Well, let me introduce Brother
Tim James to you, in case you don't know him. He's from Cherokee,
North Carolina, pastor of the Sequoia Baptist Church. Oh, stopwatch
is still running. Tim, you've been preaching now
for almost 24 hours. Feels like it. Anyway, where
was I? Oh, anyway. Y'all know who Tim
is. We're glad to have you, Tim.
give the Word of the Lord to us. Speaking of Ruth in verse 10, the Word says, Then she fell
on her face, and bowed herself to the ground, and said unto
him, that is, Boaz, her kinsman-redeemer, Why have I found grace in thine
eyes, that thou shouldest take knowledge of me, seeing I am
a stranger." Now, the wonder and thanksgiving
and praise in the heart of Ruth as she looked upon her kinsman
Redeemer and saw grace in His eyes is that of every blood-bought
sinner as he looks to his Savior. And this is understood by no
one except the sinner who has been saved by God's grace. Chris Christopherson wrote a
song a long time ago that said, Why Me, Lord? He proceeded to
reveal the meaning or the crux of his words when he said, What
have I ever done to deserve even one of the good things you've
shown? Natural man must find reason
in himself for what he believes God has done for him. He must find some reason in himself
for God to have shown him kindness. Now, it may come as the plaintiff's
pseudo-humble whine of, I've been too sinful for God to save
me. You've heard people say that.
I've just been too sinful for God to save me. That's just another
way of saying grace must be merited. Just another way of saying that.
Or it may be the self-sufficient boast of, I need to straighten
out some things in my life before I get saved. People say things
like that, which is again saying that grace must be merited. The fact is that merit and grace
are like oil and water. They are like flesh and spirit,
light and darkness, life and death, the truth and the lie.
They are diametric, absolute opposites of one another. In
the matter of salvation, in its conception, in its accomplishment,
in its maintenance and its consummation, human merit does not even or
ever enter into the picture. It just is not there. It cannot be found because human
merit does not exist. Human merit does not exist on
planet earth. Ruth was not asking this question,
why have I found grace in your eyes, for some reason. for a defining moment, an explanation,
or any such things. Her words were a declaration
of wonder and awe because she knew that she had not done, thought,
or been anything that would recommend her to Boaz. She knew that. She understood
what it means to employ the words Saved by grace. Or grace in thine
eyes. Now we know that grace in this
day is commonplace in the language of religion. Everybody talks
about grace. Even those who have nothing to
do with religion are heard to say things like, there but the
grace of God go I. I have even said that myself.
But I don't say that anymore. But I used to say it a lot until
I thought about the demoniac of Gadara, or blind Bartimaeus
on the side of the road, there but by the grace go I, best thing
we could ever be is where they are. Because that's where grace
found them. John Newton's Amazing Grace is
heard on TV and bagpiped at official funerals and on radio. And as
of late, I heard it called a folk song, an American folk song. Preachers, propagates, and traveling
troubadours, also known as gospel singers, abuse this word with
abandon. Believers, however, speak of
grace as sovereign grace. in efforts to distinguish it
from the puny, impotent, ineffectual, anemic, generic, and universally
unrequited affection spewed in the hermeneutics of hubris. Grace
in religion is a byword. Everybody is talking about it
and singing about it, but the question arises, Why are those
who preach it as sovereign and immutable and unstoppable and
unfrustrated, why are they scandalized and despised by religion? What does grace mean? We all say we believe in the
sovereign grace of God. And everyone could answer, as
far as definition goes, that it means unmerited favor from
God. And they would be correct. But
what does it mean? You say you believe it. I say
I believe it. What does it mean? Well, there
are three categories of beings for whom grace means something. And I want to look at those tonight. It won't be long. First of all,
grace means something to God. Grace means something to God. When He declares that He has
saved you by His grace, and that's what He declares in this book,
What does that mean to Him? The primary and foremost thing
that it means is that He, as God, has glorified Himself. When He says, He saved you by
His grace, it means that He has glorified Himself. When Moses
asked God to show him His glory, God said four things. He will
say that, I will make my goodness pass before you. This is my glory.
I will make my goodness pass before you. I will proclaim the
name of the Lord before you. I will be gracious unto whom
I will be gracious, and I will show mercy unto whom I will show
mercy. When Paul wrote of eulogizing
God or saying something good about God in Ephesians chapter
1, beginning with verse 3, he said, God has blessed us with
all spiritual blessings in Christ, according as He has chosen us
in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestinated
us to the adoption of children by Jesus Christ unto Himself.
