From His Heart

Guest (Male): Today on From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve, discovered that Jesus is not a one-sided Jesus.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: Miller Beer had a and somber beginning to today's From His Heart broadcast with Pastor Jeff Schreve. Today an important topic that really can't be ignored in a world where there is such a great imbalance about how people perceive Jesus. Many have a distorted understanding of who he is, and it causes great deception. It's imperative that we have a correct understanding of both grace and truth in balance, so we don't fall off the high wire into theological heresy. Are you willing to get to know the real Jesus? Let's catch up a bit from yesterday's start and then hear part two of the message a one-sided Jesus.

Here again is Pastor Jeff. In the New Testament, when John in his gospel tells us about Jesus, he lets us know that the God of the Old Testament is the Jesus of the New Testament. And in John chapter 1, he opens his gospel this way. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being by him, and apart from him nothing came into being that has come into being. And the Word is obviously Jesus Christ because he says in verse 14, in case you wonder, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory.

Glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. John bore witness of him and cried out saying, This was he of whom I said, he who comes after me has a higher rank than I, for he existed before me. For of his fullness we have all received and grace upon grace, for the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ. No man has seen God at any time. The only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father, he has explained him. Lord, show me your glory, Moses prayed, and God passed by, and he said he was full of loving kindness and truth.

And John lets us know that Jesus the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory. And what was his glory? It was full of grace and truth. And you and I have to have the proper theological balance between grace and truth so that we don't fall off the theological wire into theological heresy. So we don't believe in another Jesus who's not a real Jesus because the real Jesus of the Bible is full of grace and truth, full of loving kindness and truth. So we want to talk today about that important issue.

Question, do you have a proper balance in your understanding of Jesus? Let me share with you three important insights associated with that. First of all, very simple, Jesus is full of grace. That's what the Bible says. The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. He is full of grace. I like to think of grace this way. Grace is God's undeserved love and kindness in action. That's grace. It's undeserved, unmerited love from God and kindness from God mixed together, loving kindness, and it's in action.

It 's doing something for you and for me and to you and to me, God's grace. Now grace is what saves us and it's what sustains us. It 's how you come to know the Lord is by grace, for you Ephesians 2 makes that clear, for by grace are you saved through faith and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not as a result of works, lest any man should boast. It's by God's grace that you're saved. And it's by God's grace that you continue in your Christian life. Grace came to Peter in John chapter 21 when the Lord Jesus restored him to his place of leadership with the disciples, all because of grace.

Jesus is full, overflowing. That's what that word means, replete, overflowing with grace, just as it says in the Old Testament, the Lord the Lord compassionate and gracious abounding in loving kindness. Second insight, not only is Jesus full of grace, but Jesus is full of truth. Abounding in loving kindness and truth. He is full of grace and truth. John chapter 14 and verse 6, at the Last Supper Jesus told his disciples, I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. Now he didn't say I am a way and a truth and a life.

No, I am the way and the truth and the life. I am the embodiment of truth. And then he said in John chapter 17 in his great high priestly prayer, as he was praying to his Father, he said, sanctify them, praying for his disciples, praying for those who would believe in his disciples' message after he was gone. He is praying for you and me, folks. And he says, sanctify them in the truth. Your word is truth. So what is truth? It 's the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the embodiment of truth. It 's the word of God, the word of God that speaks to us about Jesus and tells us about Jesus, that is truth.

And if I am going to know the truth, then I have to spend time in this book. Now you mark it down about truth. Truth is not moldable or situational, but it's absolute. We live in a world today where people say, well truth is it's situational truth. I mean, it's truth the way I want it to be. Truth is not moldable. Truth is not situational. You know, we have truths in mathematics, mathematical facts. 2 + 2 equals 4. It doesn't equal 3, it doesn't equal 5. I don't care what century you live in, 2 + 2 equals 4.

1,000 years from now 2 + 2 will equal 4. It's just the way it is. God, when he designed this world and set up the moral code in this world, he didn't just do it willy-nilly. It's all based on his character and his nature. What did Jesus say? I am the way and the truth. And truth You say, well why is it so important? Because truth is what sets you free. Jesus said, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. If you don't have truth, how are you going to be set free?

See the the Bible makes it clear that it's by loving kindness and truth that iniquity is atoned for. So here I am a sinner and I need for God to forgive me. Well how do I how does that come about? Just by grace? No, by loving kindness and truth. By grace and truth iniquity is atoned for. Those things go together. As Forrest Gump says, like peas and carrots. I mean, like peanut butter and jelly. Those things just go together and you can't separate those and say, well you know, I like the Jesus that's just grace.

