Good to have all of you with
us this morning. We're going to return to our series of studies
that we've been looking at in 1 Timothy. We took a little break from it
back when Norm Wells was here. And I just felt the Lord leading
me in other directions up until this week. And so we're going
to look back into it again. We're in Part 5. If you would
turn to chapter 1. In our previous messages, we
looked at the different instructions that our Lord was giving us. We looked at where Paul calls
the gospel In verse 11, a glorious gospel of the blessed God, which
was committed unto my trust. This gospel, what the Lord sends
His ministers out to preach to His people, the very gospel that
Christ uses to save His people with. How are you going to know
who to call upon if you've never heard of the true and living
God? How are you going to know who to call upon if all you've
heard about is a weak God who is waiting for you to do something?
waiting for you to make a decision, to get baptized, to pray a prayer,
or sing a song, or talk to a minister. God uses His preaching, the preaching
of His gospel, Christ in Him crucified, not only to save His
people, but to feed His people. We go around through this world
all the time. We're out in it. Seven days a
week, 24 hours a day, except for when we're sleeping. And
we have to live with the things around us, don't we? How easy
it is for us to forget who the true God is of this world. Hearing the Gospel preached every
week reminds me the flesh is weak. It reminds me that I need to
turn to my Lord. I'd like you to look at verse
9 through 14 with me this morning. Knowing this, that the law is
not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient,
for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane, for murderers
of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers. for whoremongers,
for them that defile themselves with mankind, for men-stealers,
for liars, for perjured persons, and if there be any other thing
that is contrary to sound doctrine, according to the glorious gospel
of the blessed God, which was committed to my trust, and I
thank Christ our Lord, who hath enabled me, for he hath counted
me faithful, putting me into the ministry, who was before
a blasphemer and a persecutor and an injurist, but I obtained
mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of
our Lord was exceeding abundant with faith and love, which is
in Christ Jesus. Now I'd like to take a moment
this morning I'd like to take a moment and consider these very
words that our Lord inspired the Apostle Paul to pen in regards
to the grace, the very same grace that is shed upon all for whom
Christ died that day on Mount Calvary. There are no different
treasures for others than there are for this or for that. We
all have the same treasure, Jesus Christ the Lord. If you're looking for something
more than that, then you don't see Him as Lord. If you're desiring something
more than Christ, another feather in the hat, or another reward
for whatever it is you've done, then you don't know the Lord. The grace of God is abundant
with faith and love, which is in Christ our Savior. That's
what it says right there in verse 14. And the grace of our Lord,
which was exceeding abundant with faith and love, which is
in Christ Jesus. It's not in something we have
done. You know, Rick, you're a very nice guy. I like you a
lot. But the Lord doesn't love you because of you. He loves
you because of His Son, Jesus Christ. And that goes for every
single one of us. It's not what we have done, it's
not what we can do, but it's what He has done. The power of God shed His blood
on a cross a little over 2,000 years ago for all of those for
whom the Father gave Him. And the power of God's blood
was shed, and that blood accomplished what it was shed
for. Salvation is of the Lord. The grace of God is abundant
with faith and love which is in Christ our Savior. Faith,
a gift of God, is given because Christ's faithfulness, as we
saw in Friday night's Bible study, In the book of Galatians, it
talks about Christ's faith, and it talks about our faith. You've
got to have both. You can have faith in anything,
but if Christ wasn't faithful in what He did, your faith is
worthless. Christ being faithful in what
He did, you've got to believe that. You have to have faith
in that. They both go hand in hand, but they are two separate
things. because of His faithfulness,
because of what He did, because of that agreement that He made
with the Father, the covenant before time began. God the Father
gave God the Son a people that God the Son would go to the cross
and pay their sin debt. And in the day of His love, God
the Spirit would come to them and quicken them, give them life,
just as Lazarus received life in the tomb. When Christ said,
come forth, life was already there. To prove how that was so miraculous,
He came bound in His burial wrapping still. Picture what that must
have looked like. I can see somebody kind of like
this, and it's just floating to Christ. I don't know who said
it, but I remember somebody said one time, you know, if he hadn't called Lazarus by
name, the power of God spoke every single body that was in
a grave would have come right out of it at that time. That's
the power of God. Abundant faith. Abundant grace
is the title of my message this morning. God's grace is sufficient. So
much so, there is an abundance of it. More than I need. Great is Thy faithfulness we
sing. The faithfulness of Christ. Once
again, we can see how all the glory is His. Even the glory
He has instilled in each of us is a work for His glory. My faith, my belief, is a direct
result of His abundant mercy, of His abundant grace. which
is in His great Son, Jesus Christ the Lord. In Ephesians 1-3 we
read, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly
places in Christ. Any blessings that we receive
come through Him and from Him. Isn't that wonderful? In Ephesians 2.4, but God who
is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even
when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ
by grace ye are saved, and hath raised us up together and made
us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Oh, I love that word. We sit
in heavenly places right now. I know it's a hard thing to picture.
