You know, the more I look around, the more I come to the conclusion that we are masters of self-delusion. All this stuff going wrong in our lives, and yet we want to blame everyone rather than taking responsibility for our own actions …

The Missing Link

I don’t know if you have noticed this before but we are masters of self delusion, you and I and half the rest of the world too, I would have to say. That’s a bold statement, isn’t it? So what leads me to this earth shattering conclusion? Well I don’t know, we seem to have this amazing capacity to make excuses. To see something that’s obviously wrong and then to rationalise it away – look at how long it took us to acknowledge that smoking was bad for you, even though the evidence was there for long, long time.

It seems that what we do is that we separate the impact from the cause; the symptom from the disease, because we just don’t want to acknowledge the disease because that means taking responsibility and then….then what we do is the rest of our lives, we spend those treating the symptoms instead of dealing with the underlying issues of the disease. It is as though there is a missing link.

Today we are starting a new series called, “Extravagant Grace”. It was sparked by a pastor in a place called, “Bukavu”, which is in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He wrote to me recently and this is what he said. He said, “We appreciate very much your programmes but many of our people here are traumatised by war; they have become like children in their thinking. In reality, they need some “milk” teaching to grow up as well as “meat” teaching that we are feeding them.”

That really made me think – how easy is it to quickly gloss over the centrepiece of what Christianity is all about? The Gospel; the Good News that God created the whole universe and He created us and we turned our backs on Him and what we deserve is His punishment, and so often in life you see peoples’ lives are a mess because they have turned their backs on God. And Jesus comes and what He came to do was to pay for that sin so that we could have a new life; an eternal life.

It’s a wonderful story of extravagant grace, but so often we don’t talk about it and so often we fail to make the connection between God’s story of extravagant grace and our desperate need of that grace – between our rejection of God and all that stuff that’s ruining our lives. How do I know that?

Let me tell you something interesting. I produce fifty of these programmes each year, in fact over five hundred radio programmes a year – the different programmes that I’m involved in. That’s a lot of programmes! And we deal with all sorts of different subjects – sometimes it’s about the underlying disease, sometimes we talk about the symptoms, sometimes we deal with issues like forgiveness, or discovering who God made us to be. All sorts of different things but you know the three most popular series have been – the ones that have had the phone ringing hot? “Dealing with Difficult People”, “Anger Management” and “Affluenza”, which was all about working too hard, spending too much money, being addicted to spending money.

See, people have a felt need – there is something wrong in a relationship and so the phone rings hot at our office: “I want to buy that CD – send me the Life Application Guide”. But a series leading up to Easter, let’s say, looking at who Jesus is; some poignant vignettes of Jesus life; personal intimate pictures of who He is – just as good; just as relevant, yet we have nowhere near the same response. Why is that? Because people respond to their felt need – it’s about dealing with the symptoms.

“I have a difficult person in my life; I need those programmes dealing with difficult people.” “I have an angry person in my life, I need anger management”. “I have money problems; my credit cards are maxed out – send me those CDs on “Affluenza”. See, we try to treat the ills in our lives by managing the symptoms. And we fail to make the link often, between the symptoms and the deep underlying causes. See, if you treat the underlying causes the symptoms go away.

All my life I have been overweight – it’s just one of those genetic things, I guess, plus I love food. And last year I felt tired and lethargic and uncomfortable and I wasn’t sleeping well, so I saw a doctor about my sleep and he did the tests and he said, “No, you don’t have sleep apnoea”, he said, “just go and lose some weight”. Now that’s confronting – I knew that I was overweight – I knew that that was probably the cause of me not sleeping well but I just didn’t want to deal with it, and since then I have lost weight … a lot of weight and I feel fantastic.

It’s an awesome thing – you deal with an underlying problem and the symptoms go away. It’s the same thing over and over again in our lives – marriages are falling apart; people are leading miserable lives; people in really difficult situations. You know, over half of the millions of people who will listen to this programme this week, live in poverty, in a war zone, under threat – it’s like an emotional battering ram.

We have unforgiveness in our hearts – we have fear – some people are into witchcraft, other people are into worshipping wealth and money. There is an answer! God has done something that breaks through all that and goes right down to the root of the problem, to heal it with His extravagant grace.

Over these next few weeks on the programme, that’s what we are going to be looking at. And I would like to start with what the Apostle Paul writes in Romans chapter 1, verses 16 and 17. He says:

I am not ashamed of the Gospel because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes – for the Jew and the Gentile. For in the Gospel, a righteousness from God is revealed; a righteousness that is by faith from first to last.

And like Paul, neither am I ashamed of the Gospel, because the Good News of Jesus Christ is the power of God for everyone who believes – the power to save us; the power to heal us; the power to deal with all of those symptoms by striking at the underlying disease. I am not ashamed of the Gospel because it is a Gospel of extravagant grace.

Maybe there is a missing link between the symptoms and the disease and it’s time to deal with that once and for all. And I’m not ashamed to tell you, the answer is Jesus.

No Excuses

I spent a lot of my life making excuses for things. Perhaps you have too. Do you remember as a child when you did something wrong, how quickly you were able to formulate an excuse for your parents when they held you to account? It’s amazing how early in life we start with the excuses and then later in life we deal with this issue and that issue. We make a mistake here or there, perhaps even reject God as I did for much of my adult life and we have an excuse. “Well, I didn’t know!” “Well, you know, I felt this or I thought that and well, so it didn’t turn out ok, it’s not my fault.”

And that’s the bottom line! We want to shift the blame somewhere else. “Well, I didn’t realise there was a God. I didn’t realise that He is a good God and some of the stuff I’m into is like a slap in His face.” We’d all like to think that God is a kind and loving God, and He is. But when we turn our backs on Him, as we all have done, there’s a price to pay and I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t tell you that, from time to time. So it’s easy to go through life, living on this superficial level.

Some people listening today are pretty well off; others are in war zones and refugee camps. Some are pretty resilient, some are damaged emotionally but it doesn’t matter who we are or where we are at, this is something we need to hear – a message from God. I am going to share that with you today.

If you have a Bible, please open at Romans chapter 1. I’m reading from Romans 1 verses 18 to 25. This is what he says:

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world, God’s invisible qualities – His eternal power, His divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

For although they knew God they neither glorified Him as God nor gave thanks to Him but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like men or birds or animals or reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator who is blessed and praised forever.

This talks about our wickedness; our sin. Sin literally means “to miss the mark”. The whole point of life; the whole point of existence is for us to have a wonderful life in relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Sin is about turning away from that and missing the point and what Paul is saying here, that the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness.

No matter who we are or where we are at, we need to hear that message and Paul actually goes on, beginning in Romans 1 and verse 29, to list some of those wicked things. He says:

They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, they are insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless.

Maybe you relate to some of those things in that list. But you know what we do? We end up blaming everyone else – “Not my fault, so and so did this and that and then they made me feel this and besides, I have never really thought about God. Does He really exist?” See, we make excuses – we duck shove these things – we lay off the blame somewhere else.

