893. What Makes Grace So Amazing? Part 2

Welcome to The Daily Platform. Our program features sermons from chapel services at Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Whether it's the general chapel service for the whole student body or services for those in the ministerial class or seminary, everyone at the school is blessed by the preaching of the word each day from the chapel platform.

Today on The Daily Platform, we'll hear the conclusion of an evangelistic message which was preached by BJU President Steve Pettit to the student body at the beginning of the 2020 fall semester. The scripture passage is Romans 3 24 and the title of his sermon is What Makes Grace So Amazing. Christ is the one who perches our freedom from our sin and probably the greatest illustration of this in the Bible is the story in the Old Testament that every Jewish boy and girl learns by heart. It is the story of redemption of the Jewish people from the bondage of the king of Egypt named Pharaoh when God delivered them through a little lamb called the Passover.

What's the story about? Well God was going to deliver, redeem the Jewish people. They were slaves living under the control of Pharaoh and God sent a deliverer named Moses and God said to Pharaoh let my people go and he said no I'm not going to do it and so God began to sin through Moses various plagues to motivate him to turn and change his mind but instead it hardened his heart and finally after nine plagues God said that the tenth one will come and he will let you go. He will release you from your slavery and that tenth plague was sending an angel of death into the home of everyone living in Egypt and taking the life of every firstborn son and every firstborn, firstborn animal but God came to the Jewish people because they were God's people and he said there's going to be a way for you to be protected from the angel of death and that is it is going to be through a lamb.

Now that would defy logic. It did make sense but God said take a lamb of the first year, a little lamb, one year old and bring it into your house for three days. Why three days? Number one, for inspection to make sure that this lamb had no spot or blemish. It was a clean lamb.

But then secondly, I want you to bring it into your house not only for inspection but for affection. You see you can't bring a little lamb in a home and the children not make it a pet and give it a name and love it. There's a reason why God did that because He said after three days I want you to take the lamb and I want you to kill it and I believe God wanted that lamb killed after three days to break the heart of everyone in that family of knowing that that lamb's blood was being spilled for them because God said take the blood put it in a base in a bowl and I want you to take the blood and smear it on the doorpost of the house and here's my promise to you that if you put the blood on the doorpost when I pass over that night I'm going to see that that that blood and instead of coming into your house and you experiencing death I'm going to pass over you and you're going to live. And every child and every parent and every aunt and every uncle and every grandparent was sitting in that house knowing that night that they were delivered from the powerful angel of death because of the blood of that lamb that was on the doorpost.

And while they were in that house what were they doing? They were taking that roasted lamb, that cooked lamb and they were consuming the lamb and they were feeding upon the lamb and they were receiving the lamb because the lamb was their deliverance and the lamb became their life. And when Jesus began His ministry and was baptized by John the Baptist at the Jordan River and John saw Jesus, what did He call Him? The lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. Who is the one that delivers us from God's judgment? Who is it that, that is, is the one who gives His blood to deliver us? It is God's lamb, it is Jesus. We are redeemed through the blood of the lamb. We are not redeemed with silver and gold but with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. And so Paul writes here in Romans 3 and he's explaining what defies human logic. That we are saved by this lamb who went and died for us.

God is able to justify us not because of what we do but because of what Jesus did when He died as a spotless lamb on the cross. Go back tonight in your mind if you will 2,000 years ago to the city of Jerusalem. It's another hot day in April. It's Friday morning and death is in the air.

Why? Because the Romans are planning an execution. Three men have been chosen to be put to death through crucifixion. The crowd gathers outside the city walls at a place of execution called Skull Hill or Golgotha.

It's right on a busy road, a great place for people to see that you can't mess with the government of Caesar and get away with it. Word spreads like wildfire because one of the men being put to death was a rabbi named Jesus of Nazareth. The crucifixion begins at nine o'clock sharp.

Iron spikes are driven through the hands of the feet and the feet of the criminals and now they are nailed to a tree. And when you look at those three crosses, the one in the middle, the center cross is where Jesus was hanging and it looks like He's not going to make it. He's not going to survive. He's already been beaten severely. The skin is hanging off His back and tatters. His face has been beaten and bruised. His body is covered in blood.

