Amen. There's nothing greater than
grace. Point of grace saying that we
hope to have them here in October. Accepted. Accepted by God. The question that's been asked
this morning in our praise service is, how can it be? How can God love me? There's
nothing greater than grace. Today I hope to answer that question from the book of Ephesians. I
know you want to know you're accepted. Everyone in here wants
to be accepted. Some of you more than others
because you're always putting your face on Facebook. And always checking to see how
many likes you got. We want to be accepted. And those
of us who are not putting our pictures on Facebook, we have
that same desire to be accepted. What a glorious thing it is to
be accepted by God. And to know that you're accepted
by God. Life is really a mess until you
come to see that. And then it becomes a very awesome
thing. A thing of wonder. that I am
accepted by God. Do you ever just think, just consider the goodness of God
and all that he's done for you? And as you're thinking, do you
ever just have to spontaneously cry out, bless God, Just bless
God. Paul obviously upon writing the
very first verse of Ephesians had been thinking about God's
goodness, God's goodness to him and to others, and he can't help
himself. Usually he waits until the end
of the book to make the triumphant announcements, but here, by the
time he gets to the third verse, he's already carried away in
his spirit by the grace of God. He says in verse 3, blessed be
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Bless God. Not bless me, not bless my church,
not bless my baptism, not bless my good works, but bless God. This God, he says, who is the
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us. Notice that. Underline, hath blessed us, past
tense. God hath blessed us, past tense. Where did he bless us? In heavenly
places. With what did he bless us? With
all spiritual blessings. God has blessed us with all spiritual
blessings. Now, little believer, just think
about that. Every blessing you're going to receive in life, God
has already ordained for you. He has blessed and paid for every
blessing. Think about the storehouse of
God's blessings in Jesus Christ that are coming to you, blessings
you haven't even received. Your future, little believer,
is bright and awesome. God has wonderful things in store
for you, every good and perfect gift. What it would be like,
what would it be like for you? And some of you are here and
you live this way. You don't know about tomorrow.
Tomorrow looks pretty gloomy. Today was awful. Tomorrow looks
no better because you have very little hope of tomorrow being
better. You live a life not knowing what's
going to happen. The little believer is not to
live that kind of way. We are to know the grace of God. There is nothing greater than
the grace of God, greater than all your mess. blessed with all spiritual blessings. Everything that you're going
to need between here and heaven, God has blessed you with. They're
coming your way. Blessings are flowing your way. And the apostle then begins to
make known some of those blessings. Blessings that you've been blessed
with in heavenly places. One of them is the election of
God. Oh, it's important. Many churches
hide this truth. Here, we do not hide it. What
a tremendous blessing it is that God elected you. And of course, the question always
comes up, why would he? In this crowd, every person in
here who is a believer. It's so important that you see
the truth of election. Election should not be hid. It's
something for your comfort, for your enjoyment. You've been blessed
with a spiritual blessing. God went down to the dunghill
of sin one day, before the foundation of the world, and there was none
good, no not one, on the dunghill. We were all tumble bugs. For
you lack of farm people, look it up when you get home. Tumble
bugs live in the manure pile and all day long they just roll
little balls of manure until they die. Some of you are living
that way now. What a grand thing it would be
if you found out this morning that you, Tumblebug, were no
different than the rest of the Tumblebugs, but God chose you. That God elected you. Who maketh thee to differ from
another? What hast thou that thou didst
not receive? Now if thou didst receive it,
why dost thou glory as if thou didst not receive it? I know
it's hard to comprehend this truth. In fact, all truth is
revealed truth, and God must reveal this to you. And this
is something for you to say with the Apostle Paul, bless God. When you find out that God chose
you, not because you were better, You may even be the chief of
sinners here today, but God set his affection upon you. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that
amazing? Anybody here with me caught up
in the wonder that God chose you? And that he elected you before
the foundation of the world? Then there's another word here
that churches and church people and pastors have a problem with.