If you have stuff happening in your life – relationship issues, fear, perhaps you live in a dangerous place, perhaps people have done some bad things and you feel emotionally damaged – you might be saying, “Berni, I don’t need to hear this”. Listen to me, no matter who we are, it’s time to stop making excuses.

Let’s put first things first – God, does He exist or doesn’t He? Listen again to what Paul says:

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, because what may be known about God is plain to them because God has made it plain. Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – His eternal power, His divine nature – have been clearly evident, being understood from what He made so that men are without excuse.

Look around; look at creation! People want to deny God – look at the stars, the cosmos, the earth, the plants, the animals, the forces of nature, the land, the sea – it’s got God’s fingerprints all over it. Stop and think about it for a few minutes – it’s so vast, yet so intricate, so complex, yet so beautifully simple. Everything is so interdependent; working together brilliantly. Was that an accident? Or did God make it?

God’s invisible but who He is can be clearly seen and there are no more excuses. God is God! We have rejected Him and all He wants for us to do is to admit that and turn back to Him. There’s a link between what we are going through in life and where we are in our heart relationship with God – there is!

But what we do is exactly what Paul says:

Although we claim to be wise we become fools and we exchange the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal men and birds and animals and reptiles.

You know, some of the people listening to this today live in parts of Africa where witchcraft is huge. People have rejected God and they have gone after evil spirits. You see, we have traded the physical reality; the things we can see and touch for the great unseen reality of God.

We’ve started to worship what we can see – and some people worship money and some people worship the devil and some people worship through witchcraft – we’ve replaced God with all that stuff. And there are consequences!

See, one day you and I, all of us, will stand before God in judgement. But there are consequences here and now too. We rebel against God; we go our own way; we’re stiff necked and we are insolent and we are ruthless and we’re faithless and on the other hand things are falling apart all over our lives. They are the consequences of rejecting God – it is right in front of our face!

Listen to me. God is talking to us through His Word today. Wake up! Where ever you are, are you in this place that Paul is talking about? Don’t get me wrong – God isn’t a bunch of rules but there are a few things; just a handful of things He says, “Don’t do!” And when we reject Him; when we turn against that, there are consequences – there just are. And now that you have heard it, there are no more excuses. It is time to turn back to Him.

Just Desserts

I remember when I was a kid, doing some things that were just plain wrong. Well, it’s part of growing up and every now and then I’d get a good, old fashioned belting. It never seemed fair; I never enjoyed it – I guess that natural. But now as an adult I look back on that, when I disobeyed my parents, there were consequences, as there should be. I got my just desserts!

And that’s something that we pretty much understand. There are certain boundaries in life, like the boundary between right and wrong and when we cross those boundaries, there are consequences. You eat too much, don’t exercise, you’ll go to an early grave. You smoke and you probably will end up with lung cancer. You fool around outside your marriage and the marriage will fall apart.

We pretty much understand that, at least, for other people. For them there should be consequences, absolutely, but me, well, we are prepared to cut ourselves a bit more slack than that aren’t we? It’s true we are prepared to judge other people far more harshly than we judge ourselves and that, as it turns out, goes to the heart of our relationship with God.

In this series, “Extravagant Grace”, grace is something we don’t deserve. It’s extravagant, God’s grace, it’s over the top. It’s more than we can hope for or imagine. But we have no need for God’s grace unless we are someone who doesn’t deserve it – “But surely I’m not such a bad person, surely I deserve God’s favour? I mean surely when I get up there in heaven He’ll pat me on the back? But that old cow over there, she deserves God’s judgement.” Sound familiar?

Well, have a listen to how the Apostle Paul deals with that sort of thinking. We’re reading, if you have a Bible, open it up at Romans chapter 2. He says:

You, therefore, have no excuse – you who pass judgement on someone else. For whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgement, you do exactly the same things. Now we know that God’s judgement against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere person, pass judgement on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgement? Or do you show contempt for the riches of His kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you toward repentance?

But because of your stubbornness and your unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath against yourself for the day of God’s wrath, when His righteousness judgement will be revealed. God will give to each person according to what he has done. To those who by persistence in doing good, seek glory and honour and immortality, He will give eternal life. But for those who are self seeking, who reject the truth, who follow evil there will be wrath and anger. There will be trouble and distress for every person who does evil but glory, honour, peace for everyone who does good, both for the Jew and the Gentile, for God does not show favouritism.

I love that first part. We are in the business of judging other people – “God should zap that person, they deserve it,” but Paul turns the table back on us. He basically says, “You are doing exactly the same thing.” Wake up! You think no one will notice but God notices. Don’t you realise that God’s kindness is meant to lead you toward repentance? But instead you are showing contempt for the riches of His kindness.

And then Paul goes on to say here, that because of your stubborn and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath against yourself – God’s wrath. “Oh, come on Berni, lighten up, people just have sex before marriage these days. It’s just the way it is – people live together. Come on Berni, it’s not that serious, my sins are only small sins, no one will notice.”

Listen to me, sin is never small, why? Because it’s rebelling against God – there will be a day of judgement. There will be a day of reckoning and when we deny God, what we are doing is rejecting truth and following evil. I know that is an unpopular message but it’s the truth and there are consequences.

Look again at verse 9 of chapter 2 of Romans.

There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil, for the Jew and the Gentile. But glory and honour and peace for everyone who does good, both the Jew and then the Gentile, for God does not show favouritism.

And there are troubles and consequences now as well, not just then on the day of judgement, but now.

What makes us think that in this beautiful world that God created we can reject Him and there won’t be consequences? If we are going to be angry and selfish we are going to have fractured relationships – if we are money hungry, we are going to be lonely and one day we are going to lose that money. Where will we be then?

Wake up, Paul is saying, God doesn’t show favouritism – this is for you and me – for the Jew and the Gentile, for everyone. Not just that person over there that you and I think should be judged, but for you and me as well. God is fair; God is impartial. Why am I sharing this with you? Because this isn’t just for those other people, it’s for us too. “We all have sinned”, writes Paul in Romans chapter 3, “We all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

All of us, you and me and that’s why we need God’s grace. Today on the programme you might be thinking, “Why is Berni hammering this so hard? I’m hurting; I’m afraid. This person has done this to me and there is war raging around me and Berni’s doing the guilt trip on me.”

It doesn’t matter who we are, where we are, what’s going on, good or bad or indifferent, what we are feeling, at the end of the day, the heart of the matter is this: if we have a fractured relationship with God that is because we have sinned and missed the mark.

You and I are in desperate need – there is judgement; there are bad consequences to sin. We need an answer and we won’t find that by staying on the surface with the symptoms – we have to deal with the disease and we need to let God’s Word cut deep to deal with that disease.

Question: If you won ten million dollars today, would you hide it in a shoe box under the bed, or would you use it? The answer is obvious. So let me ask you, what would you do if you received the grace of God into your life?

