The Prodigal and the Perfectionist - Understanding Grace, Part 1

Did you realize there is one word that is more important than any other word in all the Bible?

In fact, it's one word that separates Christianity from every other religion on the planet. Want to know what it is? Stay with me. That's today. Thanks for joining us for this Edition of Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. Chip's our Bible teacher on this international discipleship program, and I'm Dave Druey. Today we begin a series called The Prodigal and the Perfectionist, Why We All Need Grace. That's the most important word Chip was just talking about, grace. But describing grace can be difficult and seem vague or nebulous. So Chip helps us get a grasp on grace by taking a look at Jesus' parable of two guys, both lost, and a father whose lavish love shocked his listeners. If you have a Bible, open it now to Luke chapter 15, and let's join Chip for his message, Understanding Grace. What's the biggest challenge that you're facing personally right now? Just kind of the number one biggest challenge, physical, relational, family, crisis, health, I don't know.

You got it? Now let me read a promise given to a man who had prayed very hard, who had lots of faith, but God said, I'm not going to answer it the way that you wanted answered. It's the Apostle Paul at 2 Corinthians chapter 12, and the Lord says to the Apostle Paul, My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. Paul would then say most gladly, therefore, while I rejoice in my weakness that the power of Christ might be manifested and be made known through me. So I want you to think about as you hear what we're going to talk about. So what is God's grace and how does it work and how is it operational? I want you to think about that challenge and that promise that God would say to you like He did to him and says to me. Does He always say He's going to take you out of it?

Does He say a check is going to come in the mail? Does it mean necessarily a supernatural healing? He can and has done all those kind of things in our church, but His grace will be sufficient.

If you have some notes, go ahead and pull them out because you're going to need them. And as you pull those out, I want to make three observations about grace. Number one, I would argue that the single most important in all of the New Testament, in fact in all of the Bible, is the word grace. Secondly, I would argue that grace and the concept of grace separates the God of the Bible from every and all religions or religious systems in all the world.

Over here you have grace and the God of the Bible and over here you have every religious system. Third, I would argue your understanding or lack of understanding of grace will determine the quality of your life on earth and more importantly will determine the destiny and the destination of your life after you die. When you open the Bible, it says by grace we are saved.

It must be pretty important. The apostle Paul would say of his entire life, I am what I am by the grace of God. And His grace didn't prove vain toward me, but I labored more than all of them. Yet not I, but the grace of God in me. Peter would say grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Peter would say set your hope fully on the grace that's to be revealed. You come to know God through grace. You grow through grace. You're sustained through grace. You're called into relationship by grace. Whatever grace is, it's really, really important. But here's my observation and I've been doing this for about 30 some years.

New Christians, not so new Christians, really old Christians. When you sit down with someone, look them right in the eye and you say, could you kind of explain grace to me and how it works? You get kind of a, well, it's sort of and it kind of and it's free and it's unmerited and it's foggy. And so what I want to do is as we get started, I want to define grace. Then I want to show you where it comes from. And then we're going to talk about how do you experience this goodness, this generosity of God, this unmerited, free love that God wants to give us.

So you ready? So let's define it. The dictionary, if you just open up the dictionary, it'll say it's a simple elegance, a refinement of movement. We're thinking to ourselves that may not be the definition we're looking for, but it has this idea of grace, of movement, like a dancer or a ballerina. And then it gives us the free, unmerited favor of God. A theological definition is, if you get, this is right, I have a theology book. It's the free and unmerited favor of God as manifested in the salvation of sinners and the bestowing of blessings. So that's theological, that's what it is. Or the Sunday school definition, many of you grew up in Sunday school, and the acronym G-R-A-C-E, God's Riches at Christ Expense.

That's accurate, that's true. The riches of God, the abundance of God given to us freely by what Christ did. Here's the problem. The problem is that it's still nebulous. In fact, I looked up the word nebulous and see if this doesn't reflect a little bit on your view of grace.

It's a concept or idea that's indistinct, unclear, vague, hazy, cloudy, fuzzy, misty, blurry, ill-defined, confusing, and ambiguous. We've learned grace is the most important word in the Bible. You come to know God by grace.

You grow by grace. You're sustained by grace. You're given gifts by grace. The Greek word for grace is charis. The word for joy is a root word, acar.

The word for gift is charismata. I mean, it's all about grace and giving. And yet, the average Christian really has a hard time getting their arms around what is it exactly, how does it work, and how do you experience it.

So you ready to roll? Open your Bibles to Exodus chapter 33, and we're going to take a look at this man named Moses. And one of the most interesting passages in all of Scripture. Moses has led the people out of Egypt. They've seen the Red Sea part. They're going out in the mornings, and there's manna to pick up.

