Well it's a privilege, it's lovely
to be back with you all. Todd's a dear, dear friend and
a friend of mine back home was struggling with a message while
I'm away and I said the best commentaries on passages of scripture
you're struggling with is to go to Go to a man who preaches
in the love of God and the love for the souls of people before
him and aware of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. I said,
just go and listen to Todd. He sent me a message a little
while later and said, it's all been sorted. Thanks very much.
So look, I'm thankful. I'm thankful. I'm obviously very
thankful to Todd and Lynne and Aubrey and I'm thankful to you
for being participants in what comes to us as a blessing from
the messages that come from here. We have a great and glorious
God and I want us to look at not all of that passage that
Todd read that was just in context but I want us to contemplate
This remarkable verse, isn't it? My grace, my grace is sufficient
for thee. One of the dear ladies in our
church and she'd been a foundation member of our church and just
the most extraordinary blessing to me for the last 15 or 20 years. When she was dying here a few
months ago, I went to her and it's a challenging task to ask
someone, what passage of scripture would you like me to preach on
for your funeral? And can you choose the hymns?
I'm not sure whether you do it here but for a pastor it's extraordinarily
comforting to get up before a grieving family and a grieving church
and say these are the words that June has chosen for us to hear
today and these are the verses. My grace is sufficient for thee,
for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly, therefore,
will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may
rest upon me. The power of Christ is the gospel.
May rest upon me. She was a dear, dear sweet friend.
As I sat down next to her husband at the graveside, I said, I feel
like I've just buried the body of my best friend. and she's
still alive and she's in the most remarkable place and for
the last 15 years every time I've thought of her and every
time I've prayed for her I've had a smile on my face because
she just so loved the Lord and she so loved the gospel that
you preach here and we so much delight in. And what a great
thing to contemplate isn't it that I could live a life Such
that when Todd thinks of me, he smiles. That's good, isn't it? a good
thing to contemplate, it's a good way to finish your life. And
I sat next to her as she was dying and held her hand and I
looked at her and said, June, do you know that you're loved?
And she just had the sweetest smile on her face. And I wasn't
talking about the love of man for her, I was talking about
the love of the Lord Jesus Christ. And she just, in her last days,
she just absolutely rejoiced in her eternal union with the
Lord Jesus Christ. the glory of his presence with
her and if we'd known her time with him we would have been envious,
it was so sweet. We have a great and glorious
gospel, we have a great and glorious God and we We are left like Paul,
troubled and pleading with the Lord and crying out for the Lord
to take away these trials and what a great answer the Lord
Jesus Christ gives. My grace, my grace is, I'm not
taking them away, my grace is sufficient for you. My grace
is sufficient for you. This gospel is a gospel that
is declared to the praise of the glory of the grace of God. Grace is glorious because God
is glorious. It reveals a glorious God, a
glorious Saviour. It reveals that there's a glorious
throne that we can come to. It reveals a glorious covenant
of grace in the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. It reveals
a glorious salvation. So let's begin with these words.
I just wanted to look at them briefly with you. I've titled
this message Sufficient Grace. And the Lord's answer begins
with, my grace, my grace. God alone can say my about absolutely
everything in this universe. We don't own anything. It just
can take wings and fly away. My grace. My grace. It's God's possession and it's
God's act in giving it, isn't it? And grace bears all the distinguishing
marks of the giver. God is sovereign. Grace is sovereign. Grace reigns. There is a throne
of grace that we're encouraged to come to in our time of need.
If you're like me, you're always needy. So what a great time and
what a great encouragement to come. God's grace is sovereign. God's grace is eternal. You love
that verse, I'm sure, as we read it often in 2 Timothy chapter
1, where the Lord says, That's the definition of grace, isn't
it? Not according to our works. But according to his own purpose
and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world
began. And it's now made manifest through
the preaching of the Gospel of the Lord who has abolished death
and has brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel.
Grace is sovereign grace, grace is eternal grace, grace is omnipotent
grace. It always achieves its purpose,
it always reaches the person to whom the Lord sends it. And
God's grace is always saving grace. We cannot speak of God's grace
without speaking of God's grace in relation to the eternal union
between the Lord and his people. You can't speak of grace without
speaking of that election of grace, that remnant saved according
to the election of grace. Grace is always saving. God's
grace reveals the holiness of God. God's grace reveals the
justice of God because God's grace is all blood-bought grace. It always leads us back to the
glory of the Lord Jesus Christ as he's revealed in his death
on the cross and the resurrection glory that he ascended to. God
is love. Grace reveals the love of God.
