South Shore Pentecostal Church

Guest (Male): Welcome to the Apostolic Truth Radio Program with Pastor Craig Ouellette, a radio ministry of South Shore Pentecostal Church located in Whitman, Massachusetts. At a time when many Christians do not know what to believe, South Shore Pentecostal is honored to bring you clear biblical teaching on which you can confidently build your faith. Thank you for joining us.

J. Craig Ouellette: We're going to talk today about God's grace, mercy, and truth. Let's read these scriptures in Genesis 20, verses 1 through 6, then going to Romans. Genesis 20, verse 1 says, "And Abraham journeyed from thence toward the south country, and dwelled between Kadesh and Shur, and journeyed to Gerar. And Abraham said of Sarah his wife, 'She is my sister.' And Abimelech king of Gerar sent and took Sarah. But God came to Abimelech in a dream by night, and said to him, 'Behold, thou art but a dead man, for the woman which thou hast taken; for she is a man's wife.'"

"But Abimelech had not come near her: and he said, 'Lord, wilt thou slay also a righteous nation? Said he not unto me, She is my sister? And she, even she herself said, He is my brother: in the integrity of my heart and innocency of my hands have I done this.' And God said unto him in a dream, 'Yea, I know that thou didst this in the integrity of thy heart; for I also withheld thee from sinning against me: therefore suffered I thee not to touch her.'" Amen.

In the book of Romans, chapter 2, and verse 4, it says, "Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?" Then, in Philippians 2:13, "For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure." Amen.

We're going to talk about God's grace, mercy, and truth today. We have to lay a little bit of foundation, so we're going to talk about different elements before we really get to the main point of what this is about. When we talk about grace and mercy and truth, all of that is related to the fact that God is love. God's grace comes out of His love. God's mercy comes out of His love. God's truth is just who God is. The Bible states in 1 John 4:8 that God is love. Love is an essential aspect of God.

The reason we have a problem is we try to interpret love in terms of our worldly understanding or application of love. But God's love is not a love that's doing something to get something back. God's love is a love that He does just because it's the right thing to do and He cares. God will do something good even if He knows you won't return the favor. Amen. God's love is a pure love that cares and wants the best for everyone, even when we don't love Him in return. If you ever get a vision of that, that will change your life. You can't just conjure it up, but in a prayer place or worship place, you realize how much God really loves and how selfish we really are and how much we need the love of God. It changes you.

We could say that God's love is expressed in this very familiar scripture: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." The point here is that the love of God is a giving love. God gave because He loved. God didn't give because, "Well, if I give this much then I'll get their attention." God gives because He loves. Amen.

The Bible says for husbands, "Husbands, love your wife even as Christ loved the church." That puts a lot on a husband. God expects us to give, not because we're getting something back, but because that's the position of the husband. Amen. In other words, God cared enough about all sinful humanity that He provided a way for everyone to be saved. We can just say, "Thank you, Lord." If we're saved, it's only because God has provided a way and God has reached into our life with His mercy.

God's mercy is a result of His love. Because He loves, He's merciful. Because He cares, He has compassion on us. Because He has a love that's not trying to get something back, He sees us in our situation and He sees that when we're reaching and trying, He's going to have mercy because He cares about us. Amen. We see it in Titus 3:5. It says through mercy that God provided salvation through the washing of regeneration, that's water baptism, and renewing of the Holy Ghost. The scripture says, "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us."

God reached out. God could have done a bunch of good things for us and said, "Now I've done some good things, but you're still going to hell." He could have said that. But He didn't. He reached out in mercy to us. According to His mercy, He saved us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost. So that water baptism and that Holy Ghost has something to do with our coming to God and being saved. Through God's love, He has compassion which leads to His mercy.

Let's look at a couple of scriptures. Acts 20:28 says, "Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock over which the Holy Ghost has made you overseers, to feed the church of God which He hath purchased with His own blood." It's easy to just go over that scripture and it goes right by you, but you think about God as a spirit. Spirit doesn't have flesh and blood. So how does God have blood? God has blood when He robed Himself in the humanity of Jesus Christ to be our sacrifice. That shows that God's got some compassion. God's got some love. He's willing to put Himself into our mess. A sinless God is willing to put Himself into a sinful world that He can give us a way out. Hallelujah.

