Grace Thoughts

Guest (Male): Hello friends, welcome to Grace Thoughts, the radio ministry of Grace Connection Church with Pastor Tim Kelley. Grace Thoughts has been dedicated to preaching a clear gospel of grace for over 20 years. Here is Pastor Kelley.

Tim Kelley: If you've been to church for a while, you know that my core values and my core preaching material is really the grace of God. I love whatever you want to call it. Some people call it the finished work gospel, and it is indeed the finished work gospel. Some call it the grace message; it is indeed the grace message.

Some call it the exchanged life, and it is also the exchanged life. A lot of people call it different things. But that's our cornerstone, that's our launching pad for everything. We believe that the grace of God and the mercy of God shouldn't be a part of a message, it should be woven into every message.

It shouldn't just be a four-week series once a year or so; it should be woven in and out of anything that's taught in any pulpit anywhere, because it all comes under the mercy and the grace of God. Now, the Bible says as a Christian, I'm complete in Christ. Wonderful verse, Colossians 2:10. That's the King James translation: "I'm complete in Christ."

If you were to look at that word "complete" in English, it's a wonderful word. It means finished, it means complete. But in the Greek, it's a profound word. If you were to describe that word "complete" in Colossians 2:10 from the original language, you would need a lot more than just one word.

When they looked at that Greek word, which is "pleroma", and they translated it "complete" in our English Bible, it really needs a paragraph to describe that word. It means that all that God is is inside of us. We're complete in Christ. All of God's righteousness, all of God's holiness, all of God's character and nature.

We are complete in Christ. We're thoroughly lacking nothing being placed in Christ. Eighty-plus times in the book of Ephesians, we're in Him, in Christ. That in itself is a phrase that goes beyond our human ability to explain it—what it means to be placed in Christ.

We read it in our English Bible and we read right over it, never really embracing or grasping the scope of it and the magnitude of what it says being placed in Christ. I've always used the illustration—and this is getting way off-game here, but let me just humor me.

Being placed in Christ, I take a little paper guy and I put him inside an envelope. If you look at this little paper guy, that's Tim Kelley. Here's his envelope, that's Christ. If you look at this paper guy, he's full of insecurities, he's full of fears, he's full of manipulations and lies and whoever that little paper guy is representing. Your little paper guy and my little paper guy would be two different little paper guys.

But then we get born again, we're saved. You take that little paper guy and you put him inside that envelope and you seal the envelope. Now you look at it. Where's the little paper guy? Well, he's inside the envelope. Who's the envelope? Christ.

But what happened to all the stuff that you saw in the little paper guy? Well, you can't see that anymore. He's in Christ. But I'm going to take that a level further. This is what that really means. That's pretty cool, we stop right there, but it gets even cooler than that.

It gets into mega-cool after that. Because if you were to reopen that envelope and you could—but if you were—you'd find out that that little paper guy not only did he disappear in Christ, he became part of the envelope. He was no longer an individual within that little envelope; he became part of the actual envelope.

That's what it means to be placed in Christ. You can see the significance of that. That was the opening line in the whole message, so really it's just the introduction. I get all excited about that. The Bible says that I'm positionally seated together with Christ in the heavenly places. Ephesians 2:6.

That didn't really apply to me yesterday when I was mad at my spouse, or I was mad at my kids, or I was mad at my lawnmower. But it says I'm in Christ, I'm seated together with Him in the heavenly places. The Bible says that right now—Ephesians 5:27, Colossians 1:22—we're without spot, without wrinkle.

That word "wrinkle" is a cool word; it just means nothing's unbecoming about us. We're unreprovable and unblameable in His sight. There's nothing in us that is blamable, nothing in us—the word "unreprovable", "anegkletos"—there's a word that means we're above legal censure.

So anything that we've become unbecoming disappears because we're placed in Christ. The Bible says that I'm a son of God, part of God's divine family. Romans chapter 8, Galatians 4:6. Beautiful, beautiful principle. We're adopted into the family of God.

The Bible says in John 15:15, not only does God love me, but God also likes me. He calls me His friend. That was the biggest hurdle I had to come over. I knew God loved me because the Bible said so; I just didn't know if He really liked me very much, because I didn't like me all the time either. No, He likes me.

So with that said, now that you know how perfect you are, and now that you know how perfect I am, why am I the only one without any faults? And you know I'm kidding. So, in essence, what I'm trying to say is this: the truth is we are perfect in God's sight. Absolutely.

It has to be that way; we couldn't be redeemed unless we were pronounced righteous. But we're very imperfect, aren't we, in our everyday lives? I illustrated this morning early. I talked about my early days. You've heard me share the story before, but I got saved in a non-Christian—I grew up in a non-Christian home, as we know it.

I went to Bible college about six or seven months after I got saved. When I—I didn't have a pastor, I didn't have a church. I got saved in a high school and there was a little movement of God in my public high school. I had my "Good News for Modern Man" Bible and I was born again.

I was 19 years old and me and my buddies, we just start reading. I read this "Good News for Modern Man" Bible, had little figures in there. I just read that thing from cover to cover. It was only a New Testament, started all over again. I probably read it the first week and read it the next week and read it the next. I couldn't get enough of it.

As I started reading that Bible, I realized there were things in my life that I was doing and practicing that I couldn't really do and practice anymore. So I stopped those things. It wasn't a whole bunch of them; I think there was a total of six. I counted them. There were six things.

If I could just give up those six things, I'd be sinless. I'd be perfect. The war was over, and it was over early. So I went off. I was like, "Okay, I'm going to give up this, I'm going to give up that," and I did. I gave up all those six things that I was doing and I felt really good.

