Five Gospel Words of Hope #2

The key to your spiritual growth is bound up in what we're talking about from God's Word here today. The key to your comfort and sorrow is bound up in what we're talking about today.

The thing that humbles your pride and makes you an appropriate, humble Christian is bound up in what we're talking about here today. Welcome to the Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Hi, I'm Bill Wright, and we're continuing our series, Breaking the Bonds of Legalism. Last time Don gave us the first two of five words of gospel hope, love and kindness.

Those, along with the three others we'll hear about today, serve as the antidote to legalism. You'll gain further appreciation for the marvelous character of God. So have your Bible open and ready as we join Pastor Don Green now in the Truth Pulpit. Let's go to point number three, see what Scripture says about the nature of God displayed and revealed in the gospel. Point number three, we see that He's the God of mercy, the God of mercy. And for this, turn over to Ephesians chapter 2, if you would.

Ephesians chapter 2, verse 4. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. What does mercy tell us about the God of our salvation?

Mercy expresses the compassion of God. He showed kindness to you in your spiritual distress. He rescued you out of trouble and out of condemnation.

Do you see it, beloved? What great mercy there you are, broken along the road to Jericho, broken bones, broken spirit, broken heart, chained in sin, chained in condemnation, chained in guilt, and what did God do? God, as it were, came along, speaking metaphorically, speaking figuratively here, God came along your road to Jericho and saw you there broken and unable to help yourself, and He stopped, as it were. He reached down and by the magnificent, miraculous healing power of His hands, acted upon you to rescue you, to redeem you, to deliver you from that condition. When you had no claim on Him, when your lips were mute and unable to help, unable to call even, God stopped and out of the great mercy, the great compassion of His character, healed your every disease, healed your every broken bone, removed sin and guilt from you, and brought you into Christ. Beloved, what can we say to that except that was one great act of mercy? I love how the passage in Ephesians chapter 2 isn't content just to say that God being merciful did this. Watch the adjectives, beloved, watch the explosion of things from God's Word. It's not that God being merciful did this, it was that God being rich in mercy. Abounding, overflowing mercy did this with great love with which He loved us. Listen, listen and listen carefully.

Those adjectives are really, really important for you to understand. They go to the heart of what we're trying to communicate here today. God did not do this reluctantly. God did not save you, ah, do I want to do this or do I flip a coin, okay heads, I'll save them.

It wasn't like that. God did this because He's merciful, but more because He's rich in mercy, because He abounds in mercy. God did this because He loved you, yes, but understand He loved you with a great love. This is who God is. This is the God that is revealed in the gospel. This is what Jesus Christ is like.

Great love, great kindness, rich mercy. And it was in that great mercy that God rescued you from your captivity to Satan and to your own sin. He abundantly did it.

He gladly did it. It was the eternal plan before the beginning of time for this to happen. Christ was crucified before the foundation of the world, Acts 2 says.

So what's the key for us here today? The key for you is to recognize that it was God's mercy that prompted your salvation, not anything in you. God's love was unprompted. God's love was unprompted. God's mercy to us was unprompted by anything good in us. It came from within His own undivided essence.

It came from as an outflowing of His own attributes, His own eternal perfections, His own perfect excellency. The gospel shows us what God is like and in the satisfaction of His justice in Christ, it shows Him undeniably, irrefutably to be a God of great love, great kindness, great mercy. You cannot explain salvation on any other terms and be true to Scripture. Fourthly, salvation shows Him to be the God of grace, the God of grace, grace being from the Greek word charos, meaning that God has shown undeserved favor to us. Look at Ephesians chapter 2 verse 5. Your Bible is opened right there. Even when we were dead in our transgressions, He made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved. Verse 7, notice the superlatives once more. In the ages to come, He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. And so what comes next in the sequence of Paul's argument there?

It's profoundly emphatic in the Greek text. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And that, not of yourselves.

Do you see it, beloved? Not of yourselves. Not from anything in you. Not from anything that you did. You must banish that thought from your mind that God has been kind to you because somehow you deserved it.

That's not true. That is the first and preeminent lie from the devil. It is by grace you have been saved through faith.

That not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not as a result of works so that no one may boast. This was a gift. A gift undeserved. A gift unearned. A gift given because the giver who is God Himself. A gift from the giver who is Christ Jesus Himself.

A gift expressing His love, His kindness, His mercy, His grace. Beloved, do you see that as Scripture describes salvation and what motivated it and what didn't, you didn't, God did, what you see exploding upon our minds and our understandings is a kaleidoscope of the greatest, richest hues of color of God's attributes that could ever be displayed. This is who God is. This is who God is to His people.