I deal with the same mirror that you deal with. The same mirror
that looks back at this flesh and sees what we have in this
world. But that's the wrong thing to
be looking at. Because this is going to be the way it is until
the Lord takes us out. Look to Christ. Turn away from
that thing in the mirror that we see before us and turn to
our Savior. Perfect in every way. We were
talking about this in Bible study this morning. We're looking at
some specific instructions on how to discipline the congregation,
how to deal with discipline in the church. And I reminded everybody at the
end of our study that we try the best we can. God help us
to turn from sin. God help us to. But if you say
you have completely, then you are lying to yourself. We must look to Christ as our
perfection, because that's where perfection is. And by the shedding
of His perfect blood on that cross, salvation is abundant. It's more than you need. It's
all that you need. King David, he put it this way
in the 23rd Psalm. He said, the Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green
pastures. He maketh me to lie down in green
pastures. We see all the chaos going on
around us. We come into this little building,
some of us twice a week, most of us once. What peace we can
see right here today, knowing that our Lord and Savior has
everything under control. There's no chaos with him. Folks, we're in green pastures. It's hard to see that when we
walk through this world, through this valley of the shadow of
death. He leadeth me beside still waters, it says. He restoreth
my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of
righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through
the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. We don't
have to worry about what that government is doing. Go out and
vote. That's our responsibility. As
the people of this country, we should vote. But we don't have
to worry about what's going to happen, whether we win the vote
or lose the vote, because our God has it already worked out
for us. And it's going to happen exactly the way He wants it to,
because He's God Almighty. Though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for thou art with me. You see the abundant love that
He has for His people, where two or more are gathered, I shall
be in their midst. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort
me. Jesus Christ is our rod. And He is our staff. And He comforts
me in all the ways throughout this world. He says, Thou preparest
a table before me in the presence of mine enemies. Thou anointest
my head with oil. And here's what I want you to
hear. We're talking about abundant grace. He says, My cup runneth
over. What more do we need? The word in this case, the word
abundant, is actually more than just that. It's used twice in
Scripture in both times right here in the 1 Timothy verses
1, verse 14. The word is huperpleaonadzo. Not bad, huh? I got that out.
Woo! I look to Cheryl because she's
always helping me most of the time get through that in Friday
night Bible study. It means to superabound. It doesn't
just mean to abound, to fulfill your cup or anything, but to
overflow your cup. All kinds of just running over. God's grace is so good to us,
folks. It means to be exceeding abundant.
More than enough, as it is stated in my margin. It simply means
this, it's all I need. Everything I need is in my Savior. If I'm down and out about what's
going on in the world around me, stop and look to my Savior. He's got it all. All of a sudden,
that abundant love starts coming in. He fills my heart. Calvary covers it all. What abundant
mercy and grace. faithfully fulfilled by submitting
Himself as my substitute, fills my cup with His grace. When I
see how much of a sinner I am, and what I should be receiving
is a condemned unclean. When I see myself as once a blasphemer,
once a lost sinner, but now I'm found, I can sing that song,
grace, grace, God's grace. Grace that will pardon and cleanse
within. Grace, grace, God's grace. Grace that is greater than all
my sin. It's abundant. Even when I fall to my knees
crying out for forgiveness for those sins, crying out for strength
to turn from them, my Lord's grace is sufficient. Turn to
2 Corinthians 12 if you would please. You know, it's easy to think
that the apostles were extremely blessed with supernatural visions
and miraculous revelations. That was then. Those were things that happened
then. No one's ever seen them since. But in reality, we all
see the very same visions in today's world, don't we? Right here. We see the same miraculous things
right here that the apostles saw. That's why they wrote them
down, so that we could see them. So we can picture in our minds,
so the Lord can take His Word and apply it to our hearts. We see the very same visions.
