The Church of Eleven22 - Wk 5: Blinded By the Light

Episode Date: December 29, 2019

Hey, I'm not your campus pastor. My name's Adam Flynn. I'm one of the pastors here. Pastor Chris, who was just up here reading, is your campus pastor. So, he just slipped out to go check on kids. So why don't you guys clap real loud for Pastor Chris? Make him here across the walls. Man, we love him.

So when Kristen and I were first engaged, we were doing premarital counseling. And have you ever played, like, Word Association games? you know, like somebody throws out an idea and then you just say the first thing that comes to your mind. Like if I said, greatest football team of all time, you would say Florida Gators, right? There you go. It's right. A little equal opportunity up here. It's okay.

So when we were premarital counseling, the pastor that was doing our counseling said, I'm going to say a word. You say the first thing that comes to your mind. He said, Kristen. And instantly, which is it's okay with newlyweds. It's a little more dangerous if you've been married 20 years, right? we were just engaged. So the first thing that pops out of my mouth is faithful. And I think that's still true today. Kristen is one of the most faithful people you will ever meet. Like if Kristen is your friend, you know she is your friend. There's no doubt that she's your friend and she will be

your friend forever. Now there's a word, if you were to throw out the word Christianity and ask me what pops into my mind, like there's lots of words. Jesus, of course, the gospel, yes. But there's a word that we're going to look at today, and it's the word grace that would come to my mind. Grace is one of the most important words in Christianity. And I think it's a word, honestly, that we take for granted a lot. Like the word grace appears 128 times in the New Testament. And there's only 260 chapters in the New Testament, which means you can hardly turn a page. It's about every other chapter.

you're going to bump into this whole idea of grace. And then for some of us, we'll go, well, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, like, but God was wrathful in the Old Testament, and he was mean, and he was angry. And then in the New Testament, he was a hippie, and it was peace and love. The problem with that is the Old Testament word for grace is favor. And grace appears 128 times in the New Testament. It appears 137 times in the Old Testament, which just means on word count alone. grace shows up more in the Old Testament than it does in the new.

And I think grace is not only one of the most important words, but it's one of the things that sets Christianity apart from every other world religion. That every other world religious system says, okay, here's the list of things that you have to do. There's the religious system that you have to adhere to. Here's the things that you can and can't do, the rules, the regulations, all that, in order that you would please God and God, would somehow find you acceptable in his sight. Christianity instead says it's not what you have to do,

but what God did for you. It's not what you have to work for. It's about what you accept and who you trust and who you believe. It's about grace, which means that technically speaking, you could say that Christianity isn't so much of a religion as it is a faith, that grace categorically sets Christianity apart from every other world religious system. And it's one of the most important words, but it's also one of the most misunderstood words. Like, it's so hard because if you go to the Bible and go looking for a definition of grace,

you're not going to find one. And if you go out and search the internet or look in dictionaries and all Bible dictionaries and other places for what is grace mean, you'll find tons of definitions. In fact, some of them are like, well, grace is God's unmerited faith. favor, but favors the word for grace. So it's like, hey, God's grace is his unmerited grace,

which your sixth grade English teacher, be furious if you defined a word with a word, right? So it gets confusing and it gets hard. And I love, I love, love, love the United States. Like I spend a lot of time overseas. I go to a lot of places, but there is nothing like coming home. There's nothing like having safe water to drink and clean food and freedom and all those sorts of things. America can make it really hard when it comes to getting a hold of this idea of grace. Because this entire experiment historically has been grounded in, you get what you earn. And so we get kind of cooked in those waters of earn and deserve. And we have this kind of this cultural ethos right now where the word of the day is fair.

We want everything to be fair. The problem is we're going to see grace isn't fair. It's not. And so it makes it really hard. But the thing about graces, there is nothing in this world. I truly believe this. There is nothing that will cause our heart to leap for God like grace does. There is nothing that will cause us to want to worship God.