I don't like this truth stuff because I like to make up the rules as I go along. Well 2 + 2 equals 4. You can put down whatever you want on your math tests, but the answer is 4. You can put down 5 or 3 or whatever, but you 're wrong. Ephesians chapter 1 verse 13 says this, in him you also after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation having also believed you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise. Truth leads us to God's grace. The truth that I'm a sinner and I'm in trouble and I need a savior.

That's the truth and that leads us to God's grace and God's grace says yet you are a sinner and you are on the highway to hell and you're in trouble, pal, but I sent my son. The Word became flesh. I sent my son for you. He's full of grace and truth and if you'll just come to him, the Lord the Lord compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth, who forgives iniquity, transgressions and sin. There's forgiveness found in Jesus Christ. Truth leads to grace and grace leads to truth and truth leads to grace and grace leads to truth.

They are connected. They are Siamese twins. You can't disconnect those. Jesus is full of grace and truth. Now notice it doesn't say that he has half truth and half grace. He has overflowing grace and overflowing truth. He is completely balanced in truth and grace, loving kindness and truth. Truth is what sets you free. It works in conjunction with grace and that reveals God's glory. So insight number three, Jesus wants his followers to be balanced in grace and truth. To be balanced in grace and truth, that's really really important. Now this is what it looks like to be balanced in grace and truth.

You have this little teeter-totter looking thing. You and I need to keep grace and truth in proper balance in terms of who Jesus is, in terms of the Christian life, so we don't fall off. Now truth heavy Christians, you might be a person who gravitates toward truth. Maybe you have a little bit of trouble with the grace. You gravitate toward truth. You know, some of this is just it's kind of how you're wired, kind of how you were raised, you know, and man they just you you really focus in on the rules and the laws and that just kind of floats your boat and so you tend to be a truth-heavy Christian.

I tend to be a truth-heavy Christian. I am not ashamed to say that I I work on all of keeping proper balance, but my default setting, if I'm not careful, is I'll go off into truth. Now what happens if you do that? Truth-heavy Christians can be legalistic and judgmental. That's the that's the downfall of being truth-heavy and grace-light. You can go off and and if you really fall off the wagon, so to speak, in where it's truth so heavy that grace is like non-existent, you become a Pharisee. And that's what the Pharisees were, all about legalism and all about rules.

And Jesus had so many run-ins with the Pharisees because you know what? They had so lost their ability to care for people and to love and to have compassion and kindness toward people. All they cared about were the rules. When Jesus would heal Remember he healed the guy who had been 38 years at the pool of Bethesda and Jesus told him, arise, take up your pallet and walk. And it was the Sabbath when he did that. So the man arose, hadn't walked in 38 years. And it's pretty big day for him and he is excited as all get out and he is carrying his pallet and what some Pharisees see him and they said, you can't carry your pallet.

It's the Sabbath. How dare you? He said, well a guy that healed me told me to arise, take up my pallet and walk. I mean, you should have seen me just a second ago. I was jumping and running and dancing, so now I am just walking. Don't do it. You can't do it. Jesus healed a a woman who was 18 years bent over like that because of a demon spirit. And he healed her and it was the Sabbath. And what did the synagogue officials say? There are six days in which you can do healing, but don't do it on the Sabbath because that constitutes a work and you're not supposed to work on the Sabbath.

And Jesus said, you guys are just hypocrites. If you have an animal that falls into a ditch, your ox or your goat or whatever falls into a ditch on the Sabbath, you pull it out. And I heal this woman on the Sabbath and you're all bent out of shape. What was wrong with those guys? Well they had a skewed view of truth, but the grace wasn't They had taken it off the teeter-totter. It was just everything was law and legalism and judgment and it was awful. So truth-heavy Christians can be legalistic and judgmental. Grace-heavy Christians can be morally weak and licentious.

There's a big problem with that. To be morally weak and licentious You say, wait a minute, time out, Jeff. I'm writing down this word licentious, but I'm not really sure what that means. Let me tell you what that means. Licentious means this, shameless, unprincipled in morality, decadent and corrupt. If you think of licentiousness this way, it's a good way to think about it. Licentiousness is basically saying I have a license to sin. And the scripture warns about that. The book of Jude says this in Jude chapter 1 verses 3 and 4. Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith, for the truth, which was once for all delivered to the saints.