We all have the same revelations. And when God is pleased to press
this upon our hearts, we too must take care not to become
puffed up with them. Look at me. I'm a child of God. I've got God on my side. All of a sudden we start thinking
a little better of ourselves than we should, don't we? Look
at verse 6. Verse 6 of chapter 12. For though
I would desire to glory. Listen carefully folks. This
is what I was just talking about. Allowing ourselves to get puffed
up because we're children of God. For though I would desire
to glory, I shall not be a fool, for I will say the truth, but
now I forbear, lest any man should think of me above that which
he seeth me to be, or that he heareth of me. And lest I should
be exalted, lifted up above measure through the abundance of the
revelations there was given to me, a thorn in the flesh, the
messenger of Satan, to buffet me, lest I should be exalted
above measure. For this thing I besought the
Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me,
My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect
in weakness. Paul goes on to write, Most gladly,
therefore, will I rather glory in my infirmities that the power
of Christ may rest upon me. Therefore, I take pleasure in
the infirmities and reproaches and necessities and persecutions
and distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am
strong. Let us never forget the pit that
our Lord pulled us out of. I believe this is why we still
fall into great sin. I believe this is why our Lord
allows us to fall into that very thing. You know, when Jonah ran
from the Lord, was that not a sin? Did the Lord not allow him to
do that? Jonah had to run. There was a
lesson for him to learn. And it was a tough lesson to
go through. A lesson of death. Could you imagine what it was
like for the reeds to be wrapping around his neck as he describes
in Scriptures? Inside of a big fish. But yet then the Lord had the
fish spit him out on dry land. And what was the lesson learned?
Salvation is of the Lord. What a wonderful lesson to learn.
May God teach me that every moment He can. It is our very nature in this
flesh. And secondly, we are reminded
of how great our Savior's grace is when He pulls us out of that
fall into sin. When he reaches down as he did
with Peter, and he grabs his arm and says, O ye of little
faith. Peter was reminded of the love God has for him. How
often are you reminded of how much God loves you? How often do we sing this, I
am weak? but thou art strong, O dear Lord,
keep me from all wrong." Our sins may ever be before us, folks,
but our heavenly advocate is more able than our sins are. He who is perfect, holy in everything
that he has done, everything he did, pleased the Father, even
the death of the cross, he became a curse For cursed is all who
hangeth upon a tree. He bore our sins in His own body. In 2 Corinthians 5.21 we read,
For He hath made Him, God the Father, hath made God the Son,
sin for us. Speaking of God the Son who knew
no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. The abundant faith, the abundant
love is in Christ. Our righteousness is in Christ. Everything we have is in Christ. Are you starting to get the picture
of that cup? And how it's overflowing for
each and every one of us? I know we're going through some
tough times. Some of us are going through some really tough times,
and have gone through some very tough times. But we can sit back
and say, look what the Lord has brought us through. His mercy
and His grace brought us through abundantly. And here we are on
the other side of that trial, still looking to Him and praising
Him for all that He has done for us. What a wonderful God
we have. He no longer leaves us to ourselves. Forty years I spent the Lord
leaving me to myself. Thank God the day of His love
came and His Spirit called me out of that self and brought
me into the living life of Jesus Christ. Do you see the abundant mercy
and grace that we're talking about this morning? We can see the sin in this flesh
that we have. But here's the wonderful news.
God sees His people in His Son. He doesn't look down upon John
Reeves. He looks down upon what His Son
has done for me. We are clean and pure as He is
right now. God saw the blood of His Son
and the angel of death passed us by. Our God does not do anything
halfway. He does all things well. That's
one reason that we can say He's not waiting for us to do something. Whatever we could do would not
be enough. But God, oh how I love those words too, but God. In
1 Peter 1.3, Blessed be the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, which according to His abundant mercy hath begotten
us again unto a lively hope. by the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead. Turn to Philippians chapter one,
if you would. Okay. Verse 12, But I would,
ye should understand, brethren, that the things which happened
unto me have fallen out rather under furtherance of the gospel,
so that my bonds in Christ are manifest in all the palace and
in all the other places. And many of the brethren of the
Lord, waxing confident by my bonds, are much more bold to
speak the word without fear. I am reading the wrong Scriptures. Okay. I apologize for that. I blame
my wife, she's not here. No. I'm not sure what happened
with that. As we grow in the knowledge of
our Lord and Savior, we grow in our love and in our faith. We learn to trust more and more
of Him. Now, some may dispute that we
grow in faith, but we learn over time As our Lord takes us and
pulls us out of those very things that I spoke of a moment ago,
we learn more and more, don't we? We grow more and more in
trusting our Savior. Well, I know I can trust Him.
