know, with hate in the heart.
So, certainly, the consequences are different for certain sins—murder and adultery—versus lust and anger. But the seeds of of the sin is there in the heart.
So, and God sees that.
Well, we don't see that.
So the law comes in, and it it finally defines sin clearly as transgression. It it uncovers the nature of sin, of how God sees it in its wickedness, and it uncovers. Covers the deceit that happens because, as you've alluded to, we deceive ourselves into thinking that we're okay. Maybe we compare ourselves to somebody else, or we compare ourselves the way we used to be, or how bad we could be. We're not that, so we're we're very deceived in that, and so we excuse our sin.
And if you go back to all through human history, there's three ways we do that. People blame shift. You know, Adam and Eve did that. Eve blamed the serpent. And Adam blamed the woman and God.
So, blame shifting has a long history. If we don't blame shift, we rationalize our sin into thinking that well, it's not as bad as something else, or there's a reason I had to do this and be this way, or we minimize it, we call it something else, and so we excuse our conduct by calling sin by a lesser name or even denying it.
So here, the law comes in, and it teaches us the depth and the wickedness and the exceeding sinfulness of sin. And then we began to understand.
Well, now we understand that sin has power over us.
So the law exposes sin's power. Before we understand what sin is, we might think we're okay. We might think we can clean ourselves up in some way. We can turn over a new leaf. We can reform, and we might try to do that.
And we realize, no, the the problem's too deep. We we can't fix our sin problem. And so the law, by the Spirit of God, brings that. Conviction that we've been deceived, and so just to summarize all that, it's a wonderful thing for the law to intensify the seriousness of our sin and help us to see it the way God sees it—that it's rebellion against Him. It increases our knowledge of it, and that's a good thing because then we're at a place to look for well, then what is the only answer?
If it's not in me, it's only in Christ, and it drives us to the Savior. Yeah, and you know before. We move from the from the despair that can be caused when we see our failures illuminated through the law to the hope that we have. I think that it's important too. When we come back, we're going to talk about how.
Roman or not Roman, so how Galatians warns us about seeking justification through the law, and I think we all have that propensity for whatever reason. I don't know why why it's in our nature, but we have that propensity. It's part of our pride, the corrupt nature that we're born with. We're oriented toward Adam, and you know, with that corrupt, sinful orientation, sinful nature. Yeah, our default setting seems to be that no, I'm okay, or I can fix this.
I'll take care. This I can be better. I can become a better person than I am. In a sense, that's seeking to be justified, which means accepted by God to have a standing before Him. It's it's seeking to be justified by law, by our own efforts, by human initiative.
So yeah, you're right. Galatians five four warns against that and says literally, you've been severed from Christ. You who are seeking to be justified. By the law, you have fallen from grace. It just means you have you have fallen away from the only path that can bring the remedy to your sin, and that is to be saved by God's grace through faith.
And so, if we're saying no to that, then everything else is an empty bag. There is no answer in anything else, and so there. Galatians three twenty four then clarifies well then the law then ends up being this tutor that leads us to Christ so that we can be accepted by God the only way it's possible and that is by His grace through faith alone by grace alone through faith alone. When we come back from the break, we're going to talk about that. You know, we've talked about the weight of really this grief that comes upon our souls when we realize just how far separated we are from God, the one that we were created to.
Commune with, and when we come back, we're going to talk about God's grace and how He has bridged that separation.
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Listen to Hope in the Morning and be equipped to offer the hope of Jesus to every hurting heart. To learn more or to partner with our ministry, visit us at hopeinthemorning.org. Welcome back to Hope in the Morning. I am joined today with one of our ministry pastors, Carrie Hardy, and he is also my my personal pastor. And he recently spoke a sermon on Romans five verse twenty, and that's what we're talking about today.
And we're talking about the weight of the law and how the law exposes our sin. Really, the law condemns us. But there's something there's something so beautiful that God has established that is greater than Than our sin, and I'm going to start this portion by reading one of my favorite hymns, which is called "Grace Greater Than Our Sin." And I just want you to hear these words as we move forward into this portion. It says, "Marvelous grace of our loving Lord, grace that exceeds our sin and our guilt. Yonder on Calvary's mount, outpoured there where the blood of the Lamb was spilt.