A God of love, a God of kindness, a God of mercy, a God of grace. This is how He has dealt with us and He hasn't done it in restrained fashion. You've seen the words, you've seen the adjectives. This is in richness, in abundance, surpassing. This is how God has dealt with us. Beloved, listen to me closely.

Listen to me closely. The key to your spiritual growth is bound up in what we're talking about from God's Word here today. The key to your comfort and sorrow is bound up in what we're talking about today. The key to your deliverance from guilt is bound up in what we're talking about today. The thing that humbles your pride and makes you an appropriate, humble Christian is bound up in what we're talking about here today.

The key that takes you away from being that angry sense of entitlement, I haven't gotten what I deserve, is bound up in what we're talking about here today. Beloved, by grace, God freely bestowed undeserved blessing on you in Christ. He accepted you in Christ even though you were unworthy, not because you were worthy.

Let me say that again. God received you at the initial moment of your salvation, not because you deserved it, not because you were worthy, not because you had somehow met a minimum level of requirement that prompted His hand. Banished the thought out on such blasphemy.

That's not true! God came to you in Christ. God came to you in the gospel because, despite your unworthiness, God came to you because He is a God of love, a God of grace, a God of mercy, a God of kindness. That's why God came to you. It was all from the great love and goodness of His own undivided character. Did anyone get saved that you got saved?

Beloved, hear me and hear me closely. God accepted you in Christ though you were unworthy. Grace is not earned.

By definition, it is undeserved favor. And what this tells us about God, when we remember that millions through the ages have been on the receiving end of this, that there will be myriads of myriads of believers surrounding the throne, praising the great name of Christ throughout all generations and throughout all of eternity. What this tells us is that God gladly gives that undeserved favor. And that if you are in Christ, you have received something of incalculable, infinite worth that you didn't deserve. This was about a great God of grace, love, mercy, kindness, generously, richly bestowing on me, things that will benefit me throughout all of eternity and which I absolutely did not deserve.

The key? God's grace prompted salvation, not anything in us. Fifthly and finally here today, what does the gospel tell us? The gospel tells us that He's a God of patience. He's a God of patience.

Beloved, I don't know if you ever step back and think on these things and reflect on them in the way that we're about to describe, but whether you were saved as a young person or whether you were saved as older, later in life, the truth of the matter is that before you were saved, God endured a lot of your sin against Him. 2 Peter chapter 3, I'll just read it for the sake of time. 2 Peter chapter 3 verse 8 says, Do not let this one fact escape your notice, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years and a thousand years like one day. The Lord is not slow about His promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance. He was patient toward you. God deferred the judgment that this wicked world deserves in part so that He could gather in you. And He defers His judgment now so that others would still have time to come. The word for patience here is the Greek word makrothumeo.

I like just the way that sounds, makrothumeo. There's just a manliness about that. This idea of patience has, listen to me, has the idea of being forbearing. It means that God was willing to wait. He showed self-restraint in the face of provocation. God, watch it, listen.

Oh, this is also important. God does not hastily retaliate against sinners. He does not promptly punish them.

If He did, we'd all be vaporized long before now. We are all here breathing, living today, saved or unsaved. We are all here because God has shown forbearance. He has been patient with us in our iniquity, in our transgressions, in our guilt. He was patient.

This is undeniable. God restrained the judgment that you deserved so that you could be shown this kind of rich grace, mercy, love, kindness. And the key? God's patience is what allows for salvation, not anything in us. Now, beloved, do you see how these five words give us hope? God's love, His grace, His patience, His mercy, His kindness?

Listen to me carefully. We need to pull this together and have it start to shape the whole way that we think about God and the world around us and our own multiplied, seemingly infinite and unending shortcomings. God is a God of love towards sinners, of kindness, of mercy, of grace, of patience.

Beloved, let this deep balm enter deeply into your souls. God did not grudgingly save you. He did not reluctantly save you. It pleased Him to do so, and it pleased Him because He's a God of love and kindness and mercy and grace and patience. It pleased Him to put those attributes on display in your life and let you be the eternal beneficiary of who He is. It pleased Him.

He gladly, richly did it. God never accepted you because you were worthy. God never accepted you because you were somehow obedient enough. That was never the case. It was never the premise. It was never the cornerstone. It was never the foundation of why you came to Christ in the first place. Forget it! Don't go back there if you've ever thought that thought.