There is nothing that will unload burden from our life. There is nothing that will set us free like grace does. We've been in a series called Behold Our King. If you ever feel like worship is kind of dry, or you just don't know if, man, I don't know what that looks like to behold our king, like to have my affection set on Jesus and stirred for the Lord. And I believe that grace is the thing that causes us to behold our king. And so we're going to look at really what I think is one of the best examples of grace in all of the Bible.

It's the passage that we just read. It's in Acts chapter 9. And so if you've got a Bible, grab it, turn to Acts chapter 9. If you don't have one, you can look at your worship guide or grab a Bible that's in front of you. You can have it. That's our gift to you and take it. We're going to jump into Acts chapter 9 starting at verse 1. It says, but Saul.

Now, Saul is who most of us, if you've read the Bible, is we know is Paul. He's the guy that he writes most of the New Testament, Romans, Ephesians, Colossians, all those letters. Paul is the author of that. Paul is the one that travels around what was most of the known world at that time planting churches. And so before Paul is Paul, he's known as Saul. And that's who this is. This is, this story is about him. It says, but Saul still, like, actively doing what he's about to be said he's doing. So Saul still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. This is varsity-level stuff going on here, okay? This is, like, serious.

He's not just dabbling in persecution. It says he's breathing it out, like it's deep down in his guts at the core level of his being that Saul is breathing out murder and he's breathing out threats against the disciple of the Lord. He went to the high priest, and he asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus. so that if he found any belonging to the way.

Now, the way is just what following Jesus was called in that time. If you were to say I was a Christian, they wouldn't say that. They would say, I'm followers of the way because Jesus said, I am the way. So they went, hey, we're going to do the way. So that's what they called themselves. So if he found anybody belonging to the way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. So it's not only is it deep down inside of Paul like it's a part of the way,

like it's a part of who he is and it's deeply this personal offense against Christianity. But he's now trying to systematize the terror against the church. If you go back in Acts just a chapter, and you go to Acts chapter 8, verse 3, here's what Luke says. He kind of adds a little bit of color commentary to what's going on. And Luke says, but Saul was ravaging the church. Entering house after house, he would drag off men and women and committed them to prison.

You see what? I mean, he's going house to house, finding people that are followers of Jesus, dragging them out, and he's either murdering them, threatening them, helping somebody murder them, or throw them in prison, which will pretty much end up with them being murdered. Now, Saul, later on when he's Paul,

he writes to one of his protégés, a pastor that he's training named Timothy. And in 1, Timothy 1, 1, this is how Paul describes himself at this moment in Acts chapter 9. He says, I was a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent opponent. And he goes on to say, Christ Jesus came in the world to save sinners of whom I am the foremost. So do you see, I'm, Paul is going, I was a blasphemer. I was speaking wrong things about God.

I was contradicting the very nature and character of God. I was persecuting. I was opposing the church, and I wasn't just a sinner. I was the foremost of sinners, breathing out murders and threats and ravaging the church, men and women. And it's into that, it's in the middle of that that God is going to break in and save Saul, which means that grace is not fair. It's not fair. Grace is totally and utterly free. I remember it was about 20 years ago, 15, 20 years ago. We were living in D.C. And I'd gone downtown one afternoon to the children's hospital. There was a girl in our church, a little girl who had had cancer. And I went down to visitor. I went in the afternoon. And on the way home, in D.C., they have these weird things where they'll actually close off and block some of the on-ramps and off-ramps to get.

get traffic to flow faster at certain times a day. So as I'm leaving the hospital, I leave the hospital and I go to get on the highway except for they've already shut the ramp to where I need to get on. And I'd missed it five, ten minutes. I'd well missed it. And I just look at the ramp and I think, who cares? And I go around the blockade is dropped. I go around the blockade, right? So as I go around the closed off highway on ramp. As soon as I clear the blockade and go and I start to get up, guess who's there? Yep. Funely officer sitting right there. Pulls me over. He comes over to the door. He's like, can I have your license registration? I'm like, here you go. And I'm, oh, wait, sorry, that's my pastor card. I'm going to need that back. Here's my drivers. Oh, sorry, that's my

hospital ticket. I was visiting a girl with cancer in the hospital. Excuse me, sorry. He's like, I need your license, into registration. So I get a ticket. So then I go home and I'm telling, you know, Kristen, which didn't go well at all. And telling some other people that I got this ticket and they're like, you know, if you go to court and the police officer doesn't show up, you get out of the ticket. I'm like, I'm going to court. He couldn't possibly, like he's got way other things to do in D.C. than show up to traffic court.