It's predestination. He not only chose you, he knew
all about you, knew everything you would ever do, knew about
all of the bad. Hey, there's nothing greater
than grace. Think about it. And yet he chose
you, and then he predestined you. What a mess you are. What a man! Prone to wander. Some of you here, as yet, have
never come to Christ. I hope today you come, and you
come in amazement. You find out about this thing
that there's nothing greater grace and grace Some of you've
lived most of your life thinking I've done too much. I've gone
too far There's no way that I can be accepted. My life is a total
disaster I've slept around I've used drugs I've done this I've
done that and then some of you have been Pharisees all your
life You've gone to church and you think you're better than
anybody else but now you're beginning to be honest with yourself and
finding out There is no good thing in you as well Now what What a predicament you're
in unless there's nothing greater than grace Unless it's amazing
grace. How sweet the sound that saved
a wretch like me you are predestined Nothing can stop you Somebody
ought to say man, it's all right. I predetermined to heaven you're
gonna make it you say well if I believe that I just live no
no when you come to see that that God has loved you before
the foundation of the world and chose you you immediately become
a debtor a debtor to the grace of God. Oh, to grace, how great
a debtor! I am daily constrained to be. When I think of God and all of
his goodness to me, I don't want to go use. Did you hear me? Love is the strongest thing in
the world. And when God changes your heart
and gives you a love for Jesus Christ, you hate every evil way. It's true. I didn't say you live
perfectly. You do not. Because in your flesh
dwells no good thing. But coming to know that you're
chosen, coming to know that God has predestinated you, coming
to know that nothing can stop you, Look at Romans 8. For whom
he did foreknow, he also did predestinate. Whom he predestinated,
them he also called. And whom he called, them he also
justified. And whom he justified, them he
also glorified. One of the great, I think, verses
in the Bible is in Revelation where Jesus stands before the
Father and says, Lo, I am the children which thou hast given
me. Any missing? Not a one. I give unto them eternal
life, and they shall never perish. This is the grace of God. This
is the message of the Bible, that you are saved to the praise
of the glory of His grace. Oh, if you could just get a hold
of that. How much happier your life would
be. I'm saved. Praise God. I'm saved. Bless God. I'm saved. Hallelujah. Worthy is the Lamb
that was slain. If you can get to that place,
life goes a lot better. I'm accepted. God has accepted you, just like
that, chosen before the foundation of the world. Oh, you were a
Gomer, all right. You were Hosea's wife, who was
constantly unfaithful. Constantly unfaithful. God gives
us such great examples of his grace. Grace, unmerited, undeserved
favor. God said to Hosea, I want to
give an example of my grace. I want you to marry a whore.
Now that's unusual for the preacher to be told to marry a whore,
but that's what God told him because God was going to give
us an example in his word of amazing grace. He marries Gomer,
what a mess she is. She has a baby, she leaves Hosea,
comes back, has another baby, leaves Hosea, comes back. The third time she comes back,
she has another child, leaves Hosea, and this time she doesn't
come back. And so, Hosea, who is the type
of our great and gracious God, says to his servants, follow
her. When she gets hungry, feed her.
We call that Theologically, we call that provenient grace. That's
grace before initial grace. That's grace before you get saved.
That's grace in the hood. That's grace when you're whoring.
That's grace when you're drunk. That's grace when you're out
there wandering. Grace before grace. His eye is
on the sparrow and he watches over his little elect kids and
protects them. You're not here because you were
careful. You're here by the grace of God.
