OK, turn back to Acts 20, and
we'll finish this a series of messages from Paul's
farewell. Terry, if you need a title to
this one, it's Paul's Legacy, Part 2. You remember our message Sunday
night. The Apostle Paul was leaving
the town of Ephesus, these people he loved so dearly. And these
were his parting words to these people, and sweeter and more
blessed words could not have been uttered, and words which
we should take heed to. You remember Paul said here in
verse 32, And now, brethren, I commend you to God. And we
just scratched the surface on that. plumb its depths by any
means, we waded ankle deep or stuck our toes in that ocean.
I commend you to God. What that means to be committed
to, commended to God, or find all your help, hope, trust, strength,
salvation, saving, keeping, provisions, everything in God. Who he is
and what he has done in Christ, there is a lot there, isn't And
Paul says in his parting where, I commend you to God, I commend
you. He prays that God will keep these people and care for them,
that they'll look to him for their all and in all. It's kind
of like Christ, remember Paul's leaving and giving his parting
words where he said, you're not going to see me anymore. So he
says, I commend you to God. Brethren, now brethren, I commend
you to God. That reminded me, John, of when
the Lord was hanging on the cross. and looked down at John and Mary
and commended them, sought to their safekeeping, you know,
for the rest of the time. And Paul is doing the same thing
here. Paul says now, like Christ said, Woman, behold your son. Son, behold your mother. Paul
says in his departure, Brethren, behold your God. I commend thee
to God. He shall keep thee. Then he utters
this, and I just couldn't give some parting thoughts to
this. I had to develop this a little bit. Paul says, verse 32, And
now, brethren, I commend you to God, and I commend you to
the word of his grace. I commend you, I commit you, you, verse 32. You got it? Acts
20, 32. You see it? I commend you, he
says, to God and to what he said. Have you heard it? One word from
God will suffice. When God said, Let there be light,
light, it was light. Right? When God says grace, that says
it all. who God is and what he did. Grace.
It's all in that one word, isn't it? Now, to the world at large
out there, it obviously means nothing. They're passing by right
now in scores, scores of people. It means nothing. We're in here
talking about the grace of God. Why, the world is just not interested.
They don't need this, do they? They don't need the grace of
God. They're rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing. People sometimes get in a mess,
they get in trouble and get sick or lose their jobs and so forth,
and they go to church and do God a little favor and ask for
a little help. But this grace that we're talking
about tonight, nobody needs it but an old sinner. It's the only
one. To the religious world, it's
just a good song to sing, Amazing Grace. That's their favorite
song. Ninety-nine percent of them don't have the foggiest
idea what it means. To the legalists, it's a good,
pious word, isn't it? Grace. It's a good, pious word. To an old sinner, all of his
salvation is in that one word, grace. And we're going to see
through this message that grace and Christ are synonymous. They're
one and the same thing, one and the same want. because all of
the grace of God is in a person named Christ. And like I said
one other time, I don't think it is coincidental, merely coincidental,
that they even sound alike, don't they? Grace, Christ. I know it's an English word,
but I still don't think it's coincidental. God brings that
to our mind. Grace and Christ are synonymous. You see, because salvation is
all of grace. And salvation is all of Christ,
isn't it? And when we say all of grace,
we mean all of grace, don't we? It's not part. Paul said that
in Romans, didn't he? It's either grace or it's works.