to wretched sinners like us. God is light. The grace of God
reveals the light of God's salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. God
is love. Grace is a love word. God's grace, as I said earlier,
reaches to its objects always. like our God. I love the definitions
of grace, I love the word grace. When the Lord first did a work
in my life I'd been a serious rebel for a seriously long time
and I was running as far from God as I possibly could and the
one word other than the Lord Jesus Christ and the glorious
words of the scripture but the one word that just had captivated
me in those early days was grace and anytime I met anyone who
was claiming to be a professing believer I wanted to talk to
them about the grace of God and I wanted to ask them about their
understanding and their experience of the grace of God because it
had captivated me. But I love the definitions, grace
ceases to be grace unless it is totally and absolutely irrespective
of anything and everything, whether good or bad, in the objects of
it. Grace ceases to be grace unless
it is totally and absolutely irrespective of anything and
everything, whether good or bad, in the objects of it. Grace cannot
be earned, it cannot be merited. It comes to chosen sinners as
a pure gift, unsought for. to those unaware even of their
need of it. It cannot be earned, therefore
it looks to no merit for it to be given. Nor can it, and does
it, does any demerit cause it to be lost. I don't know, I find that very
satisfying. I find that very comforting. Isn't it remarkable
to think that when the dear saints leave this earth and go to be
with the Lord in heaven, you have a place in heaven right
beside Abraham. Rahab and Abraham, side by side,
isn't it? Grace at the foot of the cross,
all the ground is very level. In heaven, I love the fact that
the thrones, the crowds in heaven are seated around. And how do
you get 10,000 times 10,000 around? You just talk to God about that,
but he can do it. We're all equidistant. This grace is sufficient grace
because of its source. and its reflection, it brings
glory to God because it reflects the divine attributes of our
glorious God and particularly it reveals those divine attributes
in the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. But he goes on to say,
he says, my grace is always. Our God is the eternal is. He
says, I am. I am. He's always am. Grace is. Grace now. We cannot live on yesterday's
grace. We live on today's grace. We need grace for the moment,
don't we? We need grace to gather here. You need grace to hear
from God tonight. I need grace to preach tonight
if God is going to speak to you. We need hearing grace and seeing
grace. We need it always, now. It's enough for us in the trials
today and grace will carry us into the very presence of God.
There's a lovely description of of grace in Ephesians 1.6 the
word is translated we are accepted in the beloved but the word actually
means to be graced in the beloved and it's the same word that is
declared of Mary in Luke chapter 1 and it means remarkably it
means to be pursued and it means also to be surrounded with a
favour, to be honoured with blessings. I just love to be a recipient
of the grace of God. I'm just so thankful that God
is not looking to me. He looks to his son. He looks
to his son for everything. He says my grace is sufficient. It's sufficient grace. It's enough. It means to be satisfied, to
be content. It's to be possessed with unfailing
strength. As Paul goes on to say, by the
grace of God, I am what I am. It's sufficient. It's always
perfectly adequate for the circumstances of our lives, isn't it? Our God
is called El Shaddai, God all sufficient. But God's grace is
sufficient grace because it's effectual grace and it's effectual
grace in that it's sufficient grace, sufficient now, sufficient
before salvation to keep us preserved and sufficient in salvation,
it's sufficient in life after salvation, it's sufficient in
our dying hours and God says that he's sufficient in 2nd Corinthians
8-9 to make all grace abound. Don't you love that? Whenever
God is talking about grace, the words are just extraordinary,
aren't they? The scripture writers and us are led of the Holy Spirit,
but they're always using almost superlative words when they're
describing grace. It's glorious. Well, how do we
know how glorious glory is? It's as glorious as the Lord
Jesus Christ himself. His glorious grace. My grace,
Paul, with all of your buffeting, my grace is sufficient for thee. God's grace always deals with
the certain ones of scripture. It always reaches the particular
ones, isn't it? Sufficient for thee, the notion
of common grace. Common grace is useless grace.
I'm not a common sinner, brothers and sisters. Common grace that
necessarily means that if it's common then I'll have to do something
to gather it and have it and appropriate it to myself. That's
a denial of grace altogether. Grace of God. The grace of God
is for thee. So let's go back and look at
the for thee. This is for Paul. As I said,
grace is particular. And I want us to look at this
man. And Paul describes himself in
the most remarkable ways in 2 Corinthians 12. And he is forced to do it. Isn't it remarkable that Paul
is forced to defend his apostleship? It's remarkable in so many ways,
isn't it, to think that they were, before other men, so ordinary
that men could challenge their authority, challenge their really
scent of God. But listen to his description
of himself in 2 Corinthians 12, verse 2. He says, I knew a man
in Christ. A man in Christ. How does a man
get in Christ? God puts them there, 1 Corinthians
1.29. It's of God that you're in the
Lord Jesus Christ. If you're going to be in Christ,
what do you have to be like to be in Christ? You have to be as good as God.
