Address—Don Rule
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
Grace is the sweetest sound that ever reached our ears.
When conscience frowned and justice. When conscience charged injustice, frowned. Towards grace removed our fears.
His freedom to the slave, to his light and liberty It takes its terror from the grave, from death its victory.
Grace is a mine of wealth laid open to the poor.
Grace is the sovereign spring of health. Tis life forevermore of grace. Then let us sing #10.
Nsnoise.
Check me for a verse in Luke's Gospel chapter 2.
Luke's Gospel, Chapter 2.
And verse 40.
And the child Jesus grew.
And wax strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.
I'll turn over to the first chapter of Revelation.
Revelation chapter one and verse 4.
John to the seven churches which are in Asia.
Grace be unto you, and peace from Him which is, and which was, and which is to come, and from the seven spirits which are before his throne. Now over to the last verse of the Bible, Revelation 22.
Revelation chapter 22, the last verse, verse 21. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
00:05:05
So in my heart to make some remarks this afternoon on the subject of grace.
We opened with the grace.
That we see upon the person of a child.
That little child growing up in his household and God has chosen to say the grace of God was upon him. I start there, brethren, because we very often when we think about grace, refer to it as undeserved favor.
It's true in us. It is undeserved. But that little expression, true as it is, if used rightly, come short of the true sense in Scripture of what grace is.
We would never dare say that that little child was receiving undeserved favor.
That was Jesus.
And on the other hand, we don't want to say that that intent there is to say he was receiving deserved favor either.
If anyone deserved favor, he did, but the thought and grace is upon the giver more than upon the object of the giving, and the God of grace looked upon that child.
According to his own heart with favor.
With pleasure.
Did he have an easy life?
We know the answer. He did not.
He had a comparatively quiet life until he was about 30 years of age, but from that point forward.
His life was tremendously difficult.
Did the grace of God leave him?
Did he have 30 years of the grace of God and then three years and 1/2 or so without it? No. We know that the grace of God was just as full and complete upon him the last 3 1/2 years of his life as it was in the 1St 30.
We live in the day of grace, we call it.
We are recipients of the message of the gospel of grace.
We say it's a time that is in contrast to the law and the day of the law. And so in contrast to that, we're in the day of grace. But the point I want to make in the second and third places where we read about grace is this.
It's important for us to distinguish between the grace of God to us or toward us.
And the grace of God with us or in US. And this afternoon we're going to concentrate on the second of those two aspects of grace.
The grace of God with us and in us, in contrast to the grace of God to us and for us. It's interesting to me that most of the New Testament epistles begin with the grace of God to us as the wish of the writer to those to whom he was writing. Grace be unto you in peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
But almost all of them that begin with Christ end with the other aspect of it.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.
And so we have in the book of the Revelation a book of judgment in a large measure, and yet the only two times in that whole book where grace is mentioned is in the beginning John says to them, grace and peace be unto you, and the very last words of Scripture for us, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you in order to see the difference.
And the time that we have, we're going to look at a few places, particularly with the grace of God with us or in US. Turn now to first Peter, chapter one.
First Peter chapter one.
00:10:11
Verse ten. Of which salvation the prophets have inquired in search diligently.
Who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you?
And then down in verse 13. Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, and be sober, and hope to the end for the grace which is brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. That's the time of His appearing.
To make the contrast between the two aspects of grace, we're gonna start with a few words about the grace of God toward us, which we're all very familiar with, I believe.
The word of God says by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves. That is the gift of God.
Here in Peter he talks about the prophets had spoken that the time would come when God would act in grace toward man, and that time had come in Peter's day. And now the gospel of the grace of God was going forth, and it had reached those to whom Peter was speaking. We read in the book of Romans in chapter 5 that God acting toward us gives to us in His grace the gift of righteousness.
He also gives to us the gift of eternal life and so.
We who are in this room will put our trust in the Lord Jesus. We sit here in our seats.
With some sense in our souls of the wonderful working of God toward us.