Grace, grace, God's grace, grace that will pardon and cleanse within." Grace, grace, God's grace, grace that is greater than all our sin, sin and despair, like the sea waves, cold threaten the soul with infinite loss. Grace that is greater, yes, grace untold, points to the refuge, the mighty cross. Dark is the stain that we cannot hide. What can avail to wash it away? Look.
There is flowing a crimson tide, wider than snow. You may be today, grace, grace, God's grace, grace that will pardon and cleanse within. Grace, grace, God's grace, grace that is greater than all our sin, marvelous, infinite, matchless grace, freely bestowed on all who believe, all who are longing to see His face. Will you this moment His grace receive? We were talking about how our failures in light of the law can seem despairing, but there is hope.
Carrie, what is the hope?
Well, I'm certainly glad that what the law produces in us hopelessness. It doesn't have to be the final story. Yes, it exposes our sin for what it really is, where we really are in relationship to God. We're under His wrath. We we cannot.
Save ourselves in any way, but as Galatian says, it drives us to the Savior, and that's the great hope that's found in the gospel. That in Christ we find what we need. We don't find it in the law and in law keeping. The law serves that that important purpose, but we find what we need then in Christ. And what do we need?
Well, we need the forgiveness of our sin. That's our only hope. We need to have peace with this God who created us. For the the barrier, sin. To be broken down, that's what Christ does.
We find purpose for living. Then, the rest of our lives in Christ, we have the hope of eternal life in heaven when we die. All of that is what we find in Christ, and that's the greatest hope that there is in the world. That we that there is a solution for our guilt. By the way, I want to say it while I'm thinking about it.
Guilt biblically is not a feeling; it's a position. We are guilty before God, whether we feel it or not. By God's grace, He convicts us of that through the law and by His Spirit, so we see our condition. But even if we didn't, we are guilty before Him, and people are living under the weight of their guilt—a guilty conscience, even if they don't know that's what it is. And so, what a great thing it is to to tell people about the hope that is in Christ, and that's real hope—to find forgiveness and peace with God and eternal life.
That—that's the mercy of the law, right? Because even though the law condemns us, it shows us our failings. The mercy of it is the fact that now we are aware. We're not walking around with this this heaviness, with this standing before God of guilty and unaware that what God's standards are. They've been given to us.
We know what His standards are. We know that we fall short of them, and. And yet he is gracious to give us the law, but then he doesn't leave us in that despair. He says he's made a way for us to be reconciled with him. And one of the other things I think you know we talked about the danger of trying to be justified through the law, and I think.
You know, kind of a flip side of that a little bit can be legalism. We talk about legalism in the church, and that there can be a danger in that as well. Can you tell our listeners what legalism is and why it can be a danger to Christians?
Well, there's sort of an official definition, and then sort of a a common definition that we tend to to to think about a lot. But but in its essence, legalism would would be trying to earn God's acceptance by law keeping, by doing good deeds, by Meriting acceptance by God some way in our own efforts, whether it's religious deeds that we do, good deeds, or something other, something else that we've created. That's legalism in its essence, trying to get God to accept us by our performance.
So the gospel, you know, takes off the blinders so that we see that there's no hope in that. It's only in Christ.
So we come to Christ through faith alone, trusting in Him alone to forgive us of our. And then, and then, following him as the Lord of our lives.
Well, we easily slip back even, even as believers sometimes, into that works righteousness sort of perspective. And so, another definition of legalism has sort of arisen in common language, and that is even to refer to what Christians might fall into sometimes, sort of a legalistic perspective. That okay, yes, I was saved by grace. I get that, but somehow we think I need to keep my myself saved. You know.
By still winning God's favor and trying to impress Him with my performance in some way, and so you have to get back and see that all of that is wrong. Either way you define legalism, we we cannot be saved by our efforts, and we can't keep our save, ourself saved by our efforts. God saves us, and He saves us eternally, and He keeps us eternally by His grace. And so every way of looking at legalism then is wrong. Yeah, it's just a terrible blot.
On us, Carrie is is Christianity the only religion that actually does not condone some form of legalism and some sort of justification by works?
Well, I'm not an expert on all that, but I had know enough to know that essentially you can you can wrap every false religion in the world under this one banner, and that is it's works righteousness in some way or another. It's it's doing something to appease the pagan gods, you know. By throwing somebody into the volcano to try to satisfy the god, you know, it's doing something to satisfy this this false god. We we understand as a false god, but but yeah, every religion that's wrong is teaching works in some way or another. There are Christian cults that still teach works, but the true religion of the Bible is that we are saved by grace alone through faith alone.