A Tight Spot

Have you ever been in a really tight spot – a difficult or risky or painful situation and just at the last minute, someone reaches out to you, a friend, and pulls you out of that place? It is an amazing feeling when that happens, especially if it is one of those situations, well, where it’s your fault – something stupid you did, something selfish or greedy. And yet this friend ignores all of that – he or she isn’t interested in the rights or wrongs of the situation, they just step in, give you their hand and pull you out. It’s amazing because what it says is they care so much more about you than they do about how you got yourself into this mess in the first place.

They value you more than they detest your mistakes. There’s a name for that it’s called ‘grace’ and grace has a way of changing us on the inside. Grace has a way of bringing healing to our hearts in a way that judgement and criticism and condemnation simply can’t. And that’s why last week we began this current series that I’ve called, “Extravagant Grace”.

I decided it was high time for us to spend some time together looking at the extravagant grace of God and if you joined me last week on the programme you might say, “Well, Berni, all I heard last week was about my sin and my failure and God’s judgement and the consequences”. And my answer would be, “You are exactly right”.

It’s interesting but until we truly realise that we are in a tight spot, we don’t realise how desperately we need God’s help. I used to hear Christians talking about Jesus as their Saviour – my question was always, “To save them from what?” It seemed to me like this was an answer in search of a problem. “I don’t need saving from anything”, and yet I had all these things going wrong in my life; falling apart – relationships, I wasn’t happy, I was never satisfied, I used to blame everyone and everything else under the sun for my woes, but the last thing I needed was saving. You see my point?

Until we get beyond blaming the world and the battle zone we are in and other people and all that other stuff out there for the ills and the woes in our lives – until we take responsibility for ourselves and our own actions, well, who needs the help from God? And that’s why the Apostle Paul starts off his letter to the Romans – it’s the sixth Book in the New Testament and by the way, if you have a Bible, grab it now because we are going to go back today into that wonderful letter of Paul to the Romans. But he begins that Book with a very clear statement of the problem. The problem is our sin – our rejection of God. God is righteous and we, well, we aren’t!

What does that word “righteous” mean? You hear it used sometimes but what does it actually mean? It means God is perfect; it means God is without sin – there is no darkness, no blemish, nothing wrong with Him – He’s perfect – that’s who He is; perfect God, perfect love and we have all fallen short of that.

Listen to how Paul puts it in Romans chapter 3, from verse 11 onwards:

There is no one righteous, not even one of you. There is no one who understands; no one who seeks God. All have turned away; they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one. Their throats are like open graves; they’re tongues practice deceit; the poison of vipers is on their lips. Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood, ruin and misery mark their ways and the way of peace, they don’t know. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore, no one will be declared righteous in His sight by observing the law. Rather through the law we become conscience of our sin.

See, so often we say, “Well, I’m a good person – I’m not a murderer or a rapist or a thief – I fit within the rules” and God’s position is none of us do. That’s the point; we have all fallen short but now….now Paul goes on to start talking about the Good News. See, up till now, it was all bad – God is righteous and we are not and in a sense that’s the bad news – that’s the nub of our problem. All the symptoms in our lives come back to the fracture in our relationship with Him – fix that and we have a starting point to fix all the other hurts and pains and ills and diseases in our lives.

Have a listen to how Paul puts this in Romans chapter 3, from verse 21 to 31. He says:

But now, a righteousness from God apart from the law, has been made known to which all the law and the prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference for we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and we are all justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

See, God presented Jesus as the sacrifice of atonement through faith in His blood. He did this to demonstrate His justice because in His forbearance, He had left the sins committed before hand, unpunished. He did it to demonstrate His justice at this present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

See, this is the crux; this in the nub of the Gospel; this is the Good News. Look at verses 23 and 24 again:

This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference for we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and at the same time, we are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

The righteousness of God gets given to us all who have sinned and we are justified freely through the redemption that comes through Christ’s sacrifice. Now we are going to unpack this some more because it is really important. So many people believe in Jesus but for what? They’ve never accepted the righteousness from God and started living their lives on the basis that they have a right standing with God.

A Judge and His Friend

You know, one of the things that makes all this stuff difficult for me – I think that people use terms that don’t make sense like “righteousness” – what does it mean? And anyway why doesn’t God just forgive me? If I’ve made mistakes along the way why doesn’t He just say, “Well, Berni, you are forgiven?” Why do I need Jesus to go and die on a cross?

I mean, if you are a parent and you have children, the kids make mistakes – that’s the way it goes – but we are their parents, we don’t kick them out of the house every time they make a mistake – we wear it. We deal with it – we love them, we teach them, we forgive them, even when it drives us nuts some days. You see my point?

What is this righteousness of God? Why is it so important? Why do I need it? And how is it going to make a difference in my life – I mean to the things in my life that really matter to me? You know the best explanation of this that I have ever heard was by a man called Nicky Gumble. If you have ever done an Alpha Course or watched the Alpha videos – Nicky is a pastor of the Holy Trinity Church in Brompton in London and he tells this beautiful parable and I want to share this with you because it really helped explain this whole thing to me.

Here’s the parable: Many years ago there were two young boys, they were the best of mates – they did everything together. When they grew up they even studied law at the same university and when they graduated their work took them in different directions. One went on to become a learned judge, the other, well, one thing led to another and he became a corporate criminal.

One day the criminal ended up in court standing before his old friend. “All rise!” Can you imagine how the judge felt but as he listened to that evidence he could only come to one conclusion. “I find you guilty and fine you the sum of ten thousand dollars.” That was justice! But no sooner had the gavel hit the bench than the judge raced from the courtroom into his chamber, tore off his gown and his wig, raced back out to the courtroom and with tears in his eyes, embraced his old friend and then wrote out a cheque for ten thousand dollars. That was grace!

When the criminal pays the price he is justified; he is back in right standing with the law. If a murderer goes to jail and serves his time at the end of it he is free, he is justified, he is in right standing again with the law – he has paid the price. That’s what righteousness means – either, you have never done anything wrong in the first place and you have a right standing or you have done something wrong and you have paid the price and again you have a right standing – you are righteous before the law.

See we are programmed – when we do something wrong we have to pay the price but we know that when the price of justice is paid in full then we have a right standing with the law again – then we are justified or righteous. But as the parable of this judge and the criminal explains, grace is when the judge doesn’t sweep it under the carpet but the judge pays the price.

And the difference between the world’s system of justice and God’s system of grace is that in God’s court the price of our sin is death – eternal separation from God – “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” And grace is the fact that Jesus died that death on our behalf.

That means that you and I, if we put our trust and our faith in Jesus, we are justified – we stand before God as if we have never sinned. Listen again.

This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ, to all who believe – there’s no difference, for we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and we are all justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

Through what Jesus does – that’s how we receive the righteousness of God; the right standing with God; the freedom to go to Him. That’s what it means to be justified; to have free access to God. See, God is still just, that’s why … “God presented Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in His blood. He did this to demonstrate His justice because in His forbearance, He had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished. He did it to demonstrate His justice at the present time so as to be just and also the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus Christ.”