You have to be as holy as God. You have to be as righteous as
God to be in him. How did that happen? It's just the cross brothers
and sisters isn't it? It's in the cross. This is a
man when he's speaking of himself as a man in Christ he's speaking
of himself But listen to, just come down with me. Paul is struggling, he's struggling
to declare what had happened to him because in these revelations
of God we are dealing with people meeting God and the language
of men and the wisdom of men and the understanding of men
is absolutely irrelevant. Our relationship with God is
so eternally mysterious. We are talking about things that
we cannot possibly understand but we can rejoice in them and
we can rejoice in what Paul had been through. So Paul says in
verse 3, I knew such a man whether in the body or out of the body,
I cannot tell. This is a remarkable experience
that Paul had had. And he was caught up into paradise. And again, if he's in Christ,
that's how you get into paradise, brothers and sisters. How do
you get into paradise? You get into paradise in Christ.
And he heard unspeakable words which is not lawful for a man
to utter. Then in verse 5 he says, of such and one will I
glory. have confidence in. He has confidence
in himself as he is seen in the Lord Jesus Christ and listen
to what he goes on to say. He's boasting in this man in
Christ and he immediately goes on to say, yet of myself I will
not glory. This is one of those glorious
passages of scripture, brothers and sisters, that speaks of the
two natures of a believer. Here he is, he's a man in Christ
who has access to the paradise of God, to the very presence
of the throne of God, and yet he's a man on this earth at the
same time. And he'll boast, he'll glory
in his infirmities. Is that your story? that all
of your boasting, all of your confidence before God is in the
Lord Jesus Christ and him alone. And all you see in your flesh
here gives you absolutely no reason
to boast or have any confidence whatsoever. All of my confidence
is in heaven. My righteousness sits on the
throne of heaven. My holiness sits on the throne of heaven.
My sins being put away is all there in heaven, isn't it? We
have an alien righteousness. And it comes as just this extraordinary,
glorious gift, a blood-bought gift from God the Father to his
people. And I love the truth of the two natures. Firstly, I love it because God
says it. He says it here, he says it in so many other passages
in the scriptures, he says it in Galatians chapter 5. I'm sure
you've dealt with it many times. He says, for the flesh, the eye will not glory man. For
the flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against
the flesh. And these are contrary one to the other so that you
cannot do the things that you would. What would you love? I would just love to love the
Lord Jesus Christ with all of my heart and all of my soul.
I'd love to live without sin. I'd love to love my brothers
and sisters in Christ as perfectly as I could. So many things we
love, we love and we just can't do it. That's flesh isn't it? There's a contrary to one another
so you cannot do the things you would and the other side of that
is that God's grace is a restraining grace upon his people. He sets
limits. He hedges our way like Gamer
with thorns. We don't like the thorns. And
we might plead that God would take the thorns away. The thorns
hurt. And the thorns are there regularly. And people immediately
go to this passage and say, what are the thorns? Well, the thorn
is your flesh, brothers and sisters. And the thorn in your flesh hurts
enormously. But the thorn in your flesh is not going to kill
you. And the thorn in your flesh reminds you again and again of
how weak you are. And our thorns in our flesh cause
us to run back to our savior again. We come to the throne
of grace, the thorns make us needy. And we come to the throne
of grace to find grace in our help of need. There are so many
other passages of scripture that describe this battle between
flesh and spirit. And the reality is, according
to the scriptures, that when God does a work of grace in you,
he puts something in you that wasn't there before. It is, if
any man be in Christ, 2 Corinthians 5, 17, if any man be in Christ,
he is a new creature. All things are passed away. Behold,
all things are become new. There are so many reasons, as
I said, the first reason I love this truth of the scriptures,
this is what God says. I love the truth of this scripture
because It is the lived experience of the children of God throughout
the scriptures. It is the lived experience. You
think of Peter. Satan wishes to sift you as wheat,
Peter. But your faith will not fail.