Ephesians 1:14 says, "Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession." What's the purchased possession? If you got saved, you're the purchased possession. The church collectively is the purchased possession. It's the earnest. The Holy Ghost is that down payment for our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession unto the praise of His glory. God loves enough to make an offer to humanity: "If you want to come live with me, you want to be free from sin, I have a way for you to get out of that."

Hallelujah. That's God's compassion. Isaiah 59:16 says, and I understand that in the context it's a little bit different, but this is the mindset of God looking down on Earth. This is God looking down, and He saw that there was no man, and He wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore His arm brought salvation unto Him; and His righteousness, it sustained Him. God looked down and He saw there's nobody that can be their Savior. There's nobody that's going to be able to deliver them. Nobody can come up with the price. Therefore, God Himself let His arm be put out there. If you read in Isaiah 53:1, Jesus is the arm of the Lord made manifest. Because He is God in flesh.

God's love and mercy are guided by His righteousness and His judgment. He's not arbitrary. He doesn't make a bad decision. He never makes an unfair judgment. He always knows the right judgment. We've got Supreme Courts, sometimes they do the right thing, sometimes they don't. But God always does the right thing. God always makes the right judgment. He's not biased. Even if you're one of His children, He's still going to judge you the same way He judges others. The only difference is you're saved, you're adopted, you're purchased, but God still expects you to be under the same authority that the rest of the world is under.

Notice this in Jeremiah 9:24. "But let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me." If you backed up, He said don't let the wise man glory in his wisdom, don't let the mighty man glory in his might, don't let the rich man glory in his riches, but let him that knows me glory and understand this is who I am. "That I am the Lord which exercises loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness in the earth: for in these things I delight, saith the Lord."

If you're exercising loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness, God's going to delight in you. I don't know about you, but that gives me a prayer life right there because I know my loving kindness falls short and my judgment and righteousness fall short. But if I can get into the presence of God and God can start to guide me, I can sometimes do something that pleases God. Hallelujah. God delights in loving kindness, judgment, and righteousness. This means that the Lord will provide mercy and grace because of His love, but He also must judge righteously.

Understand that grace and mercy and love give us space. They give us an opportunity. Grace and mercy and love are not "it's all wrapped up." It means that God is offering us something whereby we can obtain the promises. Every one of us has got a number of days. You want to be wise. The Bible says, "Teach us to number our days." That doesn't mean you have to get up and say, "Well, now I only got 10,000 left." We don't know our end. But what it means is be aware there is an endpoint. Be aware that we need to try to redeem the time. Amen. Be aware that God wants me to do something, God wants you to do something, and I've only got a certain amount of time to do that.

God is a God of truth. Let's read some of these scriptures. Deuteronomy 32:4 says, "He is the Rock, His work is perfect: for all His ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is He." Even the first phrase, "He is a Rock." We know rocks don't change very much, very quickly. They're stable. There's a big rock in your yard, you go out tomorrow, it's still probably there the same way, pretty much. We think of stability. That's God. He's a Rock. You can build on Him. He's stable in the storm. He's stable in the changes of life when the currents of life start to change. God doesn't change. If I've got a hold of God, I've got an anchor. I've got something that's not going to change. Everything else might change around me, but I've got a place that I can hold on to that's not going to change.

Psalm 31:5 says, "Into thine hand I commit my spirit: thou hast redeemed me, O Lord God of truth." He's a God of truth. Then, in Isaiah 65:16, it says, "That he who blesses himself in the earth shall bless himself in the God of truth; and he that sweareth in the earth shall swear by the God of truth; because the former troubles are forgotten, and because they are hid from mine eyes." He's a God of truth. Well, what does the Bible say about God? He says, "I change not." So, if He's a God of truth and He doesn't change, that means there are absolute truths.

That means there are truths that transcend history, and culture, and education, and understanding, and background, and opinion, and majority. They are truths because they are anchored in the character and being of God. One of the things that the Bible is, is a record of God keeping His word. Prophecy fulfilled is God keeping His word. In Genesis 3:15, when He says the seed of the woman is going to bruise the head of the serpent, and God comes in the person of Jesus Christ 4,000 years later, God is keeping His word. He's the faithful God.