That was true in the Old Testament; is true in the New Testament, it's never changed. Abraham believed God; he put his trust in what God told him, and God counted it to him as righteousness. That's always been the way it is, and that's the way it is today. Is the way it always will be. That every false legal religion is legalistic in some way.
I think what's interesting is that. As we mentioned before, we all have a propensity to want to contribute some sort of good works toward our salvation. I think that that actually can play a part sometimes in people struggling with assurance of salvation because they feel like they didn't do enough. But it's exhausting. That's an exhausting path to go down because because of what James says that if you fall short in one area, you've now fallen short of all of it, and It's.
I mean, I don't remember where the reference is, but the the scripture that says, "Cease striving and know that I am God." And I, you know, just being transparent here on air, like I'm a striver. That's that is that's a struggle of mine. It's a struggle for me to not be a Martha. You know, to to not be that person that you know. Lord, don't you see all that I'm doing?
You know, and There, there's a real comfort and a peace, and kind of a just an exhale that comes from that verse of cease striving. And know that He is God. He's the one.
Well, the Book of Galatians even is about all this. Judaizers they were called had come into the churches in the region of Galatia, and were teaching people that, well, yes, well, sure, you need to believe in Jesus. That's part of it. But you got to keep the law as well. You still got to be circumcised and and so forth.
And so Paul is addressing that, confronting that that they've left the true gospel of grace.
So yes, there's a comfort in grace. There's a relief in grace. People then. Question about well, then what's the place of works?
Well, works are important. It just put it's just it depends on where you put them. Is it before the cross or after the cross? Before I come to Christ or after I come to Christ? Before I come to Christ, works are not impressing God.
They're not getting us Him to accept us and to forgive us and to treat us differently in some way. But once we come by His grace through faith alone in Christ, then and we're and we're saved and.
Now we're followers of Christ.
Well, Ephesians two ten says we're saved for good works.
Well, now good works then just become the way we express our love for the Lord, the way we show the world who we are, and the way we glorify God and please Him. It's a joy to to obey Him and to serve Him. Christ Himself said, "You, if you love Me, then keep My commandments." Well, I love Him, so there's a joy in doing that. That's different than this exhausting thing. I'm glad you used that word.
Exhausting, this exhausting approach to the Christian life of trying to keep myself saved in some way. You know what I visualize when I hear that and think about that? I think about that little animal that people buy for. You know, a pet, a little rodent, yeah, a little rodent. But you know, you sell in a pet store, so it's not a rodent, I guess.
But this little gerbil or something, you know, is running on that wheel. It's just running and running and running and running and running and running. I sometimes feel like that Christians are like that. You know, they're they're trying to sustain that, and you know, it changes everything. Then when you come to understand grace more deeply, yeah, you can stop all the striving.
And rest in the grace, and then be free to strive and to do what's right and to obey the Lord. You know what's interesting that that just came to my mind is you know how people will say if you love what you do, if you love your line of work, then you'll never work a day in your life, right?
Well, when when it comes to works, if we're working out of a love for Christ. It's not works. It's not drudgery. It's an act of love. Oh, it's an act of worship.
Yeah. If you just really, I like to zoom out and let's make it practical. I like to think that way, and it's like, okay, take chores around the house. Doesn't matter what it is. Maybe it's washing the dishes.
That's a proverbial sort of example. Washing the dishes can become an act of worship to the Lord when I'm thinking rightly about it. Who I am in Christ, I'm secure in Him, and I'm a follower of Christ. I love the Lord. And it pleases him that I I take care of my home and I fulfill my duties in the home.
For me, it's mowing the grass. You know, it's it's an act of work. I like to wash dishes as well, and I like to vacuum for that matter. It's somewhat therapeutic, you know. But but I think about that.
Well, there there's there's something that needs to drive all this, and and that is it's not to You know, to do all this to impress other people, let's do all this because I'm being responsible for the Lord, and there's joy in that—great joy in that.