Now, if it's grace, it can't be works. And if it's works,
it can't be grace. So then, what does he say? What's
grace? No, it's grace, isn't it? Salvation by grace. Do you mean
it? Is that what it means? It's grace. It's grace. From
the planning of it, you're going to see this, from the planning
of salvation to the complete fulfillment of it, to the very
end of it. He's the author and finisher
of the faith. What's the faith? Grace. Faith
in his grace. Faith in his Son Christ. When
Paul said in a letter, we read it there to the Ephesians, and
it's no accident either, that he commended them in his parting
words to his grace, and then wrote them a letter later on
to remind them, hey, it's by grace. You see that Barber in
that little parenthesis, he says, we're saved by grace. He says
it three times in the space of a few sentences, that we're saved
by grace, according to the exceeding riches of his grace. You might
make known. By grace, you say. It's by grace. Paul wasn't just taking up space,
was he? He wasn't just taking up space, he's saying we're saved
by grace. Actually, we're saved by God's
grace. We're saved by God's grace, actually. And we owe all to God's grace. Everything we have, Paul said,
I am what I am by the grace of God. That is, we're actually
saved by God's grace, and then we owe all we have and all that
we are to God's grace. A gift, a gift, that's what it
means. It doesn't mean what the world is calling it, that it's
an offer. You'll not find that in the scriptures
anywhere. God's gifts and callings are
without repentance. That means you can't reject it.
Right? He won't take it back. What he
divinely bestows and supernaturally and effectually bestows, you
don't want to give it back anyway. You want it. He makes you willing
to receive it. The word receive is a biblical
word. Not accept or not offer. Right? Christ offered himself
to God, not men. Isn't that right? through it. He was offered to God, not me,
and this gift is bestowed. When we say grace, we mean undeserved,
unmerited, unsought, unthought, unwanted, undesired. It's a free
gift. The world says, well, you must
receive it, or they'll argue that much, won't they? Well,
you've got to receive it, man's got to receive it. Well, you
know it takes grace to make a man receive it, doesn't it? It takes grace to make a man
receive grace. See, even that's of grace. It's
all of grace. It's all of grace. If you asked
me for one word in all of the Bible to sum up everything we
preach, I'd use this word, the word of His grace. Like I said, the word grace and
Christ are synonymous. They are used interchangeably.
Look at verse 24 here in the text. It says that Paul received
of the Lord, the Lord Jesus, his ministry, to testify the
gospel of the grace of God. So what is the gospel in a word?
Grace. It's the word of God's grace. So Paul commends us to the word
of his grace. The word of his grace. Whose
grace? Whose grace is it? Well, the way you're hearing
it today, it sounds like men are being gracious to God and
accepting him, aren't they? Now, what you're hearing today,
that's what it sounds like, that men are being gracious to God
and letting him save them. That's blasphemy. That's absolute
blasphemy. Now, we're talking about God's
grace. God's grace. And I said it's
a gift. That would be a word to sum up
grace, or to describe or define grace. It's a gift. It's a gift. It's not of works. It's a gift,
a gift bestowed. Now, if I have a gift to give,
It is my gift, right? Something that belongs to me,
and I have someone that I want to give it to. All right? Now, that person can't demand
it, can they? It's mine. And it's a gift. It's not, say, I'm determined
to give this gift to Stan Anderson there. It's not his right, is
it? If it's a gift, Eric, if it's
a gift, It's not the man's right, is it? Well, they're saying today,
every man deserves a chance to be saved. No, salvation's not
by chance. Salvation's by grace. And that's
the gift of God. It's his to give. What am I saying? It's sovereign grace. In other
words, it's his, and he can give it, or he can withhold it. He
doesn't have to. And he can give it to whosoever
he will. That's how he gives it. It's
not anybody's right. It's a gift. That just makes
good sense, doesn't it? If it's a gift, well, if it's
a gift, it's not your right, is it? And if it's my gift, I
don't have to give it to you. I can give it to Viola. And it
would be real good of me to give it to Viola. And there wouldn't
be anything unfair about it, not giving it to you. Right?
That's God's grace. It's sovereign. It's a gift,
and it's his to give. Thank God he gives it. Right? He said, I'll be gracious. Well,
man ought to be praising him to high heaven, and he's gracious.
He didn't have to show grace. He said, I'll be gracious to
whom I will be gracious. And that's, what is that, preacher?
That's the glory of his grace. That's the sovereignty of his
grace. That's the sovereignty of his will and his purpose. All right, it's his grace. He
says, I commend you to his grace. God's grace. It's his grace.