God cannot lie. In Hebrews 6:18, that would violate His character, and He cannot unbecome who He is. So He can't lie. Hebrews 6:18 talks about how God made a covenant with Abraham and He gave him two immutable or unchangeable things in which it was impossible for God to lie, that we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope that is set before us. That hope is Jesus Christ and our salvation through Him.

The Bible says again in John 17:17, "Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth." That's why you study your Bible. That's why you get it into you. When you're confused, what does the Bible say? It's truth. When you don't know what to do, what does the Bible say? Because it's truth. When you fled to God for refuge and the devil comes and tells you, "I'm going to eat you up," what does the Bible say about them that have put their trust in the Lord? When you think, "I need something and I don't have it, God, and I don't have the means to get it," what does the Bible say about God helping us and providing our needs? God is truth. His word is truth.

A lot of times the things we go through, God is putting us into a situation where I've got a choice to bail out and try to do it myself, or trust God and His word. Often times what we call temptations really are situations of choice. Am I going to believe God, what He says, or am I going to try to handle it myself? Amen. So mercy with truth is required to purge our sins. Proverbs 16:6 says, "By mercy and truth iniquity is purged: and by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil."

To come to God, you need God's mercy, right? But you also need the truth of what you need to do. You need to repent, get baptized in Jesus' name, and get the Holy Ghost. But in order to continue to live for God, if you don't have a fear of God, you're not going to stay there. Fear of God is a good thing. The fear of God is a good thing. Amen. Sometimes it's good to have some things go wrong so we fear God. So we start to think about if I don't have God, what's going to happen? The fear of God is a good thing. The Bible says that God will reveal His covenant to them that fear Him.

There are a lot of people that know the Bible, but they can't understand it. They can't understand the plan of salvation because they don't fear God enough. If I fear God, guess what happens. If I see it in here, I say I better do it. I don't reason it away. I say I better do it. Amen. If I fear God, I better do it.

When the Bible talks about having a prayer life, like Jesus said on the night of the last supper when He's out in the garden, He said, "Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: for the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." Jesus just told us we need a prayer life. He just told us that in our nature inside with our conscience there's something that wants to serve God, but our flesh will often override. But if I pray, I can build up the inner man. When I get into the presence of God, I build up the inner man. And when I build up the inner man, I'm able to resist the flesh. I'm able to resist what I want to do and able to submit to what God wants me to do. I'm able to have the victory. Hallelujah. And I feel God, and the joy of the Lord comes. Hallelujah.

Psalm 25:10 says, "All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep His covenant and testimonies." When I start and you start to walk in the way God wants you to walk, it doesn't mean it's always going to be a picnic, or a blue sky, or nice areas and stuff. There's going to be some rough stuff, but all those paths are ordained of the Lord and it's mercy and truth. God is going to bring you through. When you walk those paths, that's when you start to learn some of the truth. When you walk those paths, you see the mercy of God as He delivers you through those. But He'll never let something come upon you that's greater than you can bear because all the paths are mercy and truth to them that love Him and keep His covenant and testimonies. It pays the price to serve God. It pays to serve God. Amen. It doesn't mean I won't have a day I don't like, but I know that it's not the end of the story because I know the God that governs the day. Hallelujah.

Again, we need truth to properly worship the Lord because the Bible says that God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth. Part of that understanding is I need to know who God really is to worship Him. So, if I think God's something that He's not, I'm not really worshipping Him, right? So it's important to understand. I need to have truth in my life to worship God properly.

We're talking about grace and mercy and truth. If you check out that phrase "mercy and truth," you find out it's repeated quite a few number of times in the Psalms and Proverbs. But God's mercy is actually God's grace. Grace is something that God gives us we don't deserve. God gives us mercy because He is graceful, because He is loving. When God extends mercy to us, that's really grace because, again, we're all sinners. We were all sinners. Amen.

People have all these different ideas about grace. You can resist grace. God extends it, but God does not force us to take it. Sometimes I have to do some things to get to the place where the grace works in my life. If God says the grace is down at the bank, I've got to go down to the bank to get the grace. Amen. A lot of people think, "Well, I just believe and so the grace is there." Sometimes you've got to obey God to be a partaker of the grace that God has given us. Amen.

