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: I'll be in Luke chapter 15 and somewhere in the middle of the message. I won't speak long today. We trimmed it down because of different events. I am very excited about this series, Discovering God. A.W. Tozer said something like this—I don't have the exact quote here—but he said there will be no more important thought that a man thinks than his thoughts about God, who God is, and knowing who God is. That's why he wrote his book, *Knowledge of the Holy*.

Who is God? What do you think, as we said yesterday, when you think of God? Do you think He's indifferent, judgmental, cruel, mean, or doesn't really know what's going on in your life? What are your impressions when you think about God? Now last week, we saw how God self-described himself in Exodus 33 and 34. If you weren't here, you can get that online. These messages all fit together like pieces of a puzzle, so it's important that you can hear them all.

When Moses asked God to follow Israel, and Moses had God at a bargaining table, Moses asked this question: "God, will you show me your glory?" What a statement. God, show me your glory. I want to see something in you. I want to know who you are. I want you to be more than just the God of the burning bush, the God of the seven plagues, or the God who parted the Red Sea. I've seen your power, but I want to know who are you? Show me what makes up your glory.

And God said, "Moses, I've heard your prayer and I'll do that. When you go up on Sinai, I'll stick your face in a rock because if you look on me, you'll die. You can't see me, but I'll pass before you and I will self-describe myself. I'll tell you who I am so you'll know who I am." In a sense, God is saying, this is how I want you to know me. This is how I want you to think of me.

His glory was being described as merciful, gracious, long-suffering—the God with the big nose, remember that—and committed to a steadfast *hesed*, an unchangeable love and lovingkindness. That's how he described himself. He gave us a clear picture of how he wants himself to be known by his people.

I was thinking today, and I just scribbled it down on my notes. I could actually write on this. I'm going to tell you a little story about this because I usually use my iPad. You've seen me with my iPad. I usually don't have notes. That is so archaic. Paper? Pens? Where do you even find a pen? Who needs pens anymore? My goodness. So I use my iPad. I just need to type one finger at a time.

I used to work in the restaurant business, and I worked with this very eccentric chef. This was down at Innisbrook years ago. Every time we did a wedding, he'd make two cakes. This was great because at the end of the wedding, one cake would be in the employee's dining room and they'd cut that baby up and we'd have cake for dinner that night. It was wonderful.

This one particular time, we're wheeling the cake out to the floor where the wedding was to set it up. There was a cable on the floor with one of those little rubber sleeves over it, and the little wire cart we were wheeling the cake out on hit that cable and bam! Four levels of wedding cake on the floor. We immediately claimed a five-second rule, picked it up off the floor, and started eating it.

The chef was fine because he always made a second cake. He had one in the background. This past week, this is how sensitive I am to the God. I'm thinking, I finish my notes and I send them up to the OneDrive, which is a Microsoft version of the iCloud. I send them up there, then I take my iPad and I suck them back down so I have them on my iPad. That's how I do it every Sunday.

For some reason, the servers were down. So when I sent it up there, it never reached. Or if it reached, it never came back down. As I was leaving the office Friday, I thought just in case we have a technological glitch here, I'm going to print my notes off as a backup. I was on it. I figured it out. I'm just so proud of myself. That's why I brought that up. If not, I'd be up here winging it because I would have no notes at all and my computer's not here.

We defined grace for you last week. That's in your program. We came to the same definitions we put on the screen. We won't go through those, but those are something I want you to read and familiarize yourself with. We ended up in Exodus 33 and 34 last week. Now I want to find the same God that self-described himself in Exodus. Let's find him in the New Testament, Titus chapter 2.

"For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all men." So the grace of God has appeared. That word "appeared" there is *apokalyptō*, and it's a cool word. I use the illustration of if I had created a masterpiece on the table here and I put a sheet over it. You've come here to see my masterpiece and I say ta-da! and I whip the sheet off. You look at my masterpiece. That's the word *apokalyptō*. It means it's an unveiling to see something that wasn't seen prior to that.