Salvation is of the Lord. And it's all of his grace. It's all his gift, isn't it?
From start to finish, it's all of grace. It's his purposing
grace. If you keep in notes, under his
grace, it's his purposing grace. In other words, before the world
began, God foresaw that man would fall. Now, why in the world would
he want anything with man after he saw what he's going to be?
How is he going to shake his fist in God's face? Well, it's
all to the praise of the glory of his grace. That's why he's
going to get glory out of this thing. So he purposed, didn't
need any of it. What a mass of sinful flesh humanity
it was in the mind and in the sight of God Almighty before
the world began. And God Almighty purposed to
save some of those people. He's going to be gracious to
some of those people. He's electing grace, purposing
grace, and he's electing grace. And out of that mass of sinful
humanity, he chose some individuals. He chose a
certain number of persons to save them. And if he just, like
Spurgeon said, if he just elected one, that would be infinite,
marvelous, infinite, matchless. I know one person that would
be singing that song in heaven. Don't you, Joe? Marvelous, infinite,
if there was just one person in heaven, one old sinner saved
by grace, boy, he'd be singing that to the top of his lungs,
wouldn't he? Christ would have had to go and
die for that one fellow. Marvelous, infinite, matchless
grace, freely bestowed, freely bestowed, undeserved favor, electing
grace. If he just chose one, it'd be
grace, but he chose, the scripture says, a number which no man could
number. Lest anybody say, well, it's
just not fair that God should choose. Well, he chose them,
as many as the stars of the sky and the sands of the seashore.
Is that unfair? One's marvelous grace. One hundred
trillion zillion. That's just unfathomable. I don't want to attempt to say
that again. That's just marvelous. And that's the reason he said,
I'm going to have a whole bunch of people singing about my grace,
about my grace. There's not going to be one sire
note in the bunch. That sire note would be my will
or my works, wouldn't it? They're all going to be singing
his grace. Look over at Ephesians 1 real quickly. Ephesians 1,
and like I said, we can quote these verses, but we read them
so much, it Maybe we ought to just read them a little more
carefully. This Ephesians 1 explains it, doesn't it? It declares it,
gives glory where it's due. Verse 4, according, it's all
according, salvation is all according, as God had chosen us in Christ
before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy
or be like Christ, without blame, before God in love, having his
predestinated the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself,
and he did it because he just was pleased to do so, according
to the good pleasure of his own will, not according to our faith
or according to our works or according to what he saw in us.
He was pleased to do so. And it's all verse 6, to the
praise and the glory of his grace, of his grace. where we are in
this grace, he hath made us accepted. We're accepted, how? By grace,
in Christ, in whom, in Christ, we have redemption through his
blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his
grace, Christ's grace, God's grace, Christ's blood, Christ's
redemption. You see how it's all interchangeable,
isn't it? You could put God's name, Christ's
name, grace all in each one of those places, couldn't you? And
have the same, mean the same thing. So God Almighty chose
some individuals. Didn't have to, didn't need any,
but he did. Thank God. Praise his grace.
And then it's his saving grace. It's his purposing grace, his
electing grace, and it's his saving grace. God purposed it,
good as done, dictum factum. He said, I've spoken it, I'll
bring it to pass. And in time, it had to be, it
had to come to pass. We had to be saved. Christ was
a lamb slain before the world began, but since the world began,
Christ had to come and be the lamb slain. Right? He had to come and actually be
made sin for these people. That's the grace of God. Think
about it. But what would it take for God Almighty to make his
holy, spotless Son sin? Huh? For me. Something he saw in me was, is
there anything he could have seen in me that would merit making
the King of Kings and Lord, the Son of Glory, the Crown Prince
of Heaven, the beautiful, the altogether lovely one, die for
me? Anything of value? Then why did
he do it? praise and glory of his grace.