So certainly, serving the church and and serving other people and serving our spouse and our children, all of that becomes an act of worship when it's bathed in our understanding of grace. Yeah, it's like the difference between going to work just to get a paycheck, or you know, doing good works just to get that that salvation paycheck, or going to work. Because you love what you do, which you know, doing doing good works, honoring the Lord, doing doing things to serve others, because you love Him. It's it's a completely different motivation there. And one of the one of the things that you mentioned, which I think is this, I think was one of the reasons why this sermon was one of my favorites that I've heard in a long time, is because of how you laid this out for us.
I love this. You had talked about how. In Romans five twenty, it talks about how through the law sin increased, but grace abounded all the more. And you talked about the differences between increased and abounded. And you know we only have a minute left here on the radio.
We're going to cover this portion on the podcast. And so, if you're listening on the radio right now, we have a podcast that actually the episodes are about twice as long. And so, you're going to want to hear the remainder of this content. We're going to not only talk about the difference between Increased and abounded, which might blow your mind a little bit, like it did mine. But also, we're going to talk about how this grace is a filter with how we handle loss in our life, and it it changes everything between how we handle loss with an attitude of hope or despair.
So, going back to Your sermon when you talked about that, I loved that. That was probably one of my favorite parts. Because mine too. Just so you'll know. Yeah, I mean, I, I think that's one of the neat things about.
Scripture, and I love having a pastor that that does expository preaching. For those that don't know what that is, that are listening, it's having a pastor that just opens God's word, studies God's word. You study, you study the original language of it, you study the historical context of it, the passages before and after, and you're giving us just pure, unoblitrated Word of God. It's not, it's not a topical sermon. It's The word of God as it comes, and and yes, it's taken us you know a year to get to chapter five, but we're loving it.
Um, and I feel like we learn something new every time. I mean, you could go through Romans five, I mean not Romans five. You go through Romans once a year for twenty years, you're going to learn something new from it.
So, was this something new that you learned, or did you already know the difference between increased and abounded?
Well, the the first time I studied this was probably about twelve years ago, and so it got sealed in my my understanding at that time. But as the years went by, I had this desire to preach through Romans again because I've grown myself, I understand Scripture more, and I want to go through it again. and Just for my own heart, so there was some degree of of relearning and some degree of understanding it even more deeply this time, and I think the reason it's important is because some of the Bible translations are actually confusing the issue. They they translate that verse using the same English word both times. Romans five twenty basically says, "Well, the law came in so that transgression would increase," and there it's not that it.
It causing you to sin more, although that's our nature to do that. It's like that magnifying glass you were talking about. The magnifying glass doesn't increase the number of spots on what you're what you're examining, but it helps you see the number of spots that are already there. And so, yes, it causes it causes sin to increase by helping us understand just how many sins there really are there. And so, it's a numerical term increase, but there are some.
Translations that go on to say, but where sin increased, grace increased even more. Uses the same word increased, or it says abounded both times. When sin abounded, grace abounded even more. They're two different words, so it's better to say where sin increased. In other words, now the law helps you see just how many spots are there.
They were there all the time, but now you can see them the way God sees them to some degree. But even though that's true, that the spots have multiplied numerically. In your understanding, grace—the word "abound" applying to grace—is a word that means to overflow. It means to have more than enough.
So, no matter how many spots the magnifying glass of the law has helped you see, grace. Is more than enough to cover those spots and even more. It abounds, and to make it even stronger, Paul put a prefix on the Greek term translated "abound." He put a prefix. It's "huper," h-u-p-e-r, which in common English way of expressing it would be our term "hyper." It it it hyperabounds.
So it's not just abounding grace; it's superabounding grace, abundant excess of grace. No matter what your sin is. Grace overflows, and Paul even even used it that way in another passage. The same word in Second Corinthians seven. He talked about how his his joy, even in the face of affliction, was overflowing.
It was superabounding. That's what he's saying about grace compared to our sin.
So that's what makes it more comforting: is that even if sin is multiplied in our understanding, grace immeasurably exceeds our sin, which is. Really, the essence of the hymn you read earlier. Yeah, yeah. I would say that if what he just said didn't get you excited, you need to rewind and listen to it again, because. We we are so like we know our sin more than anybody else, and so even if you see people that you're like, wow, they're a really sinful person, they know even more of their own sins, and we know so so many of our own struggles, and it weighs heavy on your heart.
