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: We finished up the "Discovering God" series last week. We're going to start a new series. We really put a lot of work into that series because we wanted to pour a foundation of who God is. We saw throughout that whole series this recurring theme of extravagant grace. That’s how I called this amazing grace of God. It's vitally important as we get into this series—which I see being more discipleship-based or service-based—that when we hear the word of God being taught, we filter it through the grace of God. We must see it through the lens of the grace of God.

These light towers back here are pretty cool. They are air filters that you use in an air conditioner. This is duct tape. Only the best for Grace Connection Church. In a real world, those are used to filter air. You put air through there. What happens if you don't change them? It gets a little stuffy in there. You start breathing stuff, snorting stuff, sneezing, wheezing, hacking, and all that. It gets a little allergic in there. That's how we have to hear. We have to take everything that we hear and filter it through the grace of God.

When we hear something, even if it's something that challenges us, compels us, or may convict us, we filter it through the grace of God so that conviction never turns into condemnation. The challenge turns into inspiration, not something that squashes me and makes me want to just quit and not even try anymore. When we hear things through the grace of God, even when the challenge comes forth, it's life-giving and not life-sucking. The law sucks the life out of people. The "ought to, should have, better, how come you didn't" message sucks the life out of people. The grace of God breathes life into people.

Let me show you this scriptural ideal of life that is beyond man's ability to live. Matthew 5:28 says, "But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart." That sort of just wipes the male race out. Every man is already toast. Maybe heaven will be full of women, but the men are gone already. That's something that's impossible to live. And it is impossible to live. I'm the only one I know that's lived it so far.

Matthew 5:48 says, "You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." Who is married to a perfect person? Don't raise your hand because then you'll be guilty of lying. We're committed to be perfect as my heavenly Father is. Who can do that? "I wasn't perfect today." We know. Verse 20 of Matthew 5: "For I tell you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you'll never enter the kingdom of heaven." What's the Lord doing here? These verses in Matthew 5 are pointing to an impossible life, a life that cannot be lived without grace. That's the bottom line.

The Lord is saying this is perfect. You can't even think it. If you think anger, you've committed murder. If you think lust, you've committed adultery. If you really want to be like God, if you really want to be perfect, that's how impossible it is. That's why I've come to die on a cross to give you grace. Please, as we get into this series, don't take everything we just learned the last five or six weeks and throw it out the window and say, "Now, finally, give me something to do. Once I start doing it really good, I can compare myself with others and make sure I'm doing it a little bit better than them." No, that's not how we want to approach this.

According to the historian Eusebius, an ancient historian who used to report for Rome, in about 177 AD, there was a young deacon in one of the churches. His name was Sanctus. One of the Roman emperors was doing a major crackdown on the Christian church, as they did periodically in the first 300 years of the church. They arrested this young deacon in his early 20s. When he was questioned with even simple questions like, "What is your name?" his answer was simply, "I am a Christian." "Where do you live?" "I am a Christian." "You're going to get in a lot of trouble if you don't stop this 'I am a Christian' thing. What do you have to say about that?" "I am a Christian."

That was his answer. They beat him. "Will you deny your Christ? Where is He to help you now?" "I am a Christian." After interrogating him, beating him, and torturing him, they sentenced him to die in a public execution. The day of the execution came and it wasn't just simple. He had to go into an amphitheater full of people. They stripped him naked. "You can go back home and put clothes on right now, just renounce your faith." "I am a Christian." I won't tell you what else they did to this man because it just makes me squeamish.

We see the atrocities in the world today. We see them on the news every day with ISIS. The way they tortured people back then would make ISIS look like a JV team. They did some unspeakable things to other human beings. Their death was not quick, easy, or long, but was pronounced and drawn out on purpose. Through each incremental level of torture, they gave him the opportunity to renounce. His answer was the same: "I am a Christian." Turns out, Eusebius says that was a common mantra that they had back then in the early church. Sanctus wasn't the only one to say it.

They determined beforehand when persecution came—and persecution was going to come—that that's how their answer would be: "I am a Christian." That was the sum of their existence. Nothing else mattered to them. Being a Christian was entirely a new way of thinking. The question I pose to myself and to all of us is, what does it mean for me to be a Christian? We won't be tortured. The biggest thing threatening us now is tax-exempt status. That may cause me economic pain, but it will not cause me any physical pain. It won't even necessarily cost me anything personal.

What does it mean for me to be a Christian? I have three types of Christians here that I think are common in the church. They are cultural Christians. These are people who are brought up in the church. It is their culture. My kids have known nothing but church culture. I didn't know church culture growing up; I was the first believer in my family. But I watch my kids and they grow up in church. They run through the seats and the pews. That is their culture and they know the church inside and out. Once a service ends, they take over the chapel. I brought the kids here a few weeks ago and they went to the playground. They were done in six minutes. I brought them in here and I couldn't get them out of the chapel. They were hiding and crawling from one side to the other. I had to get a SWAT team in here to get them out.

These are cultural Christians. They know how to act, what to say, and what not to say. They know what to do and what not to do to be accepted in this culture. It's actually pretty easy because this is your culture; this is what you know. It's a little scary because these people are living, in a sense, their parents' faith. They grow up and they live their parents' faith without necessarily a passion or deep attachment to Christ. I'm not saying it's not there, but at some point, these cultural Christians need to grow up and make this faith personal.

Remember, we were having a baptism ten-plus years ago and a bunch of nine or ten-year-olds were all being baptized. My daughter Hannah came up to me and said she wanted to be baptized because all her buddies were being baptized. I told her baptism is not about her buddies. I explained what baptism means. I told her I'd baptize her if she wanted me to, but I wanted her to understand why she was being baptized. "You're saying to the world you're giving your life wholly to Christ." She said, "I'll wait." At 17, she came to me and said, "Now I'm ready to be baptized." She had to own it. She had to go beyond Dad's faith and Mom's faith and own this faith for herself.

There are social Christians. It's very similar, but not always the same. They're Christians because we live in this culture and it becomes a social circle. In a sense, their entire social circle is right here within the local assembly. There's nothing wrong with that, as long as I can say "I am a Christian" instead of "I am from Grace Connection." The local church can't be my identity; the fact I am a Christian is my identity. This is where my friends and family are, so this is where I hang. Again, there is nothing wrong with that as long as I define myself as a Christian.

There are behavioral Christians. This is the believer that lives by an outward moral or ethical code that subtly convinces them that they and God are doing fine. There are no real moral challenges. We like to have fun with this. Some of us just get too old to sin. I'm just tired; I don't want to sin. Sin takes way too much energy. I'd just as soon take a nap. So, I never get challenged. This could be somebody who sits in church their whole life. They don't battle with the moral or the ethical. They put themselves in cruise control and they just complain about a bunch of things. They are behavioral Christians without any real inward passion, nothing that could point to a Spirit-filled life. When the word of God is preached, they click off.

Acts 11:25 says Barnabas went to Tarsus to look for Saul. When he had found him, he brought him to Antioch. For a whole year, they met with the church and taught a great many people. In Antioch, the disciples were first called Christians. It was the first attempt by the unbelievers to insult and mock the early church. It was not a good term and was not seen that way. It was seen as a ridicule: "You're followers of Christ." It simply means a wholehearted follower of Christ.