Grace made him sin. He made his soul an offering
for sin. When Christ hung on that cross, the only way we can
really understand this is when Christ hung on that cross and
when he cried out, even though he knew everything from the beginning,
still, when he screamed with a loud voice, God, why is that?" That was when his soul was being
made an offering for sin. His soul, not his body. His bodily pains were excruciating
and perhaps as bad or as terrible as any man ever may be. But that
wasn't the suffering that That wasn't the worst suffering that
Christ endured on that cross. His souls made it off. And if
you could hear the cries of the damned in hell right now, that
was the tone Christ's voice took on. Because God made his soul
an offering for sin. That holy spotless soul, Terry,
who knew no sin, was made sin and made an offering for sin. Somehow he went through hell
on that cross. I don't think he actually went
to hell. I think that separation from God, which is hell, that's
what he endured for us. His only son now, remember when
Abraham took his son up on that mountain and God said to him,
Abraham, take your son, your only son. You've got one
son, Charles Ross, don't you? One son. It's your only son.
The Son you love. You see, what he was going to
have to do to his son, that made it that much more serious and
horrible, really, didn't it? Take him and offer his body for
a burnt offering on a mountain, and I shall show you. Whew, man. That's what God did to his son,
didn't it? Huh? His son, his only son, the one
he loved. It pleased the Lord to bruise
him. The Lord did that, didn't he? God did that. Wicked men
did what they determined to do, but they did what God directed
them to do, what God determined before to be done. And that's
the reason I say it's utter blasphemy to say that Christ must do that
for every man. Do you follow me? what he underwent
on that cross. He shouldn't have had to do that
for anybody. Right? And it's infinite grace
that he did it for one person, let alone a hundred or a thousand
or a million. But to say that he had to do
that for everybody, that's a blasphemy. You follow what I'm saying? That's
utter blasphemy. To say that God had to put his
Son through that for everybody. For this old fellow over here,
who doesn't care less. That's blasphemy, isn't it? And
to say that it didn't accomplish anything, that's double blasphemy.
I'm telling you, God knew what he was doing, and he knew who
he was doing it for. And he wouldn't let a wasted
drop of that precious blood. Was it going to make your son
go through a second of suffering if it wasn't effectual? If it
didn't accomplish that, would he? He'd be a monster if he did
that. Men call him a monster for not
choosing everybody. No, he'd be a monster for putting
his son to death for somebody who didn't do anything, and it
didn't accomplish anything. Right? It's God's grace. In calling grace, it's God's
calling grace. After Christ went through all
that, and God pleased with that sacrifice, and God accepted that
sacrifice, and God justified people on account of that sacrifice,
and God raised him from the dead, proving that he accepted that
sacrifice, and now Christ ever lives to make intercession for
those he made that sacrifice for. Then these people that Christ
did that for must be brought to Christ in repentance and faith. Isn't that what Christ said?
sheep I have which are not of this foe, them I must bring."
Why? Because, like I said, that blood
was shed for him, and God's not going to waste a drop of his
son's blood. So he sent his Holy Spirit to
call out all those that Christ did that for. Call them by this
All that Christ did that for, God sends his Holy Spirit down
here to call them by our gospel. And you, knowing, brethren, your
election of God, because our gospel came to you, you are called
by our gospel. What gospel? I just talked about
it. The gospel of grace and what
God did and who did it for God, Christ, and the fact that he
did it. That's the gospel. There is no other gospel. It's
the gospel of God's grace. And that's the gospel the Holy
Spirit uses to call out his sheep. People say, well, if I believe
in election, you know the arguments. You've heard all the arguments.
But the fact is, just the opposite of what they say. Since election
is true, you believe it. Since election is true, God calls
you and you respond. Right? There's nothing left to
chance. It's because God, you're elected unto salvation. You're
going to call. And you're going to hear the
gospel. Everybody must hear the gospel. Right? The gospel is
the power of God unto salvation. Isn't that what Romans 1.16 said?