Why? to the praise of the glory of
His grace. That's why He did all that. I
thought He was doing it for me. He wasn't doing it for you. He
was doing it for Himself, to the praise of the glory of His
grace. When all is said and done, this
is why everything and everybody exists on the face of this earth,
and everything that moves or wriggles or arises or stands
still, exist for the praise of the glory of His grace. Adam's sin and rebellion in the
Garden of Eden is to the praise and the glory of God's grace. You are and exist, everything
does, for the glory of God. He has saved you by His grace
that you might be That's what it says in Ephesians 1.12, that
you might be, exist, that you might be for His glory. That's what grace means to God.
It means that He's glorified Himself. It means that God has
been propitiated for the elect. That's what that means. It means
grace has arrived on the wings of satisfied justice. God is
satisfied with justice. That's what propitiation means.
Satisfaction, appeasement. God has appeased Himself by His
own blood according to Acts 28. Grace arrives that way. It means
that He is freely, without cause, favored the Son. It means that He has honored
His Son for the work that He has accomplished. That's what
grace means. And the Word was made flesh and
dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory as the only begotten
of the Father, full of grace and truth. That's what grace
means to God. He glorified Himself. But what
does it mean to the believer? That's the second thing. What
does grace mean to the believer? I could just say everything and
quit, but I won't. It means first that the believer
has been saved. Not could be or might be, but
has been. Has been saved. It means that
God has shown His elect unmerited favor. And that is joy unspeakable
and full of glory for worms of the dust like us. It means that
we know that when God saved us, by grace He gave us faith to
believe that He had saved us. Knowing the condition in which
He found us, we rejoice to know that what we could not ever merit
came to us in immeasurable abundance. It means that the reason we are
saved is for His glory. Grace means that nothing we have
or are, nothing we did or did not do, had anything to do with
God favoring us. That's what grace means. Grace
is God employing the consummately useless to glorify His name. It means that the favor you have
now, and this is where most people forget somehow about the grace
of God. It means that the favor you have
now, tonight, this hour, the favor you have now, The favor you have every moment
of every day, you have no merit in that. None
whatsoever. It means that all the days of
your life as a redeemed believer, you by declaring that you believe
in the grace of God must ever don the garments of the helot,
The qualifications of the quarry slave, the resume of the ruined
refuse, and the idea of the ignoble. You must always do that. Believing grace means believers,
children of God, righteous, sanctified, having been given the wisdom
of God. They have so much, but nothing they do. or are,
has merit in itself. Nothing. We are gathered here tonight to glory in God's grace. To rehearse the power and the
magnitude of that grace. To worship Him in spirit and
in truth and in all of that. There is no acceptable merit.
Do you believe in salvation by grace? By grace we are saved. Ourselves,
our works, don't merit it. I've been a church member a long
time. No merit there. I read my Bible every day. No
merit there. no merit there. I love, no merit
there. I understand truth, no merit
there. I have doctrinal purity, no merit
there. I have theological knowledge,
no merit there. I have faith, no merit There. None whatsoever. The concept of grace is enormous. It's all-encompassing and all-consuming. It is indeed amazing that men
and women who are righteous, justified, sanctified and perfected
It can only take the place of one who merits nothing. One who has nothing to offer. More wondrous still is that that's the way believers
like it. Well, what does grace mean to
those who feel that what they do must count for something, must have accrued some asset
on the plus side of the balance sheet, must obligate God somehow
to recognize what they have done. What about those? What does grace
mean to those who look at their life and see reformation? God forbid, even improvement,
who think that by applying to the flesh they can improve the
flesh. It means that they have nothing
to do with God, and He has nothing to do with them. God suffers them to be themselves. You better pray He don't suffer
you to be yourself. He suffers them to revel in their
supposed accomplishments. Grace means nothing to them.
It means that God has shown them no favor. It means that God has
ignored them in His great scheme of salvation. What does grace mean? A word
in due time. For by grace are ye saved through
faith, and that not of yourselves. It is a gift of God, lest any
man should boast. For we are his workmanship, created
in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God had before ordained
that we should walk in them." What does grace mean? To God
it means He glorifies Himself. To the believer it means that
his life from day one till the day it ends has no merit in it,
no matter what he does. And if you tonight are here,
and you're thinking somewhere, somehow, what you've done, and
I'm sure you've done some fine things in your life. I'm sure
you've taken care of friends. Perhaps you have a sick one in
your family and you've attended them. Your mothers have sat up
nights upon night with your children when they were sick. Perhaps
your mate is sick and you attend them. Perhaps you give groceries
to folks who are poor. Perhaps you mow somebody's yard
because they can't do it anymore. You do good things. I'm glad
you do. There's no merit there. And if you're saved, God will
have to show you grace. He'll have to show you grace.
If I was you, I'd just camp out at Mercy's door, hang on for
dear life, and look to Him. Maybe, perhaps, probably, if
you look to Him, you'll find grace in His eyes. God bless
you.