And when you when you think about the fact that even though our our sins increase, we are aware of them through the law all the more. What a beautiful thing that, as as you had said on Sunday, too. That I love. I wrote it down here in my Bible because you had said it's like a hyper overflowing of grace, and I just I think of these waterfalls coming down. You know, you think about you've got this dirty cup, and you bring it, and you're thinking this is this is filthy.
How could this ever? I don't have any cleaner to clean this. But you put that underneath this just colossal overflow, this water fountain, or not this waterfall that's pouring into. That cup and cleansing—it's such a beautiful. Reminder of of God's infinite character, and I tell you what, even more specifically, why this should be a comfort to people because there are people.
I'm sure somewhere along in my life I've had these thoughts along the way, in years past. But many people labor under this that they hear something like this and they go, "Yeah, that that's fine for other people, but you don't know how sinful I am. You don't know what I did in the past. Yeah, and you don't know what I'm." Struggling with now, so it's especially comforting for anyone who says that my my sin is too much. I don't know if God can forgive me.
May forgive other people, but what about me?
Well, then press on this idea that it's superabounding. That is, it is this waterfall of grace that totally engulfs inner sin. Then the implications of that is that God's grace is never withheld from someone because of the amount. Of their sin, you know we're we're not like that. I think I probably said that in my sermon.
That as humans, we tend to, if somebody sins against us or offends us, we tend to, well, we don't like them anymore. Yeah, you know, and we sort of pull away from them. You know, it's awkward. I don't know what to say to them. You know, and if I see them in the grocery store and they're going down aisle two, I'll go down aisle ten.
I just don't want to run into this person. You know, or we may even get worse than that. I mean, we may become totally uncivil. You know, towards somebody who's offended us and so. And I think we put that on God.
We think that God's like us in that. And so, if we've offended Him, greatly offended Him, then it's awkward now. You know, He just is avoiding me. Yeah. And no, it's superabounding grace.
He, where sin increases, grace superabounds. My favorite illustration of that is Peter. I think you know he denied the Lord three times that night, and and yet after Christ was crucified and. Buried and then was resurrected from the grave. He sought Peter out.
It tells us in First Corinthians fifteen that he that he appeared to Peter. But the most poignant expression of the grace toward Peter is the end of John, John chapter twenty-one, there where the resurrected Christ on the edge of the lake was interacting with Peter and basically restored Peter to ministry to be able to minister again. What a what a superabounding grace. Toward Peter, who denied the Lord, that's pretty serious to openly deny the Lord. Paul, who was writing Romans, he understood that.
He tells Timothy, his young disciple, in First Timothy one, that I was a blasphemer, I was a persecutor, I was a violent aggressor. I mean, he he he wanted to wipe out the church. He wanted to wipe out people who were followers of Christ. He hated Christ, and yet it says in First Timothy one fourteen, and the grace of our Lord Jesus. Was more than abundant.
I mean, it saved this murderer, this violent aggressor, this blasphemer named Saul, and turned him into the man we know as Paul. And so, I think Paul loved to preach about grace. He loved to talk about the superabounding grace.
So, if there's someone listening that is really struggling over. How painfully conscious they are of their own failures. Maybe something in the past, distant past that nobody knows about. Maybe something recently. Maybe something they're struggling with right now, and they see their sinfulness and their failure as this great barrier between them and God.
Well, then this text ought to encourage you that no wall erected by our sin can prevent this abundant flow of God's grace. If that's what we humbly desire, so He doesn't withhold grace. It's not reduced. You use the imagery of a waterfall. It's always a waterfall.
It's never a little trickling. It's not.
Well, I'm going to give you a little bit of grace, but you offend me so bad here. Just just a little smidgen of grace, and that's it. And no more grace for you. It's not like that. It's not like we get so many visits to the Lord and so many copays, and now it's not covered anymore.
Yeah. It's nothing like that. Grace is. Never reduced because of our our sin, and so no matter what level of sin we've committed, even if we've walked with the Lord and then have struggled with sin, and we think, well, you know, He's been gracious to me in the past, but I've used it all up now. Yeah.
No, there is an unlimited supply of grace available. What a what a God we serve. And I want to put a little caveat in here, and I've done this a couple times on shows, but I just think this is so important: is that we. Do we are often tempted to make a god in our image, rather than remembering that we were made in his image, and that's why it is so important to be in a good church, to be in a church where the word of God is faithfully spoken. We are not to forsake the assembly of other believers, and that has sadly become optional.