Romans 3:23: "All have sinned." Every human being is born a sinner because of Adam's sin. Romans 6:23: "The wages" or the payment "for sin is death." And the word there, "death," the Greek word, means eternal separation from God. This is what it's really talking about. Like Jesus said, He said don't fear the one that when you die can't do any more. Fear the one that when you die has got power to put you into hell. So when I die, if I'm right with God, I'm going to be with God. I don't have to worry. But if I die and I'm not right with God, I don't get a second chance. This life, one life to live. I'm not going to get reincarnated. That's anti-Bible. Job says if even if I die and I disintegrate away, these eyes are going to see Him. He's going to stand at the latter day upon the earth. So Job's not saying I'm coming back as somebody else. He's saying I'm coming back as the same person when God raises me up. Amen. Reincarnation is not a Bible thing. We've got one life to live right here.

God in His love provides salvation through grace. He makes it available. In Titus 2:11, it says, "For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men." In other words, it's available to all humanity. This is what it's saying. It doesn't mean everybody's seen Jesus. We all will someday, but it means that the grace that's come of God that's come through Jesus is now available to all humanity. Amen.

We obtain mercy through grace. Hebrews 4:16 says, "Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy." So that tells us that mercy comes through a channel of grace that God gives us. Let us come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in the time of need. Now, that's really speaking about not just talking about salvation, but it's talking about as we live for God and we find out we stumble. I need to go to the throne of grace and get mercy and find grace to help me get up again and go on and live the way God wants me to live. Amen.

There's a throne of grace, but I've got to go to it. Even though God's got it, I've got to visit God. That means I've got to get in my prayer place, or worship, or some place I've got to get into the dimension of God where I feel God and God is speaking to me to get what I need from God. Hallelujah. God's working in our life. Until the Lord opens our eyes, we don't know how sinful and evil we really are. Again, I can just tell you from my own experience that you look around and you say, "Well, yeah, I know I do this wrong and this wrong, but I'm not as bad as them. I'm not a cold-blooded murderer. I'm not beating my parents and other people." But we don't understand. I'm trying to measure myself against other people and not God. When I stand before God, I won't be able to lift my eyes. That's what happened to Moses at the burning bush, right? Moses planted his face in the ground. He can't look at the Holy God, even though God is calling him. If God starts to talk to us in His holiness, we'll plant our face on the ground. We'll be afraid to look at God.

Think about Daniel. Daniel in one of his visions, he sees a man starts to talk to him, and the angel tells him, "Oh Daniel, you're beloved. We heard you the first time you prayed twenty-one days ago." When they start speaking to Daniel, Daniel plants his face. Daniel says, "I got no strength. My comeliness is all gone. I don't have strength to even stand up." Same with John in the book of Revelation. He gets into the presence of God, he can't stand up. God's got to lift him up. The holiness of God, the best of us does not come close. If God let us see His face, even with His blood upon us, we'd probably be consumed because He'd have to judge our sin.

Now if I'm under the blood, God doesn't see my sin, but understand, it's not my righteousness, it's His righteousness. That's why we get baptized. We want to get His righteousness on us. We want to get our sin washed away. And why do we get the Holy Ghost? Because we know without the power of God in us, we will go back to where we came. Right? Peter talks about the dog returned to his vomit. If the dog stays a dog, it's going to do what a dog's supposed to do naturally. If a human stays a human naturally, morally, they're going to go back to sinful nature. So we need a baptism of the Holy Ghost to raise us up above ourselves. And we need the blood of Jesus upon us. Amen. Every day I need to have my mind washed in the blood of the Lamb. Hallelujah.

The devil blinds our minds. If God today removed the devil with his spirit moving in the world, there'd be a lot of people that would be running to the church. They would be running for an altar. If the church was closed, they'd be pounding on the door saying, "When's it opening?" Because they'd recognize, "I'm lost." But the devil blinds people's minds so that they don't know that they're worse than they think they are. They're measuring themselves against other people. They're measuring themselves against society. They're measuring themselves against how you were raised. They're measuring themselves against a different standard than God. But when we measure ourselves against God's standard, we find out we all fall short of the glory of God.

Again, we need God to shine into our hearts. Every one of us, the only reason we're here, God moved in our life and drew us. Now some of us came kicking and screaming, but God still moved in our life. Amen. Some of us came in and we didn't want to be here, we didn't expect to be here, we came in for different reasons, but then after we got here, God started talking to us and we realized, "I need what's going on." Amen.