So I go, I show up on the day, I sit down, there's like one spot in the front row, I go and I sit down in the front row. It's packed. It's like this, man. I mean, D.C. is just full of violators everywhere. I'm like, you too? Yeah. So sit down there. Right as court starts, who walks in? The officer that pulls me over. Sits down like, oh, no. The judge comes out. She gavels the start to the session. She stands me up. She's like, Adam, Flint, I walk forward. I'm the first. one up and I'm just thinking great she's fresh she's ready to go like so I'd walk up there she reads off the charges she looks at the police officer she's like they do it he did it you know and he tried to give me a pastor card and hospital like so the judge looks at me and just gabbles and goes case dismiss fines paid you're free to which everybody in the room was like what like they just knew

instantly and they were just, I mean, that's not fair. Like, I had just exhausted all the freebies in the room for them. Right? I deserved what was fair were points on my record. What I deserved was insurance to go up. What I deserved were all the fines. What I deserved were all the fees. And what I got was freedom. It wasn't, it wasn't fair. None of it. I did all of it. I tried to get out of all of it. And yet, I just got the judge to say, free, go, done, fines paid, you're free to go. Grace isn't fair. Fairness isn't a biblical value.

Grace is a biblical value. And it's not, just think about this. When God created all the universe, why did he create it? I mean, did we do anything to deserve being created? created? No, we weren't created yet. We couldn't do anything to deserve to be created when you weren't created yet. Which means the whole reason you and I exist, all of this exists, it is an act of God's sheer unearned grace. We did nothing. In fact, Scripture tells us that the whole reason God created was it was just this overflow of his love that caused him to create all of

this. And it's not just that we're undeserving of it. We're actually ill deserving of it. When Paul writes to the church in Ephesus in Ephesians chapter 2, he says, but God, start in verse 4, but God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us, while we were dead in our trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ by great. grace, you have been saved. When he says, but God, that's great. He had just explained all that was wrong with us. But God, the fact that God would act while we were in our sin, but God, being rich in mercy,

not because you and I did anything, not because we changed our tune, not because we cleaned up our act, but because of his great love. I mean, and Paul says we were dead in our sins. It's not just that we were bad. It's not just that we were mistakeers. Sin makes us dead. And dead people can't do a single thing. And then when God saves us, he makes us alive,

which means every bit of our relationship with God is grounded, not in fairness, but in God's total freedom. that he would pour out his grace and make us alive in Christ Jesus. And so here's the thing. You just need to chuck fare. You just need to toss it. When it comes to your relationship with God, get rid of fair and opt in for free.

Grace is free. It's not cheap. It costs God his son. But it's free. It's not fair. And if you think right now, You're sitting in your seat right now and you're thinking, yeah, but Adam, you have no idea what I've done. You have no idea what I've been mixed up in in my business.

You have no idea what I did last night. You have no idea what I'm texting right now to do later this afternoon. And I would look at you and I would say, I don't care because where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. That's what Paul says in Romans. where your sin abounds, God's grace super abounds over it. So he goes on in verse 3, and this is what he says. Now, as he went on his way, and if you got a Bible, you want to underline that because that is super important. As he went on his way, he, Saul approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him

and falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Now that's odd because Saul was persecuting the church, but somehow Jesus takes persecuting the church super personally. And he said to him, who are you, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus who you are persecuting. Now this is the moment in which God is reaching in and this becomes Saul's conversion. This becomes where he goes from not believing in Jesus to believing in Jesus. but I love that little phrase that it says in there, as he went on his way, like as he was going to murder more Christians, as he was ravaging the church,

as he was dragging men and women out of their homes, as he was throwing people in prison, as he was blaspheming God, as he was doing all of that, God broke into the middle of that. You don't see any repentance. You don't see Saul going, Hey God, can I explain to you how much I've studied the Bible in the past?

