To the Praise of His Glorious Grace

Ephesian 2:5-8 is the motivation behind our series, Stories:The Grace of God on Display. I wanted to spend a bit of time laying out the thought that these verses give us.

First, your adoption is born in the grace of God. There is forgiveness and redemption that is a major part of everyone's story. That forgiveness and redemption is there because of the grace of God. Because gravity exists, you and I do not float away. Because gravity exists to extent that it does we do not ever so slightly float away. Because grace is exists, redemption and forgiveness are ours. We do nothing to earn gravity, we do nothing to earn grace. But our lives are a testimony to its existence.

Your adoption is to praise of his glorious grace. In other words, you are really jacked up and God still brings good out of you (REDEMPTION) and you are really sinful and God still loves you (FORGIVENESS). When this is put on display attention is brought to God who is the giver of this grace.

Our series seeks to bring attention to redemption and forgiveness that the grace of God has brought into the lives of people. Think about how this is true in your own life and tell someone about it.

Grace Compels

Thinking a lot in the past few days about the power of grace. Read Luke 7:35-39. Read Luke 10:30-37. As you do look for the grace of God.

Compel is a word that I have studied. Some of the definitions of the word I have found are:
-to force to submit.
-to have a powerful irresistible effect.
-to influence.

Many times we look upon grace as a lyric to a song or just something that we are grateful that Jesus was filed with and gave us on the cross. But when we look at grace in it's pure sense, we see it as a force, we are compelled to action.

I am praying today that God would give me a more pure view of grace. I am praying that this view would compel me to action, holiness and mission. I am praying the same for those who read this.

Thanks for reading.

The Gospel in Life

The tag line for our series "The Gospel in Life" is, "Grace changes everything". As we are the beginning of the series, let's look the word grace and how it affects us and in turn how that ought to affect how we affect the world.

From the NAS Greek Lexicon, the word Grace (Charis) is a noun defined as::

favor of the merciful kindness by which God, exerting his holy influence upon souls, turns them to Christ, keeps, strengthens, increases them in Christian faith, knowledge, affection.

The root of this Greek word is verb that simply means to be glad. So grace is that quality possessed by God and given without external provocation to you and I. It is delivered to us through the work of Christ and our surrender to it.

Grace changes everything.

I want to explain what I mean when I see without external provocation. Grace rests within God. God gives that favor (see above definition) without regard to anyone deserving it. When I look at my wife and see her eyes and I say to her, "you have beautiful eyes." The actual beauty of her eyes is an external factor that has stirred up affection in me and caused me to tell her that her eyes are beautiful. When one of my kids does something sweet or funny, I am stirred to action by telling them they are cute or smart or funny or a superstar. Those are external provocations.

God giving us his grace was unprovoked, unmerited, unearned in anyway. When we realize that we have been rescued from a broken world and been redeemed from our own brokenness and when we realize that we have been rescued purpose and deep interacting love; it must change everything.

Join us in this series (sermons, blog, community groups, vimeo) as we breathe in deeply how grace changes the way we look and and interact at work, in our cities, in our families and everything about us. We are broken, but through the grace of God, we have been redeemed. That should motivate us to live in a broken and bring redemption to it.

God's Noahic covenant of grace depicted through the rainbow

The following us a powerful explanation of God's covenant of grace enacted through Noah and depicted through the rainbow. It comes from a portion of the writing of Theologian A.W. Pink in his book on The Divine Covenants, (http://www.pbministries.org/books/pink/Divine_Covenants/divine_covenants_03.htm), which I commend to you in full. It's powerful stuff!!!

