I hope she forgives me. Sometimes
I have reason to doubt, I'm afraid. Oh, my. Over in Acts chapter 20, I just
have one verse I want to read, but you'll all remember the context
of Acts chapter 20. The Apostle Paul was going up
to Jerusalem. He was coming close to Ephesus,
but he told them that he won't see my face again, he said. This
is the last time you'll hear or see me. And he told them some
of the trials they were going to face. Man, they were going
to go through some trials. They were pastors, teachers back
in those heathen countries. And he said some of you even
wanted to draw away disciples after themselves. Some of you
within this little group here, he says, however many there was,
you're going to get lifted up and draw away disciples after
yourself. And that's when he told them, you'll see my face
no more. But he said, I've declared the whole counsel of God unto
you. And these are his departing words to these preachers. And
I just want to emphasize here in Acts chapter 20. verse 32. Just this one verse,
I want to just speak in general on this afternoon just for a
few minutes. After He told them there in verse 31 to watch and
be sober, where He said, I've been with you three years and
I've taught you and warned you with tears. And now, brethren,
I commend you to God and to the Word of His grace, which is able
to build you up and to give you an inheritance among all of them
which are sanctified, set apart in Jesus Christ. I commend you
to the word of His grace. I commend you to the grace of
God, the free and sovereign grace of God. It has been said by some
who have surely not learned the grace of God as they should,
that if we wholly depend upon the grace of God that's in Jesus
Christ to save us and to carry us through this evil world to
heaven, that we'll become antinomian, that we'll become lawless and
sin at will. We'll say with those of Paul's
day, let us do good, let us do evil that good may come or let
us sin that grace may abound. And yet Paul says to these pastors
here and to you and me, they needed to be kept from evil.
They needed to be kept from error in doctrine and in their preaching.
They needed to be kept from inward corruptions that they felt in
their own selves. And here is what he said to them,
I commend you to God and to the Word of His grace. I commend
you to Him. And He was saying here, I commend
you to His wisdom, His gracious wisdom that's able to lead you.
I commend you to His power, His gracious power that's able to
keep you. I commend you to the supplies
of His grace which is able to meet all your needs. I commend
you to His faithfulness. God is faithful, isn't He? I
commend you to God and He says you're to the Word of His grace
which is able to build you up. Grace is able to build you up. I've never known anybody, brothers
and sisters, that grace tore down. Not a believer. Grace builds you up. puts you
on the foundation, Jesus Christ, and then when it puts you on
the foundation, it builds you up and makes you strong. Grace builds you up. I've got
a grandson, Devin. He's my middle boy's son, and
he was always a puny sort of fella. His arms and his legs,
he's always puny, and he went off to college, and they give
him this lunch ticket that he can eat as often as he wants
to, whatever he wants to eat. And he started working out and
eating. And I'm telling you what, you
ought to see that kid. I mean, he is built up. He is
strong. And that's what the Apostle Paul
said in Europe. What can the grace of God do
for you? It can build you up. We need to be built up, don't
we? He says this, grace is able to build you up and spiritual
strength. Oh, I want to be strong, don't
you? Grace will make you strong. Grace is able to enlighten your
understanding. Oh, how I want that! Grace can
build you up in the faith. I want to live by faith and I
want my faith to be strong. I want to be strong in the doctrine
of faith. Grace can build you up in the
doctrine of faith. Grace is able to inform your
judgments, he was telling them. Boy, you're going to need judgments,
he said. You know, the errors that we make in our life is because
we are weak in judgment. Did you ever make a wrong judgment?
Man, I have. And he said grace is able to
build you up and inform your judgments. Grace is able to fill
your memory with divine truth. I'm 65 years old, I'm starting
to forget things. I want to remember, don't you?
Poor old John Newton reached the point, he was so old, and
his mind was going, and he said, I'm at the point now, I can only
remember two things. I'm a great sinner, and Christ
is a great Savior. I don't want to lose that, do
you? I want these truths to to rest in my memory, that I can
call Him to my memory. Grace is able to do that. Grace
is able to increase your affections for Christ and His Kingdom and
His people. Grace is able to cause your will
to resign itself to God's will. Oh, don't you want that? Father,
not my will, but Your will be done. Oh, this is grace. the grace of God, this is what
it's able to do for you. Paul said it's able to do exceedingly,
abundantly, above all that we ask or think. You know something? Grace is
the most misunderstood thing in this world. You and I can
just get a glimpse of it just for a minute. Hang on just for
a minute. I'm talking about real grace, free grace. And then we
lose the knowledge of it. It's just outside of the natural
realm. We're always looking for something
we've earned or something we deserve or something we're worthy
of. We know so little about the free grace of God in Jesus Christ. Brothers and sisters, I'm convinced
of this, that it's not an over-trust. It's not an overly trust in God's
grace that makes us weak and straying. It's a mistrust of
it or a distrust of it. Paul said, here's what I commend
you to, to God and to the Word of His grace, for it's able to
build you up. If this is so, then let us pray
for grace. I ask Randy to bring us before
the throne of grace. Let us come before the throne
of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help us. And
let us trust Him for His grace. And not trust ourselves and look
to ourselves, but trust to Him for the supply of His grace.