The devil blinds people, and it says in Ephesians 4:17 that people that don't know God, they're walking in the vanity of their mind. "This I say therefore, and testify in the Lord, that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of their mind, having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: who being past feeling have given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness." That's us without God. That's us before we come to God.

We might not understand that. I was hearing about one man that was raised in the mob. His father or uncle or somebody was one of the big mobsters out of New York. This man was raised, he went to prison, but he came, had some experience with God, he came to God. He said, "I used to do all these wrong things and I justified them morally. I justified going against the government morally." This is what he said. He said, "When I got saved, I realized I was wrong." That's what we do without God. Unless we let God draw us and God bring us to a place where we realize I've got to have you, Lord. I've got to have you.

Again, 2 Corinthians 4:6. "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." Now I understand that the real intent of that scripture is to reveal that Jesus is God. But it's also talking about how God shines in our hearts to help us realize I'm lost. I need to repent. I need to come to God. It's not us shining in our hearts. It's not our goodness. It's not our intelligence. All of a sudden, God shines in our hearts to help us realize I need God. I need to be saved. I need the Lord to do something in me. Amen.

Jesus says this in John 6:44: "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him." So He's talking about the Spirit. See, the Father's in Him. The Spirit of God is who He is walking in humanity. Unless the Spirit of God reaches out to our life, it doesn't matter how much Bible you know, you will not act on it unless God draws you. So again, if we've been convicted, don't turn it off. Thank God. Because it's the mercy of God drawing us to Him. Amen.

The Bible lets us know that God is trying to draw everybody. So Peter said in the last days, in Acts 2:17, that God is poured out His spirit on all flesh. That means God is trying to draw all people. But the question is, do we respond? God working in our lives. Amen. As I've already mentioned, we often think we're not so bad. "I just need to clean up this or clean up that." But we're like Abimelech. We didn't do the wrong thing because God moved on us with grace and God withheld us from doing worse than we did, and we didn't know it. We didn't know it. When we were out there, we thought, "I didn't do that and that and that." The only reason we didn't do that and that and that is because God was working in our lives even when we weren't saved and often inhibiting us from doing worse to ourselves.

And we're only here, even if we came in limping, because God's grace was working in our lives. We thought I wasn't that bad, but God had moved even when we didn't know Him and said, "Don't do that. That's not a place you want to go. I'll hold you back." And if we would respond and we don't let evil take over, God's grace works in us to keep us from being worse and less evil than we really are. Abimelech thought I'm okay. "I didn't take her. I thought I was doing all the right thing." But God said it wasn't you. "I moved on you."

Now it doesn't mean grace is irresistible. If we've got a conscience and we're not gone, when God starts to move on us, we respond to a lot of those things. A lot of good things that people do that aren't saved, it's because God sometimes is moving on them. Again, the Bible says in Philippians 2:13, it's God that works in us to will and do His good pleasure. God will work in us to try to get us to line up our will with His will. God will work with us and draw us to try to get us to do what He wants us to do.

If we're searching for God and we want to be faithful and obedient to God, then that grace will work in us to do what God wants us to do. But I can resist the grace of God. You can resist the grace of God. God does not force us, but God tries to draw us, or woo us, or persuade us. He gives us a Bible with all kinds of events, stories that are true events. They're not parables, they're real stories. He gives us those stories to show us this is what happened when these people acted this way, this is what happened when these people followed what I wanted them to do. Here it is again, and again, and again. So you know it's not just a one-off. Here's a Bible that shows you how I act. Here's a Bible that shows how I dealt with Israel. So God is trying to help us understand that we often think we're okay when we're not. We often think I'm not that bad. And maybe to you I'm not, and maybe to the rest of the world I'm not, but that's not the comparison that's going to be.

When I stand before God, He's not going to measure me against anybody in this room. He's not going to measure me against anybody else in the world, but He's going to pull out His word and He's going to measure me against the word of God. Amen. So God's Spirit is working even when we're sinners. God drawing us as a result of God's love which causes Him to reach for us. If you look back, you've been saved very long, in prayer, you look back, you find out that God took you down different paths and you realize, "I thought I was going to go over here, but I ended up over here. And when I got over there, I thought I was going to go over here and I ended up over here." And all of a sudden you realize I ended up in church and I got saved, and it's because God said don't go that way, come over this way.