Would that sway you to be nice to me? Hey, God, could I show you? Let me say I'm sorry and then maybe you'll act. No, it's in the middle of him as he's going on doing all those things. God breaks in and just pours his grace out on him. God makes the first move in all of that. Listen, when I was 15 years old, I went on a time. trip with Young Life. If some of you, if you don't know what Young Life is, you should go look it up.

It is an amazing organization. Yes, amen. I went on this trip, my Young Life leader, we went up to camp in upstate New York, camp called Lake Champion. And on our way, we made two stops. One stop was at an amusement park. And at the amusement park, my buddy David and I went to this place that had beer mugs, and we got them engraved with our names on them. 15. On the way to church camp. camp getting beer mugs engraved. Shows you where my heart was. Then we stop in New York City on the way. And I decided that it would be more fun

if one of my friends and I left the group in New York City without telling the group we were going to leave them and go do our own thing. Can you imagine? Can you imagine what was going on in my young life leader, Kevin's heart and mind? I mean, the panic? Like, you turn around in the grocery store and your kid is gone and your stomach drops, right?

Imagine losing somebody else's kid in New York City. So, I mean, I was not at all. I wasn't looking for God when we went to camp. In fact, we shut up at camp and I'm like, where are the girls? Girls? Anywhere. There they are. I'm going there. And it's in the middle of that.

It's in the middle of like engraving beer mugs. And in the middle of running away in New York and in the middle of being concerned. about, you know, how I can ease my hormones as a teenage boy, that God broke in and radically saved me. God made the first move that grace doesn't wait. Grace always initiates. Grace pursues, grace interrupts. Grace always goes first. In Romans 5, verse 6 and 8, this is what Paul will write the Romans Church later. He says, for while we were still weak. At the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. It doesn't say when we had cleaned up our act, Christ died for the people that had all their ducks in a row. When they were really strong,

Christ said, okay, now I'll accept you because you are a really godly person. It says, no, while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. Verse 8, but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. When I was, I don't know, about nine years old, my dad and I went on this Cub Scout camping trip, and it was a canoeing trip. So one day we're canoeing down this river, and the river comes to a big bend. And as we come through this big bend, it funnels together. And so it starts these white waters, seemed huge to me at the time.

They probably weren't. But it seemed big. As we come around the corner, our canoe tips up. over. My dad goes flying out and as the canoe tips over, it tips over on top of me. I get trapped underneath and then the water takes the canoe and pushes it up against the bank so the water's all pushing. And I'm under, it's like a movie. I'm underneath and I'm watching this thing fill up with water and I'm trapped. Now do you think in that moment my dad came over and went, now Adam, you know you applied incorrect paddling techniques and that's what got you into the situation.

You know, I told you over and over and over again that we should paddle on separate sides of the canoe and yet you insisted on always paddling on the same side of the canoe. And that's why we took the turn too hard and then we flipped over. You know, Adam, actually, Adam, why don't I hand you a paddle and if you could demonstrate proper paddling techniques, then I'll get you out. No! No! In that moment, my dad jumps in the water, swims underneath,

pulls me out at the risk. of his own life. And that's what grace does. Grace is free and grace always goes first. Grace always initiates. Grace always pursues. Grace never waits. Which means it is one of the greatest things to glorify God. Think about it. Who gets the credit when it's all up to grace? God does. God gets all the glory and all the worship and all the worship and all the the honor and all the praise. Like we show up. One day I'll show up and God will stand in front of me and he'll say, okay, Adam, why

should I let you in? I don't know if it's going to work this way exactly. But I'm standing there. Why should I let you in? And I got one of two answers. I can stand before God and say, well, God, look at all I did for you. Look how good I was. Look at all the ways I served you.