That has saved us and given us peace with God and that we because God just chose to love us and to act toward us in that way. And so because of his great love, he is given. And grace is particularly connected with the thought of giving something because of the heart of a giver. And so God, with the greatness of his heart as the giver, has given us gifts, salvation.
Eternal life, righteousness with himself, and so on. And so it had come to them.
When we recognize that, we sit here with the enjoyment of that as a present possession that we have. We're not looking forward in that sense to some those aspects of grace. It's ours. It's ours to enjoy. It's ours to feel the love of God in our souls that is shining upon us.
Then in the 13th verse, he looks on to the future.
Not now, not today, not the day after our salvation.
But he looks on and he says, you know, we look forward to some more grace.
More work of God in his giving toward us that we haven't gotten yet. It's still future.
We're gonna see it. We're gonna experience it at the his revelation, the day of his appearing and so.
This world will look on this company in this room, all of us, I speak to you is belonging to the Lord Jesus. And they'll look at us right at the side of the Lord Jesus and they'll say, wow, what a tremendous gift of God to those people to make them the bride of Christ.
And to display them as His bride before a world. And so that isn't true today. The world doesn't look upon us that way today. And we don't yet experience the full truth of what is ahead of us yet. It's a hope, but it's a sure hope. We know that. But still it's future. And so it will be brought to us. It's the grace of God that will be brought to us at that time.
But what about between now and then?
What about the present life? This morning in the prayer meeting, several times in the hymn, and sometimes in the prayer in the opening hymn, the thought was this world is a wilderness. Why?
We don't always try to treat it that way, but we find it's that way anyways a lot of times. And so we have from the day of our salvation to go on through the experience of life to its end, or until the Lord comes and Scripture does say.
00:15:04
It is a wilderness.
And Peter, particularly in the New Testament.
Is very parallel to in one Peter the Journey.
That began in Egypt for the children of Israel and took them through a wilderness.
And the end of the wilderness journey was Canaan.
For us, we can enjoy Canaan. Now, we're not going to get into that line of thought or truth, but it's seen in many senses as the end of the road, the end of life, when we are at home in heaven. And so there is the experience of passing through what's called the wilderness, experience of life. And Peter is occupied with that, particularly in this letter.
And I want to take up some remarks that he says about the experience of Grace.
If I could put it this way, the grace of God with us in the wilderness. So turn over to first Peter.
Chapter 5.
First Peter, chapter 5.
First Peter 5 and verse five. He says likewise, Ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yeah, all of you be subject to one another, and be clothed with humility, for God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time, casting all your care upon Him.
For he careth for you.
To go back to the children of Israel for a moment.
When they left Egypt and they went into the wilderness in Deuteronomy chapter 8.
He tells us why he did that.
Why he took them there, They had to go there. It was part of their life's experience.
He said I took you into the wilderness to humble you.
To prove you.
To display what's in your heart.
That's part of the wilderness of life.
We I believe in the wilderness. There may be many things but two I would just comment on. God presses your life and mind through the will so-called wilderness to show us what's in our heart.
And even more important, to show us what's in his heart.
To humble you.
Is there any pride in this room?
Part of the wilderness experience is to bring to our own realization and our own lives where there's pride.
Pride tends to make a person independent.
And in this case, independent of God.
Humbleness tends to make a person dependent, and in this case dependent upon God. And so as we pass through the wilderness of life.
Pride, if it's in US, gets exposed.
And so, he says, God resists the proud.
You know, there were times in their wilderness experience when.
God, if you will, resisted them.
And.
At the same time.
He says that journey. He says I suffered you to hunger.
I suffered due to hunger. I brought hunger into your life experience. God brings hunger into the life experiences of us in this room. God brings us through the experiences of life in our individual lives, whether we're young or middle age or old, into situations that are determined by himself that are going to bring us into a situation of hunger.
00:20:00
Not necessarily physical hunger.
But a hunger of soul, of some character.
Anxiety. Uncertainty.
Hunger.
Why does he do that?
It's part of his grace.
This part of his grace.
Oh, we say grace.
In the way that always, not always, but tends to have the sense of escaping from difficult things, hard things. But the grace of God with us is not to cause us to escape.