My grace is sufficient for thee. I think sometime we ought to
write that down on a little piece of paper and carry it in our
shirt pocket. Sticking on our little magnets on the refrigerator.
And just look at that often. My grace is sufficient for thee. For what? Everything. Everything. Every aspect of our life His
grace is sufficient for it. Sometimes we are so mistrustful
and distrustful of Christ and His grace to build us up and
make us strong. He has to humble our strength. That's what these trials sometimes
are about, brothers and sisters. That's what the breaking is about,
the humbling is about. He weans us from dependent upon
our own strength. Paul said this when he went to
the Lord Jesus and he said, Lord, I have this thorn in my flesh
and it's killing me. It's weakened me. It's brought
me low. I feel like I don't have enough
strength to go on. And he prayed three times about
that. Please remove this from me. And the Lord said, No. And
here's why. He said, My grace is sufficient
for you. What did that thorn do? It stripped
Paul of all of his power, of all of his strength, and made
him rely wholly upon the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. My
grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in
your weakness. There's one thing I don't like
to be is weak. It's weak. They got me on a medication now
that I can't hardly do anything. My heart just starts racing and
my muscles get weak and I hate it. If you hear that I've had
a stroke, you say, Bruce finally got aggravated and quit taking
his blood pressure medication. I hate that stuff. I don't like
being weak. I don't like being stripped and
zapped of my strength. But here's what Paul said, I
will glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may
rest upon me, for when I am weak, then am I strong. And sometimes
we trust in our strength. We trust in our wisdom. We trust
in our abilities to get through everything. Wiggle through our
trouble. And sometimes the Lord just cuts
us off and He weakens us and He brings us down. And He does
it for this reason. We'll trust His grace. We'll
trust His grace. It's not all the trust in God's
grace that weakens us. But it's the trust in ourself
that weakens us. I am strong in the grace of Christ. Grace working for me, and grace
working in me, and grace working with me. I am certain there is nothing
we are more ignorant of in this world than the free grace of
God in Jesus Christ. I am convinced of that. I am
convinced of that. We live in the vain hope that
we can make ourselves better. We can make things better. only
to realize we have trusted ourselves and not in God's grace. Why do we get disappointed? Why
do we get discouraged? Is it not because of self-trust?
We trust ourselves, we trust others, and we get disappointed. Why? Because we trusted ourselves
and we trusted others. in our unbelief in the grace
of Jesus Christ to do for us and with us and in us what we
cannot do for ourselves. I commend you to God and the
Word of His grace, the Word of His grace which is able to build
you up and to give you an inheritance, to give you an inheritance. among
them that are set apart." That's what that word means. They're
set apart. You're set apart in Jesus Christ. You're washed. Oh, it's a marvelous thing, brothers
and sisters, to be set apart. To be set apart. If God has set
you apart, that means He's washed you. You've been set apart to
be washed. To be cleansed from your sins.
You're set apart to be made a new creature. You're set apart to
have the Spirit of God's own Son sent into your heart. Set apart, sanctified in Christ
Jesus. If God has called you out of
darkness into His light, then you've been set apart. Set apart. You are set apart from this world
and its sinful course, and its dreadful end, and you are alive
unto God. Now you can know Him, you can
love Him, you can worship Him and serve Him. He's set you apart. And you know what else you can
do? You can hope to the end that when your life is over in this
world, there's an inheritance awaiting you there in heaven. And what's giving you that inheritance?
One thing I learned about an inheritance years and years ago,
it's not something you earn. It's because of who you are.
It's because of who you are. You're your father's son. And
inheritance. And inheritance. When my dad
died, none of my neighbors got anything he had. None of my cousins got a penny
he had. No good friend come and said, this is left to me. You
know who it was for? The children. The children. Inheritance is for those who,
because they have this relationship with their Father, inheritance
is given unto them. The inheritance of sons. What kind of inheritance is it?