You're not alive because you were careful. You were here by
the grace of God. There you were down in Lodibar,
down in the hood. Think about where you were and
how God protected you. Isn't it an amazing thing that
today you're in Grace Gospel Fellowship, sitting in the house
of God with your hands lifted up, praising God? In the last chapters of the book
of Hosea, God says this about Gomer and Hosea. God says, this
is the way I will love my children. I will love them freely. I will
love them freely. That word freely means without
a cause. That means God loved you, but
there was no cause in you. Isn't that amazing? There was
nothing in you that would cause God to love you. You're not saved
by self-merit. You're saved by this amazing
grace. And this amazing grace absolutely
makes no sense to those human beings who build everything on
this self-merit. Amen. It just doesn't mean now. Wait a minute. You mean God chose
me and God knew everything I'd ever do ever think every place
I would ever go and yet he chose me before the foundation of the
world you mean there was no difference between me and other people and
yet God chose me I Hear I hear messages all the time that God
chose people because of something he saw in them, but it's not
true You got to take that away Otherwise, grace is not amazing.
If God chose you because of something He saw in you, then you deserve
for Him to choose you. But the truth is, not-o. Nothing there. God got out his
big telescope, looked down through time, he was looking for a good
man, and Psalm 14 says he couldn't find one. Not a good person on
the face of the earth. There is none good, no, not one. This truth is followed up in
the book of Romans, in Romans 3, 24, when it says, being justified
freely. justification. You've been declared
not guilty, but it wasn't because you were not. He has loved you
freely and you've been justified freely. You've been justified
without a cause. God has declared you not guilty,
but you had nothing to do with it. It was free justification. How glorious this truth is. You see, grace is extravagant. Isn't it extravagant? Somebody
some more of you ought to be smiling out there Because when
you were in the drug house when you were shooting up when you
were in the whorehouse when you were living your life And and
those of you who are religious and are here when you were in
the church house, you know that's the blessed place to camouflage
yourself from God and and to hide out and You can hide in
the choir. You can hide being a deacon.
You can hide being the preacher. All the time, hiding from God. But here is the flat-out truth,
that there is none good. And if saved, you will be saved
by the grace of God. And for this purpose, remember
this, God didn't save you to praise yourself. The further
you can get away from giving self any glory, The more in line
you are with this truth, to the praise of the glory of His grace. To the praise of the glory of
His grace, wherein, in this grace, He has made us accepted in the
Beloved. Isn't that something? The only
way for you to be accepted is for you to be put in Christ.
And God put you in Christ. And you are accepted in Jesus
Christ. Not in yourself. You have nothing
to do with saving yourself. Absolutely nothing. And if you
do, I guarantee you, you're running around patting yourself on the
back. I hear preachers say this, God has done all he can. Now
it's up to you. Whoa. It would be like this,
if everybody was dead in here, I mean physically dead, and I
said, there's only one thing you have to do, just one thing.
Everything else has been done except this one thing. You just
have to wiggle your pinky two times. And you can live. You know that
isn't going to happen. Or it'd be illustrated this way.
We walk up to a casket and say God's got a wonderful plan for
your life But you have to uh-oh You have just won the lottery,
but you have to show me the ticket Don't think so and you have to
be made alive who were dead and Wouldn't it be something if some
old raw bone dead sinner got quickened today, made alive in
Christ Jesus? It's been a while since I've
told the Brother Birch story. Brother Barnard used to tell
this. He was in a revival meeting down in Texas, and there was
a couple there that was attending this little church. Mr. Birch and Ms. Birch, and her
name was Mary. And Mary attended service, but
Mr. Birch was just flat out mean.
And he was mean to Mary, and he didn't like her going to church. Mary went to the protracted meeting.
The preacher got up and preached, and it was wonderful. She went
home. She walked home. They didn't have any means of
transportation. She walked home. She jumped up on the porch and
she said to Mr. Birch, you should have been there
tonight. It was absolutely wonderful.
And Mr. Birch said to Mary, Mary, I ain't
going and you're not going back either. Well, God began to do
a work in Mr. Birch's heart. And the next night,
he did go with Mary. He changed his mind. And as that
preacher preached, Mr. Burt said this, that preacher
cut me open. He said he cut me wide open,
and he poured in salt, and said on the walk home, I told Mary,
Mary, we're never going back there. I ought to give that preacher
a good whipping. The next night, Mr. Burt said to Mary, You know,
I've been thinking about it. Maybe I'll go back and give him
one more shot. Mary said, I'm not feeling good.
