Good morning. Let's open this
morning's service with hymn number 22 in your spiral gospel hymns
hymnal. Number 22, let's all stand together. We were ruined by the fall Adam's
sin defiles us all By our deed as by our birth We deserve the
law's great curse Helpless, hopeless, sinners we Never can our souls
retrieve But the blessed Son of God Came as man in flesh and
blood He fulfilled the lost demands And in death stretched out his
hands On the cross of Calvary Christ redeemed and set us free
In the time which God had set, the Spirit came for His elect
to regenerate and fall from the ruin of the fall. By His power
and by His grace, we were born for God's own praise. ? Now your purpose we fulfill
? ? Saved according to your will ? ? Sing this song of joyful
praise ? ? For the glory of your grace ? ? Blessed holy triune
God ? ? Hear our praise through Christ our Lord ? Please be seated. morning for the glory of His grace. Let's open our Bibles together
to the book of Colossians, Colossians chapter 1. I've titled this message, Grace
Be Unto You. Grace Be Unto You. What is grace? And what does God's grace produce? That's what I want us to see
in the first chapter, the first few verses of the book of Colossians. Let's go to the Lord together
and ask his blessings. Our Heavenly Father, once again,
you have blessed us with the opportunity of worship. You've
enabled us to sing praises to the glory of your grace. Lord, we are completely dependent
upon your grace for the hope of our salvation and for all
that we enjoy in this life. We know, Lord, that it is a gift.
And so, Lord, we offer to you the fruit of our lips, which
is all we have to offer our thanksgiving. Lord, we thank you for your Holy
Spirit. We thank you for the promise
that you've made to send him in power and to enlighten the
eyes of our understanding and to give faith to your people. Lord, we ask that you'd be pleased
to do that this morning and that you would reveal to us the glory
of your son and enable us through faith to rest our hope and our
souls in him and on him. For it's in the precious name
of the Lord Jesus Christ that we pray. Amen. You have your Bibles open to
Colossians chapter 1, we'll begin reading at verse 1. Paul, an
apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Timotheus, our
brother, to the saints and faithful brethren in Christ, which are
at Colossae, grace be unto you. and peace from God our Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ. We give thanks to God and the
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since
we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and the love which you
have to all the saints. For the hope which is laid up
for you in heaven, whereof you heard before in the word of the
truth of the gospel which has come unto you, as it is in the
world, and bringing forth fruit as it doth also in you since
the day you heard of it and knew the grace of God in truth. What does grace, true grace,
produce? There are several things in this
passage that we can be encouraged with. But before we do, I want
us to identify what true grace is. A lot of people talk about
grace. Most folks that talk about grace interpret it to mean tolerance. You know, we are gracious people
because we tolerate everything. When God speaks of grace, often
we have to be somewhat redundant and add
adjectives to grace in order to define true grace from false
grace. We call it free grace. That's
redundant. Grace is free. We call it sovereign
grace. The only grace that there is
comes from our reigning sovereign. It is up to him to give that
grace to whomsoever he wills. And so the grace that's true,
the grace that we place our hope in is free and it's sovereign. Grace has been interpreted, has
been defined as unmerited favor. And certainly grace is unmerited. We can't earn it and we don't
deserve it. But it's more than that. I shared
this illustration some time ago, I'll repeat it. If you, and I'm
not suggesting you do this, but if you stopped at an intersection,
rolled your window down, and handed someone begging for money
a dollar bill, that would be unmerited favor. They didn't
do anything to deserve it, just out of the free goodness of your
heart or ignorance of your whatever, you decided to do that. Now,
suppose that instead of rolling your window down and handing
that person a dollar bill, you instead opened your door and
invited them into your car and you took them home with you.
And you gave them a room in your house and you gave them clothes
to wear and you fed them. And then you took them down to
the bank and you put their name on all the documents of your
accounts, giving them unfettered access to all of your assets. And then you took that person
down to the courthouse and you filled out all the necessary
documents to adopt them as your own child. And to add to this
illustration, that person that you just did all that for murdered
your only child. Now that's quite a bit more than
unmerited favor, isn't it? That's what grace is. The sins
of God's people is what put the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary's
cross. He has adopted us into his family. He's given us unfettered access
to all the sweet, profitable assets of grace. And he's loved us with an everlasting
love in spite of what we did to his son. And that might even be a better
illustration, I mean a better definition than unmerited favor. Grace is in spite of. It's in
spite of. Now that's the kind of grace
I need. I need a grace that will gift me with the blessings of
God in spite of myself. And that's true grace. That's the grace that the Lord's
speaking of here. And what that grace does is it
makes those who are at enmity with God saints. It sanctifies
them and makes them holy. You see that in verse 2? It causes
them to remain faithful. They can't depart from the gospel.