Look what happened the other day. Look how He saved me from
that. Look how He brought me through that. As we come through the trials
of this flesh, we see more and more the rule of this One who
has over all that is. We see His abundant love for
us. We turn more and more from the
ways of this world and we turn to Him. This is what Paul is
saying in Galatians chapter 6 verse 14 where it reads, But God forbid
that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ,
by whom the world is crucified unto me and I unto the world.
For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth to anything nor uncircumcision,
but a new creature. We are a new creature because
we turn away from trusting in our own flesh. We don't even
trust in our own thoughts anymore. We can trust in Him for sure.
But let us question what we see in the flesh, including our thoughts. Look into God's Word. Be as the
Bereans, noble in every way, to see if it is so. We turn from our natural ways
of this world and we turn to our Lord, who is sovereign ruler
over all that is. We are born again, as the Scripture
calls it. We are a new creature. We have
a new nature. We read words like this in Romans
8.31, What shall we say then to these things? If God before
us, who can be against us? Did you ever say that before? Do you remember a time when your
trust was in your own flesh? We've got to go through certain
things to learn that our Lord is ruling over all that stuff
and controlling those things. "...He that spared not His own
Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with
Him also freely give us all things?" Is that cup starting to fill?
Is it overflowing yet? If not, who shall lay anything? You know what's coming next.
Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is
God that justifieth. I know I got all this sin. But
who's going to lay that to me? My Lord and Savior has already
taken it upon Himself. All that sin was already laid
upon Him. All the sin that I'm going to
commit today, tomorrow, and the next day, which I'm really trying
not to. And I want not to. And it bothers
me when I do, but that's already been laid on Him and punished
in Him. The price has been paid. The wages of sin is death. And
I, Lord, died for my sake. What about yours? Is the grace of God becoming
abundant to you? Is the love of God abounding
in your heart? Who is He that condemneth? It
is Christ that died, yea, rather than it is risen again. Who is
even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession
for us? That was mine. That one's not
going to go to hell, because I've already gone there for him. I paid for this one. It's mine.
I paid for this one. He's mine. Who shall separate us from the
love of Christ? Can you? Is your will stronger than God's? If it was His will to go to the
cross for you, do you think He would not have you? Who shall separate us from the
love of Christ? Shall tribulation distress, or persecution, or
famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword. As it is written, for
thy sake we are killed all the day long. We are accounted as
sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are
more than conquerors through Him that loved us. Is the cup
starting to flow? It is in mine. My cup overflows
with the abundant mercy that my God has for me. Nay, in all these things we are
more than conquerors through Him that loved us, for I am persuaded
that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities,
nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height,
nor depth..." Is there anything else that you think you have
to put there? We don't need to. God's already put it all right
there. "...Nothing shall be able to separate us from the love
of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Your cup is starting
to flow over the sides. I know I don't deserve it. I know I can't earn it. That's
what makes His grace so wonderful. That's what makes it overflow
from my cup. What a great love our Lord has
for us that He would give Himself for us. What a great love our
Lord has. for His people. That He would have us be with
Him for eternity, singing praises and worshiping His name. What
about Romans 8.1? If that doesn't float your boat,
check this out. There is therefore now no condemnation
to them which are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the flesh
but after the Spirit. Why the snow? Why the snow right
now? These are but words of grace,
abundant grace. And when these words are revealed
as truths, we see our Savior's love for us and the length that
He went to save us, and this is the result. Turn to Philippians
1, chapter 1, verse 21. For me to live is Christ. and die is gain. What Paul is
saying there, he would rather die from this world and be with
Christ, because that's his gain. How many of us feel that very
same way? I'm tired of the sin that I got
to go through. I want to be with my Lord, but
I don't sin anymore. That's our greatest desire. But if I live in the flesh, this
is the fruit of my labor, yet what I shall choose I want not."
Verse 22. For I am a straight betwixt two,
having a desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far
better. Nevertheless, to abide in the flesh is more needful
for you. And having this confidence, I
know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance
of joy and joy of faith. that your rejoicing may be more
abundant in Jesus Christ. Glory to His name is what we
sing. His abundant mercy. His abundant
grace. What is the result of that? It's
our crying out, thank you Lord. Glory to the name of the Lord
Jesus Christ. It's all His. It's going to be
all His anyway. We rejoice in His abundant love
for us. To God be the glory, great things
He hath done. Amen. Stand with me if you would
please.