Before I even went to Bible college, I gave them up. Come on! I already graduated. I went right from a sinner to a self-righteous Pharisee. I looked at my friends. They didn't give some of those things up, but I gave them up because I meant it.

Then I went to Bible college and I heard the Word of God spoken in the power of God and the anointing of the Spirit. God started showing me things in my heart: motives, why I did things, judgmental spirits, Phariseeism. All this stuff He started showing me in my own life. I realized what a mess I am.

Now, I fixed these six things on the outward, but this whole bunch of me inside was just a sewer. My thought life, my motives, my everything else. I remember crawling out of Bible college classes thinking, "Is there any hope for me?" The only comfort I had was I realized there was no hope for my friends, too.

They were just as screwed up as I was. I did everything wrong. I did everything for the wrong reason. I manipulated people. I was this way and I was that way, and God's showing me all this stuff about my heart and I'm like, "Oh, there's no way I can fix all this."

Now, I've got two cars. Most of you, many of you have two cars. I have a Honda Odyssey, which we got about a year and a half ago. I really like that car. It's my minivan, it's got all beautiful—it's a very comfortable car. And I have a new Honda CRV I just got in the last month or two.

The Odyssey, now, driving to Alabama this summer, I realized something about the Odyssey. My wife drives that more than I do. I almost killed us. I almost got killed. I just drove into the other lane because I looked in my rearview mirror, I didn't see anything.

I looked in my sideview mirror, I didn't see anything. So I started pulling into the other lane and realized another car was now in the breakdown lane as I was pushing them off the road. What happened? What do they call that thing I couldn't see? A blind spot.

Now my Honda CRV is different. That's a 2015. I'm driving a new car now, baby. In that car, they have a blind spot camera. You turn on the directional and it's really cool. A little camera lights right in the screen; you can see anyone in your blind spot.

You can even see who's driving the car and spy on them; they don't even know it. But this is the problem I want to present to you this morning. When it comes to the blind spots of my soul, I have no camera. I have no easy way to discern them, do I?

I've got to find them. I've got to discover them. I need to seek them out. What's a blind spot, in a sense? Let me define that to you simply. You probably can define it along with me. It's that area in me which I don't see that everyone else may see.

That area of maybe a wound, an area of pride, an area of arrogance. It could be an area of insecurity or self-consciousness. It could be any one of those things, but I don't see it. It's a blind spot. I look in the rearview mirror of my life, I don't see it. I look in the sideview mirror of my life, I don't see it.

I have to make a constant effort, a conscious effort. I have to turn around and look to see if anything's in my blind spot. It's the same way spiritually. If I ignore the fact that I have them, I'm not proactive in discovering them, I can go my lifetime and have them influencing relationships, influencing my inner peace, challenging my family because I've never taken the time to discover my blind spots.

I want to talk about that. How do we do that? First, a biblical example: 2 Samuel chapter 11. I'm going to be turning to 2 Samuel 12. I'll narrate you through 2 Samuel chapter 11. Many of you know this story very, very well.

Joab, who was David's general, he was at war at Rabbah with the Ammonites. It's always fun; I think in verse one they say it was springtime and it was time for war, or something like that. They would take the winters off, then they'd get, "Oh, the sun's out, let's go fight." And they'd go do war.

So they were besieging Rabbah. Rabbah was about 40 miles from Jerusalem as a crow flies. I looked on a map and I saw the terrain; it's not an easy journey going from Jerusalem to there. It'd be up and down and all around, over mountain ranges, rocky paths, valleys. It wouldn't have been an easy journey on foot or by horse by any stretch of the imagination.

So David did not go out with the troops. He stayed in the palace, stayed in Jerusalem. At this particular point, he was taking a nap. He wakes up, goes on the roof, looks down and sees this beautiful woman who was practicing her Jewish law of cleansing on the roof bathing.

David said, "That's a pretty woman." He calls for her, she comes to the palace, he sleeps with her, and she gets pregnant. Problem: she was already married. That's a problem. So David says, "What do I do now?" Well, plan B.

We'll get Uriah, her husband, the Hittite. We'll get him. He's fighting with Joab. We'll bring him back from the front line, put him—bring him back to Jerusalem. First thing he's going to do, like any guy would do who's been gone for all these weeks or months, he's going to go home and find his wife and sleep with her. And then we can blame this baby on Uriah.

Uriah comes home. David wakes up the next day. Uriah is sleeping in the palace. David says, "Uriah, what are you doing here?" "You know, King David, how can I go home to the comfort of my wife when the rest of the nation is fighting? I couldn't do that."

He was a noble man. He was an honest man. So David said, "Well, that didn't work." Plan B. "Uriah, come to my house tonight. You're going to eat with me at the king's table." So he comes. David is pouring his wine glass up, pouring his wine glass up.

Uriah gets pretty happy. Happy. He's just happy. Now he's happy, now he's drunk. He's going to go home now because that's what guys like that do. He sleeps in the palace again. Strike two. So David is thinking now, "What do I do? If people find out I slept with this man's wife and impregnated her, I'm in deep trouble."

"What do I do? This isn't working. He's much more loyal, he's much more faithful than I am. How do I cover my tracks? This could be disastrous for my reputation, for my reign in Israel. I know! All right, this is what we do." Writes a note to Joab.

"Uriah, take this back out to the front lines. Give this to General Joab." In the note it said this: "Put this man, put Uriah on the front lines in the fiercest battle. And when everyone comes out to attack, have all your other troops step back so he's fighting all by himself and he's killed." And that's exactly what happened. Uriah was killed.