It's to be with us in.
That through which it's necessary that our lives pass.
Here he says.
God resists the proud, but gives what to the humble grace Christ.
That is, to put it another way, brethren, there are things that can keep us from enjoying or experiencing the grace of God in our lives.
There are hindrances to walking in the sense of the grace of God and one of them's pride, and so there needs that God uses things to humble us that we may what cast our care upon him, for He cares for us.
Independent spirit of spirit that has self-reliance in it.
A spirit that may say, if all else fails, try God. God will sometimes make all else fail.
Just so we'll try him.
And then he says, cast all your care upon him. Well, we know what the words mean, but the experience of life is not always the same. And sometimes we have to go through a lot of learning, growing in grace if you will, before we really experience it. Because very often in a certain sense we say, I went to God in prayer. That's a dependence upon him to cast my care upon him. But I don't feel.
Peaceful about it after my prayers over and I go on. I still have anxiety about it and so on.
He's teaching, He's teaching we haven't perhaps learned in its fullness yet. Maybe none of us have completely, but the soul that stands in their own experience in the enjoyment of what the Scripture says, the grace of God and the grace of God with us is able enabled to leave the care there with confidence. So let's read the next verses more about it.
Verse 8 Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil is a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whom he may devour, whom resist steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. But the God of all grace, who have called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that she have suffered a while, make you perfect, establish strength and settle you.
To him be glory and dominion, forever and ever. Amen. Verse 12 by Sylvanus, a faithful brother unto you. I suppose I have written briefly, exhorting and testifying that this is the true grace of God wherein you stand.
Few minutes ago.
Out there I noticed on the one of the tables a coupon book for Pella.
And the coupon book for Pella is you open it up.
There's a restaurant, you can use that coupon and you'll get 10% off your next meal. And if you use another coupon, you can enjoy a golf course somewhere in the area at some reduced rate and so on.
What about God's coupon book?
As soon as I saw that book, I thought, what about God's coupon book?
I suppose if we were to write a coupon book for God, we might write one that had a coupon in it that said I got sick. 1 Coupon and you'll get well.
I've got another coupon that says you will avoid some form of difficulty in your job.
00:25:03
Just turn in the coupon and we would look at life that way. If we wrote the coupon book for God, that would exempt US1 exemption from a difficulty with your son or daughter and so on. We could, we could make a pretty lengthy book, I think, at least if we've been on the path of life a while.
But God doesn't have a coupon book like that.
Brethren, he has one, though.
Maybe has multiple ones, but the one I want to emphasize this afternoon is it's a coupon book and each coupon in it says, I'll give you grace for that trial.
I will give you grace to sustain you in that present circumstance in your life. I don't promise to take you out of it.
He says to them in their journey after that and maybe sometimes the after that is afterlife is over, it'll be a little while when it's all over. In some cases it may be temporary and it'll only be for a week or a month or whatever.
Umm, but it says.
Establish, strengthen, settle you the work of the grace of God in our lives is that work of God in its present form that would.
Establish, strengthen, settle our soul, not exempt us from sorrow and suffering and temptation and pain.
But rather the grace of God the Lord Jesus Christ on those two to the way to Emmaus.
He came along with them, they didn't recognize His presence with them, and He started to minister to them. His Grace.
His compassion, His care for them until their hearts had the need that they met and could meet that need. And so I believe here, that's the grace of God in which we stand.
Some have suggested those words are really an exhortation in the grace of God stand.
And it's in the sense of the present grace of God stand, not in the sense of the grace that has been brought to us or the grace that will be brought to us at the appearing, but in the present circumstances of our lives. OK, let's turn over to 2nd Corinthians.
Chapter 8.
Two Corinthians, chapter 8.
Verse One. Moreover, brethren, we do you to wet the grace of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia, how that integrate trial of affliction and abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality. For to their power I bear record day, and beyond their power they were willing of themselves, praying us with much entreaty that we would receive the gift, and take upon us the fellowship of the ministering to the Saints.
And this they did not as we hoped, but first gave their own selves to the Lord, and unto us by the will of God.