For certain persons have crept in unnoticed. False teachers had come into the church. Those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons. And what do those ungodly persons do? They turn the grace of God into licentiousness and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. Serious serious sin when you turn the grace of God into a license to sin. When you say it doesn't matter how you live, it matters. It matters how you live. Now that's what we can have. We have to have proper balance because we can fall on this side and be truth-heavy and grace-light, or we can fall on this side and be grace-heavy and truth-light.

And one last point, but it's very very important. The big issue facing us in the last days is the lack of truth. That's the big issue. What's going on in the church today? It's the lack of truth. It's not a dearth of grace, it 's a dearth of truth. And the Bible tells us that that was going to happen. It foretold that that was going to happen. When Paul told Timothy the last chapter he ever wrote in 2 Timothy chapter 4, he told Timothy, I solemnly charge you, preach the Word. Be ready in season and out of season.

Reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction, for the time will come when the people won't endure sound doctrine. But wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires and will turn all their ears away from the truth and will turn aside to myths. And they'll say, we want a Jesus that that just just is mushy and gooey and doesn't care anything about how we live. We don't want It's like in Isaiah's day where they said, don't tell us anymore about the Holy One of Israel. Just prophesy to us illusions.

Speak to us pleasant words. Tell us how good we are. Give us that sermon again that that I'm okay, you're okay. I like that one. Tell us about how God exists just to fulfill our needs. Tell us about our champagne wishes and our caviar dreams. I remember that from Robin Leach. That's that's the kind of God I like that just exists to serve me. Well there isn't a God like that. God doesn't do that. So if you want a God who exists to serve you You know, we have the John Lennon God, all you need is love.

The John Lennon Jesus, all you need is love. Then you have the genie Jesus. What's the genie Jesus? The genie Jesus is you rub the lamp through prayer, he comes out and he says, yes, master. I'll grant you whatever you want. What do you want? And then he's all excited because you're going to give him something and just use those magic words in Jesus' name. And then the Lord is just like, hey, you ain't never had a friend like me. I can do all these things for you. And people are like, oh, that sounds great.

That's the Man, I want to go to that church because that's that's where it's at. This is There's They tell me about a God who exists for me. God doesn't exist for you. We exist for him. He is God. And it matters how we live. We talk in our church about shine and share. That's what God's called us to do. Shine for Christ and share with people what great things the Lord has done in your life. He can't shine if you're walking in darkness. You can't shine if there's sin all over your life. There is truth.

We can't walk in the darkness and walk with God because God is light and in him is no darkness at all. So if we're living in sin and saying, well you know, I mean, nobody's perfect. Well duh, nobody's perfect. But that doesn't give you a license to just say, well nobody's perfect, so I'm going to sleep with my boyfriend. I'm going to sleep with my girlfriend. I'm going to do this sin. I'm going to do that sin. I'm going to cheat at work. I'm going to cheat at school. Nobody's perfect. Yeah, but God asks his children, come out from among them and be separate.

God says, you shall be holy for I am holy. And there is a big portion of scripture that deals with sanctification, the life of the Christian. How are we supposed to live? We're supposed to walk as he walked. Jesus said, you'll know them by their fruits. A good tree produces good fruit. A bad tree produces bad fruit. You'll know them by their fruits. Just watch how they live. False teachers How did you know they were false teachers? Because they were greedy and they were into sensual things, sexual immorality. The fruit of their life was rotten because their heart was rotten.

That's how you know. That's how you know. And God says, come out from among them and be separate. In the 1980s Miller Beer had a ad campaign. They ran it for about 10 years. And they always had the same tagline. It was light beer from Miller, taste great, less filling. Taste great, less filling. You know what we have today? So many puppets across America, they're preaching light Jesus. Light Jesus. He tastes great. He's less filling. But he doesn't save because he's not real. Because the real Jesus is full of grace and truth. And by loving kindness and truth iniquity is atoned for.

And if you try and come any other way, you will not have your sins forgiven and you will find that God will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. It's a balancing act for every Christian. On the theological wire between grace and truth may you may I never fall off.

Guest (Male): This is From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve. And as we've said so many times, if your sins are truly atoned for by your faith in the real Jesus, God sees you through the righteousness of his son. He does not view you through the eyes of your sin. But the truth is if you don't know Christ in a personal way, you've never surrendered all of you to all you know of him, then we invite you right now to turn from your sin and surrender your life to Jesus in repentance and faith. He will save you.

