The Story of Grace - Philippians 4:23

Welcome to God's Word for You from Ministry of Sharon Arpey Church in Southeast Iowa. We want to thank you for listening today and we pray that you'll be blessed by both hearing God's Word as well as having it applied to your life and your heart. Please turn over in your Bibles with me to the book of Philippians, Philippians chapter 4. And it seems like it's been a long time, because it has been, but we're finally at the last verse of Philippians. Philippians chapter 4, verse 23. You can find Philippians chapter 4, verse 23 on page 1045 of your Pew Bibles. Philippians chapter 4, verse 23.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ Be with you all. Amen. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Grace can also be defined as divine favor. Grace means that somebody is pleased with you and is glad that you are in their presence and in their sights. And this is an amazing thing that happens In this last verse, for the pronouncement of God's favor to be upon you, the favor or the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Favor is an interesting thing, though. Being favorable to someone can also be lost.

About two decades ago, there was a man named Joe. And Joe, one night, had a problem. Joe was an alcoholic. He got behind the steering wheel of his car and he entered into his car and he put his keys in the ignition and he started driving down the highway only for minutes later for something to go terribly wrong and for him to kill a teenage girl named Amy. Joe fled the scene in fear and immediately there was a family who didn't know Joe from anyone else. And all of a sudden, Joe, all he wanted to do was to flee and to go kill himself somewhere else, instead of facing what he had done and knowing the consequences that this had on this family. Joe was, without a doubt, outside of the favor of this family. Joe was charged with second degree murder and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

And within his first few weeks of being in prison, Joe shared the gospel. Joe, for the next 12 years, reformed his life as the Holy Spirit changed him and released him from the addiction of alcoholism, and he became a faithful Christian. When he came home out of prison, the church where his wife had also become a Christian and was now a member, put yellow ribbons on the oak trees around New Hope Church, which said, Welcome Home Joe. And in the eyes of the church, he had favor. But something more amazing happened.

One day Joe's sponsor gave him a call and he said, Joe, Amy's dad Rick wants to meet you. And Rick had been following along with what Joe had been doing and how the Lord had worked in Joe's own life. And when he got together with Joe and he saw him face to face, he told him, two times a year I go to my daughter Amy's grave, her birthday and her death day. And with tears in his eyes, Rick looked Joe in the face. He said, I forgive you because Christ has. And it was at that time that Joe and Rick truly knew what the grace and favor of Christ was.

And this is what we recognize in each of our own lives as we look at the story of grace that each one of us has had the Son of God himself wrap his arms around us and look in the face and say, I forgive you. Where do you find grace? Where do you find hope and acceptance before God? It is in Jesus Christ alone. Our call today is to rely on the grace of Jesus. And this story of grace in Jesus Christ starts in the very first chapter of the Bible, Genesis chapter one. Will you turn there with me? Genesis chapter one, verse 26. We know this story well.

God in his power and in his infinite glory creates everything out of nothing. But in verse 26, God does what he considers his best creation. Verse 26, Genesis chapter 1, then God said, Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. Male and female, he created them. Then God blessed them.

And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. And God said, See, I have given you every herb that yields seed, which is on the face of the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed. To you it shall be for food also, to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, which there is life. I have given every green herb for food and it was so.

Then God saw that everything that he had made and indeed it was very good. so that it was evening and the morning were the sixth day. And then drop down to verses 15 through 17 of chapter 2. Then God took man, and he put him in the garden of Eden to tend and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may eat freely, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat. For in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely See, man was created in an estate of grace.

There was original grace found. There was original grace found in the Garden of Eden. God made everything perfect. It was very good. There's intimacy in the story of God creating man. It says that God with his hands, it's as if he formed, sculpted man and he stooped down and he... breathe into his lungs the breath of life. And he looks at man and he says, everything's yours. Everything is yours. God walks with man in the cool of the day. God is there with man and he is favorable towards him.

God tells him, here's the buffet, everything you want to eat of the garden, absolutely anything, the papayas are yours, the mangoes are yours, the pineapples are yours, everything in the garden is yours. You shall surely eat of it. You don't even have to work for it. This is all time before weeds, a time before roundup, a time before having to toil and labor for food. And here God is gracious to man. He's intimate with him. He's favorable towards him. But there's a dark turn in this history that we know of.

The dark turn that comes in Genesis chapter 3, verses 1 through 12, where the woman is tricked by Satan when Satan says, Has God indeed said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat any of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but the fruit of the tree which is amidst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat, lest you surely die. Verse five, for God knows that the day you eat of it, verse four, then Satan said to the woman, you shall not surely die. There's a turn here, and it's a dark turn. God had had nothing but favorable relationships with man and with woman, and here Satan tries to say, God is lying to you. God's tricking you. God knows that if you eat of this, you're going to be like Him.

And what does woman do? She looks at that tree, the tree that she had never desired before, and all of a sudden, she believes Satan. over God and she sees the food and she sees or thinks that it's somehow pleasurable or desirable for eating. And in that act of disbelief and disobedience she ate and her husband followed after her and immediately following that, what do we find?