And we have access to that right standing with God; to that relationship with God by faith in what Jesus did for us on the cross. The burden of guilt is gone. You see, it’s not about working our way into the favour of God; it’s not about obeying rules because this access to God’s grace is free – we put our trust in what God has done on the cross and there begins a new life.

Every day we put our faith in Jesus, but you know what happens? So many people hear that message; they believe it in their heads but then they never live their lives with this message. They never live their lives knowing that … “I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus” – that’s a huge revelation!

Maybe once or twice before you have heard me talk about my favourite movie “The Shawshank Redemption” and Morgan Freeman plays this character who is locked up in jail for fifty years and eventually he gets out. And he’s standing outside in the bright light and the freedom he has is scary because it’s a huge adjustment to go from guilt to right standing; living your whole life in the prison of guilt and all of a sudden, God says, “You are forgiven; you are free”. And so Morgan Freeman’s character goes on to live life the way he used to in prison, through all the rules and restrictions.

Now, I make mistakes every day, but when I stand before God, I stand before Him holy and pure and righteousness, not because of who I am and certainly not because of what I’ve done but because I put my faith in Jesus Christ. He sees me the same way as He sees His Son. The same is true of you, pure, clean, holy, shining, the righteousness of God, having a right standing with Him.

And the only reason you and I can come into His presence and pray and delight in Him and have no more guilt and not have to shy away from Him and have a new start, is because we believe in Jesus Christ – all by grace, through the huge sacrifice of Jesus and that’s what changes your heart. That’s the starting point of transformation – it’s the grace that God shows us.

In Romans chapter 2, verse 4 Paul writes:

Don’t you realize – God’s kindness; God’s grace is meant to lead you to repentance – to change.

And in Second Corinthians chapter 5, verse 21 Paul writes:

God made Him, Jesus, who had no sin to become sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

Do you believe in Jesus? Then you are the righteousness of God.

A Story of Faith

You know, as I look at God’s story and how He deals with us, truly, some days it doesn’t make sense. God is God; He creates the universe, the earth, everything, you and me, humanity – the only species made in His image, always knowing that we would rebel. And He only had two choices – either to let us suffer the consequences of that, by never having a relationship with Him or by paying for our rebellion Himself.

He chose the latter; He chose for Jesus to die on that cross for you and me and then He comes along and says, “Actually, you don’t have to work your way into my good books – that’s not how it works. Just put your faith in Jesus, My Son and what He’s done for you on the cross and I’ll forgive you. Then you can have a relationship with Me.”

I know the whole point of Him creating you and I was so that we could know Him and be blessed by Him and I know the reason He gave us a free will was unless we have that, the relationship between us and God couldn’t really be a love relationship. But Jesus dies on the cross and I get all that just by believing? Sounds too easy doesn’t it?

It’s almost as though the Apostle Paul knew that, so He uses the story of Abraham, the father of the nation of Israel to explain that actually God is in the faith business. Abraham was the first man – he was the father of Israel – he is the first man that God engages with and God calls him, as an old man in his seventies, out of this place called, Ur.

He and his wife Sarah are old and they have no children and yet God promises him a son and also some land – the country of Israel. Hard to swallow but Abraham sets off on the journey out of Ur to the Promised Land in faith and God’s promises eventually are realised – it’s a beautiful story. It starts in Genesis 12 (probably only take a half an hour or so to read and I really encourage you to do that).

One day along this journey, Abraham is struggling with these promises. I mean it took twenty five years to have this son – he was a hundred – so along the way you can’t blame him for struggling. Have a listen. This comes from Genesis chapter 15, starting at verse 2:

Abraham says “God what can you give me since I still remain childless and the one who will inherit my estate is Eliezer of Damascus.” Abraham said “You haven’t given me any children so a servant of my household is going to be my heir.” But then God said to him “This man won’t be your heir but a son who comes from your own body will be your heir.” So God leads Abraham outside the tent and says “Look up at the heavens and count the stars, if indeed you can count them,” and then God said to him “So shall your offspring be.” And Abraham believed the Lord and He credited it to him as righteousness.

It’s a beautiful picture – even back then, God is in the faith business. Think about it! God is in the spiritual dimension – you and me, we have a spirit but He puts us, not in the spiritual dimension but in the physical dimension. We can’t see Him or touch Him or what goes on in the spiritual realm and He asks us simply to believe.

Hebrews chapter 11, verse 6 says:

Without faith it’s impossible to please God because anyone who comes to Him must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who earnestly seek Him.

Abraham followed God on this twenty five year journey in the wilderness – Abraham believed in Him, put his trust in Him, had faith – not perfectly mind you; he made mistakes along the way and here is the outcome as Paul records it, looking back, a few thousand years later – in Romans chapter 4, beginning as verse 13:

It wasn’t through the law; it wasn’t through following all the rules that Abraham and his offspring received the promise that he would be the heir of the world, but through the righteousness that comes by faith. Therefore, the promise comes by faith so that it may be grace and may be guaranteed to all of Abraham’s offspring. Not only to those who are of the law, the Jews, but also to those who are of faith of Abraham (you and me). He is the father of all of us, as it is written “I have made you a father of many nations.” He is our father in the sight of God in whom he believed. The God who gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were.

Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed God and so became the father of many nations just as it had been said to him – “So shall your offspring be.” Without weakening his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead – since he was about one hundred years old and Sarah’s womb was also dead – yet he didn’t waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God, being fully persuaded that God had the power to do what He had promised. That’s why it was credited to him as righteousness. The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone but also for us to whom God will credit righteousness – for us who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead. He was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification.

You see how this practical example from Paul helps – Abraham’s faith wasn’t some comfortable armchair, remote control kind of faith. He had to leave all of that comfort behind; get out there on the journey of life and for twenty five years journey with God and live out his faith through his life.

See, it’s that sort of faith when we put our life trust into God’s grace – God’s extravagant grace saying, “I’m going to live my life as though I am the righteousness of God; as though I do have right standing with God because I do; because I believe in Jesus Christ” – that’s it.

The faith of Abraham wasn’t some cerebral faith; it wasn’t sitting in an armchair thinking, “I believe in God”. The faith of Abraham was living his life according to what God said and that’s the same for us – when we take our lives and we say, “You know something? The Bible says I am the righteousness of God. I don’t have to be condemned anymore; I don’t have to be a little mouse sitting there thinking ‘God is going to squash me or whack me over the head. No, I have a right standing with God because Jesus died for my sins; He rose again; I believe He is the Son of God and so I am the righteousness of God.”

That’s what it means to be a Christian – nothing less – nothing more. I am the righteousness of God through Christ Jesus and no war, no pain, no person, no situation, no fear, no stock market crisis nothing can take that away from me.

God wants you and me to have a wondrous relationship with Him on His terms and that’s by grace – not be working our way into that relationship according to some formula or by a bunch of rules – no, by grace; extravagant grace.
That’s God’s plan – it’s the only way – Jesus!