Look at everything. Look how I loved my family. Look how I served the church. Look at all that I did for you. or I can stand in front of God and go, God, it is only what you did in your son, Jesus Christ. That's it. You did everything.

The only reason I should ever get to be with you is because you did everything that I was helpless and weak and dead in my life to do. You did it all. One of those, I get the glory. The other one, God gets all the glory. And so grace glorifies God. And so in verse four, he says, in falling to the ground, he Saul heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And he said to him, who are you, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus. Not I'm an abstract feeling. Not I am an ecstatic moment. Saul doesn't have an

encounter with an emotion. He doesn't have this sort of emotional high. He has an encounter with Jesus, with the risen Jesus. Listen, when I asked Kristen to marry me, I didn't go to Kristen and say, Kristen, I propose to you that you and I enter into a contract based on the institution of marriage. No, I looked at Kristen and I went, Kristen, I love you, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Do you love me? Do you want to spend the rest of your life with me? it was personal like this may sound weird I'm not committed to my marriage

I'm committed to Kristen like I'm committed to spending the rest of my days loving her not loving my marriage I love my marriage if I love her I'm committed to a personal relationship with Kristen and that's what grace has a name

grace is not so much a what as it is a who And that name is Jesus. When John writes the beginning of his gospel and kind of the prologue to his gospel in John Chapter 1, he says that Jesus came full of grace. That grace and Jesus go together. That if you want to embrace grace, you must embrace Jesus. That if you don't embrace Jesus, you don't embrace grace.

They come together, they go together. Grace is not an invitation to a religion or a set of rules. Grace is an invitation to a relationship with Jesus. And so embrace Jesus. Embrace Jesus. Verse six, God says, but rise, enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do. The men who are traveling with him stood speechless, hearing the voice but seeing no one. Can you imagine this moment?

I mean, this is how we know this is not a figment of Paul's imagination, because the rest of the people are standing around and they're all looking each other like, did you just hear what I just heard? Like, am I insane? Did that, and they're like, yeah, I didn't want to say anything, but I think that just happened. So they look around and it says Saul rose from the ground, and although his eyes were opened, he saw nothing. So they led him by the hand, brought him into Damascus.

and for three days he was without sight and he neither ate nor drank. He had a moment, there was this flash of light, but more important than the moment is that this thing results in a life change for Paul. I mean, when he says that he went three days without sight and neither ate nor drank, what that is is that sort of Bible code for Saul took some time to get away and to pray and to fast. In fact, you'll see in a minute that a few days later, Saul's baptized. And then later on in the story, we know that Saul goes away to Arabia for three years to be disciples. That there was a moment, but it's not so much about the moment. Grace creates a real life change. We were dinner the other night, and I said, hey, let's just go around.

I want everybody to tell the story of how they came to faith in Jesus. Welcome to a pastor's home. Isn't it fun? I mean, I think it's great. I think you should tell the story of how you came to believe in Jesus for your kids. And I think your kids should tell their story with you and learn to tell that story. And so we just went around and I told my story going to Young Life camp and it was dramatic. And it like a bolt-a-lite. Like I could take you to the place and I could sit down and I could tell you where I was sitting when I heard the gospel for the first time. And then Kristen, she tells her story. Kristen grew up in a very religious Catholic home.

Her mom just retired from being a lifelong parochial school principal. How about that? Talk about rules and regulations in her house. And so she says, well, it wasn't until, you know, my early 20s, 21, 22 years old, when this thing I'd sort of grown up around became my own. It was in my early 20s that that happened. And Sophie, who's 14, she's in middle school. It was kind of late in elementary school for her.

Gavin's like, I don't know. I never really knew a day. I mean, Dad, this is what you do for a living. Like, we hear about it all time. Which I'm like, great, I never want to know. And he's saying it was kind of the end of middle school, beginning of high school, when he grabbed hold of faith, and it was really personal to him.