God's goodness is leading us to a place where we can get what we need from God and God can save us and God can help us understand what we need. God's long-suffering in our lives. Romans 2:4 says, "Or despisest thou the riches of His goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?" In other words, I didn't get to the altar of repentance by my goodness. I didn't get to the altar of repentance because somebody was a great preacher. I didn't get to the altar of repentance because they were playing the songs I liked. But I got to the altar of repentance because the goodness of God was reaching into my life and I responded. That's how you got there. You responded.

The riches and understanding. A lot of times we look out and say, "Why doesn't God just take that person out? They're doing all this wrong and evil." But God is long-suffering. God is forbearing because that could have been me. That could have been you. If He's taking them out, where does God draw the line? He could take me out too. But God was long-suffering with me. God was forbearing with me, thank God. He gave me time to make my mind up and come to an altar. Hallelujah. But He says in verse 5, "But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up unto thyself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; who will render to every man according to his deeds."

You're not going to earn salvation, but it means is your life being directed by God in His purpose, good deeds, or by yourself, bad deeds? That's what it comes down to. Is my life being directed by God? Good deeds come when I respond to God and I do things that God wants me to do because I want to please God. Now bad deeds, when I'm doing my own thing, it doesn't hold up before God. It's not going to hold up. Might hold up before me and you, but it's not going to hold up before God. I've got to come under the authority of God. If you think about it, I mean it's just almost to me it's almost mind-boggling. You got people that go to church, they say "Jesus is Lord," and they don't do half the things the Bible says. How do you call Him Lord if you don't obey Him? How do you call Him God if you don't give Him Godship?

We often go through many trials and tribulations in coming to God because He's long-suffering and forbearing. Again, God's grace is not irresistible, but God will put it out there. And since we're made in the image and likeness of God, there's a conscience in every one of us. And if that conscience is not burned up, if it's not seared with a hot iron, then it responds often times to what God is doing even when we're not living for God. God will work. Listen, I can tell you when I got saved, I realized somebody prayed for me. It wasn't me. And I can maybe guess it was my grandmother, but I don't know that. But I do know somebody was praying for me. That's why I'm alive, because somebody prayed for me. In other words, I didn't get here by myself. But God, here and there, a little turn here, a little turn there, a little step here, a little step there, maybe ten steps backwards and twenty forward. But in time, God reaching, God's grace, God trying to persuade me, brought me to an altar where I could get my sins washed away, get buried, get born again. Amen.

Again, God working in our lives. You go down through the same passage and it's talking about if you continually resist God, eventually God will let you go your own way. I heard some preaching just this week, I was listening to a guy preaching and he was talking about a man that he knew that told him, "I haven't felt God since I was twelve years old." This man was a grown man now. He was telling the preacher this. He said God was dealing with me. God was drawing me. He says but one day in a service when people are up at the altar and I was in the back pew and they're all praying loud, he said I screamed out, "God, you leave me alone, I'll leave you alone." And God did just that. We can reach a point where God won't deal with us anymore. That's why the Bible says "now is the day of salvation." I don't know if I got tomorrow, but I do have today.

Today I can find God. Today I can renew myself in God. Today I can know that I know the Lord and He knows me. Today I can have security in my relationship with God. Today I can have the joy of salvation. Amen. So He reached down there. He goes He's going to render, verse 6, to all men according to their deeds: to them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life. Now the glory we're seeking for is not our glory, but His glory. But it's telling you that living for God requires patience. God's grace in our life, He reaches and brings us in, but now that I'm in, I've got to continue in patience. Continue in patience reaching for the things that God has for us.

That's why Paul said, "I press toward the mark." I'm reaching. I see somebody stretching with all their power to reach that mark, that end goal of the calling of God, high calling of God in Christ Jesus. I see somebody pressing against the oppositions that are coming against him. Saying, "I'm pressing, I'm reaching." I'm trying to reach that. That's how you get God. Sometimes you've got to press through the crowd. Sometimes the crowd is people, and sometimes the crowd is just a bunch of thoughts in your head, but you've got to press through the crowd.