That is God's promise. Then you'll want to thank him for saving you. If you'd like more information about what that really means and how to apply it to your heart and your life and how you can really know peace and joy and forgiveness through Christ, then we invite you to go to fromhishart.org, just by grace? No, by loving kindness and truth. By grace and truth iniquity is atoned for. Those things go together. As Forrest Gump says, like peas and carrots. I Nk like peanut butter and jelly. Those things just go together and you can't separate those and say, well you know, I like the Jesus that 's just grace.

I don't like this truth stuff because I like to make up the rules as I go along. Well 2 + 2 equals 4. You can put down whatever you want on your math tests, but the answer is 4. You can put down 5 or 3 or whatever, but you 're wrong. Ephesians chapter 1 verse 13 says this, in him you also after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation having also believed you were sealed in him with the Holy Spirit of promise. Truth leads us to God 's grace. The truth that I'm a sinner and I'm in trouble and I need a savior.

That's the truth and that leads us to God 's grace and God 's grace says yet you are a sinner and you are on the highway to hell and you're in trouble, pal, but I sent my son. The Word became flesh. I sent my son for you. He 's full of grace and truth and if you'll just come to him, the Lord the Lord compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in loving kindness and truth, who forgives iniquity, transgressions and sin. There's forgiveness found in Jesus Christ. Truth leads to grace and grace leads to truth and truth leads to grace and grace leads to truth.

They are connected. They are Siamese twins. You can't disconnect those. Jesus is full of grace and truth. Now notice it doesn't say that he has half truth and half grace. He has overflowing grace and overflowing truth. He is completely balanced in truth and grace, loving kindness and truth. Truth is what sets you free. It works in conjunction with grace and that removes God's glory. So insight number three, Jesus wants his followers to be balanced in grace and truth. To be balanced in grace and truth, that 's really really important. Now this is what it looks like to be balanced in grace and truth.

You have this little teeter-totter looking thing. You and I need to keep grace and truth in proper balance in terms of who Jesus is, in terms of the Christian life, so we don't fall off. Now truth heavy Christians, you might be a person who gravitates toward truth. Maybe you have a little bit of trouble with the grace. You gravitate toward truth. You know, some of this is just it 's kind of how you're wired, kind of how you were raised, you know, and man they just you you really focus in on the rules and the laws and that just kind of floats your boat and so you tend to be a truth-heavy Christian.

I tend to be a truth-heavy Christian. I am not ashamed to say that I I work on all of keeping proper balance, but my default setting, if I'm not careful, is I'll go off into truth. Now what happens if you do that? Truth-heavy Christians can be legalistic and judgmental. That's the that's the downfall of being truth-heavy and grace-light. You can go off and and if you really fall off the wagon, so to speak, in where it's truth so heavy that grace is like non-existent, you become a Pharisee. And that's what the Pharisees were, all about legalism and all about rules.

And Jesus had so many run-ins with the Pharisees because you know what? They had so lost their ability to care for people and to love and to have compassion and kindness toward people. All they cared about were the rules. When Jesus would heal Remember he healed the guy who had been 38 years at the pool of Bethesda and Jesus told him, arise, take up your pallet and walk. And it was the Sabbath when he did that. So the man arose, hadn't walked in 38 years. And it's pretty big day for him and he is excited as all get out and he is carrying his pallet and what some Pharisees see him and they said, you can't carry your pallet.

It 's the Sabbath. How dare you? He said, well a guy that healed me told me to arise, take up my pallet and walk. I mean, you should have seen me just a second ago. I was jumping and running and dancing, so now I am just walking. Don't do it. You can't do it. Jesus healed a a woman who was 18 years bent over like that because of a demon spirit. And he healed her and it was the Sabbath. And what did the synagogue officials say? There are six days in which you can do healing, but don't do it on the Sabbath because that constitutes a work and you 're not supposed to work on the Sabbath.

And Jesus said, you guys are just hypocrites. If you have an animal that falls into a ditch, your ox or your goat or whatever falls into a ditch on the Sabbath, you pull it out. And I heal this woman on the Sabbath and you're all bent out of shape. What was wrong with those guys? Well they had a skewed view of truth, but the grace wasn't They had taken it off the teeter-totter. It was just everything was law and legalism and judgment and it was awful. So truth-heavy Christians can be legalistic and judgmental. Grace-heavy Christians can be morally weak and licentious.