They've seen miracles. Actually, by this time, he's already gotten the Ten Commandments, and he's come down. And when he was gone for a while, they decided that they would find a golden calf, and they would worship it, and the people were involved in sort of blatant immorality. Moses, out of his frustration, breaks the commandments and goes back up and talks to God and goes through this dialogue, and we pick up the dialogue in chapter 33 where Moses says, you know, if you're not going to go with us, I can't go. And by the way, these are your people.

These aren't my people. And as they begin to talk, Moses does something that few people do in Scripture. He's very, very bold, and what he says is, I want to know who is this really, not just your presence.

If your favor is going to go with me, I want to know what you're really like. Then Moses said, now show me your glory. And the Lord said, I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim the name the Lord in your presence. And so here's one time where someone says, I want to know who you are. I mean, pull back the veil.

I want to see you just as you are. And God says, no man can see my face and live. But here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to cause my goodness to pass in front of you. And then he gives Moses instructions. He goes, look, I'm going to put you, you stand over here.

I'm going to pass by. I'll put my hand here, and you can see the flares of my glory. And then I'm going to proclaim my name. And so he instructs him to chisel out two more stones. He gets them.

He brings them back up. He's alone with the Lord. And then as you skip down, look at verses chapter 34, verse 5. Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him, and he proclaimed his name, the Lord. And he passed in front of Moses proclaiming, the Lord, the Lord.

Literally, Yahweh, Yahweh. I am that I am. I am that I am.

It's his covenant name. I'm the ever-existent one. I have no beginning.

I have no end. I am. I'm the author of the universe. I'm the author of all history. I have no needs.

I'm self-sufficient. Well, what is this I am God like? The God who is the alpha and the ammonia, has no beginning, has no end, who's the creator of all that there is, who's spoken, the galaxies came into existence, who created life itself. What's he like? What's his goodness like?

And then he fills in the gaps. The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to a thousand and forgiving the wickedness and rebellion and sin. It's this amazing picture of God's goodness. The first two words, some of your translations, if you're in another one, will say, the God, merciful and loving or gracious. The first word is hesed.

It's 235 times this word is used in the Old Testament. It's his loyal, steadfast love. It's a commitment love. It's I'm for you love. Every time it's from a superior to an inferior, a God to man, it's always just the equivalent of grace.

I'm for you. I love you. Then the next word, gracious, is a little word named chen. And it's the idea 100% of the time it is a free, unmerited, non-coerced, non-legal, unilateral, I want to bless and give and make you all that you can be.

I want to help you and love you and care for you and protect you. And grace is a very interesting concept in Scripture because when people are proud and say, I don't need God, he's opposed to the proud, but he gives grace to the who? To the humble.

To people that recognize their need. Imagine, if you will, for a word picture, grace always flows downhill. It's like this huge lake of unlimited supply.

But think of this. God could have described himself in any way possible and he says, I'm gonna let my goodness pass before you. A quote from J.I.

Packard in his classic book writes this. He says, within the cluster of God's moral perfections, there is one in particular to which the term goodness points. The quality which God especially singled out from the whole, proclaiming that all of his goodness to Moses.

And then when he speaks of himself, he speaks of being abundant or overflowing in goodness and truth. This is the quality of generosity. Packard goes on to say generosity means a disposition to give others in a way that has no mercenary motive. It's not limited to the recipients, anything that they deserve. God gives generously because he longs for the joy and the happiness of his people. They are the object of his affection. Now here's all I want you to get. You have a picture in your mind and I have a picture in my little psyche of when you close your eyes to pray or look up to pray or when you think about what's going on in your life and you think of, you have a snapshot of God.

And I'm gonna suggest that whatever snapshot you have is probably pretty marred. He's not like your dad. He's not like a pastor you met.

He's not like a bad experience you've had. He's not a God whose arms are crossed in the sense of you need to get with the program. He's not a God that's down on you.

He is a God who's abundant in grace and goodness. In other words, he wants to protect you. He wants to love you.

And take this in the right way. He wants you to be happy. It's the picture of when a mom hears a baby crying and she rushes in, where does she get that? That's the goodness of her heart wanting to comfort her child. When you hurt, that's how God feels about you.

If you're a dad and someone picks on one of your kids or wants to hurt them or take them or kidnap them, I mean, there's something in a dad that steps up and goes, you mess with my son. That's how God feels when danger and darkness and difficulty and pain comes into your life. He's good. He's gracious. His predisposition is not merited based on how you happen to be behaving or not behaving.

His predisposition, he's good because of what he's like. And the big error when you look at all the systems of all religion down in our psyche ever since sin entered the world is we have this, and you go to ancient Egypt. Ancient Egypt, when you look at the tombs, they have a picture of a scale, and the whole mindset of the world then and now largely is there's a scale of good and bad, and if your good outweighs your bad, you go into some eternal bliss by every system. And the God of the Bible says your good could never be perfect and holy and righteous enough, and the basis for relationship with me will be grace. It'll be not what you deserve, not what you can earn, not what you can merit, and that grace is most clearly and most powerfully pictured in my son. Turn, if you will, to John chapter 1.