And He says in verse 8, "But unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Gentile." So God's saying it's not about Jews or Gentiles, it's about humanity. I've got the same judgment for all humanity. Amen. Again, the mistake we make is we compare ourselves with ourselves or others or other standards or society standard or the culture we live in. Everybody else does it. That doesn't have anything to do with God. It's got nothing to do with God. Everybody else knows they shouldn't do it and they're getting away with it. Still doesn't have anything to do with God. Even if everybody else knows it and's getting away with it or seems to be getting away with it, God still requires it of us if we know it. Amen.

When we read about the flood in Noah, and you read about Sodom and Gomorrah, why are those there? Those are there to let us know that there are times when God literally judges sin. They're there to let us know that there is a point where God comes and steps in and judges sin. In Noah's day, the world reached that. God took out the ones that were ready, but everybody else, they were judged. Sodom and Gomorrah, God was willing to pull out if there's at least ten people I'll hold back. But those are real events. Those are not parables or fables. Those were real events that occurred, and God has let them there to let us understand there is a point of judgment. And if I'm not where God wants me to be, judgment will fall on me. Amen.

The real point that God wants us to bring about is just because we did some good things, don't get puffed up in ourselves. It's God working in us. Just like Abimelech, he was a man serving idols, doing all kinds of pagan things that the Bible would be against, and he thought he was okay because he didn't do something with Sarah, didn't touch her. He thought he's okay, but it was God that held him back. And every one of us here, there's been things where God has held us back in our life and we would have done way worse than we've done except for the grace of God working in our life. Repentance, water baptism in Jesus' name, receiving the Holy Ghost, that's the new birth. God's grace makes it available today, but I've got to respond to God's grace. I've got to obey what God says. We all fall short of the grace of God and do our best, but our best righteousness, the Bible says our best righteousness is like a dirty rag compared to God.

Lord, we thank you for mercy, truth, grace today, Lord God. We thank you, Lord God, that you've held us back from doing worse things than we have done, Lord God. That in your mercy all of us here today, if it wasn't for you, we wouldn't be even be here today to praise you, Lord God. We thank you, Lord. We're asking you, Lord, to work in our hearts, God. Work in our hearts and our minds, Lord God. We need you. Help us understand it's your grace working in us. Amen. It's us responding to what you're trying to do in us that's good. It's your spirit because you love us, drawing us, wooing us, trying to change us, Lord God. Help us here today, Lord God, to realize we have done much more evil than we thought was possible, but your hand working in our lives, your merciful hand speaking to us. Come on, you can have the Holy Ghost today if you don't have the Holy Ghost, if you'll just repent. Amen.

And tell God whatever your Bible says, whatever your word says in the Bible, Lord God, if it's wrong, I want to do the right thing. I repent. Hallelujah. Lord, whatever I need to do, I'm willing to do it. If you'll just start to worship God in truth, God will start to come upon you. Amen. If you'll just start to let God be God, God's going to show up in your life. Hallelujah. Oh, help us today, Lord God. You're a merciful God. You're a good God. Hallelujah. We need you, Lord God. Help us, deliver us from our own vanity of ourselves, Lord God, where we think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think, Lord God. Help us to realize that's you working in us to do your will and good pleasure, Lord God. Oh, continue to draw us, Lord God. We need you. We need you to work in us, Lord. Come on, just praise Him, He's here. Come on, He wants you to be lifted up. He wants you to receive a full cup. He wants you to receive enough, amen, that you leave here with joy unspeakable. Hallelujah. Amen, that you got that joy. Come on. Hallelujah. He's not against you. He's for you. Hallelujah. Come on, that's it. The Holy Ghost is starting to move here. Hallelujah. Come on, let it come.

Tina Ouellette: Thank you for joining us today as we have studied the word on Apostolic Truth Radio. My name is Tina Ouellette, wife of Pastor Craig Ouellette of South Shore Pentecostal Church located at 58 West Street in Whitman, Massachusetts. If you love praise and worship, you will love services at South Shore Pentecostal Church and we invite you to come and worship with us. Sunday School for all ages begins at 10 AM and our Sunday evening service begins at 6 PM. Adult Bible study and children's church is held on Wednesdays at 7 PM. You can learn more about our church on our website at southshorepentecostal.com or you may call us at 781-447-1668. If you have been blessed by this radio ministry, you can help support Apostolic Truth Radio via online giving through Venmo at SSPCWhitman. Write us today and request a free copy of today's message and join us for another broadcast of Apostolic Truth.