Just leave it behind. Let it be part of your growth in repentance and in the grace and knowledge of Christ that you leave that thought behind, never to revisit it again. Christ receives sinners because of His grace and mercy. His character does not change, and do you know what that means? With these five attributes, these five words of gospel hope, and the fact that His character does not change, do you know what that means for you today as a Christian? It means this. It means that God does not grudgingly keep you. God does not grudgingly love you now. The God who was patient with you before you came to Christ in all of your dishonesty, in all of your lust, in all of your anger, and He patiently endured that so that you could come to Christ, He graciously, patiently keeps you now. Romans chapter 8, I'll just read it for the sake of time. Romans chapter 8, verse 31, this is Paul's point. He says, what then shall we say to these things?

If God is for us, who is against us? And listen to what he says. Oh, listen carefully, beloved, I'm almost done. It's been a long time, I know. I know, but I don't really care.

I'm just getting started. Verse 32, listen. He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? If God dealt with you so graciously while you were a sinner, now that Christ has delivered Himself, now that you have been brought into Christ, do you think that somehow His attitude toward you has changed, His disposition is different, and now He is no longer loving, but He is hasty to punish and quick to chastise, grudgingly bearing with you?

Oh, she fell again. Oh, I am fed up with that child of mine. Is that how He treated you when you were in sin? No. Did His character change when you became a Christian?

No. He deals with us in a consistent manner, consistent with His immutable attributes, and His attributes revealed in the Gospel are those five words of hope. The implications of this, my friends, for Christian living, for your sanctification, are utterly incalculable.

There is no way that we can exhaust it, but we'll spend a few weeks going forward to try to work out some of the implications of it. Listen to me now. Listen to me now, and we'll work all of this out more in the days to come. Many Christians, probably many of you, if not most of you, live with guilt that comes from their struggles with sin and failure. And prior teaching in other places has laid upon you a legalistic notion that you have to work yourself back into God's favor. You try harder. You start making up rules.

I'm going to do this, this, and this. And in that, you project your own sense of guilt and legalism. You project it on God as if that's how God is thinking.

It's not. They try to get back into God's good graces by trying harder, but the more they try, the more their rules condemn them even further. The rules, beloved, will never show you mercy.

The rules will never show you love and kindness and grace and undeserved blessing and benefit. God will. Christ showed us mercy and salvation, and He shows us mercy as Christians, not because we deserve it, but because...here's the point... but because that's who He is. He is gracious and humble in heart, and He invites all who labor and are heavy-laden to come to Him, and He will give them rest.

That's who He is. Beloved, before you were a Christian, your performance did not prompt His love, and now, as a Christian, your performance does not keep His love. It is a matter of eternal outworking of His eternal attributes that He was pleased to show to you. Your rest as a Christian is not found in being sorry enough. Your rest is not found in asking forgiveness hard enough. Your rest as a Christian is not found in striving harder to keep the commandments. Your hope, your rest, is found in the cross of Christ. Your rest, your hope, is found in that eternal display of the love, kindness, mercy, grace, and patience of God. As He was to you 2,000 years ago, as He was to you at your conversion, so He is now in your very imperfect sanctification, your very imperfect Christian growth. I invite you, beloved, by faith to look outside of yourself to Christ, day by day and with each passing moment. Look to this Christ and look to the One who has displayed His marvelous attributes in your salvation. Go back and read these passages again and again.

You won't find exceptions. You won't find qualifications on the outpouring of the divine mercy upon those that He has brought in Christ. As you do that, you'll find strength to meet your sins and trials here. And let me say to those of you that are not in Christ, you have not sinned your way out of being able to receive this grace. All of the confusion and guilt of your sin, all of the chaos of your mind, God cuts through all of it like a mighty gilded sword cutting through a knot that cannot be untied. He cuts through all of that with the glory of Christ and says, Come to me and I will give you rest. If you're not a Christian, I invite you to this God. He will receive you when you put your faith in Christ. The five words of gospel hope again are love, kindness, mercy, grace, and patience.

Use them to combat legalism. Pastor Don Green will have more of our series, Breaking the Bonds of Legalism, next time here on The Truth Pulpit, so don't miss a moment. Right now, here's Don with some exciting ministry news. Well, my friend, it's always meaningful for me to be able to preach God's Word to God's people and to share it with you here on the radio.

Recently, I completed a series that is one of my all-time favorites. It's called The Bible and Roman Catholicism. It was several messages designed to test Catholic teaching by what Scripture says. We'd like to share a copy of that with you, a full, complete CD album of ten messages. Just go to our website and request it, or you'll find the downloads. We just want you to have this material at no cost as our gift and ministry to you. Just visit us at thetruthpulpit.com and click on Radio Offers to learn more. I'm Bill Wright, and we'll see you next time on The Truth Pulpit.