It's not so much the moment. Grace is not so much concerned with this ecstatic moment, but with the life change that happens. The grace changes your life. Listen, if you somehow don't doubt your salvation, if you don't have this experience, this Damascus Road moment, ecstatic experience, the question is, has your life been changed by Jesus?

Right? I mean, every conversion is a dramatic thing because you went from death to life. I don't know what is more dramatic than that. I mean, that's incredible. No matter how the situation pans out, whether it happened in a moment or it took a long time, whether you were like crying and sobbing tears

and at rock bottom or everything seemed okay or whatever it was in the moment, when you go from death to life, that is the grace of God changing you utterly and completely. And if you haven't had that life change, maybe today, God's grace would pour out. on you and you'd be changed. So he goes on in verse 10. Now there was a disciple at Damascus

named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, Ananias and he said, here I am, Lord. And the Lord said to him, rise and go to the street called straight. In the house of Judas, this is a different Judas than the betrayer Judas. That other Judas is gone by now. And at the house of Judas, look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. For behold, he's praying. and he's seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight. But Anonias answered, Lord, I've heard from many about this man how much evil he's done to your saints in Jerusalem. And here he has authority from the chief priest to bind all who call on his name. I mean, picture you're Ananias.

And you hear this. I mean, he's going, hey God, can I remind you of who Saul is? Can I remind you he's the guy trying to murder us? Can I remind you that he's blaspheming against your name, that he is an opponent, an insolent opponent? Can I remind you that he's dragging out men and women from their houses and throwing them into prison or helping other people murder them? God, do you know? I'm sure God's like, I know exactly what I'm doing. You don't have to remind me, because look what he says. The Lord said to him, verse 15, go for he is, now you want to underline this one, he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and the kings and the children of Israel.

For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name. God, in the middle of Saul terrorizing his church, by his grace, reaches in, saves Saul. And when he saves him, he says, Saul is my chosen instrument to carry my name to the ends of the earth. And he's saying, listen, don't worry. He's going to have pain in his life. And in fact, if you're in the middle of suffering and if you're in the middle of suffering, and if you're in the middle of pain, don't equate pain with God's absence.

Don't. God's feelings, you didn't do something wrong. God's not paying you back. God's not getting even with you. Grace says that God's love towards you is not dependent on what you've done or the certain circumstances of your life right now. Grace is how God feels towards you,

right in this moment. and he says he is my chosen instrument. Like, have you ever thought about, think about this. When God saved you, if you've come to faith in Jesus and you would call yourself a Christian, at the moment you became a Christian, whenever that was, why didn't God just strike you dead right then and there?

It's because you were not only saved from something, your sin, but you were saved for something, which is the mission of God. The grace gives you a purpose. purpose-filled life. Grace does not promise you a pain-filled life. Listen, I don't know about you, but I will take a purposeful life of pain over a pointless life of comfort. Don't waste your life chasing down comfort as the main point of your life. Charles Spurgeon is one of my favorite preachers. He lived in the late 1800s in London. They called him the Prince of Preachers. And in 1873,

he was preaching this sermon, and in the sermon, he said, Christians are either missionaries or impostors. And it's not just that we have to carry the name of Jesus. He says in here, listen, Saul is an instrument of mind to carry my name, that we get to carry the name of Jesus. How incredible is that? I mean, who are we? Who are we that God would entrust us with the name above all names? that he would give us the name of Jesus to carry to the ends of the earth. That's grace. What a privilege it is for us to carry the name of Jesus.

Listen, if you are a follower of Jesus, then you are a chosen instrument of God to carry the name of Jesus. And if you're in the middle of pain, God's not punishing you. and maybe as you step into this new year next year in 2020 maybe the thing you'll set your eyes on is how will I carry the name of Jesus how will I be a missionary? Maybe you'll be a missionary in the carpool line at your kid's school. Maybe you'll be a missionary in the grocery store line. Maybe you'll be a missionary in your office.

