©2000 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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8/6/00
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The Grace Extremist
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8/6/00 The Grace Extremist
I had my talk all written for today.
In fact, I was reading it over one more time
to see if I still agreed with what I'd said.
Then it started to rain.
That may not seem relevant to you,
but it was to me
because I'd been waiting three days for a
day without rain
so that I could mow my very long
lawn,
and then, once again it started to rain.
Not hard...
not even what you would call a proper rain,
just a solid grey sky,
with a few drops
and the promise of lots more to come.
So, rather than finishing my reread of what I thought
I was going to say today,
I ran out to our little barn,
grabbed the lawn mower,
and began a frantic mow before the lawn
got too wet.
Mowing doesn't take a great deal of concentration
for me,
and as I chugged back and forth across the lawn
I started thinking about conversations I'd had
with several of you this past week
and I found myself flooded
with a sense of gratitude
for some of the things you'd
shared with me.
(By the way,
I know that some of you who had conversations
with me this past week
are in agony right now,
frantically trying to recall what you said,
and hoping your name is not going to turn up in
my talk this morning.
Fear not!
I am very good at protecting my sources.)
But there were some comments made
in several of those conversations
that gave me tremendous encouragement
at a time when I very much needed it,
because I realized that at least some of you
are understanding the power the grace of
God has
to transform a person's life.
We are involved in a study of the book of Romans.
By the very nature of the book
it is an intense study,
filled a with detailed examination
of some remarkable
and crucial truths our God shares
with us about Christ,
and our relationship with Him
based on our faith in Christ.
I had planed to continue our study
of the 3rd chapter of Romans this morning.
But as I thought about those conversations this past
week
I decided it might be of value
for us to take a one week break
for me to remind us as a congregation
what God is seeking to do in our
lives
and how goes about doing it.
In other words,
I want to take this morning
to back off from the details of our study
just long enough so that we can see
where God is taking us and why.
For me to do this
it may be necessary for me to share more of
myself personally than some of you would like.
But even that, I think,
can be of value.
For, the more you understand
why I do what I do in my teaching
the easier it will be for you to relate to it.
I am by nature,
by temperament
a rather quiet, private non-talker
who would be well content
to live out my life
avoiding nearly all social contact
apart from an occasional trip to the
grocery store.
I have frequently pointed out to the Lord
that taking a person like that
and placing him into the position of Pastor in
a local church
seems to me to be a rather poor match.
He, on the other hand,
has responded by saying,
"My son, My grace is sufficient for you, for
power is perfected in weakness."
I know my response to Him
is then suppose to be,
"Most gladly, therefore, I will ... boast
about my weaknesses, that the power of
Christ may dwell in me."...
and I'm making some progress in that,
but still have a ways to go.
The great complication of my life,
and the thing that keeps me were I am
is the fact that my Lord has chosen to give
me some ability in teaching His Word,
and then filled me with a longing
to use that ability to help feed my fellow
Christians
as effectively as possible.
I did not seek the teaching gift.
I certainly take no credit for it.
I simply know I am accountable to my God
for my use of it.
I understand what Paul was saying when he told the
church at Corinth
(1 Cor. 9:16) For if I preach the gospel, I
have nothing to boast of, for I am under
compulsion; for woe is me if I do not
preach the gospel.
And by the way,
I am in no way unique in this accountability
thing.
Every Christian who has ever lived
has been entrusted by God
with certain stewardships.
If you are married
you have been given the stewardship
of how you relate to your husband or your
wife.
If you have been entrusted with children
the same principle applies.
It extends to whatever possessions He as loaned to
us,
whatever gifts He as equipped us with,
wherever He has allowed us to see
through His eyes...
All of these are stewardships
entrusted to us by our God.
But let me get back on track
with what I want us to see this morning.
Having accepted what I believe to be the calling my
God has given me,
I am in no way casual
or passive in my conscious goals for us as a
body of believers.
Those of you who know me well
know that I have very limited interest
in any kind of structural
or organizational success
for us as church organization.
The truth is
I simply don't care how big our budget is,
or how many people we have on staff,
or how many programs,
or committees,
or sub-groups are nestled under
the banner of Peninsula Bible Fellowship.
If we are meeting the needs
we believe God has given us to meet
that's all I care about.
But when it comes to us as individual Christians
I have very high
and very specific goals.
If I attempted to put those goals into a single
statement
I would say that
the great longing of my life
is that each of us would know
the personal reality of Jesus Christ in our
lives
in a way that transforms every aspect of our
being.
I don't hear and don't care about
most of what other people say about my
approach to teaching.
But I do know that, at least to some people,
I am probably viewed as a sort of GRACE
extremist -
a teacher on the outer fringes
of what they would consider to be a
"balanced" presentation of the "Christian" message.
In the time we have remaining this morning
I would like to share with you
both why I have ended up where I have in
my understanding
of what our God is seeking to tell us
about Himself through Christ,
and also to offer you my response
to those who may view me
as a Grace extremist.
This is certainly not intended to be a defense
because I do not believe any defense is needed,
but I do offer it as an explanation.
And I will begin first of all
by saying that there never has been
and never will be anything "balanced" about the
true message of God's grace.
It is the most extreme,
unbalanced truth ever to be offered to the mind
of man.
That our God would choose
to clothe Himself in human flesh and blood,
then personally take all of our sins upon
Himself,
and offer Himself as the perfect sacrifice
for those sins,
and then require from us
nothing more than our simple faith,
our trust in what He has done for us,
defies human logic.