This grace is a sustaining grace. It keeps them looking to Christ
for all the hope of their salvation. When God gives grace, the scripture
says the gifts of God are without repentance. In other words, he
doesn't take it back. When he gives free, sovereign,
unmerited, yes, even demerited favor to his people, It is for
all eternity, and it makes them, it makes them faithful. Notice
also that this grace makes them brethren in Christ. They all
stand equal together, having been birthed into the family
of God by the miracle of the new birth, empowered by the Holy
Spirit, Christ in you. is your hope of glory. And that's
all of grace. All of grace. The rest of verse two says, grace
be unto you and peace. This grace is electing grace.
You didn't have anything to do with what God chose to do according
to His own will and purpose before time ever began. God chose a
particular people. We didn't have anything to say
so in that. We didn't have anything to do with that. It was the covenant
of grace where God the Father chose a particular people and
God the Son entered into that covenant promise with His Father
and promised to redeem them. We didn't have anything to do
with that. We didn't have anything to do
with the successful redemption that the Lord Jesus Christ accomplished
on Calvary's cross. He actually redeemed his people.
We are justified by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's
grace. In spite of us. In spite of us. Regenerating grace. We didn't
have anything to do with that moment in time when in hearing
the gospel, we came to see for the first time in our lives who
the Lord Jesus Christ is and who we are and our need for Him
and brought to put all the hope of our salvation on His glorious
person and on His finished work. That's all of grace. Sanctifying
grace, sustaining grace. He keeps us from falling. And
glorifying grace. He presents us faultless before
the throne of God with much joy. This is grace! Anything that doesn't involve
the full act of grace from election to glorification is not true
grace. Any message of salvation that
requires man to do something in order for God to be able to
save him is not grace. This is true grace. And this
is what grace does. It makes them saints, it makes
them faithful, it makes them brethren in Christ. and it gives them peace with
God. You see that in verse 2? This
is the product of grace. Now, men want peace of mind. I want peace of mind when I'm
disturbed or upset. I want peace of mind. Everybody
wants peace of mind. People want peace in relationships. What a disconcerting thing it
is when there's not peace between friends or family members. We
desire that sort of peace. Men talk about world peace. Don't
think that's ever going to happen, but the best that we can experience
is the absence of war, and that's a good thing. And that's the
kind of peace that men look to and want and do all they can
to attain. But the Lord Jesus Christ said,
my peace I give unto thee, not as the world gives. That's all
worldly peace. What kind of peace was the Lord
Jesus Christ talking about? He was talking about having peace
with God. How can a man be right with God? How can I be justified
in the very presence of God? How can I have peace with God? And the scripture says, we have
peace with God through the Lord Jesus Christ. Now here's what
grace brings. Grace brings peace with God.
And if you have peace with God, you know what? You're just at
peace. You're at peace. If the enmity that we have by
nature with God has been put away, our sin has been put away. God has put his people in Christ
and he sees them in Christ. He's called the Prince of Peace. This is what grace, this is what
the grace of God brings. The grace of God and the Lord
Jesus Christ brings us to Christ. And in Christ, there is now therefore
no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. We are justified
in the sight of God. We can come, as the scripture
says, boldly before the throne of grace. And that word boldly
doesn't mean with some sort of self-confidence, it means confident
in Christ. We are sure and certain that
the Lord Jesus Christ accomplished everything necessary in order
for us to enter into the very presence of God. And the Bible
says we have acceptance in the Beloved. In the Beloved. That's the piece I'm interested
in. That's the only piece that's going to matter when all those
other needs for peace go away. to have
peace with God. In order to have peace with God,
you and I need a sin bearer. We need one to bear our sins
in his body and put them away by the sacrifice of himself.
We need a substitute. We need one to stand in our stead
before God and represent us successfully and faithfully before a holy
God, the Lord Jesus Christ, the only one that can do that. I
am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life. No man can come
to the Father except by me. This is what true grace brings. We're in need of a savior. And
here's the good news. And this is a faithful saying,
and worthy of all acceptation, Christ Jesus came into the world
to save sinners. And he saves every one of them.