In the beginning was the word. John is the last gospel. The other gospels have been written. The church has been going for roughly about 60, maybe 70 years.

So it's about AD 90, between AD 90 and AD 100. He's the last of the apostles. All the others have been martyred. He's on an island, and he's speaking now, and all the church has grown, and there's some factions, and he wants to pull everything together to remind people this is why Jesus came, and this is who he really is. And he says in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God, and all things that came into being are from God, and nothing has ever been created or come into being that isn't from the word. And then he talks about John's the Baptist and his role, and he came to be a witness to the light.

And then skip down to verse 14. It says the word became flesh. The logos, the word, the truth, the second person of eternity became flesh and lived among us for a while. We've seen his glory, the glory of the one and only son who came from the father full of grace and truth.

John testifies concerning him. He cries out saying, this is the one of whom I said, he who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me. For from the fullness of his grace, we have all received blessing after blessing. No one has ever seen God, but God the only son who is at the father's side has made him known.

Really, the text is he has explained him. If you want to know what God is really like, if you want to know the snapshot or the picture, it's why almost without exception, no matter where I'm reading in the Bible, I read in the gospels. I want to read about Jesus. I want to watch Jesus.

I want to listen to Jesus. How does Jesus respond to these people? How does Jesus respond to this? How does Jesus respond when you're in a storm? I want to always be reading and thinking about Jesus because he's what the father's like. Jesus said to what? If you've seen me, you've seen the father.

And how is he? He's full of both grace and truth in perfect balance. To understand grace, we need to just keep looking and studying and marveling at the person of Jesus. Finally, we have an amazing opportunity where Jesus explains who God the father is. I think it's probably, if not his most famous parable or teaching, the Good Samaritan was probably up there neck and neck. But in Luke chapter 15, Jesus is going to actually explain. This is what the father's like.

Luke chapter 15. And as you turn there, I had a very, very interesting experience. I teach at Mount Hermon almost every summer. Roger Williams has been the CEO and the director of Mount Hermon. It's grown, it's flourished. And some of you that are close to the situation understand he died.

He battled cancer for about three or three and a half years. And this summer I was teaching at Mount Hermon, and normally I teach in the evenings. And then I have an opportunity. I go in the morning, and if my family's there, it's even better. And I hear someone else teach, and I just, it's great.

I just soak it up. Then they have a little break, and then they have all these seminars. Well, if you do what I do for a living, like I want to hear one message, and then I want to go sort of goof off a little bit, okay? I don't want to go to another seminar.

And so I'm deciding what I'm going to do with my time. And then I hear that Roger is going to do a seminar on Luke 15. And I just passed him, and I looked at him, and I had that little prompting from God. And one of the staff members said, you know, Roger couldn't teach last week. Chemotherapy's really bad.

They've done all they can do. And what I became acutely aware of is this man's going to die very soon. And I remember I thought, well, you know, I need a little break because I'll just sit in the back so I can get out and not disturb him. And it was in the main, and he begins to talk. And I don't know if you've ever been around a person who knows they're going to die and die very soon, but they speak with a clarity and a conviction that very few of us ever have. There are no distractions.

There's no little issues. There's no little things that, I mean, they only talk and think and live and breathe and relate in ways that really matter because their time is so limited. And he started off, and he said, I've been studying this passage for over 10 years. And then he said, you know, he talked about, I'll refer to it later, a Dr. Ken Bailey who spent 60 years, six decades, in rural peasant villages in the Middle East Arab world. And he said, I've learned, I've been studying this passage for 10 years, and my view of God has been so transformed I could never fathom or believe how deeply God loves me, totally apart from my performance or my behavior. What grace is really all about. And it's a grace that doesn't set you free to do whatever you want.

It's a grace that compels you to love others and live a holy life. And as we begin to talk, and I could tell he was getting emotional, and I kind of went down a couple more rows thinking, I want to get closer to this guy. Long and shorter than I spent all three days at his seminar.

And it was just like pop, pop, pop. And all of a sudden, I mean, I went to school. I've been a pastor 30 some years. I have a little understanding of grace. But after three days, I realized my understanding was like that. And I got to be in the presence of a man who not only opened God's word, but opened his heart in a way that I thought, oh God, I have a thimble understanding of the ocean of your amazing love for me.

And if I could just digest that, it would so change how I think about me and how I think about others and how I relate to life. And so at the third day, I went down and he got weaker and weaker and weaker. And I stood in line. I said, hey, Roger, I'd like to ask you a favor. And you know, we've known each other for probably 15, 20 years. And I said, God's really spoken to my life.