Around about Easter time … and I know that’s a little way away yet … we think and talk a lot about the resurrection of Jesus. But as we continue in this series – Extravagant Grace – we can’t keep going without talking about … your resurrection. The new life that Jesus came to bring you.

Dead or Alive

There are times in our lives when we wish we could have a fresh start – the slate wiped clean and a fresh new future to look forward to. Maybe we are tired of the same old same old at work; the relationships doing the same things; going to the same place, day after day – wouldn’t a new job or even a new career, be fantastic? Or perhaps we’ve made a mess of something in our lives and we look at ourselves in the mirror and we think, “I am such a pitiful sight – if I only could get over this mess that I’ve made and move on and start again.” And sometimes it just comes by the way of the proverbial ‘midlife crisis’ – the desire for a fresh new start.

However it comes there invariably seems to be one problem – the slate never seems to be wiped quite clean enough. The past can come back to haunt us over and over and over again. I guess as I talk about that – this idea of a fresh new start – it makes me think back to thirteen years or so ago when I became a Christian. Life, well, was pretty much a mess, my fault – greed and working too hard and … all that stuff that men of my generation go through in their lives and everything fell apart on me.

The dreams I had for the future lay shattered on the ground and I never, ever thought at that point, when life was difficult and dark, that I could possibly have a fresh start – you don’t when you are in that place. You are not good enough, nothing will ever happen – the past seems to dominate the future.

Have you ever felt like that? I know that your story and my story, they are going to be different – you know we have been through different things but this sense of wanting just a new start and not being able to lay hold of that is something that we so often go through.

And you hear Christians talk about being “born again” and back then, that sounded to me like some idea from a cult. But actually it’s not – it’s an idea that Jesus came up with. He said:

Unless you are born again you simply can’t see the Kingdom of God.

Now that sounds kind of weird, but it speaks about a new start – a new beginning.

The Apostle Paul talks about it some more. Last week and again this week we are going through a teaching series that I have called, “Extravagant Grace”. People talk about grace as though it’s an ordinary thing. But grace; God’s grace is far from ordinary; it’s extravagant, abundant, over the top. We start seeing God for who He is; a God who wants to bless you and me so outrageously and then the greatest blessing of all is a new start; a slate wiped completely clean – something He gives us through Jesus Christ.

When we have a mess in our lives, whatever we do, however we get there, here and there we are going to go through this; we are going to go through that, so often we don’t make the connection between what we are going through in life on the one hand and our relationship with God on the other. Whatever you might be going through let me say this really clearly and succinctly – the answer is Jesus Christ.

Let’s have a look at what the Apostle Paul writes – if you have a Bible, grab it, open it up – you are going to need it. We are going to Romans chapter 6, beginning at verse 1: “What shall we say then?” writes Paul, “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may abound? By no means! We died to sin, how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us, who were baptised into Christ Jesus, were baptised into His death? We were therefore buried with Him through the baptism into death, in order that just as Jesus was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

“If we have been united with Him like this in His death, we will certainly also be united with Him in His resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.”

Talk about a new start! See, there is a link here between the mess in our lives and our relationship with God and that link is a small, three letter word called ‘sin’. It’s when we turn our backs on God; when we go our own way and there’s only one place that’s going to end up – in a mess.

This is for anyone who’s never met Jesus Christ, but you know something? This message is also for you if you believe in Him, but you are struggling with stuff called “sin” in your life right now because sin is like a cancer. In fact, so often, people give their lives to Jesus and yet it still feels like an old life and not a new life because we haven’t really made that fresh start.

Paul takes us through what happens when we give our lives to Jesus – dying to the old self and rising again to a new life – a life lived for God – a death and a resurrection. There are two ways of looking at this. The first is an allegory; a metaphor and I guess it’s a useful metaphor, as far as metaphors go. A picture is worth a thousand words and death and resurrection is a good metaphor – dying to sin.

But what Paul’s talking about goes so much further here than just a mere allegory. He is talking about a Spiritual reality…..a reality that God is calling us to, you and me today, to come to grips with. He’s calling us to make the link between the stuff going on in our lives and our sin. Jesus died to pay for our sin – when we put our faith in Him we too die with Him – the old man, the old woman, the selfish person is nailed to a cross in God’s eyes and we rise again with Jesus to a new life; a resurrection life; a life that comes to us by virtue of the fact that Jesus rose from the dead.

That’s how God sees it and when we die to sin and we rise again as a new man or a new woman, that slate is wiped clean. It is forgiven through what Jesus did on the cross – we have a new start – no ifs, no buts, no maybes.

We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. The old self is crucified; sin is done away with,

And in verse 11:

So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. For sin will no longer have dominion over you since you are no longer under the rule of law, but under grace.

There it is! God’s extravagant grace! And what God is saying to us here through Paul is simply this: “I have set you free, the old you is dead, now rise up and take this new life that I have bought for you at such a great price – come on, take it. It’s My invitation to you – it’s time for you to see your life the way that I see it, because of My Son, Jesus; sin no longer has any power over you. You are free; you are forgiven; the slate is wiped clean. Look at this through My eyes – rise up and live this new life by My grace.” By God’s extravagant grace!

Slaves no More

I can’t imagine what it must be like to be a slave. Do you know that today there are over twenty million slaves in this world? Twenty million – that’s the population of Australia – most of them in the sex trade, for prostitution – and yet so many of us are slaves to our old ways; slaves to ways of thinking and habits and patterns of behaviour that are no less devastating in our lives. It’s a form of slavery to self; to a thing that God calls “sin”. Not some old fashioned moralising notion of sin – just the reality that in so many parts of our lives we can so easily stray away from God’s wonderful plans, and do it our way and we end up in slavery to “my way”.

It’s different for each one of us – we each have different Achilles heels, if you like. Perhaps its anger – you know there are people who are slaves to anger or maybe it’s sexual immorality or money or whatever it is, my hunch is you know what it is in your life. But here’s the thing: you and I have a choice in this matter; you and I are free to choose who or what we want to be slaves to.

So for the last thirteen years of my life – that’s how long it has been since I accepted Jesus Christ as my Saviour – I have come to experience a new freedom that I never thought was possible. You see BJ; before Jesus, I looked at the whole Christianity thing and to tell you the truth, it appeared to me that if I accepted it; if I became a so called, “Christian”, I’d end up with a stunted life. So many things you can’t do – don’t do this don’t do that – who needs that in their lives?

I look back on that attitude now and realise that back then I was a slave to myself. I was so wrapped up in me and making money and what other people thought of me and climbing to the top – I was a slave to that. Now I thought it was freedom but actually, it was a terrible prison cell.

I want to share with you today God’s take on slavery and freedom. Something He reveals through the Apostle Paul and what he writes to his letters to the Roman church two thousand years ago. We are going to pick up in Romans chapter 6, verse 16. Have a listen, it’s really good stuff; a really different angle.

“Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as a slave, you are slaves to the one whom you obey – whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to a obedience which leads to righteousness. But thanks be to God, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness.”