Insomuch that we desired Titus, that as he had begun, so he would also finish in you the same grace also. Therefore, as ye abound in everything, in faith and utterance, and knowledge, and in all diligence, and in your love to us, see that you should abound in this grace also. I speak not by commandment, but by occasion of the forwardness of others, and to prove the sincerity of your love.
For you know, ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich. We'll start with the last verse first, verse 9.
Here we see the Lord Jesus Christ, grace and truth subsists by Him. It says John One.
The Lord Jesus Christ is seen here as a giver.
He takes of the resources that have been given to him or are his by right eternally, but he takes his own resources and he dispenses them.
That's the activity of Grace.
00:30:02
He dispensed what had been given to him.
Till he was poor.
Till he was poor.
Tilly didn't have, as it were.
Here in Macedonia, where a group of believers who were.
Poor. They didn't have much. They were poor.
And the apostle Paul says they were giving.
In their poverty they were giving.
And what was it it was the working of the same spirit that was in the Lord Jesus that God had worked out in them to be dispensers of that same character of grace.
Everybody in this room has resources given to them of.
It calls the spiritual gifts that are present in this room as expressions are results of the grace of God.
First Peter Four was read in the closing of the morning meeting prayer meeting and he spoke of the manifold grace of God. What is that in its context? There it was spiritual gifts that were given to the Saints.
What was the intent of them? To use them to dispense them for the blessing of others?
That's a present work of the grace of God. He is not exempting us from trial and difficulty in the normal experiences of people who pass through a sinful world, But He has entrusted to us by His grace things to give.
To one another, to our fellow man, and in the measure in which we are entering into the grace of God in our souls, practically with us, we'll be givers. We won't hoard, we won't save for the rainy day, we won't say after I this or that, then I can think about somebody else. But rather, as the Lord Jesus did, he thought about somebody else rather than himself, and he became a giver.
And he was a dispenser of the grace of God. And so with the Macedonian Saints they had received, and now they were giving. And Paul said to the Corinthians.
I look count on you, brother, and I trust that you too will manifest that same grace, that same spirit in your hearts.
Let's go over to UMM chapter 12, Second Corinthians chapter 12.
Verse seven. Unless I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan, to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure. For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee. 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.
Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities and reproaches and necessities and persecutions and distresses for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
It's actually these. This portion is what brought this subject before me before any other.
My grace is sufficient for thee.
My grace is sufficient. This is the present provision of grace. This isn't the salvation of the soul. This isn't the glory that shall be revealed in a coming day in the presence of the Lord Jesus. This is a grace that is necessary to get through the wilderness and for the Christian and the Christian era.
Paul, if I could go back to the coupon book, if he had a coupon that said remove one affliction, he would have used it. If he had three of them, he would have used them in this circumstance in his life three times. He said, Lord, please deliver me.
Take away this affliction in my life and the Lord gave me an answer.
00:35:00
The answer was my grace is sufficient.
For you.
Paul, I'm going to leave you with that affliction, and by doing so, I am going to sustain you by my power.
And that is the expression of my grace, Paul. That's my grace to you. I will sustain you in that affliction the rest of your life by my power.
That grace that I'm going to give you to bear with it.
Will be sufficient.
It's tremendous really, how Paul responds, isn't it, brethren?
He then made the catalogue list of things that he could take pleasure in.
If this grace of the Lord Jesus would sustain him without affliction.
He could broaden it out in his thoughts and he could say, well.
Then I'll take pleasure and infirmities.
I'll take pleasure in reproaches.
I'll take pleasure in necessities.
The Lord suffered the children of Israel to hunger.
Why? Well, to teach them things, but at the same time.
Their only answer to that need was himself.
Nothing else he had to sustain them. They weren't going to have in the necessity of the bare essential of life anything that they could sustain themselves in it. And he immediately says in that same Deuteronomy 8 chapter, I fed you 40 years with manna.
I fed you 40 years with manna. That was my heart toward you.
When we look back upon life and if we enjoy it in the grace of God that is for us in our present lives, then we'll look back and say God sustain me by His grace. From the first step to the last. He provided every single resource His own grace to sustain me in whatever it was until the end.