There's a big problem with that. To be morally weak and licentious You say, wait a minute, time out, Jeff. I'm writing down this word licentious, but I'm not really sure what that means. Let me tell you what that means. Licentious means this, shameless, unprincipled in morality, decadent and corrupt. If you think of licentiousness this way, it 's a good way to think about it. Licentiousness is basically saying I have a license to sin. And the scripture warns about that. The book of Jude says this in Jude chapter 1 verses 3 and 4. Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith, for _{the} truth, which was once for all delivered to the saints.

For certain persons have crept in unnoticed. False teachers had come into the church. Those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons. And what do those ungodly persons do? They turn the grace of God into licentiousness and deny our only master and Lord Jesus Christ. Serious serious sin when you turn the grace of God into a license to sin. When you say it doesn't matter how you live, it matters. It matters how you live. Now that's what we can have. We have to have proper balance because we can fall on this side and be truth-heavy and grace-light, or we can fall on this side and be grace-heavy and truth-light.

And one last point, but it 's very very important. The big issue facing us in the last days is the lack of truth. That's the big issue. What's going on in the church today? It 's the lack of truth. It 's not a dearth of grace, it 's a dearth of truth. And the Bible tells us that that was going to happen. It foretold that that was going to happen. When Paul told Timothy the last chapter he ever wrote in 2 Timothy chapter 4, he told Timothy, I solemnly charge you, preach the Word. Be ready in season and out of season.

Reprove, rebuke, exhort with great patience and instruction, for the time will come when the people won't endure sound doctrine. But wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance with their own desires and will turn all their ears away from the truth and will turn aside to myths. And they'll say, we want a Jesus that that just just is mushy and gooey and doesn't care anything about how we live. We don't want It's like in Isaiah's day where they said, don't tell us anymore about the Holy One of Israel. Just prophesy to us illusions.

Speak to us pleasant words. Tell us how good we are. Give us that sermon again that that I'm okay, you're okay. I like that one. Tell us about how God exists just to fulfill our needs. Tell us about our champagne wishes and our caviar dreams. I remember that from Robin Leach. That's that's the kind of God I like that just exists to serve me. Well there isn't a God like that. God doesn't do that. So if you want a God who exists to serve you You know, we have the John Lennon God, all you need is love.

The John Lennon Jesus, all you need is love. Then you have the genie Jesus. What's the genie Jesus? The genie Jesus is you rub the lamp through prayer, he comes out and he says, yes, master. I'll grant you whatever you want. What do you want? And then m he's all excited because you're going to give him something and just use those magic words in Jesus' name. And then the Lord is just like, hey, you ain't never had a friend like me. I can do all these things for you. And people are like, oh, that sounds great.

That 's the Man, I want to go to that church because that's that 's where it's at. This is There's They tell me about a God who exists for me. God doesn't exist for you. We exist for him. He is God. And it matters how we live. We talk in our church about shine and share. That 's what God's called us to do. Shine for Christ and share with people what great things the Lord has done in your life. He can't shine if you're walking in darkness. You can shine if there's sin all over your life.

There is truth. We can walk in the darkness and walk with God because God is light and in him is no darkness at all. So if we're living in sin and saying, well you know, I mean, nobody's perfect. Well duh, nobody's perfect. But that doesn't give you a license to just say, well nobody's perfect, so I'm going to sleep with my boyfriend. I'm going to sleep with my girlfriend. I'm going to do this sin. I 'm going to do that sin. I 'm going to cheat at work. I 'm going to cheat at school. Nobody's perfect.

Yeah, but God asks his children, come out from among them and be separate. God says, you shall be holy for I am holy. And there is a big portion of scripture that deals with sanctification, the life of the Christian. How are we supposed to live? We supposed to walk as he walked. Jesus said, you'll know them by their fruits. A good tree produces good fruit. A bad tree produces bad fruit. You 'll know them by their fruits. Just watch how they live. False teachers How did you know they were false teachers? Because they were greedy and they were into sensual things, sensual sexual immorality.

The fruit of their life was rotten because their heart was rotten. That 's how you know. That 's how you know. And God says, come out from among them and be separate. In the 1980s Miller Beer had a ad campaign. They ran it for about 10 years. And they always had the same tagline. It was light beer from Miller, taste great, less filling. Taste great, less filling. You know what we have today? So many puppets across America, they're preaching light Jesus. Light Jesus. He tastes great. He's less filling. But he doesn't save because he's not real.

Because the real Jesus is full of grace and truth. And by loving kindness and truth iniquity is atoned for. And if c you try and come any other way, you will not have your sins forgiven and you will find that God will by no means leave the guilty unpunished. It a balancing act for every Christian. On the theological wire between grace and truth may you may I never fall off.