Grace And Continuing Sin - Part 2

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, April 25th. What can you expect when you sin against God after you are saved? Today's message helps you understand more about grace and continuing sin. of sin dominating and enslaving the life.

Well, what about the length of that rain? It began back there in the Garden of Eden. Sin began to rain in the heart of Adam and Eve. And the Scripture says into that first family, into that first couple came sin. And that first family came the first murder. In fact, things got so bad after a while, the Bible says that God wiped out the whole human race except for one family, knowing his family. You'd think they would have learned a lesson, but they didn't. Because after that, when God told them to scatter over all the earth and replenish the earth, they decided, no, we're not going to do that.

We're going to stick together. So they built the Tower of Babel. And so from the very beginning of mankind, sin began to rain.

They were going to stick together, so they built the Tower of Babel. And so from the very beginning of mankind, sin has rained in the human heart, dominating the human heart and enslaving mankind. Therefore, the only way God can forgive sin is for God to provide a payment for sin which is life for death. Sin brings forth death and God brings forth life to die in order to pay sin's debt.

Listen to me. Grace is God's provision for man's sin. It is the only provision for man's sin. It is the grace of God that nailed Jesus Christ to the cross. We say the Romans did it.

No. The Romans were the instruments but God Himself is the one who nailed His only begotten Son to the cross. He is the one who came not to break the law but to fulfill the law. The law said sin requires death, the shedding of blood. The Father who made the law also provided for the fulfillment of that law by providing His only begotten Son, Christ, whose death at Calvary paid your sin-debt in mind in full. Grace is God's provision for your sin-debt in mind. Therefore, just confessing sin doesn't get us forgiven. Just repenting of sin doesn't get us forgiven. Just crying out to God and telling Him how awful we are doesn't get us forgiven. The only way to be forgiven of sin is through the blood of Jesus Christ. Now I'll say this again, repentance never precedes the grace of God.

The grace of God precedes everything else. It is the grace of God that convicts us of our sins. It's for the grace of God that He's provided salvation. It's for the grace of God that you and I have any faith at all. It's for the grace of God that we have anything and any hope. It is grace, grace, grace, grace, grace, and nothing but grace. And anything you and I try to add to it is nothing but human pride and God hates it. He says, all right, I got some questions.

All right, good. You mean to tell me that I can go out here and sin against God and do the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over again and God will forgive me? Now listen carefully, because I know that I have some friends out there who believe you can fall from grace who think, boy, I've been waiting for him to admit this. The answer is yes. And how do I know that?

Because here's what he says. He says, where sin abounded or increased, grace suprabounded all the more. You cannot out sin the grace of God. You say, well, that gives me license for sin.

No, it doesn't. You mean to tell me, though, that if I commit the same old sin and go back and ask Him to forgive me over and over and over and over and over again, that God is going to forgive me? Well, let me say, first of all, when Jesus died on the cross, He paid all your sin debt in full 2000 years ago. You've been forgiven a long time ago. And that forgiveness became a reality in your life the moment you receive Christ as your Savior.

Now, think about this. When you got saved, the Bible said you and I became children of God, that we're children. He says, as newborn babes desire the sincere milk of the Word, which means the simple things of the Word of God. So God knows we're children. So you and I got saved.

What happens? We stumble and fall all over ourselves. We sin against God, and we keep learning, and we keep discovering things the Bible we never knew before, and we keep learning how to live the Christian life. And you know what?

Even after you've learned as much as you and I think we know, what do we do? We still disobey Him at times. Now, listen, God is the holy God and hates sin. The only way in this world that you and I are acceptable to God today is grace, unmerited, undeserved love poured out upon us, not because we deserve it, but because He's a loving Father.

How can He do that? Even He can only do that because His Son paid my sin debt and yours in full. That isn't cheap grace. Somebody says that's cheap grace if you go out here and sin all you want to and get by with it. I didn't say you get by with it. I'm not into that. I said you can sin and sin and sin and disobey God and the forgiveness is still there because you cannot out sin the grace of God.

You cannot. That's the nature of God. And it isn't that He's weak or become less holy. And listen, when somebody says, well, that's cheap grace, you ask them this, how cheap is the life of a Son of God? That's not cheap because the truth is that Jesus was God and is God incarnate here on earth when He was walking among us. That was Almighty God Himself loving us so much to choose to come into this world in human flesh born like every other little boy except that he was virgin born without a father, in his mother's womb and grew up like other little boys only sinless and became a teenager like other teenagers only sinless and launched that into a ministry given to him by his heavenly father at the age of 30 and died at about 33 years of age on a cross between two thieves.

