All right, if you would open
your Bibles to the book of 1 Corinthians chapter 15. I want to speak this morning
on the boldness of grace. And by that, I mean the boldness
that we can have because of grace. Now I've used the word boldness
because as I have told you many times my memory of most scriptures
is in the King James and that's the word that is used in many
of the scriptures that I refer to or will refer to in this message. And I like that but in our translation
sometimes it's confidence, sometimes it's assurance but Every scripture
we'll turn to, to show the kind of boldness we may have, they
all contain the same Greek word. So we're talking about the same
thing. Now in 1 Corinthians 15, beginning
at verse nine, the apostle says, for I am the least of the apostles,
and do not even deserve to be called an apostle because I persecuted
the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am
what I am. And His grace to me was not without
effect. No, I worked harder than all
of them, yet not I. but the grace of God that was
with me. Whether then it was I or they,
this is what we preach, and this is what you believe. Now there
are some who believe that boldness, confidence, assurance, is presumption. That it is only right that we
be doubtful of everything concerning our spiritual condition, and
in particular, our spiritual condition in the sight of God. They almost make a sacrament
out of their version of repentance, which involves a lot of chest-thumping, if not literally,
at least, metaphorically. And if you were
to boldly proclaim yourself to be a Christian, One of the elect
of God, redeemed by the blood of Christ, called by the Spirit
of God, made an heir of God and joint heir with Christ Jesus.
And you were to say to them that you are confident that when you
depart this life, you shall depart it to be with Christ and you
shall appear in his presence without fault and full of joy. They would say, well, that's
pretty presumptuous of you. I don't know if they'd say it, but they'd
think so. And they go so far as to believe
that their continual doubting is some kind of evidence of real
spiritual superiority, because they recognize how unworthy they
are of any of those things. Now, I keep saying they. That
principle's in us, too. It's one of those things of the
flesh with which we will struggle for the rest of our lives. The sad thing is, among those
who make such a big deal out of so-called presumption, they are the very ones Or that
is the very ones among them who may think they have cause for
confidence are the ones who are least justified in claiming any
confidence. Now here we live our three score
and 10 years or. As Moses said, if by strength
we get 10 more, it's just 10 more years of old age. It's not
10 years of vigor and strength. But we live out our relatively
short lives in the knowledge that when we are done with this
life, we are not done. We do not die like our dogs. I saw a show last night, a child
was worried about a chicken being killed. And they said, will the
chicken go to heaven? And the preacher in that show
said, well, I guess God loves all his creatures, so the chicken's
soul will go to heaven. Well, chickens don't have that
kind of soul. Once they hit Colonel Sanders' bucket, it's all done.
That's all there is to that chicken. But we're not like that. We are
the only creature, the scriptures speak of, the only creature native
to this planet that go on existing even after this body dies. We
know that and we also realize that once we leave this world,
we will go to face God and that He will make a reckoning, a judgment
of how we lived and what we did, and He will reward us accordingly. And when we think of that, it
frightens us because we know that we have not lived in such
a way that a perfectly holy, righteous, and just God could
bless us in the least. And this causes people to come
up with religion. It caused us to be religious. Religion is simply a way of trying
to come to terms with the reality that all of us know that it's
appointed unto man once to die and after that the judgment. Some people try to simply drown
out that knowledge by living their lives in the pursuit of
pleasures. The sad thing is, if you live
long enough, you get to the point where the world does not have
much pleasurable to offer, and you're confronted with nothing
more than your imminent demise and no hope. No hope. Some do that very same thing
with their religion. because they will set up a religion
that, for lack of a better way to put it, I would call it it's
a noisy religion. And I don't mean necessarily
that it's noisy in the literal sense. All I'm saying is they
keep your mind occupied, chasing after whatever it is they've
got you chasing after. They distract you from that which
is real. They set your mind on earthly
things instead of on heavenly things. They get you to being
concerned about how you feel than being concerned about what
is actually true. We love to have positive feelings. That's natural. And there's nothing
wrong with wanting to have positive and peaceful feelings. But here's
something I've learned about feelings. Feelings can lie. And quite often they do. I'll just give you kind of an
illustration. You may be right now very happy with regard to
your health. You may be making plans for the
future. You may have estimated about
how long you think you'll live and what you'll be able to do.