You'll have to go by yourself. Mr. Bird said, I'm going to go,
but if he cuts me open tonight and pours in salt, I'm going
to give him a whipping like he's never had before. Mr. Birch, you see, and for those
of you who are not getting this, already something is happening
in Mr. Birch's heart. It wouldn't be
natural for him to go back. But he's going back. And that
night, Mr. Birch, in the power of the Holy
Spirit, was converted. He ran up and picked the preacher
up and said, lifted him right off the ground and said, I love
you more than anybody in this world for preaching the gospel
to me. On the way home, on the way home,
on the way home, the birds were singing. And Mr. Birch said, it sounded to me
like they were saying, glad you're saved, Mr. Birch. Glad you're
saved, Mr. Birch. He said, the stars were
twinkling. They seemed to say, glad you're
saved, Mr. Birch. Glad you're saved, Mr. Birch. He jumped up on the front
porch. Mary heard him, and Mary said,
Mr. Birch, you need not say a word. God has already showed me he
saved you tonight. This is the wonder of salvation. This is the glory of it. The grace of God. Now quickly,
think of it. We are accepted in the beloved. But what does that mean? What
does it mean to be accepted in the beloved? It means we are
objects of God's divine complacency. He's not angry with us. But it
means more than that. It means so much more than that,
that God is just simply satisfied. It means that God accepts us
with delight. Do you know God's excited about
you? He delights that we are his kids. In fact, Zephaniah
3.17 says this, the Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty,
he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy. He will rest
in his love, he will joy over thee with singing. I've always
read that verse and go, what's God gonna sing over us? He can't
sing how great thou art. Right? I mean, I can think of
a thousand songs we could sing to give God praise, but when
God stands over you, Dave, and begins singing and saying, I
just delight in you, Dave. I find such joy in you. You're
mine. I can't, I have no idea why. And I barely know Dave, like
Dave knows himself. But I know me. It's a mystery. Isn't grace a great mystery?
It's a great mystery. I can understand. Sometimes I
look at other people and in years past I've said, you know, I can,
why would God save me? Why would God save me? I look
at other people and sometimes I say, you know, nice folks, but God saved me. What a wonder
that is. Jude 24 says this, Now unto him
that is able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless
before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy. That's not
your joy. That's his joy. You know, when
we get to heaven and stand before the Lord, God isn't going to
be looking at us like this. Well, you made it by the skin
of your teeth. Come on in. I don't know how God's going
to do this, but he's going to be jumping up and down happy.
I saw my grandkids. I had the Chuck E. Cheese detail
of Friday night. Oh, how I dreaded it. But when those two got out of
the car and ran to Pam and I and wrapped their arms around us
and began to kiss us, what a joy it was to be at Chuck E. Cheese! God loves His kids that way.
Some of you are going around with such dread and such fear. I don't want you to be that way
There's no need for you to be that way. You're a child of the
King with Jesus your Savior You're a child of the King That's why I preach these truths
Because they bring joy they brings peace because all of us are such
a mess I don't care how long you've been saved you got garbage
all kinds of garbage. I Say, well, I've never done
this. Oh, you've thought about it.
Don't even go there with me. I've read the Bible. In your
flesh dwells no good thing. It's going to take the grace
of God to take us to heaven, all the way to heaven. You need
to grow in this truth. You need to grow in grace. I
want this to be a shouting church, a happy church, a joyous church. And I want to see sin in your
life. I want to see you overcome. Amen. And I know what's going
to overcome, not me putting rules and regulations on you. You know,
there are some here today that have relapsed four and five times. I got good news for you. You're
still not going to hell. Amen. Say, well, pastor, it just
seems to me like the way you preach, people just gonna live
like hell. You know, you just preach and
give people a license to live like they wanna live. Well, you
already live. You don't say, I'm about to sin,
I need to go buy a license. Nobody in here says that. You don't need a license. You
just, don't we? Don't we? We just, we do it. I'm talking to Christians now. Many, many people in here try
to find assurance in their experiences. But when the experience passes,
you have the spiritual experience, and you get high. But those experiences,
they pass. And when they pass, you have
moments where you cleave to the dust. I mean, you are so down. and you're victims of fear. And
you fear that you're no longer accepted because of what you
did. Is there somebody in here that could be honest enough that
you have feared losing salvation because of something you did?