I never really think about the fact that we are slaves to that rubbish; to wrong doing, to anger and envy and selfishness and greed and all that stuff. We think that’s our freedom but it’s a delusion. Freedom makes you spirit soar; freedom brings a delight to your heart – freedom is an utterly wondrous thing – you look at it and you marvel at it and you wouldn’t swap it for the world.

And as I look back on what I used to call freedom, it was none of those things – let’s be honest – cheating, stealing, gossiping, all that stuff, that’s not freedom. Paul goes on to say in Romans chapter 6, verse 19:

Let me put this in human terms because you are weak in your natural selves. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to ever increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness which leads to holiness.

When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefit did you reap at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? Those things resulted in death but now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness and the result is eternal life. See, the wages of sin are death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.

And what Paul is saying here is about swapping a bad slavery for a good slavery. See, at some point, Jesus comes knocking on your door with an invitation – an invitation to give your life to Him. For some people that happened years ago and perhaps it’s happening to someone right now as I speak – and in our hearts we say to Him, “Yes, yes, that’s what I want; I want Jesus. I want to give my life over to Him,” and yet we can do that and still be slaves to sin.

We have a decision to make. Are we going to give every part of our lives over to Him? All those things I used to do – there is no place for that in my life anymore. It’s a radical thought – we have been slaves to them for a lifetime – giving them up, that’s hard – that’s a sacrifice, to become a slave to righteousness; to goodness.

You know, when we do something good it gives us an incredibly wonderful feeling on the inside. Maybe it involves sacrifice at the time but it ultimately feels great. Parents, bringing up a child is a huge sacrifice, isn’t it? But then one day you look at them and all that blood and sweat and tears and they have grown into this amazing adult – it’s a fantastic feeling.

We are going to be slaves to something in life – good or bad – and when we become slaves to goodness; to God, it is a fantastic thing – just knowing we are heading down the right path. Listen again, that’s exactly what Paul is saying:

When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness. What benefits did you reap at the time from those things of which you are now ashamed? Those things resulted in death but now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit that you reap leads to holiness and the result is eternal life.

We reap what we sow! If we are slaves to sin, we are going to reap death – here and now and into eternity – but if we are slaves to God, we give our lives over to Him; if we sacrifice for Him – let go of that rubbish for Him, we reap good things from Him; God things; eternal things.

For the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

I want to encourage you today to take stock. Who or what are you a slave to – whose patterns; whose ways – the way of death or the way of life? Choose life – choose life for Christ’s sake – choose freedom from sin and death and a glorious, wondrous slavery to God.

It’s an incredible paradox because it’s only as we give over every part of our lives, our thoughts and dreams and resources and what we say and what we do … everything, that we discover the freedom of life in Jesus Christ. Choose life, for Christ’s sake.

The Inner Conflict

Have you ever felt torn inside between this and that; good and bad; right and wrong? Well, you wouldn’t be alone in that department. On the one hand, the grace of God is such an amazing thing – extravagant; over the top – and fancy coming up with a plan of love for you and me that involves His Son’s suffering and dying on a cross. And then along the way in life, in the face of that extravagant grace, we struggle to honour God; we struggle to lay down our selfishness and our sin and all that rubbish and that’s so discouraging; it gets us down. We get to feeling, “See, I’m just not worthy of this grace; I don’t deserve it”. Never mind that that’s the whole point about grace and you know that feeling causes so many people to drift away from God. “I blew it – I just blew it, it’s no use, I can’t live this life”, but then … then God comes along to speak about His extravagant grace.

I just want to spend a little time together exploring the story of a man who had exactly that problem; a man who it turned out, God used mightily. God commissioned him to write almost half the Books in the New Testament, and yet he had exactly that same problem as you and me; he knew so wonderfully well about the grace of God and yet he was torn between that extravagant grace on the one hand and his desires to get out there and do the wrong thing on the other – in effect rejecting God’s grace through his actions.

And it turns out God is wonderful because this man Paul, shares his dilemma with us in his letter to the Roman church which he wrote almost two thousand years ago. He writes about his inner conflict; a conflict that can tear us apart; a conflict that because of the guilt and the condemnation, we end up feeling well; it tears us apart from God.

Have a listen to what he writes – Romans chapter 7, verse 14:

We know the law is spiritual but I’m not – I’m sold as a slave into sin. I don’t understand why I do what I do. You know the stuff that I don’t want to do, I do and the stuff that I do want to do, I can’t. And if I do what I don’t want to do, ok, I agree God’s law is good. As it is, it is no longer me doing it but sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives inside of me, that is in my sinful nature, for I desire to do what is good but I just can’t do it. For what I do is not the good that I want to do, no, I end up doing the evil I don’t want to do.

Now, if I do what I don’t want to do, it’s no longer me doing it but it is sin living in me. So this is the law I find at work: when I want to do good, evil is right here with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s Word but I see another law at work in my members, waging a war against the mind and making me a prisoner to the law of sin within my members. What a wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law but in the sinful nature, a slave to the law of sin.

See the struggle? Doesn’t he put it so well? I don’t understand what I’m doing – the things I don’t want to do, I do. The things I do want to do, I can’t. And that, my friend, is a dilemma that everybody who gives their lives over to Jesus Christ faces. The old person; the old man, the old woman inside us, just doesn’t want to die.

Earlier today we looked at the fact that we have died in Christ and risen to a new life – and we have – that’s the way that God sees it – the war is won. And yet the thing that so discourages us is that we just can’t seem to fall in line some days with that amazing plan. It’s as though the old person inside us, the sinful nature, is still there rotting away, pumping its poison through our very being. And that’s what Paul writes about in that passage when he talks about this body of sin and death – how am I going to get rid of it?

What he’s referring to…he’s alluding to a Roman torture – they would strap a dead body, face to face with a living person. Imagine a corpse strapped to your front and you are face to face with this dead body and they would leave it there for days or weeks – rotting strapped to you. Who will rescue me from this body – takes on a whole new meaning?

Such a gruesome, vivid picture of our sinful nature! For me, it describes so well the guilt and condemnation that poisons me when some days I get things wrong. “What a wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore,” Romans chapter 8, verse 1, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because through Christ the law of the Spirit of Life has set me free from the law of sin and death.”

See, it’s the condemnation that pulls us away from God. We get it wrong and we think we can’t go to God; we feel condemned and that’s the wedge that sin drives between God and us.

But there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

None! Do you see the answer? The answer is the extravagant grace of God – He’s always willing to forgive. You take away the condemnation you take away the power of sin to pull us away from God.

Do you get it? All we need is the smallest grain of faith that God is a God of extravagant grace in Jesus Christ. Earlier in the programme, in Romans 6:14, we saw that sin will have no more power over you since you are not under the rule of law but under grace. It’s a double edged sword – it keeps us from sin and allows us to deal with the dilemma of sin when we stumble and fall.

