Sermon Central
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Grace - No Longer Condemned Series
Contributed by Willem Nel on Aug 22, 2009 (message contributor)
Summary: After 5 months of being diagnosed with guillain barre syndrome. I have experienced first hand God’s Grace. This is my first sermon after 5 months of absence from the pulpit. The theme GRACE
Grace
3 Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ,
4 who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,
5 to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
6 I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you in the grace of Christ, to a different gospel,
7 which is not another; but there are some who trouble you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ
Eph 2:8 (NKJV)
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God,
Notice that we are not saved by grace alone. We are saved by grace through faith. Faith grants us admission to God’s grace Without faith, God’s grace is wasted and without grace, faith is powerless. Faith in God’s grace has to be released to receive what God has provided through Christ
What does Grace then means?
•Rom 8: 1-6 (NKJV)
• 1 There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death.
3 For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, on account of sin: He condemned sin in the flesh, 4 that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
5 For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit.
6 For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
To understand if you are living in grace is to check what is grace is not:
1) No condemnation
2) Being self-righteousness
3) Carnally minded.
No Condemnation:
Well most of you say – of course I know that. I am now longer condemned. I am a new creation in Christ Jesus. All the old things have past away.
There is a very fine line between living in the Spirit and living in the Flesh.
Why do we want to live in the Spirit?
Because by Living in the Spirit we are free. 2 Cor 3.
We have access to the fullness in Christ.
We are no longer our source to life and everything that pertains to it. God is and He will always be.
So let me you ask you the same questions that people asked me and the accuser of the brethren haunted me with?
If you become ill – say you get swine flu – what goes through your mind? What do people ask you?
WHAT DID YOU DO?
So the focus is on YOU.
If you have trouble at your work.
What do your family ask you.
WHAT DID YOU DO?
If you are in trouble, what happens?
YOU THINK WHAT DID I DO WRONG?
In your relationship, what do people ask you when things go wrong? Now tell me WHAT WENT WRONG?
This bring me to my second point –
SELF Righteousness
You or somebody wants to make the wrong right. The feeling or emotion or accusations need to be corrected. So to be right, somebody needs to be wrong. To be self-righteous is proof that you were right.
Very subtle - we go through this daily.
We become with or without the help of others our own judges – the verdict will be most of the time that we were right.
Unfortunately as believers many times we condemn ourselves. We take the blame. We acknowledge our sin and then we feel guilty, depressed and many times without hope. We focus so much on our problem that it consumes us.
3 We start TO THINK!
Think think think My friends Tigger and Pooh.
The Story song trains the children from a young age that we should think think think to solve our problems. While this is good advice it unfortunately leads us back to our own minds or information to change the outcome of our circumstances. So we then start to rely on our own power, while we are called to be spirit beings.
Let me go through this again:
Romans 8:1 (The message)
With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation.