And he died as the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world. That is not cheap grace. That is the most expensive grace. Listen, when God Himself died on the cross, don't call it cheap grace. It is the most expensive grace that could ever have been. So somebody says, well, now wait a minute now, but you mean to tell me that if I go ahead and sin and sin and sin and just come back and tell him about it and confess that I'm forgiven?

Well, let me ask you this. What did he mean when he said when sin increased, grace super abounded? He meant exactly what he said, that the grace of God takes care of all my sin.

Now listen carefully. That does not give us license to sin. It does not promote sin. God hates sin. Now listen, with the grace of God, part of the expressions of the wonderful love of God is divine discipline, is divine chastisement. If God sees us heading in the wrong direction, what does He do? A God of loving grace wants to stop us before we step out. A God of loving grace is a God of discipline, and His discipline is pure love.

You can't out sin the grace of God. How do I explain that? I don't have to explain it except to say here's what God says. You know why it's so hard to understand?

Here's why it's so hard to understand. How could God love me like that? Because He's God, and that's all the reason you and I need. When grace comes into our life, we receive Jesus Christ as our personal Savior. Not only does He deliver us from the penalty of sin, it is His desire to deliver us from the power of sin in our life. Look in chapter 6 for a moment.

Notice what He says. Now that we are living under grace and not the law, sin's not reigning. He says verse 12 of Romans 6, therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should abed lust. You don't have to do that in the Lord. In other words, you don't have to do that in the Lord. And do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. Verse 18, having been freed from sin's enslaving power, now you have become slaves of righteousness. That is children of God who want to be obedient to God. He breaks not only the penalty of sin in their life, but He cancels out its power. We don't have to live the way we used to live.

Why? It's the grace of God. It's the love of God. One of the greatest expressions of the grace of God is the fact, listen, that almighty holy righteous perfect God would condescend in all of His holiness to come and live on the inside of folks like you and me. To be indwelt by God in the person of Christ through the Holy Spirit. To be indwelt by God that God in His holiness would, He would live on the inside of these temples of ours, yes.

You know why? Because He loves us. And the appeal to lost men today is not fiery judgment, hell, and damnation. Jesus' appeal was I love you and I want what's best for you.

And if you'll follow me, life will never be the same. Does that mean there's no place for judgment? Oh, no, it doesn't mean that at all.

And what does this motivate? You mean to tell me that no matter how much I sin, that God's forgiveness has taken care of it? Yes. Does that free me to sin? No. License me to sin? No. Motivate me to want to sin? Not really. Then what does it do?

Here's what it does. When you and I begin to understand the grace of God, what happens? Well, here's the problem. Most of us think we're better than we are. The most difficult kind of person to get saved is a fellow or gal who's been rather moral in their life and done some good things and sort of benevolent and got lots of friends or whatever.

In other words, they think, well, you know, I'm not too bad. Don't give me this God business. I mean, I don't, you know, I don't need God.

And listen, the reason I know that most people feel that way about themselves is because that's why they're not in church. They haven't prayed this morning. They haven't read the Bible this morning.

They're not thinking about spiritual things this morning. You know why? I'll tell you why.

It's real simple. They don't need it because Satan has so deceived them that they're good enough. Well, why? I don't need to go to church. I don't need the Bible. Don't give me this preacher business. Don't give me this gospel and hell and fire and damnation. I don't need all that stuff in my life.

Why? Because human pride says, I believe that I can be good enough to be acceptable to God. Their problem is their concept of God is he's a distorted old grandfather who knows nothing about reality. It took the blood of Jesus to forgive one or a million and one or everyone. That is nothing but pure pride.

Anybody who thinks they don't need God's living in pride and God hates it and pride will ultimately destroy them. It doesn't motivate us to do that. What does the grace of God, listen, think about this. What does the love of God loving us in our sinfulness, loving us unto holiness, as he said unto righteousness and eternal life. What does that motivate? Here's what it motivates.

It motivates thanksgiving and praise and worship and the desire to be obedient to him and to follow him. That's what grace motivates. And the person who says, well, then I can just sin all I want to, all I got to do is just tell God about it.