A lot of Christians believe that it's optional. It's not optional. We are to be in In a group, in a church, where we are not only being fed, but we are able to serve regularly, and I would say, you know, you had just mentioned that even if people are Christians and they they have a time of falling, you know, sadly, we have seen recently in the last several years several people that we have looked up to in the faith that have fallen, but I would remind the listeners. How often are you praying for these men whose books you're reading, or whose sermons you're listening to, or pastors that you're sitting under? Because you can correct me on who said this, but.
Someone had quoted saying that you know even the best men are men at best. Who who had quoted that? Do you remember who that was? I don't know. I say it a lot, and my wife reminds me of it.
Someone said it. Yeah. So I'm just going to attribute it to you, Emily. There you go. Give you credit for this.
I heard it from you. Yeah. You know, even the best of men are just men. Yeah. And so I I just want to give a little caveat here to tell those that are listening because I know that we have a lot of listeners that are prayer warriors.
And you have tender hearts. That's part of why you listen to this program because you have a heart of compassion, and you want to seek the Lord in in your sorrows. But we need to faithfully seek the Lord for these men that are preaching the word to us because really they're they are more susceptible to the attacks of Satan because if they're doing they're doing the work of the Lord that. That is not what Satan wants you to hear, and so we we just need to surround them in prayer faithfully. But to pivot away from that, you had also said that His grace never it never trickles; it always is this a abounding force of grace in our lives.
And one of the things that I love in Hebrews that's one of the books that I've been reading on my own this past year. And in Hebrews four fifteen and sixteen, and it says that we can draw near to the throne of grace. And you talk about that. As well, when should we draw near to that throne? How often can we do it, and what does it mean to draw near?
Well, this is why expository preaching and teaching is so important because you're you're driven into the text to do exegesis, to exegete the text, to get out of the text what it says, not to read into the text what I wanted to say, which is isagesis.
So when you when you exegete this first, you begin to observe the grammar and different things like that, and it's it's something very straightforward and simple, but it's written present tense.
So when he tells us to draw. Near to the throne of grace, it is a command, but it's it's written in a way to say that you can continually do it. You know, even when you're have this frank recognition of your sinfulness, that that's when you're. You should go to the throne of grace, and again, there's no limits to how many times you you can forget. You can go to the throne of grace for for grace and mercy.
And someone might say, "Well, I I did it yesterday," and I I would say, "And now I'm aware of my sin again." I said, "Well, then go again." There there's no end to it, and it's it's the Lord Jesus beckoning you to come. He's the one saying, "Come to the throne of grace and find mercy and grace of to help in time of need," and He's a. It says there that he's our great high priest. He's not a, he's not a human priest. He's not a priest that can only somewhat sympathize with us.
He he totally understands because he was tempted in all the categories of sin that we're tempted in. It doesn't mean that he faced every individual kind of sin that there is, but every category of sin that there is, he was tested in those things. His whole life he was, and he did it all without sin, which. Means that Satan didn't have to keep putting, turning. I mean, didn't have to like he does with us.
You know, doesn't have to turn up the pressure very high because we we fail so easily. With Christ, I mean, he had to to give the maximum amount of pressure and temptation, and still Christ went through that without sin.
So believe me, he understands our temptation and our weaknesses better than we do, and he sympathizes and empathizes with them. Yeah, and he's the one saying. To come, and so I love even the two terms mercy and grace. There's a little bit of difference between the two. Mercy is what we need for our failures.
Mercy basically means not getting what you what you deserve. I don't want what I deserve. I want mercy. Grace is something a little different. It's getting what you don't deserve.
So mercy is not getting what you do deserve. Grace is getting what you don't deserve, and that is the strength I need to face temptation. The help I. Needed my trials and my afflictions to deal with grief or whatever it is I may go through.
So go to the throne of grace. He's telling you to come, and no limits to the number of times you can go. Those that haven't accepted that that free gift of abundant grace that He offers, who are still in that state of separation, how do you think that that affects the way that they experience grief?