And what you don't realize is that at the very present time,
there's a disease in you and you aren't going to make it through
this year. And you're happy about the future based on that which
is not true. Here's another thing, it could
be the other way around. It tends to be that way with
me ever since I was a kid. I was always scared to death
I was gonna die. You know, when I was a kid it was something,
when I was a kid they had what they called the seven signs of
cancer. I had them memorized. And spring would come along and
The pollen and everything started to fly and I'd start to cough.
And one of them was a persistent cough. So every spring I thought
for sure I was dying of lung cancer. And here all it was was
allergies. And so my emotions were lying
to me then too. Because they were telling me
I had something to be afraid of with regard to my physical
health, when in all reality I didn't. I was in good shape. So emotions
can lie. Martin Luther said, feelings
come and feelings go and feelings are deceiving. My only warrant
is the Word of God. Nothing else is worth believing. But religion is primarily now,
as I see it being practiced, is aimed towards people coming
to church and you give them a good shot of positive, up-building
emotions that you hope will last through the week, or if they
want you back, they don't want it to last all the way, they
want about Saturday afternoon or something, you start feeling
a bit bad again, so you feel like you gotta go back and get
recharged. So they are, for the most part,
bold. because they've been distracted.
There are those who are bold because they believe that they
have lived a worthy life. We often refer to the Pharisees
as good examples of that. That one who prayed, I thank
you God, I am not like other men. Because I do the things
that are right and don't do the things that are wrong. And for
sure, I'm not like yonder publican over there. And that's how that man found
peace and confidence in this world. But that peace and confidence
would be taken away from him the moment he left this world. However, there are people in
this world, a class of people, who have a right to be not only
confident but bold with regard spiritual condition and their
relationship with God. Now you say that the word bold
never appears in this particular Scripture and that's true, the
one I read to you. But this Scripture lays out the
reason that we can be bold about all those other things I'm going
to mention here in a few minutes. There were or what Paul was doing
here was he laid out the gospel to them and showed how that after Jesus
Christ raised from the dead, he appeared to the apostles and
then to some others and one time 500 of the brethren at one time.
And he says, last of all, he appeared to me. Now throughout
the book of Corinthians from time to time, he gives a defense
of his ministry as an apostle. And the reason he was doing this
is because some had come in behind him here at the Church of Corinth,
and they said, that Paul's nothing. Where are the people you should
listen to? Paul is not really an apostle, or he's a second-rate
apostle, or something like that. And so Paul had to defend his
true apostleship to the very people who should have been most
convinced of it. And you say, why should they
have been most convinced of his apostleship? Because he came
among them, worked miracles among them, preached the gospel to
them, and many of them were brought to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ
through his preaching and working among them. you in this congregation who
believe. Most of you believed or many of you believed after
hearing me preach the gospel. I understand I didn't save a
one of you. I was merely a mouthpiece for the Lord. But you who have
believed through the preaching that I have done, you above anyone
else ought to say he is a man called
of God to preach. And I'm not saying that in a
way to build me up, I'm just saying evidently I was called
to preach because I preached and the Lord gave you eternal
life when you believed on the words which God spoke through
me. Well, the Corinthians should have been that way about Paul.
But these big shot guys came in behind Paul, and they were
jealous of Paul's position, and they wanted it, and the only
way they could get it was by putting him down. So here Paul
says in verse nine, for I am the least of the apostles and
do not even deserve to be called an apostle because I persecuted
the church of God. Now Paul said, yeah, I'm the
least of the apostles and quite frankly, I don't even deserve
to be called an apostle. Those fellows that tell you that,
they are right. But, Oh, here's one of those
gracious buts. But by the grace of God, I am
what I am. And what do you mean by that?