He saves every sinner. And he only saves sinners. Now,
contrary to what most people think about being a sinner, most
people think that sin is just a behavioral problem. You know,
sin is just, you know, the bad things we do that we feel guilty
for. But scripture is clear that sin is our nature. It's what
we are by nature. The Lord shows you that you have
no righteousness whatsoever. You have no claim on God. You
have nothing that you can present before a holy God to sway him
to accept you and to, no. No, sinners can't do that. Sinners
need a savior. Sinners need one who is holy,
harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners, and higher than
the heavens, one who is able to to speak to God on our behalf
and present himself as all of our righteousness. And that's
what grace brings. Grace brings us to Christ, to
have peace with God. And notice in verse two, this
is what grace be unto you. This is true grace. Grace brings
peace and it brings peace from God. You might hear someone say, have
you made your peace with God? Well, what are you going to do
to make peace with God? You might be able to make peace with another
man with gifts and apologies and, and whatever. What are you
going to do to make peace with God? You know, I hear the world, the
religious world talking about here, here's, here's the, here's
the way they present the gospel. Lord, I know you want to save
me, and I believe you have the power to save me, and I know
I've offended you, but I'm going to let you forgive me. I'm going
to give you permission to forgive me. Is that how it works? Try that with a man and see if
it works. No, it doesn't work that way. You don't offend someone
and then say, I know I've offended you and I know you want to forgive
me, and now I'm gonna give you permission to forgive me. It
doesn't work like that, does it? It doesn't work that way
with God either. No, grace is sovereign. I will
have mercy upon whom I will have mercy, and whom I will, I'll
harden. Our God, holds grace in his hands. So how do I know that I'm a recipient
of that grace? Well, all you can do is is plead
for it, Lord, I have no claim on grace. I have nothing that
I can present to you to obligate you to forgive me. We say with
the leper, here's what that leper said, Lord, I know, I know that
thou canst make me whole if thou wilt. I know that you can make
me whole if you will to make me whole. You see, the religious
world says, well, I know God wants to save everybody. He wants
to make everybody whole. He's just waiting for us to let
him do it. That's a lie. It's just not true. And that
dethrones God. What it does is it puts man on
the throne of God. And 2 Thessalonians 2 says that
that's exactly what man has done. He's put himself on the throne
of God. Our God reigns. and he will not
share his glory with another, and will not get any credit for
our salvation. He's gonna get it all. He's gonna
do it all by himself, and he's gonna get all the glory. And
that's where we are. Lord, I'm a sinful man. I need mercy. I need grace. I know you're able. Would you
be willing Would you be willing to save me? No man can come unto me except
the Father which sent me draw him. Now there's grace, drawing
grace, redeeming grace, the grace that causes us to see our need
for grace and our need for Christ. Grace is dependence. This thing, you know, this thing
of grace and faith, men present it as if it's some sort of character
trait that causes one man to stand head and shoulders above
another. No, the way up is down. It's just the opposite. Suffer
the little children to come unto me, for such is the kingdom of
God. We come to Him as a dependent
child. And we need Him. This all comes
from God. Grace comes from God. Faith comes
from God. Faith is not something that we
produce that activates the grace of God. For by grace are you
saved through faith. And that faith is not of yourself.
It's a gift of God. Aren't you thankful? Everything's
a gift of God. Our righteousness is a gift of
God. Our sanctification is a gift
of God. It's all by God's free grace.
This is true grace. And this is what grace produces.
It comes from God. Hope, that's a gift from God. Comfort, that's a gift from God. Faithfulness, that's a gift from
God. We can't produce any of this.
This is the good news of the gospel, that it puts men in a
place of absolute, complete dependence upon God to meet their need. You hear foolish men talk about
Christians being the hand of God and the feet of God and the
eyes of God, and we're out doing the work of God, as if God somehow
needed us. That is so foolish. He doesn't need you and me for
anything. Not a single thing. You and I completely depend upon
Him for everything. For everything. Oh, do you need
grace? Do you need true grace? This
kind of grace? This kind of grace that comes
from God? That leaves you out of the picture. as far as making
any contribution to the blessings that God gives. Notice also in verse two, this
grace which comes to us from God, our father, and he's our
father. The Lord Jesus Christ, when he
rose from the dead, told Mary, go tell the disciples, I go into
my father and to your father. The Lord Jesus Christ has a very
unique relationship with the heavenly father. And I don't
know of a place in the Bible where the singular pronoun is
used on the part of a believer. He's our father, he's your, he's
not, Only the Lord Jesus Christ approaches him as my father,
my father. We have, we have God as our father
through the Lord Jesus Christ. Look at the rest of this verse.