And rather than steal it, I'd rather ask permission because I'd really like to take some things I've learned and pass it on. And he kind of smiled, probably like a guy who's exhausted and has a baton and you know, one of those relay races. And it's like he took, he goes, he looked at me and he sort of took the baton in my hands. He said, you share that with as many people as you can. It's transformed my life. You've been listening to part one of Chip's message, Understanding Grace, from his series, The Prodigal and the Perfectionist. Chip's exploring the elusive concept of grace, helping us discover the depth of God's love, so crucial to understanding that our failures are never final when we bring them to him. Chip brings Jesus' teaching to life, looking first at the heart of a merciful father and then his two sons, one a prodigal, the other a perfectionist. As you listen, you'll likely see a little of yourself in each of these guys. The question is, are you positioned to receive the grace your heavenly father is willing and able to lavish on you? We hope you'll engage the question and continue the journey by digging into the messages of this series, The Prodigal and the Perfectionist.

To listen again or to check out the resource options, go to livingontheedge.org, call 888-333-6003, or tap Special Offers on the Chip Ingram app. Chip, it's hard to understand the concept of grace. Can you describe a way that we could actually experience God's grace? Because I think once we experience it, it helps us get our minds around what it is. I totally agree. And I really think that we have this sense that God is down on us.

None of that is true. I mean, especially Luke 15 gives us a completely different picture of the Father. Jesus is describing God's graciousness even when we have blown it and rebelled. And I fight with this so much. I have a little practice that maybe this will be helpful for you. You know, that very first moments when you're waking up, and before I do anything, I want my mind set in this direction. And so often, I will begin right at that moment, and I'll just quote slowly Psalm 23, The Lord is my shepherd.

I don't have to be in want or need. He's going to lead me by green pastures. You know, I walk through that line by line by line, or often another morning, I'll just start with, Our Father, my Father that is in heaven, how holy is your name? And I'll just kind of paraphrase, but before I do anything, I'm just saying the Lord's Prayer and reminding myself that He's for me and that He loves me. And then a favorite of mine, right as my eyes open is Zephaniah 3.17, and it says, The Lord your God is with you.

The Lord God Almighty. He will deliver you. He will sing over you. Imagine that this idea of God singing over you.

He will quiet you with His love. And I just quote that verse, and I just pause before I get out of bed or brush my teeth or take my shower, and I just start my day in that one moment. And I have to tell you, that makes all the difference in the world. How you start your first thoughts often dictate the whole rest of your day.

Thanks, Chip. Well, you know, another area where men particularly need extra encouragement is in their roles as dads. The fact is, many men don't know how to be the dad their kids need.

If you want to know more about what the Bible says about fatherhood, we've got a great resource for you to check out. Chip just released a brand new book called Portrait of a Father, How to Be the Dad Your Child Needs. It's a short, easy read that emphasizes the critical responsibility of every dad in the lives of their kids. With Father's Day just around the corner, now is a great time to get your hands on this new book, whether it's for yourself, a dad you know, or a dad-to-be. You'll find the details for Portrait of a Father at LivingOnTheEdge.org, or call 888-333-6003. And here's the deal. If you want to order this book for all the guys in your small group or church, we've discounted Chip's new book so you can order as many as you need.

Just go to LivingOnTheEdge.org or call 888-333-6003. Well, here again is Chip with a few final thoughts from this message. As we close today's program, I have to tell you that this series grew out of a very unique experience, and I started to share just a little bit of it at the end of today's message. I was at a family retreat, and I was speaking at it. And if you've ever been in my shoes and you have your whole family and you're speaking at night, you don't go to workshops, okay? I'm just going to tell you that.

I go to the morning message where the other guy teaches, and then I just want to get away with my family, have some fun, goof off, drink coffee with my wife, get a workout, something. But they announced all the workshops, and Roger in a very feeble voice said, for the last 10 years before I die, I think my eyesight has been revolutionized about what grace really is. And I realized as a Christian most of my life, I never understood it. And that's what I'll be sharing in my workshop.

And his voice was just about like that. So I thought, well, I'll sit in. And I went to every day of that workshop, and it was like God breathed inside of me afresh, this is what grace is all about, Chip, and here's how to get a handle on it for you and the people you love. So I prayed this series is one that washes over you afresh, that you might know who God really is and how much He loves you. As we wrap up, I want to remind you that our mission at Living on the Edge is to help Christians live like Christians. One of the ways we do that is by giving away free resources. So when you hear a message that's especially helpful, we hope you'll pass it on to others.

They're easily shared from the Chip Ingram app or by forwarding the free MP3s from our website, livingontheedge.org. And don't forget to include a note about how it made a difference in your life. Well, be sure to be with us again next time when we continue our current series. For Chip and the entire team, this is Dave Druey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge. .