So the grace of God has appeared. God has given us a whole new revelation of grace the world has not seen. Way beyond Exodus 33 and 34, God has shown us another level of grace that up to this point has never been seen by humankind. The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people. We know that appearing of grace simply to be Jesus Christ. That appearing was Christmas morning when he was a child in Bethlehem in a manger. That little baby represented the grace of God in human form.

If we want to see what God looks like—every little kid asks what God looks like—if we want to see what his values are, what his priorities are, what's really important to God, how he deals with people, how he thinks of people, how he reacts to people, and what he thinks of human weakness, then we simply look into the person of Jesus Christ.

You want to see what God really deems important? We read Matthew 5, 6, and 7, the Sermon on the Mount, and we'll see what God deems as really important. We look at Jesus, how he lived his life, how he dealt with people, and what he taught. That's what we want to do in the rest of this series in Discovering God.

John 1:1 says, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John denotes the essential. The word "Word" there is *Logos*. It means he was an expression of God, the essence of God. So in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. It points to Jesus the Messiah, the second person of the Godhead, shown forth conspicuously from his words and his deeds.

According to John 1:1, God and Jesus are the same. If I want to see God and I can't—even Moses didn't see him, remember, he stuck his head in a rock because he was told if you look on me, you'll die—now God sent Jesus in human form so we could look at Jesus and learn about who God is through watching how Jesus Christ lived.

Verse 14 says, "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth." John 1:16 says, "For from his fullness we have received grace upon grace." Wave after wave. This word fullness here is an incredible word. It is *plērōma*. It's as rich as any word in the New Testament. It means the very essence, the fullness, all that God is. From his fullness, we have received grace upon grace.

There is a beautiful word picture there. Lenski, the old Lutheran Greek guy, brings this up. If you were to go to the beach to watch the sunset, you see these beautiful little waves come up on the seashore. Those waves are there. They're going on right now as we're in here. They're going on all day today. There might be big waves or little waves, but there will always be waves.

Even if you never go to the beach, the waves don't stop. They just keep coming and coming. Well, that's the same principle with God's grace. There's wave after wave after wave of God's grace. It just keeps coming and coming. It never stops. He's full of grace and truth. We receive grace upon grace, wave after wave of grace with no limit and no end.

When we are gone, the waves will still be coming. When we are attentive and busy at work, the waves are still coming. There's always grace extended towards the human race. Verse 17 says, "For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but only the only God who is at the Father's side has made him known."

That phrase "made him known" is one word. It's the word *exegesis* where we get the English word exegesis. If you've studied the Bible at any level beyond the surface level, you know what that term means. You go in and you look at what certain words mean in the original setting, the original languages, the historical setting, the different tenses, the moods of the word, and the context of the passage. You're exegeting the scriptures. It means to make fully known.

Thus, the God of Exodus 33 and 34 is the same as our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. He is God fully known. As Kenneth Wuest said, Jesus is the exegesis of God. You want to see God? Look at Jesus. You want to see how God thinks? Look at Jesus. You want to see his value system? You look at Jesus.

For the rest of the series, we're going to look at some of the things that Jesus taught, maybe a few of his miracles, and things he did in light of the culture he was in. Some of these things you've heard many times if you've been walking with God for a long time, but I want to frame these into a New Testament culture that maybe you haven't quite seen the same yet.

In Luke 9:51, we see that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem. He said he set his face like flint. Now, he was always being pursued by the Pharisees, looking for anything that they could accuse him of. If you work in the secular world, most of you do, maybe you've worked with people in the office that are just waiting for you to make a mistake. They would love to expose your mistake.

They'd love to show the people that they're a little smarter than you or that you're not as good as them. They are just mean, self-centered people, but they pursue you. They're just waiting for you to mess up so they can go, "Aha! Caught you!" They might tell on you, reveal something about you, or fail to cover for you. They could lift a finger to help you, but they won't do it.

It's the way of the world, unfortunately. Not everyone's like that, but you know what I'm talking about. That's the Pharisees. They're looking at Jesus. They want him to screw up or say something so they can get him. They want him to contradict himself to prove he's a hypocrite. They test him in the scriptures to see if he knows what he's talking about. They follow him around and ask hard questions because they want to find something they can use to kill him. This is his audience for Luke chapter 15.