Every time we stumble we can pick ourselves up, put our faith in the extravagant grace of the cross of Christ and it changes us on the inside – instead of condemnation, we discovered grace, afresh and anew and that my friend, is how God wipes the slate clean.
Sin will have no more power over you since you are not under the rule of law but under the extravagant grace of God.

God’s grace is about more than eternal life. It’s about starting to live that new life here and now. It’s about seeing change that makes life today worth living.

Life in the SpiriT

Imagine that you have been in jail for the last twenty years – a prison sentence that was the consequence of all that you had ever done wrong in your life and finally one day, comes the day for your release. You step outside, fresh new clothes, into the sunlight and finally that jail house door just kind of clangs shut behind you for the very last time. Decades of prison routine; locked in a cage at it were, and today, at this moment, you are set free.

How do you feel? What struggles are going on inside? Coming to grips with, well, with this new found freedom – what do I do now, how do I live? What does freedom actually mean? My hunch is that for someone who has been in prison for a long time and now is set free, those are questions that would reverberate inside for weeks or months, even for years afterwards. Going from captivity to freedom would of course be wonderful, but on the other hand, coming to grips with this new found freedom is going to take time – it’s a process, not an event.

Over these last few weeks we have been spending some time together looking at God’s extravagant grace – the amazing things that God has done for us. Today is the last week; the last programme in this series and I want to go on and look at the fact that God just doesn’t give us eternal life – that’s fabulous enough – but God wants that eternal life to begin now. The point of God’s extravagant grace is that we can begin to live a new life now.

Today we are going to climb the ‘Himalayas’ of the New Testament, at least that is the way one commentator describes the small passage that we are going to read today from the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Roman church, two thousand years ago. The Himalayas of the New Testament – in other words the pinnacle – a place of wonder and glory and a place where we can soar above the valleys below.

We have spent a lot of time looking at the central problem of life over these last few weeks; the problem of sin and the reason for that is that it is the central problem. God deals with it so incredibly decisively on the cross. He sees it as being so important that He sent His Son to suffer and die a brutal death to pay for our sin – to fling open the door to God; to give us access into a wonderful, intimate relationship with Him.

And that forgiveness is fantastic, but with that forgiveness, comes a whole new life; a clean slate; a fresh new start. If we want to understand grace, we just kind of look at Jesus, hanging there, bleeding on the cross; brutalised on the cross for you and me. That is extravagant grace and we step into that grace by faith.

Earlier in that letter to the Romans, chapter 5, verse 1, Paul writes that very thing. He says:

Since we have been justified through our faith (in other words, since we have right standing with God through our faith) we now have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

But stepping into that grace is a bit like, well….it’s a bit like stepping out of that jail; a jail of our own making; a jail of the soul and the spirit; a jail in which sin kept us bound up – now God forgives that sin. We step out of that jail, out there into the bright sunlight of His extravagant grace.

But now we have to come to grips with the fact that we have a new life. So let’s go to this “Himalayas of the New Testament” – Romans chapter 8 – if you’ve got a Bible, go and grab it, open it up, go to Romans chapter 8 – come and climb the ‘Himalayas’ with me to see what Paul writes about the freedom and the new life that comes through this new found grace. Free from all the rules and all the guilt that bound us up before.

Let’s look at it – Romans chapter 8, beginning at verse 1, Paul writes:

Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of Life has set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do, in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful man, to be a sin offering. And so He condemned sin in sinful man in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

You see, for all the time before Jesus came, God’s people lived in His promises but they had to follow the rules – the law. You see, rules don’t actually help us, they just tell us what we are doing wrong – that’s what Paul is saying here. Jesus came to do stuff that the law couldn’t do. The law doesn’t solve anything – it doesn’t fix the problem of our sin – it simply helps us to know that we are sinning.

The rules are what condemn us. Instead Jesus comes and solves the problem. And it’s a problem that He solves through His outrageous grace.

For what the law was powerless to do, in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending His own Son, in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so He condemned sin in sinful man.

That’s what He did – Jesus solves the problem the law couldn’t.

But do you see the end bit of that passage? It begins to talk about a different life. This is for people who don’t live according to the sinful nature any more but according to the Spirit – the Spirit of God in us, leading us and guiding us and challenging us and stretching us. Instead of being led by our own desires and passions, being led by God Himself.

And that freedom requires change, otherwise, the thing that got us into jail in the first place will drag us right back there again. That’s exactly what Paul goes on to say. In Romans 8, verse 5, he says:

Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires but those who live according to the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace. The sinful mind is hostile to God. It doesn’t submit to God’s law nor can it. But those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God.

Paul is talking about what we would call ‘changing our minds’. Setting our minds on the things that we desire or setting our minds on what God desires – it’s a simple choice and there are simple consequences – death or life.

But how do we get that life? How do we stand on top of Mount Everest and look out on the glory of God’s creation and know that we are one with Him, living our lives for Him, delighting in Him? Where do we get the power to do that – because neither you nor I can climb that mountain on our own?

Paul goes on to tell us in Romans chapter 8 beginning at verse 9. He says:

You however, are controlled not by that sinful nature but by the Spirit if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone doesn’t have the Spirit of Christ he doesn’t belong to Christ but if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who lives in you.

See the very same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead – when we accept God – that same Spirit brings new life into us. Theologians call it ‘sanctification’ – I call it ‘rehabilitation’. When we have been in an accident, you know, you can’t do rehab on your own. You go there and someone with the skills and the ability and the wisdom takes you through the process of rehabilitation. It takes both – the physiotherapist and the person – they have to co-operate.

And it’s the same with God – He doesn’t want us to do it on our own. He wants us to allow ourselves to be led by the Spirit of God.

Therefore, brothers we have an obligation but it is not according to the sinful nature to live according to that for if you live according to the sinful nature, you’ll die but if you live by the Spirit you will put to death the misdeeds of the body and you will live because those who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God.

You didn’t receive a spirit that makes you a slave again; a slave of fear but you received a Spirit of sonship and by Him we cry, “Abba, Father”. The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit, that we are God’s children – now if we are His children, then we are His heirs – heirs of God, co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in His sufferings so that we also may share in His glory.

That’s an awesome thing! That’s what the extravagant grace of God is all about – setting us free and then being there in the thick of it, to help us live life.

A Future Glory

So much of life seems to be a trade-off between enjoying ourselves today or sacrificing in the here and now for something in the future. Any athlete training for the Olympics knows that; any student studying at school knows that; anyone in the process of losing weight definitely knows that; anyone saving to buy a home knows that; anyone putting money aside for their retirement knows that. It’s a pattern that is repeated over and over and over again in life – you sacrifice now, you reap the rewards later.

And yet, when we hear the gentle whisper of God’s Spirit in our hearts calling us to Him; calling us to give us our new lives and to give those lives over to Jesus who died for us, all we can think about sometimes is, “Oh, what’s that going to cost me? Well, if I follow Jesus with all my heart, it will cost me this and that. No, I don’t want to do that.” Sometimes we don’t even think about it that clearly. We just kind of reject “a boots and all” surrender to Jesus because of the cost, without weighing up the future. It’s true isn’t it? We are so focused on the here and now – it’s a “here and now kind of world”.