From God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible says
that all the promises of God in him, in Christ, are yea and
in him are amen. All the distribution of God's
grace, all the blessings of God come to his people through his
son. His son gets the glory. He's given everything to his
son. Without the Lord Jesus Christ, there is no grace. Without the
Lord Jesus Christ, there is no peace with God. Without the Lord
Jesus Christ, we cannot know God. We know him in the person
of the Lord Jesus Christ. And in Christ, we have all of
God that there is, all of God. Another illustration that I love
is that story of the wealthy man and his son who enjoyed traveling
and collecting very expensive art. And one day the father, the son,
died. And the father grieved the loss
of his son and had all these expensive paintings in the home,
and then sometime later the father died. And they had an auction,
an auction for all these, and people from all over the world
came to this auction to buy this exquisite art. And the auctioneer,
the first piece of art that the auctioneer held up was a portrait
of the son. And these people came to buy
this rare art. They didn't come to buy that.
And the auctioneer started off and came down, down, down. No
one wanted to buy. They were just, let's get to
the good stuff. Until the butler of the household in the back
of the room raised his hand and bought the picture of the sun
for just a small amount of money. As soon as that transaction was
made, the auctioneer dropped the gavel and said, the auction's
over. And everyone was confused. What
do you mean the auction's over? How can it be? And the auctioneer
said, it's here in the will. The father left it in his will
that whoever purchased the picture of his son got all the rest of
the art. And that's what we have in Christ.
You have Christ, you have all of God. You have all the blessings
of God, all the promises of God are bound up in the person of
the Lord Jesus Christ. The problem is no one's interested
in that. We want the good, we want the rare stuff. We want
the expensive stuff. We want the good stuff. We're
not interested in him. God has put all things in his
hands. He has given him the preeminence
and he gets all the glory. Truly Christ is all and he is
in all. That my friends and my brethren
is the grace of God, God's grace. We do anything to deserve that?
Did we merit that? No, we demerited it, didn't we? All right, go back with me to
our text. This is what true grace brings. You see that at the end
of verse six, the grace of God in truth. Now that's the grace
I'm interested in. I'm not interested in man's definition
of grace. I wanna know what God says about
grace. And I'm trying to, to be faithful to what God says. We're just telling you what says
the Lord about grace. It comes from God, our Father,
and through the Lord Jesus Christ. Notice in verse three, we give
thanks to God, the Father, of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying
always for you. Here's what grace brings. You
know, you and I, we ought never to complain about anything, and
yet we do it all the time, don't we? Don't we? It's just our sinful nature just
comes out. We lose sight of the blessings
of God that we have in Christ. We lose sight of the fact that
he's working all things together for good for them that love him
and those who are called according to his purpose. We get bound
up in the things of this world and we, just like the children
of Israel in the wilderness, we murmur. We murmur against
God. It ought not to be. We ought
to be the most thankful people. Thanking God always for all things,
for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
And when Paul wrote that statement, He wasn't talking about it's
the will of God that you be thankful in all things. What that statement
means is be thankful in all things for all things are the will of
God in Christ Jesus concerning you. You see the difference? God's people can rest in knowing
that they're sovereign, rules and reigns, and that he has nothing
but good for them. And they can truly be thankful.