And you must hear that gospel to be saved. And it's not just
by chance that you heard the gospel one day. Think about all
the hundreds of churches in this county alone, where you could
be right now, hearing something other than the gospel. Or you
could have been that day that you first heard the gospel. Right? Well, why is it that you were
where you were when the gospel was preached and you heard it?
Huh? What was the cause? What was
behind that? Huh? Grace. See, that's grace. God's grace has brought me here,
thus far. It brought me here. Grace brought
me to hear this gospel. And then God's grace is responsible
for us repenting. Romans 2.4 says that, doesn't
it, John? It's the goodness of God. There's another word that
you could use interchangeably with grace. It's the grace of
God that leads a man to repentance. Nobody is a sinner unless God
convinces them of it. Nobody. It's the people sitting
in here right now who have not yet been convinced that they're
sinners. Otherwise, they'd have already
called on Christ and he to save them. And it takes the grace
of God to do that. God's going to have to convince
you. I can't. But he does this to all of those people that he
elected. Christ died for, and the Holy
Spirit comes to them and makes them repent, makes them feel
their sin. God Almighty, through his Holy
Spirit, makes you feel real bad. That's what the gospel is designed
to do at first, make you feel real bad, so that the good news
will be good news indeed. make you feel real bad so the
gospel will sound real good. The gospel of grace. It doesn't
sound real good. It's not real appealing to a
man who doesn't feel real bad about himself. Does that make
sense? And when you get down and dirty
during the week and you come in here and you hear a message
about God's grace, it makes you feel real good. It sounds real
good to you. If I got up and told you about
how you had fallen, come short, And what you must do and how
you better straighten up and this and that. If I kept pointing
my finger at you, you'd just shrivel down in that seat, wouldn't
you? And feel lousy and go out of
here feeling lousy. And you'd go out of here saying,
it wasn't such a good thing to be in the house of the Lord tonight. But if you go out of here after
hearing grace, you're saved by grace. It was God's grace that
brought you here. It's God's grace that saved you.
It's God's grace that's going to keep you. And you can depend
on that grace, and you'll go out of here feeling mighty good
about the gospel of God's grace. Bad about yourself, but good
about Him. Right? And He makes you feel your sin,
so you'll need a real Savior. And it's believing grace. It's
not only repenting grace, and God gives you grace to repent,
but grace to believe. That quote, did you remember
that quote in Sunday's bulletin? No, or was it last Sunday? Sunday
before that. Man is so depraved that the thing
he needs the most, the gospel, is the thing he desires the least.
Isn't that right? That's how depraved man is. The
thing he needs the most is the thing he desires the least, the
grace of God, the So it's going to have to take the grace of
God and make you believe it. Make you have a need for it.
Make you receive it. Make it sweet to you. Right?
The grace of God. God's grace. God in grace has
to give you a need. So it's all of grace, isn't it?
Huh? It's all of grace. Most people
reject it, so it has to be of grace, doesn't it? That you received
it. Grace makes us repent. Grace
makes us believe. Grace makes us call. Grace makes
us pray. Grace makes us seek. Grace makes
us love. Grace makes us desire. Grace
makes you sit there awake. It's all of grace, isn't it? We're just beggars. And God's
got everything in his hands to give. And it's keeping grace. Lastly, it's keeping grace. Keeping
grace. When we sing that song, oh, this is the danger of saying
and singing and doing things too much, is that they begin
to lose their sweetness. Amazing grace? Think of these
words. Through many dangers. Toils and snares. And we don't
know half of it. If God would open up the spirit
world and see what's against us? Through many dangers. If he would let us see what he
has seen, how he has brought us, and what he has done for
us. Those ensnares I have already
come, his grace hath brought me safe thus far. What's the rest of it? You want to say it together?