I'm an apostle. All the things that people might
say about me, or that I may not even think about myself, that
would make it seem to be very presumptuous on my part to claim
to be an apostle and to have the authority of an apostle,
all those things mean nothing because it is by the grace of
God that I am an apostle and grace makes what I am and what
I have done irrelevant to what I am in his sight and in the
ministry that he's given me. Grace gives us the right to be
bold in our claims. Nothing else will. That is, nothing else will give
us a justified claim to boldness, confidence. Paul says, you're
right. I don't deserve to be an apostle,
but I am one. And I'm not backing up. I'm not
going to take second chair to anybody. I'm not going to let
others come in and undo the work that God gave me to do because
by the grace of God, I am indeed an apostle. Now, there were many things that
made Paul seem to be unworthy of such confidence. He mentions
one of them right here. He says, I persecuted the church
of God. And he did. I mean, he chased
down believers everywhere he could find them. He said that he was injurious
to the church. He had some of them deprived
of their goods. He had others of them put in
prison and he sought the death of others. In fact, the first
time we meet with Paul in the scriptures is when Stephen is
stoned. And he, the ever upright and
righteous Pharisee, he wouldn't pick up any rocks and throw them
at Stephen to kill him, but he was quite happy to hold the coats
of those who did. They were so full of hatred for
Stephen and what he was saying, those men wanted to stone him
and they didn't want their arm to be restricted by the coats
or the cloaks they were wearing. Men wore two layers of clothing
back then. They had their outer robe, and
then underneath they had a tunic-like thing. And generally speaking,
when they had some hard work to do, they'd take off that outer
robe so they had more freedom of movement. And so now that
they're going to stone this what they consider to be filthy blasphemer
Stephen, they say, all right, I'm going to get him. And they
take off their coat, and they hand it to Paul. And Paul's all too happy. hold
their coats for them so they can get a really good throw. And I imagine the first time
he ever said, I'm an apostle, they said, what? Now, wait a
minute. You can be in a church. We understand
the grace of God like that, you know, that all manner of sin
We'll be forgiven. We understand that, yeah. You
know, you could even serve in the church. You could be a deacon.
You could be one of the preachers. I don't know whether we'd ever
want to make you pastor in a church, but you know, you could fill
in from time to time. But he boldly proclaimed that
he was an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ right in the face
of his history of persecuting members of the church, some of
them even to death. In 1 Timothy chapter 1, and you
can turn there if you want or just listen to me as I read,
1 Timothy chapter 1, verse 13. Now we better back up to verse
12. I thank Christ Jesus our Lord,
who has given me strength, that he considered me faithful, appointing
me to this service. Now he says, I thank God that
he considered me faithful. Well, if he was a faithful man,
why would he give thanks for God considering him faithful? I mean, if you are faithful and
someone calls you faithful, all they've done is told the truth
about you. But he gave God thanks for considering him faithful.
Why? Because in himself, he wasn't faithful. He considered me faithful, appointing me to this service. What service? Apostle of Jesus
Christ. And then verse 13, even though
I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown
mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. Now, Here he says he was a blasphemer. What does that mean? That means
that he spoke words of condemnation about Jesus Christ. He wasn't just, it goes on to
say he was a violent man. He was a persecutor, but that's
what he did to people. Blasphemy means what he did to
Christ. Now I want you to think for a
minute that if you heard, you knew of some person, maybe he
became famous because he made a public stand against the Lord
Jesus and heaped all manner of blasphemous accusations against
him. Imagine one of those, as I call
them, evangelical atheists of our day, who seem to want to
make atheists out of everybody else. And they mock, and they
call our God the Sky Fairy God. And they say that Jesus Christ
is a myth, that he was nothing. And some of them even try to
concoct stories about him being not only just a man, but a rather
perverse man as well. Imagine you saw such a guy, knew
of him, and you didn't hear anything about him for a little while,
and the next time you see him, he's on television preaching
the gospel of Christ, and many are listening, and many are being
converted. And he's claiming that he's been
sent of God in these days to preach the gospel of God's
grace that the church, the American church might be revived. What
would you say? I don't know about that. I don't see how somebody can
go from blaspheming to being one of the eminent preachers
of the day. Well, that's because you're not
looking at this from the viewpoint of grace. Grace could do that. Grace can
take a blasphemer and turn him into the most powerful preacher
of that day, the most effective preacher of that day. I read
a magazine article one time, that was many years ago, but
it was trying to identify the six most influential men in the
history of the world. And I don't know why they chose
a number of six, but that's what it was. And one of them was the
Apostle Paul. And they made this point, they
said, now we understand according to the doctrine of Christianity,
Jesus Christ is the most important person. He said, but we're looking
at this from just a historical perspective. Jesus Christ never
left Israel, not even once until he went back to heaven. And when
he left, there was just a handful of what would later be called
Christians. The Apostle Paul went all over
the known civilized world and spread this gospel which is now
all over the world. He was the one who took the gospel
to the Gentiles. You and I are here today, humanly
speaking, you and I are here today because of the Apostle
Paul. Now God took this blasphemous, violent, persecuting man and
made him one of the most influential people that's ever lived through
the preaching of the gospel. Now that's what grace can do.
