Romans chapter 4, I've called these remarks audacious grace. That came to my mind and I Being
so limited as I am, I decided maybe I ought to go back and
look at what the definition of that word is, audacious. And it seemed to be defined by
two thoughts, one of them being bold, daring, courageous. But then also it's defined by
this statement, showing an impudent lack of respect. And when I thought about that,
I thought maybe that is the reason that hopefully the Lord brought
it to my mind. because that is exactly what
grace is, and especially the gospel of grace to self-righteous
sinners, and especially to those that make up so many in our day
who are nothing but works-oriented false religionists. The gospel of the grace of God
comes to them not only as something bold, but as having an impudent,
I guess you would say, lack of respect of what they claim to
be. Paul and David both use the word
blessed. I hear that a lot by men and
women in our day involved in the religions of our day. They say we are blessed. I know this, I know David was
blessed. He was a blessed man. And by the Spirit of God, he
describes and Paul uses the same description to define those who
are blessed. And they are only blessed who
are blessed so by divine, omnipotent, sovereign grace. If you would look in Romans chapter
4, beginning at verse 6, Paul refers back to this man David. Almost everyone knows about David. He says, even as David also describes
the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputed righteousness
without works, saying, blessed are they whose iniquities are
forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the
Lord will not impute sin. And what you'll find is if you
look back to Psalm 32, you'll find that Paul is actually quoting
what this man David says in that Psalm in verse 1 and verse 2. He says, blessed is he whose
transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the
man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit
there is no God. Now we know by this that Paul
and David both had the same God. And not only that, they had the
same gospel and the same way of salvation, which is by the
grace of God. He's actually saying something
like this, oh, the blessedness. And Paul and David say that the
truly blessed are blessed or happy because of something God
did. We can never be blessed and we
can never be truly and eternally happy based on something we did
or do, but only based on what God did. But the problem is and the reason
why grace is such an audacious word to men is because men and
women by nature hate the God of grace. And they hate him because by
nature they hate grace. You say, how could anybody hate And yet, this is exactly what
the Bible teaches. This is what God says, that we,
by nature, are enmity toward God, and He is the God of all
grace. And when it boils down to the
lowest essence, We find that men and women by nature hate
grace and that he purposed, God purposed to save David as he
does all of his elect, a great sinner, all of his grace. And most, when they think of
David, they think of what they view as his great sin. That awful Bathsheba affair. They remember something about
the fact that he committed adultery with her. And they remember the
fact that he also arranged the murder of her husband Uriah. And self-righteous, sinful, religious
flesh repels the notion that God did not punish David for
these things. But I'll tell you this morning,
it goes farther than that. Actually, he did not punish David
for any of his sins. Not just the worst of his sins,
but he did not punish David for any of his sins. Now we don't believe if we know
anything about the truth as someone would accuse us of believing. We know that God did not deny
his sin. And we know that he did not condone
his sin in any way. And even as his child, he chastened
David for his sin. But he did not impute David's
sin to him. Turn over to 2 Samuel chapter
12 and listen. While we find Paul is laying
this out by the Spirit's enablement in a much clearer language maybe,
we find that Nathan in that day virtually said the same thing. 2 Samuel chapter 12, listen in
verse 13. And David said unto Nathan, I
have sinned against the Lord. Not only was David's failure
a great moral failure, but it was, as all sin is, against God. Somebody said there's no way
that any sin can be a little sin because all sin is against
God and there's no little God to sin against. I have sinned
against the Lord and Nathan said unto David, the Lord also hath
put away thy sin. In other words, in those few
words, we find not only the confession of sin, the reality of David's
sin, but also we find how the God of grace dealt with David's
sin. And if we are to have our sins
dealt with, if we are to receive grace from God, then it has to
be in the same way and on the same basis. The Lord also hath
put away thy sin, thou shalt not die. And there's something about that.