And grace will lead me home. That's keeping grace. In other
words, you don't begin in the Spirit, you don't begin receiving
God's grace, and then he removes it and says, no, you get there
the best way you can. No, no. He giveth. I was trying to find
that song, Sherry. He giveth, and he giveth, and
he giveth more grace. It is a song. I wanted to sing
it for you, but I couldn't find it. That's what it said. He giveth
more grace, and more grace, and more grace. It's like that manna
that the children of Israel needed every morning, wasn't it? Grace. We needed daily grace. You know, that song says, Grace
will lead me home. And when the abundance of God's
grace, when God's grace fills our heart, this is the love of
God shed upon our heart, love to God's grace, thankful to God's
grace, for God's Christ. When that is shed upon your heart,
it will make your lips sing the rest of that song. And when we've
been there ten thousand years, bright shining like the sun,
S-O-N, where we've no less days to sing what? God's grace, than
when we first begun. Like I said, one time, somebody
said, when we first get there, Bobby, we're never going to be
singing grace. And we're going to join right in, just going
to the top of our lungs, and we're going to sing one million
verses. Same song. Worthy is the Lamb. Everybody
is great. We're going to stop and somebody's
going to shout, let's sing it again. Sing it again. One millionth verse, same as
the first. Same song, same word. Grace. We have no less days to
sing God's grace than when we first begun. Like Zerubbabel. I love that story, don't you?
Zerubbabel that built the walls of the city. After the wall was
built, he laid the top stone on it. What was he shouting all
the while? You know, God is going to crown
us with a helmet of salvation, crown us, as it were, with crowns
of salvation. But the Spirit says we're going
to cast them at his feet, and like Aaron who took it all and
boiled it up and made it one golden calf, the Lord of Glory
is going to take all these crowns of salvation and make them one
big crown, and we're all going to get it and crown him with
our many crowns. crown him. We don't deserve it. Put them all on the head. One
big crown on the head of our Lord Jesus Christ. We're going
to be shouting like Zerubbabel when he crowned that wall with
that top stone when it was all said and done, when it was all
finished. Do you remember what he was crying? Anybody? Well, come on, I've been giving
you a forty-five minute hint. Grace, he would say! Eh, what
am I going to say, works? Well, it works hard! No, as the
other one says, grace, grace unto it. It's God's grace that
started this thing and enabled us to finish it and continue
through it, and it's God's grace that finished this thing. Where
are you? Praise! And Paul says, I commend
you to the word of his grace. Commend you to this word. And
when he spoke the word, when God spoke the word, what's the
word? Who's the word? Christ is the word. You see,
it's the word, it's Christ of his grace. It's that unspeakable
gift. Christ is the unspeakable gift
or grace of God Almighty, and it's unspeakable or unpreachable.
He's unpreachable. Remember when Paul said, I commend
you to God, and I gave you that illustration of Alexander capturing
that king, and the king saying, I want you to treat me like a
king. Alexander says that all, and the king says, well, that's
all there. And so when Paul says, I commend
you to one word, grace, it's all there, isn't it? It's all
there, it's all in that grace, of his grace that we receive,
grace for grace, grace for grace. And he says here, in closing,
he says, this word of grace is able, commended to this, holding
on to it, keeping it, or him, Christ, who is that gray, he's
able to build you up. Able to build you up. What needs
building up? Your faith, doesn't it? Lord, increase our faith. What's
going to do it? Works? Grace. Increase your faith. That tells
you where faith is found, doesn't it? It's in a person. It makes good sense. It makes
good gospel sense. If it increases your faith and
it's all of grace, it builds you up. You see the law. Listen to me. Grace gives you
assurance. Not in your works, but in the
one who gives it. The one who gives grace. It will
strengthen you. God's grace will strengthen you.
It will settle you. We could take each one of these
words and work on it. God's grace will strengthen you,
it will settle you, it will persuade you. It ought to. Joe, the fact
that God was gracious to you to begin with, it ought to persuade
you that he's going to keep on being gracious to you to end
with. Huh? What's in it? All this persuades you? I'm persuaded
now that I'm a sinner. Are you persuaded of that? I'm
persuaded of that. He sends the Holy Spirit constantly
to persuade me of that, the word of God to persuade me of that.