And the rest of you, I have doubt of you. I mean, something you thought
and you've gone back and said to yourself, how could I be a
Christian and think that or do that? It's going to take the
grace of God to take us to heaven. It's going to take unmerited
favor. Oh, if you could but see that
your highs do not exalt you and your lows do not depress you
in the Father's sight. He does not love you more because
of the best about you or love you less because of the worst
about you. It's very, very true. Blessed
is that faith that walks above experience. Blessed is the faith
that sings in the dark night after feeling themselves to be
such a mess. Blessed is that faith that can
sing when everything's going bad and you've done the worst
of things in your own eyes and you can say, but I know I'm pardoned. I know that the blood of Jesus
Christ cleanses me from all sin and thank you, God. You can sing of heaven's unclouded
day and know that you're heaven bound. in the midnight and the
vileness, you have consciousness of it, and you still boast of
your pardon, that you're bought with the blood of Jesus Christ
and completely clothed in his imputed righteousness. It's true. It's just true. Oh, wretched
man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
I thank God Jesus Christ already has. There is therefore now no
condemnation to those that are in Christ Jesus. You stand accepted
in one who never alters, in one who is always the beloved of
God, always perfect, always without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. You are accepted in him and God
sees you in him and therefore there is no spot or wrinkle in
you. Some of us look within and say,
there is nothing acceptable here. That's so true. That is so true. Then I encourage you to look
to Christ, where everything is acceptable. Get your head in
your belly button, but don't keep it there very long, because
there's scary, creeping things crawling around there. It's like
a dark cellar with roots growing through the walls. Spiders on
the floor you get your head stuck in there looking for something
good when the lights come on It's a scary place. The problem
is many of you here today The lights haven't come on so you
don't see the creeping crawling things But when God in the power
of the Holy Spirit clicks the light on and you see you are
a sinner by nature You are a sinner by choice. You are a sinner by
practice. Then you cry out. I need a Savior
Bless God there is one I Am accepted by his justice and
viewed with satisfaction By his holiness the devil tempts you
but you are accepted by one who has stomped the devil's head
You are accepted as much as those who are right now in heaven.
Did you know that? I? You are accepted as much as
those who are in heaven. Do you have someone very dear
to you that has died and gone to heaven? You are as accepted
as a believer in Jesus Christ as much as they are accepted
because they're in heaven because they were accepted in the beloved.
You can't get more accepted than that. That's what I'm resting
in. 52, 53 years of preaching. I count it all done that I might
win Christ and be found in Christ. I'm zeroing in. The older I get,
the more I am determined to preach to the praise of the glory of
His grace. If you don't want to hear grace,
you better pray I die pretty soon. because Wednesday night,
you're gonna hear it again. Sunday morning, you're gonna
hear it again. I'm going to lift him up. I'm
going to say to God, be the glory, great things he has done. I'm
going to exalt him. And for those of you who are
doubters, just look at what God is doing here. We are about 60 people from packing
this place out. wouldn't it be a great thing
I'm calling sinners come on in come on in I got some good news
say yeah but you don't know what I've done I don't care come on
in come on in I've got some glad tidings for you. Oh, but I'm
wallowed in the stables of sin. That's all right. Come on in.