And grace can make us bold in such claims. Here's another thing, Romans
chapter seven, look over there. Here's another reason that a
fellow might be hesitant to claim to be an apostle or hesitant
to make any kind of spiritual claim, beginning with verse 14
of Romans chapter 7. Now this is Paul describing himself
as he was at the moment he was writing this. Some people who
want to keep a little legalism in the gospel, and claim if a
man's saved, he's suddenly not gonna be troubled by sin anymore,
or certainly not as much as he was. They try to, they do gymnastics
trying to find a way to make this Paul describing his life
before he was saved. But no, he keeps using the present
tense. He says in verse 14, we know that the law is spiritual,
but I am unspiritual. sold as a slave to sin. Wow. I do not understand what I do.
For what I want to do, I do not do. But what I hate, that's what
I do. And if I do what I do not want
to do, I agree that the law is good. See, they had accused him
of taking a stand against the law. He said, no, I'm not taking
a stand against the law. The law, if I were to approach
it, if I were to try to come to God through the law, the law
would take a stand against me, but I don't take a stand against
the law, he says. Verse 17, as it is, it is no
longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me." He's
not excusing himself here. He says, I know that nothing
good is in me that is in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what
is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the
good I want to do. No, the evil I do not want to
do, this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want
to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in
me that does it. So I find this law at work. When
I want to do good, evil is right there with me. In verse down in Well, we'll
just keep reading. For by my inner man I delight
in God's law, but I see another law at work in the members of
my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me
a prisoner of the law of sin and death. Or the law of sin
at work within my members. What a wretched man I am. Not what a wretched man I was.
I remember one of the fellow preachers years ago making the
statement, I'm getting tired of hearing the testimonies of
ex-sinners. There isn't any such thing in
this world. We are presently, right now, sinners by practice
and by nature in our flesh. Nothing about our natural selves
has changed. The new birth revived us in the
spiritual sense of the word, gave us eyes to see God, hearts
to believe Him. But it didn't change anything
about our natural existence that we got from our parents. It's
still a mess. We want to do good, but we can't. And every time we try to do good,
and most of all, the very moment when we're most interested in
doing good, evil rises up all the more within us. And says,
no, you're not gonna do that. And this is exactly what Paul
was talking about when he says, the flesh wars against the spirit,
and the spirit against the flesh, so that you're not able to do
what you wanna do. The flesh is never satisfied,
the spirit's never satisfied, and neither one of them ever
gives up. Paul talks about being a prisoner.
He talks about being unspiritual. He talks about doing all kinds
of things that he shouldn't do and doesn't want to do, and ends
it all up by saying, oh, wretched man that I am. And you know something,
brother, of all the things that make me call into question whether
or not I have a right to be up here and to tell anybody anything
about the things of God, it's this one. When I'm here preaching, usually
I feel pretty confident. Because I get wrapped up in the
message, I'm not thinking about me very much. But I tell you,
during the week, oh my. Just constant guilt, constant
aware of what right do I have to preach the grace of God? People act like if God saves
you, you won't struggle with sin. In my experience, the only
ones who do struggle with sin are the ones whom God has saved.
Everybody else struggles with righteousness. They feel they
ought to do it, so they try, but they really don't want to.