Maybe you'll be a missionary like the heralds that are leaving in a couple days to go to Costa Rica for years. Maybe you'll, I don't know where it is, but if you've experienced the grace of God, you have been called to carry the name of Jesus. What a privilege it is to do that. And so Ananias departed and entered the house. And laying his hands on him, he said,

Brother Saul. Just imagine. I mean, I think it might have stunned Ananias. Like ravager of the church, brother, Saul, persecutor of the church, brother Saul, insolent opponent of the church, brother Saul, blasphemer of God, brother Saul, murderer, brother Saul. Brother Saul, the Lord Jesus, who appeared to you on the road by which you came, has sent me so that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.

And immediately, something like scales fell from his eyes, and he regained his sight. and then he rose and he was baptized taking food he was strengthened and for some days he was with the disciples do you see that they gets called a brother and then he gets brought in in the middle of the disciples the grace actually gives you a family like we hosted our our family's Christmas party on Christmas Eve there were like 30 or 40 people in our house on Christmas Eve all family we're still missing half of them. It was crazy. Our family's nuts.

And in the middle of it, I looked around and I thought, what grace did I get to have a family like this? And when God's grace pours out into your life, it's not just that you are forgiven. Like that would be incredible enough, wouldn't it? That you would have all your sins and all your debt paid and erased. That would be incredible.

But do you know why your sins have been forgiven? It's not just to have the debt ledger clean. God pours out grace into your life to forgive your sin so that there will be nothing that stands between you and your heavenly father that you might be adopted into the family of God. The reason grace comes into your life and you've been forgiven is so that you can be adopted as a child of the king of the universe, that you get to be made an heir and a co-air with Christ.

The grace gives you. us a family. It gives us a family in the kingdom of God, and it gives us a family like this. And so don't ever believe the lie of the enemy that you can do life on your own. Being a lone ranger Christian, it's an oxymoron. The early church would not have known what to do with somebody that said, I just need Jesus, but the rest of you all, you can go. Don't buy it. Don't buy. You've been given a family. And it is one of the greatest gifts of God's grace that we would have a family. Now, if you skip down from verse 19 and you go to verse 31, you get to see the outcome of this whole scenario.

All of this goes down, some other things happen in the middle of that. And then when you get down to verse 31, here's how Luke kind of gives his commentary to what happened because of the grace being poured out. He says, so the church throughout all of Judea and God, Galilee and Samaria had peace and was being built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord, that's not like afraid, that's like awe and wonder and worship. So walking in awe of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, it multiplied. I mean, look where grace got them.

Grace, when it says that this church grows throughout all of Judea and Galilee and Samaria, back in Acts chapter 1 verse 8 Jesus after he's resurrected says you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth that as God pours out his grace you actually see the promises

of Jesus being fulfilled that it's the grace of God that makes the promises of God a reality in the people of God that you didn't see not only is this promise kept but then God says, I'm going to give you my peace, and by grace, they start to see the peace of God in them. And the church begins to be built up.

Worship of God begins to happen. People find comfort in the Holy Spirit. And then it says, this whole thing multiplied. Like, it didn't just add one by one by one, but because of the grace of God, it literally explodes across the world. The fact that we're sitting here. today is the promise kept by God in his grace. We are evidence that God keeps every one of his promises and that all of God's promises are yes in Jesus Christ. The grace is the thing that causes God's promise to be yes. I read a book years ago. It's called Bono on Bono, like

you too, Bono. Bono on Bono, conversations with Mishka Asseus. And Mishka and Bono sit down. he did an interview with Bono and then this interview runs way too long and at the end of it and he's like hey would you mind if i took that transcribed it turned it into a book and bono's like sure so this is what this is what comes out of that and here's a quote and this is bono speaking he says the thing that keeps me on my knees is the difference between grace and karma you see at the center of all religions is the idea of karma you know you put out what comes back to you. An eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth, or in physics, in physical laws, every action is met by an equal and opposite one. And yet, along comes this idea called grace to upend all that

as you reap, so you sow stuff. Grace defies reason and grace defies logic. I'd be in big trouble if karma was going to finally be my judge. I'm holding out for grace. I'm holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the cross because I know who I am. And I hope I don't have to depend on my own religiosity. The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world so that what we put out did not come back to us. I mean, I love what he says. I'm holding out for grace. I'm holding out for Jesus.