Well, it's going to complicate and impact all of other things we go through if we're not at peace with God. Think about it this way: it's what Paul, it's how Paul describes God in Second Corinthians chapter one, in Second Corinthians one verse three, he calls God the God of all comfort, and he says he goes on to say there in that passage that he comforts us in our affliction, so that then we'll not only be comforted ourselves. That we can go out and comfort others who are going through great trials with the comfort that we've received from the God of all comfort. I mean, the word comfort happens a number of times there.
Well. We need that comfort from the God of all comfort.
So, if go back to the beginning, if I'm not at peace with God, if I'm not rightly in a relationship with Him, because I've come to Him by grace through faith to put my trust in Christ, the Eternal Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, believing in who He was, who He is, and what He did to pay for sin, and that God raised Him from the dead to prove who He was, and that that sacrifice was enough. Then I don't have access to that comfort, and so I see it in people's lives that if they don't know the Lord, if they're not following the Lord, then they don't have access to that comfort. And it's the the grief that they're going through through their loss, yeah, of a loved one, or another trial that they're going through. The grief and the pain is compounded without the comfort we receive from the Lord. Yeah, you know, I mean, I've seen in the last eight years of just working in this grief space.
I've seen the difference of people who are unbelievers. It really forms a bitterness in them when, when they don't have that comfort, when they don't have any, when they don't see any purpose in their pain. But as believers, we are to have our minds. Heavenward, right? This is not our home.
This is just set your mind on things above. Yeah, this is temporal, and it makes it it makes it so that we can take a step back from our circumstances. And I'll never forget that my grandmother gave me this imagery years ago that I absolutely thought was so beautiful. She said that when you know the Lord in the midst of your trials, that what He does is here, you feel like you are surrounded by suffering on every side. But what the Lord does is He picks you up.
He places your feet on solid ground, up high above your trials, where you can look down on your trials, and they no longer consume you. And instead, we can be consumed by that abundant grace of knowing that He will be overflowing. In His mercies and His grace toward us, and it makes all the difference. It doesn't, and you know, and what you described is not necessarily a change in the circumstance. Absolutely, I can't, I can't fix what's happened that caused the grief.
It's unfixable if you've lost someone. Yeah, and there's certainly other tragic things that people go through, and people can do terrible things to other people in this fallen world.
So, by God's grace, it's not saying that that changes, but He changes me. Absolutely. It's like a magnet that pulls you up out of the mire of all that, so that I see it. It's true. It's real, and I'm going to have to get down in it maybe.
You know, still live. But now, God by His grace has removed the angst from my heart, so that I see it more the way He sees it, and I see it from an eternal perspective. Yeah. That it's only part of this world. My suffering and my loss is only here.
Right. And if I'm in Christ, I'll live eternally in heaven with Him. And there is no suffering. There is, there are no tears, and there is no grief, and so forth. And that I need the reminder of that, even if I must get back in in in the the the the throes of all of it.
You know, and and deal with some things, and I have to make some decisions, and I have to, to to to try to do this or do that. It helps me go back about those things with that comfort in my heart from the God of all comfort. Yeah, it it won't destroy you. You you will emerge changed. From every trial, we emerge changed, and by God's grace, we're able to emerge more Christ-like, right?
And even the book Hope in the Morning—that's what it was born out of. Actually, is the fact that I kept seeing this contrast between because before I did the book, I had a business called Gifts of Hope, and it was just gifts for grieving people, and you know, unbelievers and believers alike. It wasn't just for believers, and I would have people contact me a lot with their losses, and it was such a difference between. I mean, you're talking people facing cancer with their children, and and people facing the loss of their children. And the mindset was so different that I thought, you know, people need to see how Christians can walk through this.
Because in that, in the book, I specifically asked the writers, please don't sugarcoat your your suffering. I didn't want them to. I'm sure you know this term, but I didn't want them to speak in like Christianese, where they felt like they had to over spiritualize everything to make themselves sound like they're super godly and they don't suffer and Because I told them, I said, you know what? People need to see the reality and the depth of your grief if they are going to believe the reality and depth of your hope. Because if they feel like like you're not being honest about the grief that you faced, then they're going to feel like maybe you're not being truthful about the hope that you really have.
Yeah, it's something imaginary. It's something that you just psychologically have psyched yourself up into into somehow coping. Yeah, we're not talking about that. I am mindful of the fact that. Jesus Himself wept.