I've prayed for you. What's Peter's faith? the faithfulness
of the Lord Jesus Christ. The life I now live in the flesh
I live by the faithfulness of the Son of God who loved me and
gave himself for me. I love it because it allows us
to be honest before God. about our sins. And I can come
to God like Hezekiah did when he was challenged and he took
that letter that was condemning him and threatening all of him
and his nation, he just laid it before God. And he said, this
is who I am. These are the circumstances of
my life. If something is going to happen
for your glory in all of this, you must do it. It causes the
child of God to wait upon God for his grace to be made available. It causes the child of God to
be much more sympathetic with our brothers and sisters when
we fall. Again and again and again. We see through our eyes
the flesh of our brothers and sisters. And I pray that we would
pray that we'd see through heavenly eyes. If we could see through
heaven's eyes the glory of our brothers and sisters and the
glory of the Lord Jesus in his salvation of them and his gathering
them together to himself. we'd be singing praises. And
we'd be very quick, as we see the thorns in our own flesh and
the weakness of it, we'd be very quick to love our brothers and
sisters. And the one antidote to all of
the problems, isn't it, is they just need to hear the gospel
again. I just need to hear the gospel, I just need to hear about
the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. The glory of that eternal union,
the glory of the fact that according to God my sins are gone. Gone, justified, they're gone. The glory of that union that
says, as Paul said, all of God's people are in the Lord Jesus
Christ. and remarkably and mysteriously and wondrously we're in him. What's the hope of glory? Christ
in you. Christ in you. Christ in us. I just love the fact that that's
what God says and I don't have to argue with anyone about it,
I'm not interested in debating with anyone about it, we're here
to declare what God says and let other people, let other people
deal with that. My grace is sufficient for you
for My strength is made perfect in
weakness. My grace begins salvation. My
grace finishes salvation. When the great building is built
in Zechariah 4, there's grace, glorious grace in the foundation.
There's glorious grace, grace unto it when the headstone's
raised up. There's grace all the way in between. He says,
my strength, my power is made perfect in weakness. My strength is made perfect. It means complete, to be carried
through completely, to be accomplished, to finish, to finish. It's made perfect in weakness. It's extraordinary, isn't it?
came to these people and they said, well, his letters are weighty,
but his bodily presence is weak and his speech is contemptible. What an extraordinary thing to
say about the apostle. And he says, I was with you in
weakness and in fear, in much trembling. Weakness, what weakness
we have in our flesh, my strength. Isn't it wonderful that in that
weakness, we'd love to give God all the glory due his name. We'd
love to preach his glory. Aaron, you'd love to preach his
glory. We fail every time we stand here to preach the glory
of the Lord Jesus Christ. We'd love to preach his gospel
with power and clarity and simplicity and beauty, with the severity
of what's involved and the glory of what's involved. We'd love
for the words that we speak to impact those people that we speak
to from the pulpit and when we speak to them in our conversations. We'd love, we'd love to love
him. Love to believe him as I ought.
We can't boast about anything to do with my love for him or
my worship of him or my faith in him. We are weak, aren't we,
to love him as I ought, to pray as I ought, to labour as I desire,
to know his word as I ought. My grace is sufficient for thee. Most gladly, therefore, will
I glory in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest
upon me. Most gladly, he says, most gladly. Isn't that a wonderful description?
Most gladly. Isn't it wonderful when the worst
experience you can have is boastful and proud people that want to
tell you what they've done. Isn't it lovely when you can
go alongside another brother and you're as weak as they are
and you put your arms around them and say, I know about a
saviour. Let's come and talk about a saviour. Let's come and
talk about who he is. What's the power of Christ? It's
the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. It reveals all of his
power in salvation. And I'll close with these remarkable
words, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. I just love looking up words in
the Greek to see what they really mean. That word, to rest upon
me, is to pitch a tent over and to dwell upon me. Don't you love
that? That the power of Christ, I'll
boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may rest
upon me. My life is hidden with Christ
in God. What was Paul's prayer? Oh that
I may be found in him. Moses did two remarkable things
when he was called upon God to reveal his glory. He stood upon
a rock, Exodus 33, and then he was placed in a rock. I think
we do both, brothers and sisters, don't we? We stand on the rock,
the Lord Jesus Christ, and before God we're in the rock. We're
in him. The power of God may pitch a
tent over me. pitched the tent of his tabernacle over me and dwell upon me. When you went into the Holy of
Holies and you only got into the Holy of Holies with your
names written on the breastplate and on the shoulders of the high
priest. And you only went into the holy
of holies with blood. And you went through that labour,
you went past that labour, the washing by the word. You went
past the bread, the bread of life, and you went past the candlestick,
the light of the world. You went past that bread, the
bread of life, and you went into the Holy of Holies. And above
that mercy seat were those angels in Solomon's temple. The wings
went from one wall, touched each other and went to the other wall.
What a glorious place that we are taken by a high priest, where
the power of Christ rests upon us, covers us, covers us. Joel 3.10 says, let the weak
say, I am strong. Substitution, satisfaction. my sin, his blood, obedience,
my life, his life. May the Lord cause us to be weak
that we may know the power of God and may it rest upon us and
dwell over us and comfort us and carry us all the way to glory.
Thank you, Pastor. Thank you.