And for some of you in this room, here's the invitation. Just lay down your religious performance. I mean, aren't you just tired? Aren't you weary of trying to be perfectly perfect all the time? It's exhausting. It's exhausting to you. It's exhausting to everybody else. Aren't you just tired of wondering, have I done enough?

like enough good things in quantity, enough good things in quality to offset the other things in my life, doesn't that burden just weigh on you? Aren't you just exhausted? Trying to religiously perform in order to get God to somehow accept you and be pleased with you? Wouldn't you just lay it down? Wouldn't you just pick up the grace of God in Jesus Christ? Wouldn't you hold out for grace and hold out for Jesus? and maybe your problem, maybe it's not the burden of trying to be perfect all the time. Maybe you're just exhausted by your own rebellion. Maybe you're just worn out because you think you've gone too far and you've done too much and you've gone too deep.

And God could never, ever, ever accept you if he knew exactly what you had done. And I would just say, he knows full well what you've done. And into the middle of it, he offers you his grace. His grace in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. That at just the right moment, at just the exact right moment in time, God sent his son into this world. Not because we did anything to earn it, but because it was his good pleasure at the exact right moment

to send a son into the middle of the mess, he took the initiative. And that it was grace that Jesus would live the perfect life. life, the life that you and I should have lived, the life that you and I could never live, that it's the grace of God that Jesus would fulfill all of God's righteous law, that he would actively fulfill the law for us. His active obedience would make, would take the place of our active disobedience. And at just the right moment, Jesus would go to the cross and he would die a death, he never deserved to die. In fact, he would die the death

that you and I deserve to die, that the wages of our sin is death. And it's grace that he would do that. And it's grace that three days later after they laid him in a tomb and they thought all hope was done, that the spirit

would resurrect Jesus. And not just resuscitate him, but actually resurrect him to new and everlasting life, which means it is grace that conquered death. Jesus triumphed over anything, over all the penalty of our sin and our separation from God. It's grace that does that.

And it's grace that for weeks and weeks and weeks, Jesus appeared to hundreds and hundreds of people. And his offer was this, not try harder, not do more, not clean up your act. Believe in me. trust me transfer your trust from your own actions to what I've done for you that's an offer of grace and the offer still stands today whether you're in rebellion or you're in religion

whether you're trying to perform or you're trying to run I would invite you to lay hold of grace and to lay hold of Jesus So would you bow your heads? And if you have never said yes to the grace of God, if you have never laid hold of the fact that Jesus is your Lord and your Savior, and you want to hold out for Jesus and hold out for grace, except the radical free initiating grace of God,

would you raise your hand up high right now? Raise them up. really high, like you're reaching out for grace. Heavenly Father, thank you for the grace of God. Thank you that there is nothing in this world that compares to your grace. God, I pray that grace just makes us uncomfortable and grace comforts us all at the same time. I pray that grace completely upends all of our life and then pray that grace completely upends all of our life and then puts it all back together.

I pray that grace wrecks us in the best possible way. I pray that grace would draw us to fix our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and the perfector of our faith. Jesus, your grace is stunning. It's beautiful. It's radical. It's like nothing we have ever experienced. And God, please, please, please don't ever let us.

let us become numb to it. Let us just always stand in awe of it. Let our jaw just hit the floor at the mention of the word grace. God, we want to behold you because of grace. It is amazing. It's amazing. So God, may the worship that we give you right now flow out of that amazing grace. And we pray it in Jesus' name.

Amen. Would you stand? and we're going to sing and we're going to worship to this old hymn amazing grace and maybe you need to come down front and you need to just surrender your religion or you need to surrender your rebellion and you just pour it out and thank God for your grace.

I want you to come down, you can kneel down, and we're just going to worship God for the grace that's in Jesus Christ.