Come on in. I've got a message for you. The
blood of Jesus Christ will make you white as snow. I've got a
message for you. There is a fountain filled with
blood, drawn from Emmanuel's veins, and sinners plunge beneath
that flood, lose all their guilty stains. I've got a message for
you. The crimson stream I see I plunge, and oh, it cleanseth
me. It cleanseth me. It cleanseth
me. My sin not in part, but the whole
is nailed to His cross, and I bear it no more. It is well, it is
well with my soul. And when I think that God, hallelujah,
His Son not sparing, He sent Him to die. to take away my sins,
then sings my soul, my Savior God to thee, how great thou art,
how great thou art. To God be the glory. This is
the grace of God. So let us rejoice in it. Let
us proclaim it when you meet with others. Last night, Pam
and I watched the Columbine film. You remember the little girl
that was the first one to be shot by those young boys. And
she was a Christian witness. And some days before they shot
and killed her as well as, I don't know, 16 others, 13 others. They
said to her, you think you're better than us. Because she was
a witness for Christ. But she didn't think that at
all. And I want you to know, when I talk about God electing,
when I talk about God choosing, I'm not talking about me being
better than anybody else. I want you to know I was probably
worse than most folks. It's amazing to me that God chose
me. So when we talk about the grace
of God, look for people in your life that God brings into your
life that you can tell this to. There's nothing greater than
grace. Look for people that you can say to them, I was once just
like you. I was lost and without hope.
And Jesus Christ rescued me. Look for people you can say this
to. If he saved me, he can save you because it's not by works.
Look for people who've given up all hope and are captive to
drugs and lasciviousness. Look for people because you have
a message of hope. It's the grace of God. Who am
I talking to today? I'm talking to somebody today.
The Apostle Paul said this. I wanna reason with you. I wonder
if there's somebody here that's just filthy black. You're just
filthy. And you're sitting here in the
house of God, maybe for the first time, but you're thinking about
all the things you've done. You've already given up hope
of ever going to heaven. I've got some good news to you.
Good news for you. It's not by works. And I know
some of you are sitting there like this. Can it be, and can
it be, that God, my Savior, would die for me? And the answer is
yes, for you. Somebody ought to shout hallelujah. That's what ought to be happening
in here. God's people getting happy, and you, my friend, You,
my friend, all of this God has done for you. Say, well, what
do you mean, pastor? I mean, you know that rescue
mission some of you are in over there? God did that for you. You didn't find that by accident.
You're not in a drug rehab program, simply. That was not an accident.
God saw you a long time ago. You little alley cat, God saw
you. God saw you. And because he loved
you, he draws you to himself with cords of love. What you're
hearing this morning, and your heart is stirred, and you're
thinking, wow, could that be true? See, by the time you think
that, God's already drawing you. That's the reason you're thinking
that. You've already been caught. The Holy Spirit, the hound of
heaven, has already tracked you down. Some of you 25 years of
age, boy, you have a long pattern of being out there. And now here
you are, and for the first time in your life, you're hearing
about this grace of God. And you're thinking, I've never
heard anything like that. I've been in all kinds of churches.
My folks were Catholics and Methodists and Presbyterian, but I've never
heard a message of grace. See, if you're not a sinner,
this is not the place for you. We're looking for no good. We're
looking for no good people here. I mean scoundrels, rascals. This is the place for you. I hear this quite often. Well,
you know, Pastor, I don't think you're ever going to fill that
place because you know you're in downtown Pontiac and you know
about Pontiac. Oh, yeah, that's why I came here.
There's some big fish to catch here. There's some big fish here. Hey,
if you're looking for sinners, go where they are. Don't run
out of town. God's doing something here. And
let me say this, you don't have to go on Facebook today. You
don't have to try to get liked. If in your heart you know you're
a sinner and you're trusting Jesus Christ, you're accepted.
I wish you would do this, though. If you find out you're accepted
today, if you found it out, I'm gonna check Facebook this afternoon. I would like to see your face
right there on Facebook going like this. I'm accepted! Wouldn't that be great? And I'm
gonna put a like there. I like that because you came
to know Jesus Christ, confessing before men. Let's stand and sing.