Shame. They're naked. They find shame and they go run and hide themselves. They hear God's voice and immediately they're afraid. This God who had been favorable and gracious to them, now they counted him as an enemy. They were afraid of him. The God who was gracious to them and loving to them and provided everything to them, now they were afraid to hear his voice. It was here that God asked the man, what happened?

And nothing's changed. Still the same in our own day and age. Blame shifting. The woman you gave me, she gave it to me to eat. Do you see right away there was no fighting. There was only perfect grace and favor between God and man. And here at the very first act of disobedience, all of a sudden this family is ripped apart. Husband against wife. God against people.

It hasn't changed. In our own age, we see this in our own hearts with hatred, envy, strife, murder, pride, gluttony, adultery, greed, corruption, gossip, sexual immorality, pain, toil, heartache, broken relationships, backbiting, anxiety, sorrow, discontent, unthankfulness, selfishness, impatience, jealousy, poverty, homelessness, depression, injustice, bribery, corruption, children weeping, widows mourning. Death. Death. There's a loss of original grace. It's gone. It's gone because people didn't decide to love and trust the Lord.

Our hearts became as black as tar. The Lord says in Genesis chapter 9, or chapter 6, that every inclination of our heart was only bent towards evil continually. In Romans chapter 3, verse 23 again, the apostle tells us, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And then again in Romans chapter 3 in Isaiah, there is none righteous, no not one, not one seeks after the Lord.

They all go their own way. They have together become unprofitable. We're dead. Dead in our transgressions and sins. Turn on the nightly news and you know this is still the case today. There's reason for depression and anxiety. And Adam and Eve's own family one of their sons murders, slaughters his brother.

But in the midst of all this pain and suffering that comes, there's a promise of grace. Look with me at Genesis chapter 3, verse 15. And I will put enmity, God is speaking to the serpent here, to the devil. and I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed and he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel." There is a promise of grace even in the midst of the curses. In here we find the first mention of the gospel. That God is going to put enmity, God is going to put strife, God is eventually going to raise up a child from the woman who is going to crush Satan underneath his foot.

And the rest of the Old Testament, from Eve to Elizabeth, is looking for that promised seed, looking for that promised one who would finally restore the relationship, the favorableness, the grace of God that was lost. This is who Noah looked for. This is who Jacob and Isaiah and Hezekiah and Ezekiel and Jeremiah and Malachi. This is who Moses and Joshua longed to see was who this seed would be that would finally bring peace between God and man. For over 2,500 years, the people of Israel, God's people, longed to finally see true reconciliation. between God and man. And it came. It came in the person of Jesus Christ. Turn over with me to John chapter 1. John chapter 1 beginning at verse 14. John chapter 1 is on page 938 of your Pew Bibles. John chapter 1, beginning at verse 14, God tells us of this coming of grace.

And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have beheld his glory, the glory as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness of him and cried out, saying, This is he of whom I have said, He who comes after me is preferred before me, for he was before me. And of his fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him. It is Jesus Christ who is that promised one at Genesis 3, verse 15. And it is Jesus Christ, full of grace and truth, who we look back to as our Savior and look forward to now for grace upon grace. It is Jesus Christ who is fully favored in God's sight. It is the second person of the Trinity, the only begotten son, who at his own baptism, the heavens opened and the voice of the Father declared, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. It is this coming of grace that we look to and remember and love. And it is this coming of grace of Jesus Christ who beat Satan. In the failure in the garden of Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter 3, when they were tempted, Jesus was taken into the wilderness. and three times beat the power of Satan and temptation. His entire life was lived out perfectly for his father's glory. Every word he spoke was calculated to bring his father joy. Every thought he had was consumed with his father's glory. Every action he did was meant to expand the kingdom of his father.

Jesus Christ had no sin in him that he might bring us grace. There is no spot of sin, no pollution upon Him. And the good news about that is He gives you that perfect righteousness. Jesus Christ, full of grace and truth, gives you His own righteousness. He obeyed the law perfectly. so that you might be counted righteous and that God's face might shine upon you. But we have an issue even here. Wonderful. God gives you his son's righteousness.

But what do you do about your own sin? What do you do with your own guilt? If I made you a sandwich and the bologna was molded and gross and I put two perfect pieces of bread on it, would you bite into that sandwich? No, because there's still something bad that remains.

But Jesus is so full of grace and so reconciles us to the Father that He even took that guilt away from you. This is what we find in Isaiah chapter 53 that we just read, that God laid upon him the iniquity of us all. It is not just that God gives you Jesus's righteousness, but he takes your unrighteousness and he placed it on his own beloved son to offer as a perfect sacrifice, to pour out his blood and to cleanse you from your sins. You are clean. You are pure, you are spotless. If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and confess your guilt and your sin, he washes you as white as snow, as pure as wool.