Peter tells us this, "...to an inheritance that is incorruptible,
undefiled, and that fades not away, reserved in heaven for
you." To give you that inheritance. To give you. The grace of God
will build you up and give you. Put your name in there. Build
you up and give you. You? You? Poor, broken, unfit
for nothing. You? Ain't that amazing? You that have such a high esteem
of God that it humbles you in the dust. You? You that look at yourself so
low and heaven so high? Me? Me? Whom you to death pursued? Me? To have that inheritance?
What give you that inheritance? What hope do you have of having
it? Grace. Grace is able to build
you up and give you that inheritance. Grace has set us apart, and grace
is building us up, and grace has given us that inheritance
when this life is over. All complete trust of God's grace
in Christ does not lead to lawlessness. It doesn't even lead to carelessness,
but it leads to a deep humility before God and before His saints. and a deep appreciation that
God has set His love and His goodness upon such unworthy objects
as we ourselves. Grace. It is not our knowledge of grace,
brothers and sisters, that makes us proud and makes us cold and
lets us stray. It is our lack of knowledge of
it. If it's ourselves that we're
trusting in, then no wonder we get disappointed. No wonder we
get discouraged and apprehensive. But if we live in the faith that
grace has brought us safe this far, and grace will lead us home
and reveal to us that eternal inheritance, if we live in the
faith of that, then we can live in full assurance. Leave that and turn over here
in 1 Peter 1, and let's read a few verses in closing. 1 Peter
1. And when I say in closing, don't
shut down on me. That's what happens. I heard
it. We were talking over at the conference in Virginia, and somebody
said they got to realize, and he said, when I said my last
point, everybody closed their Bible and nobody heard anything
else. So don't shut down on me when I say in closing. In 1 Peter
chapter 1, look at this. 1 Peter chapter 1. Look in verse 2. Let me just
read you these verses. Elect, elect of God. Elect according to the foreknowledge
of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience
and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. Grace unto you,
and peace be multiplied. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to His abundant mercy
hath begotten us again into a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus
Christ from the dead, to an inheritance, and is incorruptible and undefiled,
and that fadeth not away, and is reserved in heaven for you,
who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation,
ready to be revealed in the last time, wherein you greatly rejoice,
though now for a season. If need be, you are in heaviness,
distressed through manifold temptations, many and all kinds of temptations.
That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than
of gold that perishes, though it be tried with fire, may be
founded to praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus
Christ. Whom having not seen, you love. And whom though now you see him
not, yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full
of glory, receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation
of your soul. Of which salvation the prophets
have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace,
look at this, the grace that should come unto you. Search
in what or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was
in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings
of Christ, and the glory that should follow. And to whom it
was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did mention
the things which are now reported unto you by them, that have preached
the gospel unto you, where the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven,
which things the angels desired to look into. Wherefore, knowing
all of this now, gird up the loins of your mind, be sober,
and hope to the end, for what? For the grace that is to be brought
unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. It's grace, isn't
it? All the way it's grace. We go
all the way back before the foundation of the world. What was it that
wrote our names down in the Lamb's Book of Life? Was it not grace? What was it that brought the
Savior down from heaven, from that happy and holy place to
this sin-cursed world to suffer and be shamed and die for our
sin? Was it not grace? You know the
grace of the Lord Jesus, though He was rich, yet for your sakes
He became poor. And let me ask you this, brothers
and sisters, What was it that preserved you in the days of
your flesh while you were out in this world serving the devil? What was it that kept you, that
preserved you from death? We got a call the other day and
a galley told us and we got to inquiring around and our grandson
Devin and five others of his friends went off to to Florida
for a few days and coming back in Alabama they had a wreck.
And T-boned a police officer in the middle of the interstate
and totaled both vehicles. Why weren't they killed? Why weren't they killed? Oh,
they were so lucky when I escaped death three times that
I remember. It comes to my mind. Three times
I remember escaping death. And I tell you, if I had died,
I would have went to hell. I was lost and I would have went to
hell. What was it that kept me, that
preserved me? Grace! What would you attribute
it to? Grace preserved you until the
day that grace called you. Paul said, He separated me from
my mother's womb and called me by His grace. And what is it
that's kept you to this very day through many dangers, toils
and snares? It's grace, isn't it? Free, sovereign,
unheard of, unearned, unmerited favor of God. That's what we
attribute it to. And Peter said, when you look
out to your death and you look out into eternity, What are you
hoping for? Looking for grace. I'm telling
you, we just bow down and worship before the throne of grace, don't
we? Grace, grace, grace. That's all our plea. Grace. I commend you to God and to the
Word of His grace. For that alone is able to build
you up and to give you that inheritance among them that are set apart
that are cleansed and made holy in Jesus Christ. God bless this
message.