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FROM A.W. PINK::

But God’s bow in the clouds was not only an assurance unto men at large that no more would the world be destroyed by a flood, it was also the seal of confirmation of the covenant which God had made with the elect seed, the children of faith. Blessed it is to know that, not only our eyes, but His too are upon the bow; and thus this gives us fellowship with Himself in that which tells of the storm being over, of peace displacing turmoil, of the dark gloom now being irradiated by the shining of the sun. It was the rain which broke up the light into its separate rays, now reflected in the bow: the blue or heavenly ray, the yellow or golden ray, the crimson ray of atonement. Thus it is in the everlasting covenant that God is fully revealed as light and as love, as righteous yet merciful, merciful yet righteous. The covenant of grace is beautifully expressed in the rainbow. For the following nine points on this covenant we are indebted to a sermon by Ebenezer Erskine, preached about 1730.

1. It is of God’s ordering: "I have set my bow in the clouds." So the covenant of grace is of God’s ordering: "I have made a covenant with my chosen" (Ps. 89). Though it be our duty to "take hold of" the covenant (Isa. 56:4), and to come under engagements through the grace thereof, yet we have no part in appointing or ordering it. The covenant of grace could no more have been made by man, than he can form a bow in the clouds.

2. The bow was set in the clouds upon God’s smelling a sweet savor in Noah’s sacrifice; so that the covenant of grace is founded upon and sealed with the blood of the Lamb—a reminder thereof being set before us every time we sit down to partake of the Lord’s Supper.

3. The rainbow is a divine security that the waters should return no more to destroy the earth; so the covenant of grace guarantees against the deluge of God’s wrath, that it shall never return again to destroy any soul that by faith flees to Christ (Isa. 54:9).

4. It is the sun which gives being to the rainbow. Remove it from the firmament and there could not be its glorious reflection in the clouds. So Christ, the Sun of righteousness, gives being to the covenant of grace. He is its very life and substance: "I will preserve thee and give thee for a covenant of the people" (Isa. 49:8).

5. Although the arch of the bow is high above us, reaching to the heaven, yet the ends of it stoop down and reach to the earth. Just so it is with the covenant of grace: although the great covenant Head be in heaven, yet, through the gospel, He stoops down to men upon earth "The word is nigh thee" (Rom. 10:6-8).

6. God’s bow in the clouds is very extensive, reaching from one end of heaven to the other; so His covenant of grace is wide in its reach, stretching back to eternity past and reaching forward to eternity future, embracing some out of every nation and kindred, and tribe and tongue.

7. As the rainbow is a security against a universal deluge, so it is also a prognostic of refreshing showers of rain to the thirsty earth. So the bow of the covenant which encircles the throne of God (Rev. 4:3) not only secures against vindictive wrath, but gives assurance of the rain—the Spirit’s influences.

8. The visible appearance of the rainbow is but of a short continuance, for usually it appears only for a few minutes and then vanishes. So the sensible and lively views which the believer gets of the covenant of grace are usually of brief duration.

9. Although the rainbow disappears, and that for a long while together, yet we do not conclude therefrom that God’s covenant is broken or that a flood will come and destroy the earth. So too the saint may not now be favored with a sensible sight of the covenant of grace; yet the remembrance of former views thereof will keep the soul from fears of wrath.

The following paragraph is quoted from our work Gleanings in Genesis. "There are many parallels between the rainbow and God’s grace. As the rainbow is the joint-product of storm and sunshine, so grace is the unmerited favor of God appearing on the dark background of the creature’s sin. As the rainbow is the effect of the sun shining on the drops of rain in a cloud, so Divine grace is manifested by God’s love shining through the blood shed by our blessed Redeemer. As the rainbow is the telling out of the varied hues of the white light, so the ‘manifold grace of God’ (1 Pet. 4:10) is the ultimate expression of God’s heart. As nature knows nothing more exquisitely beautiful than the rainbow, so heaven itself knows nothing that surpasses in loveliness the wondrous grace of God. As the rainbow is the union of heaven and earth-spanning the sky and reaching down to the ground—so grace in the one Mediator has brought together God and man. As the rainbow is a public sign of God hung out in the heavens that all may see it, so ‘the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men’ (Titus 2:11). Finally, as the rainbow has been displayed throughout all the past forty centuries, so in the ages to come God will show forth ‘the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus’ (Eph. 2:7)."