It's, it's just a horrible sight to look at. And while He hangs on the cross, He speaks some words. He, He talks to the soldiers and He mutters, He utters, Father forgive them for they know not what they do. He speaks to one of the thieves on the cross and says today you'll be with me in paradise and then not far away was His mother and He says some words to His mother and then suddenly at noon after three hours, the Bible says darkness falls upon the whole land. It comes so quickly.

At one moment the sun is right overhead and the next moment it looks like it goes on vacation. And the darkness is as dark as pitch black night and for three long hours Jesus hung on that cross and you could hear Him crying from the cross. I thirst. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And then suddenly as the darkness had descended, now it disappears at three o'clock in the afternoon at the hour of sacrifice in the temple.

And all eyes are focused on the center cross. Jesus is there at the point of death. His strength is almost gone. His struggle is nearly over and then suddenly He shouts a reverberating statement. He cries out, it is finished.

And then a few moments later He dies. What did Jesus mean when He said it is finished? Well it means to complete something or to finish something successfully. It's what the mountain climber says when he reaches the top of Mount Everest and he says it's finished. It's what you say when you turn in your final test, your senior year of college and now your college career is concluded and you say it is finished. It's what you say when you make your last house payment and you say it's finished. And it's the word that was used in Bible days when you paid your taxes.

It is finished, it literally means paid in full. Why did Jesus die? Why did He have to die? Because God is too holy to let you into Heaven with your sins and God is too loving not to do something about it. And so through the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, God accepted His death and His blood as the payment price for our sins. How can God justify a sinner? He does it through Jesus. He does it through His bloodshed, through His sacrifice. And here is the favor of God and here is grace. No matter how many sins you have piled up in your lifetime, no matter how guilty you think you are or how bad you have been, no matter what you have done in your past that still presently haunts you in the present, when you come to Jesus Christ by faith, not by works, not by anything you do, but as a humble and broken sinner, what will He do with your sins?

He will stamp them paid in full. It is finished. I remember the day I got saved. At the age of 19 years old as a freshman in college, I didn't grow up in a Christian home. I didn't go to — I didn't have a Christian education. I was a public school kid. I didn't know anything about salvation until I was 17 years old as a junior in a public high school and a friend of mine shared the Gospel with me and I didn't get saved right then because I didn't want to get saved. I went off to college in Charleston, South Carolina at a school called The Citadel and there my freshman year, I tried out for the varsity soccer team and I made the team that year. There were only two of us on the team that were freshmen.

Myself, who was a wall cone and my — who became my best friend, a guy named Maxie Birch, who was a scholarship player. Little would I have known in the plan and providence of God that he would have brought in my life a born-again Bible-believing Christian who loved the Lord and he would share the Gospel with me. He would tell me over and over, Pettit, you need to get saved and I knew I needed to get saved.

But I had all kinds of stuff going through my head. One moment I thought it was too bad to get saved. Another moment I didn't know if I wanted to get saved. I didn't know if my wife — I wanted my life to change. The problem I had is the problem that all sinners have and that is we love our sins.

Men love darkness more than they love the light. You, you love your sin. If you don't get born again, you're gonna die and go to Hell. I'm gonna say it again, if you don't get born again, you're gonna die and go to Hell.

You know why? Because you love your sin and you love your darkness and you love your way. And if God had not worked in my heart and the Holy Spirit had not begin to change something on the inside of me, I would have never come to the Lord.

And on Easter Sunday 1975, coming back from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, listening to a preacher over the radio preach the Gospel and he preached the simple message of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. And in that message it clicked, it dawned on me God loved me and Jesus died for me and that His grace will forgive me. And God will forgive me of all of my sins. I'm quite confident that I was probably worse at my age than anybody in this room. I, I, I don't say that proudly.