I praise God forever for that and so there will be that spirit of praise and worship and when we are in His presence as we look back and say the manna never failed.
Never failed in all the experience of the wilderness.
And so it was here.
The experience of the apostle Paul or times quickly going by. I want to look at two more passages, the first one in First Corinthians chapter 15.
First Corinthians, chapter 15.
Verse 10.
Or verse nine will read first, For I am the least of the apostles, that I am not meet to be called an apostle because I persecuted the Church of God. By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain, but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.
That was a present grace to the Apostle Paul. He took a man, yes, he didn't deserve the favor of God. He made him a Saint of God. He gave him great gifts.
Perhaps beyond the gifts that most of God's people will ever have in one person in this period in which we live, but.
And in fact, he had such to me, I'm really impressed with what he could say here. He had such a sense that the source of everything he was came from God, that he could without pride compare himself for the sake of the Corinthians need and say.
I labor more abundantly than any of the rest of the apostles. We would, if we heard words like that, we'd say, wow, that's a pretty high statement of pride. But it was not. It was not. It was the recognition of the work of grace and his soul that was with him that made him realize that the more abundant labor was actually the work of God in his soul, in his grace, to give him that work and to sustain him in it.
00:40:05
As he did, he said I'm the least and he looked at himself, but at the same time he could say the grace of God, which is with me. I labor more abundantly than they all. Oh, brethren, there's really a complete provision for everything that God gives us in this life to do. Even though it's a wilderness experience on the one side, God has not left us here without responsibility.
To live for himself among our fellow men. To be shine as lights in this world.
And he has given to each one of us those things that he would have us use.
So Paul could say I gladly spend and be spent.
Where the grace of God isn't having its true place in our hearts, we get weary with service.
It can become a grind, it can be some something that I don't feel appreciated.
My brethren don't love me for what I'm doing for them, and so on, and we turn inward.
About it and lose the sense in our souls, we as is said in Hebrews chapter 12, lest any man fail of the grace of God, we can fail of the grace of God. And it's connected very often with bitterness. So may the Lord help us to be overcomers, to serve, thankfully, willingly spend and be spent.
As trophies of the grace of God and the salvation of our souls, but also as recipients of the sustaining grace in that which He has given us to do. OK, one last portion in Second Timothy chapter 2.
Second Timothy chapter 2. We'll just read one verse verse 2, verse one. Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace.
Which is in Christ Jesus.
This verse comes after verse chapter one. In chapter one we have the picture of the Apostle Paul toward the end of his life speaking to Timothy. His one that he had nurtured in the faith, one that had traveled with him, one that had been blessed under his ministry and so on and used by through the of the Lord through the apostle Paul. And now where's Paul? He's in prison.
Anticipating death, he has to say to Timothy, yes, we labored in Asia and they've all turned away from me and so on. Not a very encouraging situation for Timothy. Timothy was naturally timid, we learned, and he said Paul had to say to him in the first chapter, fear not, fear not.
Keep the work, Timothy. Go on.
And what's been entrusted to you and go on to the end. I think most all in their experience of life of every person in this stage that passed through it has seen decline during the period of their life in the testimony of God and the earth. And so it gets harder for the next generation to keep going. Timothy was a young person. It's going to be harder, not easier for those of you in this room that are younger.
Than some of us who are older, it's not going to get easier.
It's going to get greater weakness, greater mixture, less separation, and so on.
Name it, it probably will get worse.
But listen to what God said to Timothy through Paul. He said be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
That strength that comes from walking in the assurance of the pleasure of the Lord Jesus Christ shining upon you give strength to go on, but the connection of faith between your soul and the Lord Jesus is essential.
If anything comes between you and your daily walk with the Lord, you won't be able to enjoy His pleasure. They'll be there. That those on the way to Emmaus didn't enjoy it at first. It'll be there. You'll go with you to bring it back to your soul so you can enjoy it again. But you'll miss it on the journey until He does. And so be strong. Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus.
00:45:08
Let's pray.