It's the believer who finds sin to be an irritant. It's sin that
the believer considers to be his enemy. Everybody else thinks
it's his friend. And then in 2 Corinthians 10,
verse 10, here's another reason why people may say, Paul, you
have no right to such boldness in your claim. Verse 10, for some say, his letters
are weighty and forceful, but in person he is unimpressive
and his speaking amounts to nothing. I've often wondered why God took
a hillbilly out of the unsophisticated regions of West Virginia and
planted him here in a city well organized, full of people, for
whom order, structure, cleanliness, and all those kind of things
is a high priority. And I have as of yet to get entirely
rid of the accent that betrays my nativity. Why did he send me here? So that if anything is positive
gets done, We'll know who it was that did it. Wasn't me. I'm confident that there are
many people who refuse to listen to me, or if they listen to me,
discount what I say, because I don't say it in a tone of voice
they're used to hearing. And I don't act like all the
other people. that are native to this area. You see, the Lord
has his elect. And the others, he always gives
them enough rope to hang themselves. And I'm that rope. My unusual
ways as compared to what is usual around here is a rope that some
have hanged themselves with. And here's another thing about
Paul. that may have put a question
mark on him being an apostle. We don't know what it is, but
Paul said he was given a thorn in the flesh, something that
made him think that it was hindering him in the work that he was doing. And he prayed three times that
God would take it away. We don't know what it is, and
he didn't tell us, and I think the reason he didn't tell us,
because if he'd have told us what it was, then we would have
think, well, that works good for that one, but I've got a
different thorn, so I don't know if I can apply this to me. So
he didn't tell us what it was. He kind of left it like one of
those algebra equations. It's just an X. And you can fill
in your own weakness right there. But he had this weakness. And come to find out, God purposely
gave him that weakness. And he gave it to them not to
hinder his ministry, but to strengthen it. For had he not had that weakness,
he would have tried operating in his own strength. And what
did God say to him after he prayed three times, would you please
remove this thorn? God said, my grace is sufficient
for you. He says, for my strength is made
perfect in your weakness. So you look from the outside,
and if whatever it was that troubled Paul, whether it be a physical
ailment or some kind of mental ailment, some say that he had
what we would nowadays call epilepsy. Can you imagine what that looked
like to everybody else? He'd go into some kind of spasm
or an epileptic fit. A lot of them would have thought
he was demon possessed. They didn't understand what epilepsy
was. I don't know that that's what it was. Some say it was
his eyes. It doesn't matter what it was. May have been a moral
problem that he had. Whatever it was, it stood against
his claim of being an apostle, and he prayed that it be removed,
and God said, my grace is sufficient for you. You don't need me to
remove it. Everything I sent you to do,
you'll get done anyway, and you'll do it in my strength, and everybody
will know who it was that really did what got done. So with all
those things, you might think that's pretty presumptuous of
Paul. However, when you bring in grace, it's
not presumptuous at all. For what could never be true
without grace is made certain and powerful. once grace is involved. Grace made him bold, for grace
was not based on his actions, on his talents, on his goodness,
on his discipline. It was based on God's purpose. And we can take Paul's statement,
by the grace of God, I am what I am, and apply it to any other
bold claim we may make with regard to ourselves in terms of our
relationship with God and our hope for eternal things. And
if someone says, well, you don't act like a Christian, you can
say, well, you're right, I don't deserve to be one, but by the
grace of God, I am. I am exactly what I just told
you. You can't tell me you've been
accepted of God and you live like you live. Well, I'll agree
with you. I'm the least of all the Christians. And I don't even deserve to claim
that I am accepted by God, but by the grace of God, I am accepted
in Christ. You see the difference there?