I don't say that, I'm not trying to boast, but I'm quite confident that I was probably worse than anybody in this room. And what grace, what makes grace so amazing is that God will freely justify any sinner that comes to Him. God does not sell you salvation, He gives you salvation. He's not offering salvation at a half price deal, He is offering salvation free of charge. He pays the full price and Jesus paid it all and you don't pay anything. If you try to pay for your salvation, it means that you don't think He paid it all. He left no unfinished business and what He came to do, He did. And when you come to Jesus, no matter what your sins are, no matter what your life has been like, He will forgive you, He will cleanse you, He will wash you, He will make you His child, He will adopt you into His family, He will deliver you from slavery and set you free, He will take you who's an enemy and make you His very best friend, He will take you who are condemned and He will declare you righteous, He will clean you up, He will make you suitable for the Master and He will use your life for His glory. Amazing grace. So what makes it so amazing? It's what He accomplishes.

And then thirdly and finally, grace is amazing not only because of what it does and what it accomplishes in your life, but grace is amazing because of how it's received. Can I go back to Dahmer again? The guy that was unbelievably wicked. According to credible witnesses and some of them who were friends of mine, actually got into the state prison in Wisconsin and were able to meet with him privately and lead him to Jesus Christ. And as far as we know, he was beaten to death in prison, but as far as we know, he had accepted Jesus Christ before he died and I'm actually expecting one day to see Dahmer in heaven. Now let me ask you a question, is there anything about that that bothers you? Does it bother you that Dahmer would go to heaven? Well let me say this, that it's not that Dahmer's going to heaven bothers me at all.

I'm not bothered by that. I mean come on, when Jesus died on the cross, Jesus prayed for the people that killed him. Father forgive them. Jesus wanted the murderers to be saved. When Jesus died on the cross, the man that he said today you'll be with me in paradise, that guy was a terrorist. I mean he's like a guy blowing people up. You see it doesn't upset me that Dahmer could be in heaven.

Why? Because this shows the greatness of God's grace. Where sin abounds, grace abounds more. God's grace is greater than any and every single sin. There is no sin that is worse, that is beyond the grace of God. So it doesn't bother me at all that God saves the worst of sinners. In fact is when you read about the life of Jesus, what did he do?

He didn't eat with the clean people, he ate with the dirty people, he ate with the sinners, and was criticized for it. So does it bother me that a guy like Dahmer can go to heaven? The answer is no, but there is something that does bother me. And what bothers me is that there are many people who have lived far better lives than Jeffrey Dahmer who are not going to get in the kingdom of God.

They didn't do what he did, they didn't kill people, they didn't need people, they were not sodomites. It almost doesn't sound fair does it? But actually for all of us there is a problem in the way every single one of us in this building think, and it's the way we think about ourselves. Because all of us assume, or let me say this, all of us could naturally assume that actually in God's eyes we are better than Dahmer because we didn't do what he did.

Let me illustrate it this way. If I could take Jeffrey Dahmer to the deepest canyon in the United States, the Grand Canyon out in Arizona, and if I took him there, and I took him down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, it's one mile down. If you've ever been there you know exactly what it looks like. I mean it's way down there.

In the bottom there's the Colorado River. Let's say we take Dahmer and put him all the way down at the bottom standing next to the Colorado River, and I'm standing on the top of the south rim of the Grand Canyon, one mile up. Now from my perspective looking down at him, who's higher?

Well obviously I am. And I can look down and see standing there and I can say he's a lowlifer. And in comparison, there's a great deal of difference between he and I from my perspective. But if I could take somebody and put them on the moon and they look down on planet earth and they can see me and they can see Dahmer, what's the difference in the distance from that perspective?

Well the answer is there is no difference. So let's even go higher than the moon. Let's go to the throne of God which is beyond the universe and look down. And what is God's perspective when He looks at the two of us?

He tells us exactly what His perspective is. Look at Romans 3 at the end of verse 22. He says, for there is no difference for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There is no difference. When we look at the stars at night, do they not look all like they're very close to each other?

Question, are they really that close to each other? No, they're light years apart standing in comparison with Dahmer. I don't think I've done the wicked things he's done, but standing before God, we are all sinners. I want to say it to every one of you. Every one of you deserve to die for your sins and I know that because you're going to die for your sins.