Thankful. Thankful for His grace. Oh, how shameful it is when we're
not thankful. We're ashamed of ourselves, aren't
we? We really are. It's really what we're doing
right now. Worship is an expression of gratitude. We've come here
this morning to express our thanksgiving to God for His grace and for
His mercy and for His accomplished work of redemption and for all
the blessings that we have for the hope of salvation and eternal
glory. This is a time of thanksgiving. Psalm 107, four times this phrase
is repeated. Oh, that men would praise the
Lord for his goodness and for his wonderful works among the
children of men. What a wonderful work he has
done. When the Lord Jesus Christ bowed his mighty head on Calvary's
cross and cried, it is finished. The work of redemption was accomplished. The blood of Christ successfully
covered all the sins of all of God's elect. Ah, what a wonderful work. What a wonderful work He continues
to do in regeneration when He sends His Spirit and makes us
willing in the day of His power. What a wonderful work. What a
wonderful work of grace He does when He convicts us of our sin
and brings us again and again and again to the feet of the
Lord Jesus Christ to do as Mary did, choose that one thing that
was needful. to hear from the Lord Jesus Christ
of his grace and of his mercy. It's a work of grace in the heart to be able to be thankful and
to rejoice. So when we're disquieted and upset Spirit of
God convicts us of our unbelief. Now, what that man said, Lord,
I do believe, oh, help thou mine unbelief. We come before the
Lord and we confess it for what it is. And then the Lord puts
a work of grace in our hearts and makes us thankful, makes
us a thankful people. Turn to me to Hebrews chapter
13. Hebrews chapter 13. Verse 15, chapter 13, verse 15, by him, That is the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, let us offer the sacrifice
of praise to God continually. And then the Lord tells us what
the sacrifice of praise is. That is the fruit of our lips
giving thanks in his name. That's the only sacrifice we
have to make. Whatever, what else are we gonna
offer God? We give thanks to his name, the fruit of our lips,
expressing our joy and our gratitude, our thankfulness for his demerited
favor. The Lord Jesus Christ said to
the Pharisees, he said, if you don't believe, I don't need you
to believe on me in order for me to be God. And if you don't
praise me, the rocks will cry out. The very rocks will cry
out. God makes rocks to praise him.
Oh, God's not dependent upon our
praise or our thanksgiving. Oh, what a blessing it is to
be able to give him that. You know, I was thinking about
all of us have experienced high maintenance relationships where
you end up doing all the giving and someone else ends up doing
all the taking. And those relationships usually
don't last very long, do they? You get tired of that and you
withdraw yourself from that sort of relationship. Aren't you glad
that the Lord doesn't withdraw himself from the highest maintenance
relationship that there has ever been. Ever been. He does all the giving and we
do all the taking and he doesn't quit. He doesn't give up. He continues. What a blessing. What a great, glorious, loving,
patient God we have. Notice also in our text that
a thankful heart is a praying heart. Prayer is an expression
of our gratitude and our dependence. That's what prayer is. Prayer
is to grace what breathing is to the body. We stay alive as
we find ourselves being moved by the Spirit of God to bow in
humble prayer. And I like what Martin Luther
said. He said, prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance. Prayer is not overcoming God's
reluctance. It is laying hold of his willingness. Laying hold of his willingness.
Prayer is not, you know, I hear people talk about, you know,
prayer warriors, you know, storming the gates of heaven and finally
persuading God to do something that he was reluctant to do.
That's not prayer. That's not prayer. Prayer is just a humble submission
of a child expressing their gratitude and their dependence upon God
and taking hold of his precious promises in Christ, taking hold
of the willingness that I am the Lord and I change not. Therefore, you sons of Jacob
are not consumed. We worship a God that's immutable. He's the same yesterday, today,
and forever. He cannot change. So what makes us think that we're
gonna change God by our prayers? Tell you what though, prayer
change you, won't it? It'll change you. It'll put you in a place. to where you're able to take
hold of His mercies and His grace and His willingness. It'll cause you to submit to
His will. It'll cause you to rejoice in His gifts. It'll cause
you to rest in His goodness. It'll cause you to glory in the
revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ. These are the things.
Now, back to our text in Colossians chapter one, and I'll finish. Grace be unto you. True grace. Free grace. Sovereign grace. Demerited grace. And peace. Peace with God. And this peace
comes from God. And it comes from the Lord Jesus
Christ. It causes thanksgiving. We give thanks to God. and the
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, praying
always for you. Come unto me, all you that labor, laboring the burden of sin, laboring
with having peace with God, Come unto me, it's what the Lord
said. All you that labor and are heavy burdened. A lot of
people laboring, but few, that word heavy burden means you're
overwhelmed with your labor. You can't labor anymore, you're
done. Come unto me all you that labor
and are heavy laden. I'll give you rest, learn of
me, take my yoke upon you. For my burden is light. Why is
the burden light? Because the Lord Jesus Christ
bore the weight of that burden when he became our sin bearer
on Calvary's cross. And now he says, my burden is
light. Oh, it'll cause your heart to leap and to rejoice, turn
your mourning into rejoicing, cause you to have peace with
God, cause you to rejoice in prayer, These are the things and many,
many more things that God's grace, true grace brings to the heart
and life of God's people. May God be gracious to us. Let's pray. Our heavenly father,
thank you for your word. Pray that you would bless it
to our hearts. Forgive us of our sin for Christ's
sake. For it's in his name we pray,
amen. All right, we'll take a break.