Try it. And my friend, if that's your attitude, more than likely you've never been saved. If you want to sin and you've given yourself over to it, more than likely you've never been saved. But when you begin to contemplate that a loving Father has provided for your forgiveness no matter what, He knows you struggle, He knows you may get entrapped, He knows you may have all kind of difficulties and things going on in your life.

You know what He's doing? He's loving you through that, forgiving you in that because God's purpose is to conform you to His likeness no matter what. If you choose to rebel against Him, to sin against Him willfully and you choose that, divine discipline comes and it comes strongly and He says there is a sin unto death.

That is, there are times and nobody knows who nor when nor how nor why. There are times and there can be times when God decides He's just going to wipe somebody out when He knows that He can no longer allow something to go on in their life. Does that mean the grace of God stopped?

No. It means the grace of God is so great that He's looking out for people around them and what they do to themselves. You see, you cannot stop the grace of God. You cannot name a sin that does not fall under the canopy of the grace of God, continuing forgiveness.

So what does it motivate? Well, I don't know about you, but when I think about my own life and I think about how many times God's forgiven me, it motivates me to want to get on my face before Him and say, thank you, thank you, thank you, God. I praise you. I worship you. I adore you.

I could never thank you enough. I want to walk obediently before you and holy in your presence and follow you and not disobey you. Focus my heart upon you, fasten my soul to you, strap me to you, do whatever is necessary to keep me holy before you. I don't want to sin against God. Now here's what I want you to think about.

We sing these songs and man, we get up and we just sing them off by rote memory and we don't even think about the words. Well here's one I want you to start thinking about. Listen to this. Now don't get ahead of me.

Just follow me. Marvelous grace of our loving Lord. Look at this. Grace that exceeds our what? Our sin and our guilt. It exceeds it. Well how much does it exceed it?

It's always ahead of it. 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 that is greater than all our sin. Verse 4. Marvelous infinite.

If it's infinite, it has no ending. Marvelous infinite matchless grace. Nothing like it. Freely bestowed on all who believe. You that are longing to see His face will you this moment His grace receive. Marvelous grace. Infinite grace. Matchless grace. Superabundance of grace. The forgiveness of God.

And who gets magnified in all of that? There's one person, Jesus. Now what does that say to us? It says hallelujah, thank God, I do not have to live under guilt. I do not have to live under the shadow of the guilt and listen to the whispers of Satan that I am unworthy.

I already know that. That God's grace has run out because it hasn't. That God isn't going to forgive me, yet He already has.

I don't have to listen to any of that. And what does it say? We owe Him everything. We sing all to Jesus, I surrender. All to Him I freely give.

I will ever love and trust Him in His presence daily live. We sing amazing grace, how sweet the sound. What's so sweet about it? That it saved a what? A wretch like me. Why do you think old John Newton, the slave trader, wrote amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a pretty nice guy like me?

He didn't say that. Who saved a what? Wretch. And today in all of our books on self-esteem and all of the success and everything else, what are we doing? We're just pumping up man, pumping up man, making man look better and feel better. Man, you've got to feel good about yourself. Well, you can feel good about yourself and be absolutely wrong. You want to feel good about yourself? Look at the cross.

Hallelujah. Look at the cross, then you can feel good about yourself. Here's what you can say, washed in the blood, sanctified with the Spirit of God, full of the grace of Almighty God, totally dependent upon Him, saint and child of God by His grace.

Then you can feel good about yourself. Everything else is pure pride and it has to go. Marvelous, infinite, matchless grace, I love that. Father, we love you and we praise you and bless you and honor you and exalt you and lift you up and we know that there are not enough words in the English language or all the languages in the world altogether to express the joy, the gratitude, the thanksgiving and the praise for grace that is beyond anything we could possibly imagine. And to think that when we stand in your presence in glory and we get our first real true glimpse with full understanding of your grace, no wonder you said the angels are going to be singing and shouting all over glory. No wonder you said we're going to be trophies of grace that are going to make them shout and praise you forever. We thank you for your forgiveness. Thank you for making us sons and daughters. Thanking you for allowing us to walk in grace, stand upon the rock of grace, live under the canopy of grace, surrounded by your grace. We just want to tell you we don't understand it all, but we understand enough, Father, to humble ourselves before you and to say we know that it's all of Jesus and none of us.

Amen. Thank you for listening to part two of Grace and Continuing Sin. If you'd like to know more about Charles Stanley or In Touch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.