If the day comes one day you hear, hey I heard about Steve Pettit, he died. You know what your answer should be? Well, he deserved it. He deserved it. He earned it. The wages of sin is death. You earned it.

You deserve it. We deserve judgment, but we can receive grace. And what makes grace so amazing is how it is received. And how do I receive the grace of God?

The church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, I've been there numbers of times, is built over the traditional spot where Jesus was born. To get inside, you have to go through a very small entrance way. Literally, you gotta, you gotta really dip down. And if you're looking at it, there it is and you can't really see it a little clearly, but right underneath that, that, that ledge there's actually a little cushion for people that hit their heads there. Now the entrance was deliberately made a number of centuries ago because what happened is the local big shots used to ride their horses into the sanctuary through the big gothic doors. The priest, feeling that this was inappropriate, bricked up the big entrance and they made us this smaller entrance. And this forced the big shots to dismount off of their horses before coming into God's house. And what they were saying was this, very simply, if you want to go to heaven, you have to get off your high horse. God resisted the proud, but He giveth grace to the humble. Probably the best illustration in the New Testament of this is in Luke 18 when two men go to the house of God to pray. One's a religious man and one is a wicked man. One is called the Pharisee, the other is called the publican.

The Pharisee stands up, a very religious man, and he comes and stands up, a very religious man, and he confesses to God how good he was and how much he depended on himself. And he prayed this prayer, God I thank Thee that I'm not like other men. I'm not an extortioner. I'm not unjust. I'm not — I don't commit adultery. I'm not even like this publican dude over here.

I fast twice in the week. I give tithes of all that I possess. He tried to impress God with his religion. So what did the publican do? Well, the Bible says that he confessed to God how bad he was. The Scripture says that he would not lift up so much his eyes unto heaven. He was so ashamed of his life.

He smote upon his breast. He beat his chest with his fist, and he said these words, God be merciful to me, a sinner. That word merciful means — literally means God, I need a propitiation. I need a sacrifice. God, I know that your wrath is coming upon me.

Oh God, provide for me a sacrifice so that I can be saved. And Jesus concluded the story, and he said, I tell you, this man, this man, this publican went down to his house justified rather than the other, for everyone that exalts himself shall be abased, and he that humbles himself shall be exalted. How do you receive the grace of God?

You humble yourself. Jesus used another word he called repent. Repent is a change of your mind about yourself, about your sin, about your God. Have you ever repented? Except you repent, you shall perish. Repent and believe the good news, the gospel, and the Bible says you shall enter the kingdom of God. So I beg you tonight, have you repented? Have you believed?

Have you received? For if you don't, you will not enter the kingdom of God. The greatest fear I have for you as a student at Bob Jones University is to sit here day in and day out, hear the Word of God, and instead of your heart being tender and your heart being fertile and the seed sown grows and there's good fruit coming out of it, you harden your heart. You hear and you harden and then you leave and you go out and you walk away from God as an apostate, as an unbeliever. And so God's grace comes to us and God's grace is enough to save us. If you've never received the grace of God, would you do that tonight?

You can accept Jesus as your Savior tonight. Just like I prayed and asked the Lord to come into my heart, it's not the greatness of your prayer that saves you, it's not even the greatness of your faith, it's the greatness of your Savior. And if you will come to Him in childlike simple faith and say God save me and humble yourself, maybe some of you are going to have to humble yourself because everybody thought you were saved and you know you're not.

And you're going to have to humble yourself, you're going to have to take off the mask of respectability and humble yourself and say God save me. But everybody who humbles themselves and comes to Him, He will in no wise, no way will He ever cast you out. You've been listening to a sermon by Dr. Steve Pettit preached at an evangelistic meeting at the beginning of the 2020 fall semester.

My listening friend, can I ask you a question? Have you received the crucified, resurrected Jesus as your own personal Savior? No doubt God is speaking to your heart. There's a knock on the door of your heart and He's asking to come in. Would you personally, individually, right now call upon the name of the Lord, ask Jesus to be your Savior? For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. Let me urge you to do that right now. May God bless you. We hope you'll join us again tomorrow at this same time as we study God's Word together on The Daily Platform.