Think about it – the economy; the share market reward is what? Current earnings! Sure they look at projected earnings in valuing a stock – perhaps the next quarter or the one after that but people don’t much think about long term value any more. It’s what I can get out of it today. The consumer economy – buy this, buy that, get my fix today. I want it now – “buy it on credit; buy it anyway you can; have it all now” is the message the advertisers throw at us – but what about next year or the year after – what about a future, a career, a life and an eternity? What about that, huh?

I was sharing the other day on the programme that recently I have lost a bit of weight; a lot of weight. Now I have got a slow metabolism – I love my food – I grew up in a European household – I learned to cook early on, so I was carrying around this weight and I always rationalised it away. “Oh, well, you know, I’ll do it one day.” Well, I just turned forty nine, next year I turn fifty – how many “one days” are there for an overweight fifty year old, working as long and as hard as I am?

I went to the doctor and did the blood tests and he said, “Listen, you want cancer, you want a stroke, you want diabetes, you want liver disease, you want heart attack – keep doing what you are doing because that’s where you are going.” Weight significantly increases the risk of all of those, particularly at my age. The blood tests just had a few warning signs in them and so I made a decision now – I either lose weight or I die young – it’s a simple choice for me as an almost fifty year old.

It was a decision between eating or drinking whatever I wanted today and dying young or making the sacrifice through diet and exercise and living longer and healthier with more energy. Took me a while but I chose the sacrifice and I have been back to the doctor and he said, “Berni, you have added at least twenty years to your life.”

Every pound was a sacrifice and a struggle but you think it was worth it? Absolutely! See we need to get away from being so “here and now” focussed and lift our gaze and think about the future, especially about eternity, because that is a huge future. Eternity is a very long time and God by His grace has made the most wondrous provision for eternity and yet there are some struggles and some sacrifices here and now. We have been talking about those over these last few weeks in this series called, “Extravagant Grace“.

We are going to finish that series off today with a glimpse of eternity. Come with me and see what the Apostle Paul has to say about that very thing, in the context of God’s extravagant grace. Come on, Romans chapter 8, verse 18. He says:

I consider our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed. The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.

For creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice but by the will of the One who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of child-birth, right up to the present time. Not only so but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is not hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait patiently for it.

I love the way Paul describes that tension between the here and now and what is to come. Today’s suffering and sacrifice and tomorrows glory – even though we can’t see it – we hope for it. We have all felt that: the burdens, the tiredness sometimes, the longing for eternal rest, a future with God in Christ forever and ever.

And this present time, he says it’s almost like a time of child-birth – pains and pangs going on for what seem to be like an eternity. And you know what we want to do? We have the overwhelming desire sometimes to end the suffering. We feel like there would be a whole bunch less suffering if we just go with the flow – live life and enjoy life, “eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die” kind of life style.

And yet, look around at all the people living that sort of a life and there is no deep satisfaction in that. What’s the answer? Jesus Christ, God’s extravagant grace, all heading towards an eternity with Him. We long for that, we rejoice in that, we hope for that, we take that joy and we let it grow in our hearts – the joy of knowing where life is headed – the joy of knowing God’s eternal perspective paid for and purchased by Jesus on that cross. Extravagant grace … what extravagant grace!

Let that grow in your heart today. Jesus is the answer; grace is the answer. The whole world looks at this from a different perspective – we get to look at from an eternal perspective. We get to put today’s suffering in an eternal context as a step along the way to eternity.

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him – who have been called according to His purpose. For those who God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that he might be the first born among many brothers. And those whom He predestined He also called, those whom He called, He also justified, those whom He justified, He also glorified.

See, the end game is the glory of God for eternity. God wants to bless us now but that’s just a shadow of what is to come through God’s extravagant grace.

Taking it Personally

I’m going to finish up this series that I have called “Extravagant Grace”, back where we started off at the beginning, in the first programme a few weeks back. It was sparked by a pastor in Bukavu, in the Democratic Republic of Congo who wrote to me recently and this is what he said, “We appreciate very much your programmes but many of our people are traumatised by war. They have become like children in their thinking – in reality they need some “milk” teaching to grow up as children Christians as well as ‘meat’ teaching we are feeding them as adult Christians.”

And that really made me think how easy it is to gloss so quickly over the centre piece of what Christianity and what God is all about – the Gospel; the Good New; the fact that God created us, we turned our backs on Him and what we deserve is death – we deserve eternal separation from Him. And yet He sent Christ; He sent Jesus and Jesus came to pay the price so that we could have a new life now and an eternal life forever and ever. It’s a wondrous story; a story of extravagant grace.

But so often, you know, we fail to make the connection between God’s story of extravagant grace and our need for that grace. So often we have a need in life; things aren’t quite going right; we’re not satisfied; we have problems in relationships or we’re looking for blessing from God and it’s not coming. And we chase our tails round and round and round, trying to have that need met; that need dealt with; that need fulfilled.

We chase after this, we chase after that, we consult this person; we consult that person – never making the connection between the problem and the cause – the symptom and the disease.

I lived most of my life like that – truly, until finally, God got my attention and said “The problem in your life Berni, is sin.” The problem in my life was that I had rejected Him and no matter how many Asprins I took to stop the pain; no matter how many Band Aids I stuck over the top to stop the bleeding, things weren’t going to change until I let Him deal with the disease.

And so I gave my life to Him – I turned away from all the things that I had done wrong. And so many people, they think religion is going to do it, rituals, rules – no, those things don’t work.

The only thing that works is God’s forgiveness as we accept Jesus in faith and what He has done on the cross. And then God sends His Spirit and puts His Spirit in us, His Spirit brings the deep healing; His Spirit transforms our lives. I know! When it came to being a sinner, I was a sinner amongst sinners. My life was so low; so selfish and yet, there in that place, He reached out to me by His grace, through His Son.

Perhaps that’s what He is doing with you right now – I don’t know. I don’t know where you are at, but He does. And I want to pray with you right now – if you have never accepted Jesus into your life; you’ve never put your faith in Him, you can do that right now. Why don’t you pray with me?

Father, I just come to You. I’ve heard the message of Your extravagant grace. I’m sorry for the things that I’ve done wrong – please forgive me – I turn away from them now. I believe that Jesus has died and risen again, that you forgive me. I believe that you send Your Spirit into me now. Father, I don’t understand everything but today I give my whole life to You, in Jesus name.

Can I encourage you, if you prayed that prayer that you get with some other Christians in a Bible based church, to worship God, to live your life for Him and it will never be the same again? You will be amazed with what God will do and how He will use you. We are never too old, we are never too this or that.

He is a God of extravagant grace and my prayer for you is that you will let that grace work out in your life. He will do so much more in you and through you than you could ever have hoped for or imagined.

God is a God of extravagant grace!