And I'm persuaded that it was the grace of God that saved me.
Are you persuaded of that? I'm persuaded of that. I'm persuaded. And I'm persuaded that Christ
Jesus came in this world to save sinners, and the blood of Jesus
Christ, God's Son, saved sinners. I'm persuaded of that. Are you
persuaded of that? I'm persuaded, then, that he's
able to keep that which he tells me to commend to the word of
his grace. I'll do that down to the day
that he takes me home. Grace will lead me home. Grace
led me to begin with, and grace is not going to let go of my
hand. It's going to lead me all the way. The law says this, guilty. Think about this. The law says, come to, says,
guilty. God says, no, no, no. Innocent, justified. The law
says, offended. He's offended, no point. Grace
is unblameable. The law says, die. Grace says,
live. The law says, look at you. Grace
says, look at me. The devil says, You're sold to
sin. Grace comes and says, You're
bought with a price. The devil says, You're unfit. Grace says,
Oh, we're fitly joined to Christ. Self says, You're unworthy. You know what Grace says? Have
it worthy as the Lamb. See, the law of sin, devil's
self, says to you, guilty, condemned to die, you ought to die with
grace. Did you hear the word of his
grace? I commend you to it. God comes along and says, grace
to him. The law of self and devil says,
guilty, you ought to die. God says, no, grace to him. Grace to him. That old boy gets
grace. It's commendable wording. And once spoken, never retracted. His words settled in heaven. Once he speaks it, he never says,
Oh, it didn't mean something. It's spoken. I've spoken it.
He'll come to pass. Now, that will build you up. It ought to build you up. When
you get cast down, it ought to build you right up. And plant
your feet on a solid rock. What's that? We'll get it. Before this is over, you'll have
the right answer with every question. Grace, the word of his grace.
I'll give you a hint. Everything starts with G and
ends with E. And give you inheritance. It
says, it's fabled, is able to build you up, that'll
build you up. Works won't, people. Law won't.
It just won't. It'll cast you down. It'll tear
you down. It'll tear your foundation out
from under you, but grace will plant your feet. And you say,
I'm unmovable. His grace is an unmovable place.
No rhyme intended. But it works, doesn't it? Christ
is that rock, that grace. It says he's able to give you
an inheritance among all them which are sanctified. See, everybody
sanctified meant to be set apart by God for holy use, and everybody
that was chosen by God and set apart by God, they all were done
so because of his grace. They're all sanctified, and you
can get in on it, too. They got there the same way. So why not me? I've told you
this before, but it's a good ending. There was a man who dreamed
he died and went to heaven. He saw a man up there, a beautiful
creature, just like Christ. He thought he was some kind of
angel. And he asked the man, he said, Are you Michael, the
archangel? The man said, Oh, no, no, no,
no, that's not me. Well, the man said, Well, look
at you, you're just so glorious, so beautiful, shining. And he
said, Are you, you must be somebody special. Are you, are you Abraham? The man said, Oh, no, no, no,
I'm not nearly one so great as Abraham. He said, well, oh, you
must be Moses. Yes, that's who you are, aren't
you Moses? The man said, oh, no, I'm not
Moses, not at all. You're way off. The man said,
David? No, not David. Paul? No, not Paul. Peter? No, no. And the man began to sing a song. The dying thief rejoiced to see
that fountain in his day. Just an old thief and a murderer,
but by God's grace, unrecognizable in that day. That's grace, isn't
it? To take an old fellow like that. And that will be us someday.
We'll be unrecognizable because of God's grace. Our Heavenly
Father, we owe it all to your marvelous, infinite, matchless
grace, and we owe it all to Christ, who is that grace, who he is,
where he is, what he did, and we want to give all glory, all
glory, not most of it, but all of it, to the praise of the glory
of your grace in Christ Jesus. So it's in his name we pray and
met together tonight for his glory. Amen.