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'm going to be in Joshua 17. It's important to be settled in how we understand God's grace. We have God's saving grace. Saving grace is the same for everybody. Ephesians 2:8: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and it is not of your own doing, it is a gift of God.” And that's true for every believer. Every truly born-again believer of Jesus Christ has saving grace. The moment I'm born again, the moment I'm sealed with the Spirit, I have exercised or accessed the gift of saving grace that God has given us.

Then there's something called preventative grace. I call it preventative grace. I made that name up. I've seen other people call it that, but I called it that first. And they called it that after me, even though they lived 30 or 40 years before me, I still say they called it after me. But truly, many people have called this different things. This is a grace to live your daily life free from sin, overcoming temptation. And again, we all get an equal portion of preventative grace.

I read a book in Bible school when I was finishing out the counseling degree by David Needham. It's called *Birthright*. Amazing book. I recommend everyone read it. It's just an amazing book. And he had a statement in there. He says, is it possible for a Christian to never sin again?

Read the book and you'll get that answer. His point was, and it was a valid point, the possibility of walking in the Spirit, to the power of the Spirit, living in obedience to the Spirit. A Christian can go through their lives without ever really falling into sin. I’m not saying they're not sinners. I’m not saying they've repulsed the old nature out of their soul. But the fact they can live a godly life, we are not destined to sin.

In other words, once I have the Spirit in me and I walk in the Spirit, we're not destined to sin. That's preventative grace. Titus 2:11 and 12: “For the grace of God has appeared.” That's Christmas morning. That's Jesus Christ. *Apekalyphto* is the unveiling. The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation. That's his death on the cross for all people. And training us to renounce—of course, it's all people—training us or teaching us in your King James and other translations. This is the English Standard, I believe. “To renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.”

So the grace of God, when God says I want to give grace to mankind, He did it through the person Jesus Christ. That's a huge thing to really embrace and understand. Grace came through a person of Jesus Christ. We'll see Sunday morning where He was full of grace and truth. So when God said God gives us grace, He did give us grace. He gave us grace through Jesus Christ.

He was grace and He was the grace of God that appeared to all men at the Incarnation, at the birth in Bethlehem. That little baby was God's grace given to mankind. Now, He did that so we could live anyway that we wanted. He did that so we could renounce godliness, worldly passions, and live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present age. The Old Testament saints didn't have that privilege of having the grace to do this, the indwelling Spirit to do this.

Is grace ever seen as a license to live anyway that we want or the ability to live anyway that we want? It's not. Is grace ever seen as an excuse not to own our stuff? We'll see a little bit later on in the message. To come to grips with what's really going on inside of us and just shove it under grace and shove it under grace. "Under grace, under grace." Really, maybe God's knocking on your door and wants to get at something in your lives and deal with it, which is an act of God's grace, by the way.

But we're just using grace as a shield to protect myself from being honest with God instead of as a provision to be transformed into His image. Then there's proportional grace. I have a whole message on that; that’s nothing to do with tonight. Proportional grace is the grace given to perform God's intended purpose for your life. And that's what we're going to be looking at a little bit tonight in Joshua chapter 17. Ephesians 4:7: “But grace was given to each of you according to the measure of Christ's gift.” Christ's gift there, that word, and the word grace are the same root word in the Greek New Testament.

Now, this proportional grace is when each person gets the grace which Christ has to give, and each gets it in the proportion in which the giver, Christ, is pleased to bestow it. One having a larger measure and one a smaller measure. You're saying some get more grace and some get less grace? Well, in a sense, let me show you what I mean. Depending on the purpose that He has for their life. But each getting it from the same hand with the same purpose.

In other words, God looks at me and God looks at John and says I'm going to give Tim Kelley grace to do what I want Tim Kelley to do in his life. I'm going to give John Penu grace so John Penu can do what I intend him to do in his life. And I'm going to give the person who's in a bed of affliction grace so they can have a life of victory. Even though they're in the bed of affliction, they can never do public ministry, they'll never be in the forefront, but I have a portion of grace for them too. That's proportional grace.

*Expositor's* is a commentary. I don't have this on the screen; let me read it to you though. This is the commentary on Ephesians 4:7. “We must be careful to note that this grace has to do with the exercise of special gifts for service, not for grace for daily living. You have grace, we all have the same amount of grace to live the same way. That's our preventative grace. I have that grace, you have that grace, I don't have any more than you do. But we all have different grace for this.”

The former is limited and is adjusted to the kind of gift and the extent to which the Holy Spirit desires to use that gift in the believer's service. The latter is unlimited, that's preventative grace, and subject only to the limitations which the believer puts upon it by the lack of yieldedness to the Spirit. The context here, Ephesians 4:11 and 12, is one of service, not of general Christian experience.

So he's saying here that we have this gift of grace for special acts of service. I have the grace to be a local church pastor. Since I was 19 years old, I was born again. Within a few months, I knew I was supposed to be a local church pastor. I have that grace to do this. You may not. Some of you may, but many of you may not have the grace to do that. And I certainly don't have the grace to do what God has asked you to do. If God has called you to children's ministry, you've got a gift of grace I don't have. I don't want to go there. I'd rather go to purgatory than that. Maybe they're the same thing, I'm not sure.