Whatever lurking pieces, if you will, or parts
of our nature, what self-righteous indignation
we see when we see our sins in others as David did. You see, when Nathan began to
describe to David his own sins under the guise of it having
been someone else who did it, he rose up in this righteous
indignation, really self-righteous indignation, and he said, just
tell me who it is, the man's name, that did this, I'll have
him killed. Nathan said, you are the man. And the truth is, when we begin
to look and to find fault and to point out and to really be
filled with some kind of indignation concerning what we see in others,
and this is a really dangerous time for us to do that. Because there's some awful things
that go on. But the truth is, though we may
have been restrained by God, to not to have actually done
some of the things we hear being done in our day, it is in our
hearts to do them, and most likely in our minds and in our intents,
we have done them, and only God's restraining hand that we haven't. He could say to every one of
us, thou art the man. But you see, God did not forgive
David because he repented, though he did. And he did not repent
because God forgave him. It's the only way that a sinner
can be forgiven. in able to repent and that is
because of the grace of God in the Lord Jesus Christ and Him
crucified. As a matter of fact, according
to what Paul says here and according to what David says here, God
in grace acted toward him in three absolutely sovereign acts. Look in verse 6. It says that God imputed to him,
he imputed to him righteousness without works. Now, number one, he's the only
one that can do that. God, in a sovereign act of his
will, imputed to David, as he did to Paul, this righteousness
apart from and without David or Paul's works. He made him
the righteousness of God in Christ. That is an act of God. Alright, the second act that
he did was that he forgave him saying, blessed are they whose
iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered. He did frankly,
fully, and eternally forgive David of all his sins. You say, well he can't do that.
No, you see that's what the gospel is about. It's about what God
has already done. And forgiveness is a word that
sometimes is translated remission. They are inseparable. So God
forgave his sin or remitted his sin on the basis of the shed
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ on the basis of that atonement,
which he made that put away his sin. And then the third act of God
is in verse 8. He says, blessed is the man to
whom the Lord will not impute sin. He will not, he did not reckon
or account or charge to David his sins. Now isn't that something
that is really amazing? That the very thing that God
describes by the apostle and by this man David as being the
very blessedness and the basis of all blessing from God You won't find anybody who talks
about them being blessed in our day talk about it. That solely God did, and certainly
through and by the Lord Jesus Christ and Him crucified, He
did in these three acts that which was necessary for him to
be blessed. He made him righteous in Christ. He forgave him fully in Christ
and he did not impute David's sin to him but rather laid them
on Christ. Now men can stand and they can
pontificate all they want to over whether that's a legal term or an accounting term. I hear this all the time. Well,
what God does here in grace, though Paul lays it out and David
lays it out really in kind of three basic acts of God, and
says that a man or a woman in Christ is blessed on that basis. They say, well, it's more than
that. It's really, it's more than just
a legal term or it's more than just an accounting term. But let me tell you what the
truth is. It's a biblical term. It is a biblical term. And this is why I use it. If I use the language of scripture,
if I have, as Paul says, our gospel, if I rest in the hope
that David rested in, then I have to believe it. I have to use
it. And quite frankly, I delight
in it. I delight in it. You see, men can just say something
like this. They can say, well, God wouldn't
be just, or He would be just if He did this, or if He did
that, or the other thing. But really, the truth is, we
only know what is just by what God does. We only know what he's
done based on what he says he's done. And what this says is,
this is what he's already done. He determined not to impute to
them the sins of his people. He determined to forgive them
and remit their sins based on the dying of the Lord Jesus Christ
and He determined and did make them or account them righteous,
not just righteous but the very righteousness of God in Christ. So you see the truth of the matter
is That grace, the basis for all grace happens outside of
us and apart from us. and without our help, and without
all the things that men and women are always told to do or don't
do, God laid David's iniquities on the Lord Jesus Christ and
he put them away, all together away, by the sacrifice of himself. Now I just find myself sometimes
shaking my head and saying, well did he do that or didn't he? The writer of Hebrews says it
like this, for then he must often have suffered since the foundation
of the world. He's comparing or rather contrasting
Christ as the great high priest of his people with all those
Old Testament priests. In other words, if he were no
more of a person than they were, if his sacrifice was no more
a sacrifice than theirs, then he, like them, would have had
to do it over and over again. But, but, now once, in the end of
the world, hath he appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice
of himself. Do you ever think about that?