He grieved. He he he felt that and and grieved over things. But but there's a difference between having hope as you go through that versus not having the hope. And it makes me mindful of what Peter said, and I think it's First Peter three, where he says, "Be ready to give a defense for what." Yeah. He doesn't say for how you fixed all the circumstances.
Yeah. You know how you brought your your your your dead loved one back to Life and how you finally, you know, won the lottery, so you don't have these financial, you know, problems anymore. Not sporting the lottery. Don't get me wrong; here it's just an expression. But he doesn't say that.
You know, give a defense for how you don't have suffering anymore. How you've come to a place where you're not sick anymore. You know, and you've been able to name it and claim it. You know, and frame it. You know.
He says, "Be ready to give a defense for the hope that's in you." That's what I want to tell people about.
Well, listen, I saw. You know, and there is things going on, and I've lost loved ones, and I I have failed, and I have been disillusioned, and I've disappointed others, and I've sinned against others. Then, but I can tell you, then what gets me through all this is the God of all comfort. I know Him, yeah, and I put my trust in Him, and He. Puts my feet on on stable ground.
He he pulls me up out of the mire and sets me on a rock, so that I can deal with those things the right way. I love that. That actually that's first First Peter three fifteen. It's one of my favorite verses. And you know, I would say the two verses that we just said those those have become almost like the theme verses of this program because that is what we hope to do here with the testimonies.
We don't make a spectacle out of people suffering. We want every every. Trial to point to the testimony of who God is and how He has been faithful, and that is being ready to give a defense for the hope that is in you with all gentleness and all respect, and that's what we try to do here. And then the the the verse in Second Corinthians one, I cannot even tell you how many times we have quoted that on. On and so you just see how real that is to people that not only has has God been a God of all comfort to them, but.
It really does work. Where it's like when you have received that comfort, you have this this aching desire to pass that on. And again, like with the book, that's what a lot of the authors' intention was. They wanted to encourage other people. They wanted to help equip other believers to know how to walk alongside people that are suffering because.
We are the ones that have received that comfort of Christ, and so therefore we ought to go forth and extend that. You know, and and it it there's an added comfort by His grace in the midst of all that, and that is to realize that, I guess it's patience slash contentment, no matter what we're going through. That. God is going to right all wrongs someday. He is the God of all justice, and there are unjust things that happen in this world.
And I think people are misguided in thinking that somehow we can bring about a just world if we just work hard enough at it.
Well, we need to promote justice, and we need to be just as individuals. We need to be compassionate toward those who are suffering and and give mercy. And we need to, if there's something that's wrong, that we Can resolve, then we ought to do that. But it's all done with the understanding. But not everything's fixable, and not all justice will happen in this world.
Some injustice is just going to remain. Then what keeps me going is to know that yeah, but someday it will, and the God of all justice will do what's right on behalf of the gospel, what's right on behalf of His kingdom for His followers, His sheep, the church, pure justice, perfect justice someday.
Well, I'm going to end with these words one more time of the just the chorus of this song, and then if you would close us in prayer, just thanking God for His abounding grace. Again, this says, "Grace, grace, God's grace, grace that will pardon and cleanse within. Grace, grace, God's grace, grace that is greater than all our sin." Amen to that. Father, what a joy it is to think about these things about you. We we thank you that, as the psalmist said, that you hear our prayers.
You are so faithful to your people and so gracious to us. And and we confess we we presume upon that grace at time. We we turn a deaf ear to it. We turn a deaf eye and ear, really, to who we are in Christ and what our responsibilities are in obeying you and seeking to serve and worship you. And yet, what we find over and over.
Over and over to be true is your hyper grace, your super abounding grace, and certainly we don't want to presume upon that. We don't want to sin even more so that grace will abound, as Paul addresses later in Romans, in chapter six. We don't want to be guilty of that, but Lord, we do want to be grateful, and we just want to pause and say that we understand that if it wasn't for you, we'd have no hope, but in you we have all hope.
So thank you for that. In the name of Our Savior, Amen. Amen. Join us next week on Hope in the Morning. Hope in the Morning is a non-profit ministry that seeks to encourage the hurting, equip those who walk beside them, and evangelize the lost with the hope of Jesus Christ.
To partner with our ministry or to make a donation in your loved one's honor, please visit hopeinthemorning.org. Your donation helps keep these stories of hope on the air and helps tangibly meet the needs of the hurting.