But so we have to be careful, and this is important. We have to be careful not to want something God has not given us grace for. Can I say that again? We have to be careful not to want something God has not given us grace for. Some of us want, especially in the kingdom of God, we want certain gifts which God hasn't given us and doesn't intend for us to have. We get so excited because we see maybe a public gift and we want that gift, we want this gift. But God didn't gift you with that. It's really a very carnal, fleshly way to approach the Spirit of God.

Be content in what God has called you to do and asked you to do. That's your portion, and it's no greater or no less than mine or Billy Graham's or anyone else's. Be content in whatever that portion is. I should say don't be content in life until you realize that portion of grace. That's the other point. Don't be discontented by the fact you're not gifted as you would like to be gifted. Be content and learn how to be content in what God has asked you and called you to be and to do.

And my friends, that may just mean being a parent for a while. That's what it may mean: raising my children and being the best husband or the best wife and the best businessman that I can be. It may be that simple. It may be just walking in the Spirit even though I face a lot of personal struggles and personal things on the inside. It doesn't have to be anything flashy, trust me. If that was the case, then only people that were out in front, which is the minority, would get the greatest rewards. That's not true. I think the greatest rewards of heaven aren't even seen now by man.

I always look at our precious Jane Goldworthy. Here is a dear lady of God who had as tender and sweet a spirit as any person had, and she couldn't get out of the bed of affliction for a couple decades, two or three decades. Did she have less grace or more grace? No. Was she less or more valuable in the kingdom of God? She was just as valuable as Billy Graham in the kingdom of God. You see, one way to look at it is carnal; the other way is spiritual.

I had a man, I think I shared this story Sunday morning. I had a man come up to me and say, “Pastor Kelley, I have a gift of preaching. I'd like to use my gift in your church.” So I said, “Well, what's how you see that manifesting?” He goes, “Well, I thought we could alternate Sundays.” True story. And I said, “Well, I don't really sense that's what God would have us do.” But that was his gift. He wanted that gift because that was a cool thing for him to stand up in front of people and speak, so he wanted that gift. And when I wouldn't let him do that, he left the church and went to find some place where he could use his gifts.

Don't have to worry about using your gifts. God will put them to work. He'll raise them up and He'll sit them down for a while sometimes too. But your gifts will never go unused. Alan Redpath said this: “If only we would always bear in mind that grace is given according to the gift, not grace to match somebody else's gift. Not to do what somebody else is expected to do, but grace for the gift God has given each one of us.” I could close with that and that could bring peace to a lot of lives if we would just meditate on that and really rest in that truth.

Now, I'm going to be in Joshua 17 here in a moment. I'm reading out of this Bible. I'm introducing something that we're going to start doing in Grace Connection Sunday morning. Actually, Sunday morning we will be putting verses on the screen because I haven't given anyone enough warning about this yet. But I want people to start bringing their Bibles back to church. I want you to get them off the shelf. I don't care if you have it on an iPad or you have it on a phone, that's okay. And we have pew Bibles in the pews and we'll get some more in there if people want them.

I'm going actually start reading right from the Scriptures. Now, is there a significance to that? It’s blessed when it's read. Well, it is, but I don't think it really matters the vehicle in which it's read. It can be read off a screen, read off a book. I don't think it really matters that much to God as long as we live it more than how we read it. But I'm doing this because I just think it's really cool. I love hearing Bible pages turn and I have 14 Bibles that I don't use enough now. I'm going start using those again. So I want to start reading that.

Joshua 17: “Yet the people of Manasseh could not take possession of those cities, but the Canaanites persisted in dwelling in the land. Now when the people of Israel grew strong, they put the Canaanites to forced labor, but did not utterly drive them out. Then the people of Joseph spoke to Joshua, saying, 'Why have you given me but one lot and one portion as an inheritance, although I am a numerous people since all along the Lord has blessed me?'”

Now, if you want to go back a few Wednesdays, we've been talking about the lots that each tribe got. They all got this hunk of land that Joshua allotted to them in the promised land. Now the tribe of Joseph is coming up and saying basically, the lot of land you've given us is too small. Why? We're so many, we're one of the bigger tribes and you've given us this little hunk of real estate. And Joshua said to them, “If you are a numerous people, go up by yourselves to the forests and then clear ground for yourselves in the land of the Perizzites and the Rephaim, since the hill country of Ephraim is too narrow for you.”

The people of Joseph said, “The hill country is not enough for us. Yet the Canaanites who dwell in the plain have chariots of iron, both those of Beth Shean and its villages and those in the valley of Jezreel.” Then Joshua said to the house of Joseph, to Ephraim and Manasseh, “You are a numerous people and have great power. You shall not have one allotment only, but the hill country shall be yours, for though it is a forest you shall clear it and possess it to its farthest borders. For you shall drive out the Canaanites, though they have chariots of iron and though they are strong.”