So long as we're saying, by the grace of God, we're not saying
it just as something we've learned to tack on to any kind of bold
statement we may make, but that we really believe. That's the
only reason. Grace makes us bold. Hebrews 10, verse 19. I will
read these to you. It'd take too long to turn to
all of them. Actually, we'll start with Hebrews
4, 16. Let us then approach God's throne
of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find
grace to help us in our time of need. Now you imagine being
a high priest of Israel, trying to go into that most holy place
there in that temple that was made with human hands. And that
had to be frightening. And I sure, he trembled. And
he'd go in there with that blood in a basin, and he had a censer. full of incense when smoking,
you know, and he'd put that in there and make the room good
and smoky, and then he'd go in with that blood. And that was
scary. But you and I can go into the
real throne of grace with boldness. Now, not being cocky, but being
bold. We can march right into the very
presence of God, knowing that we shall be accepted, that we
shall be heard, and we shall find the mercy to help us in
our time of need. We don't ever have to say, oh,
I just sinned a great sin. I can't go in there yet. Go in
there right then. You say, but I just sinned. Yeah,
and that's a good reason to go in there. But it's a throne,
yes, but it's a throne of grace. And when you put the word grace
on it, the door flies open and there seated on the throne is
no longer your judge, it's your father. What an amazing thing to think
of. I can't think of any set of circumstances
under which I would be allowed to go in the Oval Office. But
I don't care. I can, with boldness, go into
the very presence of God and seek what I need from Him. And then Hebrews 10, 19 says,
therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have boldness to enter
the most holy place by the blood of Jesus. Now grace makes us
bold to enter in the throne room of God, it's a throne of grace.
But here is why we know we have grace, the blood of Jesus. Now notice this, it says we enter
the most holy place, and this is talking about the real one.
Not that one that they had in the temple over in Jerusalem
up to a couple thousand years ago. He's talking about that
we actually come in the presence of God. Now, we don't come with
the blood of Jesus. Why? The Lord Jesus already did.
He already went in there with his own blood. And when he did,
the curtain in the temple was torn in two. And that was God
symbolically showing that the way to God has now been made
known. It's not with the blood of Christ, it's by the blood
of Christ. As though there were a trail
of that blood going all the way up into the very throne of God. And that blood gives us boldness
to enter into the most holy place. Even though we feel ourselves
to be the least holy thing there ever was. Now you look for anything else
for boldness, closer you get to the throne, the more fearful
you're gonna get. But if you come in by the blood, the blood
says, come on in, come on in, the way has been paved for you. All right, Ephesians chapter
three, verse 12. In him, that is in Christ, and
through faith in him. we may approach God with freedom
and boldness. Through Christ, Christ in His
blood, Christ in His sacrifice, and faith in Him. Not trusting
how well we have done or how faithful we have been, how consistent
we have been with our claim to be a child of God, not going
in on that, going in trusting Christ. We can be bold. We don't have to do acts of penance
to pave a way. In the name of Jesus Christ and
by the person of Christ, every believer has full and unfettered
access to God himself. And in 1 John, we'll end with
this one. 1 John chapter 2, 28. And now, dear children, continue
in him. Now, what does he mean by that? Keep believing him. Don't be
sidetracked by all the religious novelties of the day that will
get you to thinking that you're gonna get something from God
because of something you do. Him so that when He appears,
Lord Jesus Christ is coming, and when He appears, we may be
bold and unashamed before Him at His coming. I was raised in a religion that
said, Oh, yeah, you get to heaven by grace, but, boy, when you
get there, You're gonna have to give an account for everything
you did. God's gonna ask you why you did this, that, and the
other, and he's gonna tell you he gave you a chance to be a
missionary, and you didn't take it, and you coulda had this blessing,
but you wouldn't claim it. You coulda had my best, but you
sinned. I can't think of a polite word
to describe that kind of theology. It says if we continue in him,
which simply means that our hope is in him and in him alone, then
we may be bold, confident, and unashamed when
he appears. We may be unashamed when he appears,
even if the very moment that he appears, we are in the midst
of committing the most serious transgression of our lifetime. Why? Because through him, in him,
that sin was gone, covered, forgiven, eliminated before you even began
to do it. That's the boldness of grace. And so when your conscience says
to you, no way in the world you can be a child of God and act
like that, tell your conscience it's wrong. It's wrong. I'm not giving an excuse for
sin. I'm magnifying the grace of God. That's what I'm trying
to do here. We've got no excuse for our sin,
but we got forgiveness. That's a different thing. And
by grace, we can live boldly. All right, James. We'll sing from number 122, and
we'll stand as we sing number 122.