Jesus is the one who for our sins had his back lashed with a whip. every time mindful that he didn't deserve it, but he was taking it for you. Jesus, every step he took with his dusty feet to get up to Calvary's Hill, to have himself nailed to that cross, was knowing that he wanted God's face to shine upon you. He endured God's face turning away from him on that cross when he cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He had never felt the pain and the guilt and the weight of sin that you deserve. but he willingly took it upon himself that you might not have it fall upon you. It is Jesus Christ who stood as our substitute. It is Jesus Christ who endured the pain and the suffering for us. He is our scapegoat. He is our perfect atonement.

But it's not just that. The gospel's even better. The gospel of Jesus Christ is even better than just somehow that Jesus died for your sins and that you get his righteousness. It's not just somehow that the checkbook is balanced and everything is at zero again. It's not like we're back in the Garden of Eden and we need to keep the covenant of works. No, Jesus kept the covenant of works when he purchased grace. But more than just that, Jesus is our guarantee of grace. Jesus is our guarantee of grace. Look with me at Romans, chapter 6. Romans, chapter 6, verses 3 through 12. Please turn there in your Bibles. Romans, chapter 6, verses 3 through 12.

Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore, we were buried with him through baptism into death. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also should walk in newness of life. If we have been united together with the likeness of his death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of his resurrection. for knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin, for he who has died was freed from sin. Now, if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life that he lives, he lives to God.

Likewise, you also reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lust. And do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourself to God as being alive from the dead. and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law but grace.

We are dead to sin. We were once dead to God, but God has united us through Jesus Christ, and when Jesus Christ died on that cross, you died with your sinful man on that cross. But better than that, you were raised to newness of life. Jesus Christ was put to death for our sins, but raised for our justification. You were made righteous through Jesus Christ, raising from the dead.

Sin has no dominion over Christ. Death has no rule over the Son of Man, because Jesus has triumphed over sin and the grave. Jesus is the one who brings us unlimited grace, guaranteeing it with his own resurrection, because it is our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who sits in heaven now, enthroned, surrounded by the angels who sing his glory, and he intercedes for you. He sits there as the eternal Lamb slain, who is fully righteous, as your inheritance.

You are not a slave to sin, but a master of righteousness. You are not those who are stuck You do not live your life, the Christian life is not meant to be lived just in confession, but we are meant to live our lives as victors over sin. Yes, your whole life you will be battling sin, but it will be putting to death one sin and mortifying this sin and growing in grace here and growing in grace there, growing in your love and your holiness for God. We have been made alive through Christ's righteousness. He has made you perfect. He has made you holy.

Compassion, love, families. and warmth, overcome hatred, strife, murder, and broken relationships. Humility triumphs over pride in the Christian heart. Self-control and satisfaction beats gluttony in the Christian's life. Fidelity and purity replace adultery and sexual immorality in the soul of a believer. All the riches of heaven are offered to the poor and to the homeless of this world. Contentment and thankfulness are put on while greed, selfishness, content, jealousy, and envy are put off. Uprightness and integrity reign over the Christian and bribery and corruption are to be far away.

Christians are to be caring for others and their good names instead of gossiping and backbiting because we have been raised with Christ. You see this is why Paul says in Galatians chapter 2 verse 20 that I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live but it is Christ who lives in me and the life which I now live I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Jesus is the one who makes you gracious in God's sight. Jesus is the one who makes the Father's face to shine upon you, and it is Jesus, by the power of His Spirit, who transforms our hearts and renews them so that we look more and more like the Son, and less and less like the old Adam. But there's even a greater promise in these verses in Romans chapter 6.

You will struggle with sin your whole life. you will struggle with the pain of this world your whole life. Your body is still going to fail you. I have yet to meet a person I haven't thought that person's most likely going to die someday. All of us are eventually going to see the grave.

But the promise here is that when Jesus raised from the grave, he promised that we would raise also. When you breathe your last lungs full of air and you close your eyes for that final time, Your soul, if you believe that Jesus Christ is Lord and that God raised him from the grave, your soul will immediately pass into glory and you will have perfect peace. But when that great day comes and the trumpets are sounded, Your body will be raised from the grave again and you will have perfect life forever.

This is the grace that God offers to us that forever his face will shine upon you because he is gracious towards you. His favor is upon his children, his blood-bought children. Are you looking to Jesus Christ? Do you believe that He is Lord and that God raised Him from the dead? If so, this hope is yours. You will see on that last great day your Savior full of splendor and glory. Cling to Him. Run to Christ. Remind yourself of these great promises that it is the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ that is for you all.

Closing Prayer

Let's pray. God, who are we that you should be mindful of us, that you should show us kindness and grace upon grace? God, we pray that your Holy Spirit would apply these truths to our hearts and that we would be overwhelmed with joy for your love and your kindness and your graciousness to us. Lord, we pray that we would live every day with the hope of your salvation and the guarantee of your grace always before us.

Thank you for the finished work of Jesus Christ. Amen. Thank you for listening to God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in Morning Sun, Iowa. We pray that you would be blessed as you grow in your love for God, your love for His Word, as well as your love for His people. Until next week, God bless you.