By the sacrifice of himself. And when the apostle uses that
pronoun in the reference to Christ, our great high priest, he's talking
about his unique, sinless, perfect self with the sacrifice of himself. The apostle says in another place,
he offered himself without spot to God. He suffered the just
for the unjust. So what we find in scripture
is that we are taught, that we are told of God. That the Lord
Jesus Christ being who he was accomplished all that he did. God always looked to his son. All that is accomplished was
accomplished for David and for Paul and for all who will ever
enter God's holy presence because Christ was David's surety And
as David's substitute, he bore the penalty of David's sins in
his own body on the tree. He came to put away sin. He either put it away or it's
still there. He came to make an end of sin. And David is forgiven of his
sins, and God counts him righteous in the Lord Jesus Christ, and
all of his grace is all in the Lord Jesus. You know the Israelites, they
were always saying something like this to Moses. You just tell us what God wants
us to do, and we'll do it. And he told them, but they never did it. They never
received, even on that natural human level, as his earthly people. They never received one blessing based on what they did, based
on their performance. So rather than taking and running
to Israel or running to the law that God gave them, which showed
us that they never received anything based on their obedience to the
law, that all showed that salvation had to be by God's grace. Always by God's grace. And not only that, but God also
gave an illustration of His grace further to David. This is kind of where it really
gets almost, in one sense, too good
to be true, and in the other sense, it just really brings
out the self-righteousness in men and women. Guess what God
did? Here is David, the adulterer,
David the murderer, and all that was involved in that situation
with Bathsheba. And here it is, the prophet is
telling him, the Lord has put away your sin, you're not going
to die. But look back in 2 Samuel chapter
12 again. And look down a little bit farther
in 2 Samuel chapter 12 to verse 24. Well, surely, what's going to happen now? It says in David, comforted Bathsheba
his wife, and went in unto her, and lay with her, and she bare
a son, and he called his name Solomon, and the Lord loved him,
and he sent by the hand of Nathan the prophet, and he called his
name Jedidiah, because of the Lord. Well, I guess in the matter of
that great sin that the Lord in His grace is, He's not going
to let David die. He's going to forgive that sin
and all that. Not only that, He's going to bless him more. You say, what do you mean? Well,
David takes Bathsheba to his wife and she bears him another
son. And his name is Solomon. But when Nathan the prophet comes, Nathan calls him Jedidiah. Why does he call him Jedidiah?
Well, Jedidiah means for Jehovah's sake. You mean to tell me that God
is not only going to forgive his sin in the matter of Bathsheba,
in the matter of Uriah, but God is actually going to further
bless him? That's grace. That's grace. A child was born and they named
him Solomon. But when Nathan came this time,
he saw that child, he said, he's Jedidiah. Because you have him, you have
this blessing on the same basis that you had that forgiveness
of your sin, and that is for Jehovah's sake. For Jesus' sake. And later, David,
he would show mercy to that son of Jonathan by the name of Mephibosheth. You remember what Jonathan's
name was? What it meant? Whom Jehovah gave. When David rose to that throne, he looked around and others were
thinking, I'm sure, well, he's fixing to wipe out everybody
that ever turned a hand against him, especially those of the
household of Saul. But all he did was show himself
a picture of how God in his grace operates. He said, Is there not one yet remaining
in the household of Saul? He could have said, in the household
of those who've shown themselves to be my enemy. Is there not one remaining in
the household of Saul that I might show a kindness to for Jonathan's
sake? You see, God saves His people for Jesus' sake. He saves all His people in the
Lord Jesus Christ. He saves them through His shed
blood for their sins. And anyone a stepfather would,
David, And with Bathsheba, he listed
Bathsheba in the official genealogy of our Lord. Surely we'll try to put that
figure out of the genealogy. We'll shake that one out of the
family tree. We won't include her on the list. Matthew's given the genealogy
of our Lord, it says, and Jesse begot David the king, and David
the king begot Solomon of her that had been the wife of Uriah. Oh me. We can sit around and we can
say, well, You sure that's grace? I've never
been an adulterer. I've never done this. I've never
plotted anybody's death. I've never done this and all
that. Let me tell you something. If you're ever saved, and God is the only Savior, Christ
himself is the Savior of sinners. and it'll be by grace, it'll
be audacious grace. That's why upright, upstanding
religious folks who trust in themselves that they're righteous
as the Pharisees did and despised others, that's why it is such an impudent message, grace. I'm telling you this, we're the same kind of sinners
David was and Paul was. And if we receive the least blessing
from God and especially the saving mercies of God, it will have
to be by grace. Let me read you how God describes
David before David's fall. This is how he described David
to Saul, who was then king. But now thy kingdom shall not
continue. The Lord has sought him a man
after his own heart. And the Lord hath commanded him
to be captain over his people, because thou hast not kept that
which the Lord commanded thee. Well, when you get over in the book
of Acts in the New Testament, and the apostle is describing
what took place. Some things in the life of David
and Saul. He said in Acts 13, and when
he had removed him, he raised up unto them David to be their
king, to whom also he gave testimony and said, I've found David the
son of Jesse, a man after my own heart. You see, grace made David a man
after God's own heart before the world began. And grace kept
David a man after God's own heart even in the midst of the most
wicked of his sin. And even as Paul comes and those
writers there in the book of Acts, guess where grace has him? Still, the man after God's own
heart. And so when every sinner that
God saves, when all his people are gathered up, when that last
stone is set in this building called the church, he said it will be with shoutings
of grace, grace. They will for all eternity be
to the praise of the glory of his grace.