If I would have written this stuff,
my sinner's prayer
would have contained a clear requirement
of a solemn vow from the sinner
that he WILL now once and forever
cease from all wickedness
and henceforth promise to live a life of moral
purity.
The offer of God's grace
extended to us by our Creator
when we never have
and never will be able to offer Him
anything in return
is radical to the extreme.
Listen to this!
2 Cor. 5:21 He made Him who knew no
sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might
become the righteousness of God in Him.
Does that make sense?
Does that seem balanced?
Does that seem reasonable and logical?
He gets all of our sin
and we get all of His righteousness.
I fully understand
the longing to mingle grace and legalism.
Such mingling makes perfect sense to me,
and it certainly would make
for much more comfortable preaching.
There is nothing more terrifying for me as a Bible
teacher
than to find myself compelled to preach
accurately
the message recorded in the Word of God.
There are times when I would love to be able to
pick a verse here,
and a verse there,
and skillfully intertwine grace and legalism
so that we are more comfortable with
the message given to us by our God.
Let me state it bluntly -
there have been more times than I would dare
tell you
when I have found within me
this longing to stand up before you and
say,
"It is true that Christ died for your sins,
but I want you to know
that if you don't get your act together and
clean up your life
He's kicking you out of the family!"
If I would have been in that crowd
surrounding the woman taken in adultery
and then dragged out in front of Jesus,
and I would have heard Him say to her,
"Neither do I condemn you. Go and sin no more..."
there is something inside me
that would have longed to cry out,
"THAT'S NOT FAIR!!! It says right here, THOU
SHALT NOT COMMIT ADULTERY!! You wrote
the book Yourself,
why don't You read it?
How can You say, "Neither do I condemn you?"
And from a church point of view
this whole thing
gets even more complicated
by something that may be a little unique
to our particular church fellowship.
For as long as we have existed
we have always had a small number of people
within our midst
who appear to have no hunger for God,
no Spirit-driven urgency to grow,
no overwhelming heart of gratitude
for what He has done,
no changes taking place in their lives at all,
but who like coming here
simply because I don't make them feel guilty
about the immorality dripping from their lives.
In the end I have come to the conclusion
that the presence of some such folks
is an unavoidable liability
of preaching the truth.
For, you see,
I also know that there are many of you
who are hearing with the ears of the Spirit of
God.
Those conversations with some of you earlier this
week
that I mentioned a few minutes ago -
in your own way,
in your own words,
do you know what I heard you saying?
I heard you sharing with me
the incredible longing you have discovered
welling up within yourselves
to live lives that honor and glorify your
Lord,
a longing that you had never known
until the hideous bondage of legalism
was removed from your backs
and you were finally able to hear
the voice of God's love speaking to you.
Folks! That's the real thing!!
The second statement I would offer
in explanation of my preaching of the message
of the grace of God
is that I simply cannot deal honestly with
Scripture as it is written
and mingle grace and legalism.
For the past 17 years
we as a church have been going verse by verse
through book after book in the Bible.
Not once have I ever consciously tried
to force a passage to say what I wanted it to say.
My responsibility as a Bible teacher is,
to the best of my ability,
to understand what the passage is saying in
context,
and then to share that understanding
with you.
And the truth is
I have ended up where I have ended up
in this whole GRACE thing
because I cannot handle Scripture with
honesty,
and integrity,
in context,
and end up anywhere else.
I noticed something this past week
that I had not seen before.
Most of you know
that the last book of the Bible to be written,
the final written statement given to us by
God,
the one that God clearly designed
to be at the very end of the Bible
is the book of Revelation.
I want to read the last few verses of the Bible for us
this morning
because, when I saw them this past week,
I was overwhelmed with God's obvious
determination
to make certain that the message He has
given to us
throughout the several thousand
pages that precede this final statement
is never misunderstood.
This is God saying to us,
"Are you still confused? Then let Me pull it all
together
and give it to you one final time
in utter simplicity."
And this is what He says:
Rev. 22:17 ¶ The Spirit and the bride say,
"Come." And let the one who hears say,
"Come." And let the one who is thirsty
come; let the one who wishes - take the
water of life without cost.
That's it!
That is what it's all about.
And then, after including
a powerful warning
to anyone who would dare to tamper with
this message,
and a final reaffirmation
of the soon return of Jesus Christ,
listen to the last 10 words
we will ever receive from our Creator in
written form:
Rev. 22:21 ¶ The grace of the Lord Jesus
be with all. Amen.
I believe God chose those final words
as His way of telling us
that if we have touched this Book
without being overwhelmed with the
message of Grace
then we have not understood it correctly.
And my final explanation
of my fervent commitment
to the undiluted preaching
of the radical message of Grace
is said best by Paul in Galatians 3:21
... if a law had been given which was able
to impart life, then righteousness would
indeed have been based on law.
There never has been
and never will be a list of rules written
that have the power to change a person's
life.
Gal. 2:21 "I do not nullify the grace of
God; for if righteousness comes through
the Law, then Christ died needlessly."
And so, with all the risks that come with it,
and all the opportunities for misunderstanding,
and all the wilful abuse and distortion of the
truth that accompanies it,
in the end there is no place else for us to go.
The only thing that can offer us hope
is the bold proclamation
of the pure message of the grace of God,
believing it alone has the power
to restore us to our God,
and break the power of sin in our
lives,
and recreate us into people of great dignity and
moral strength.
And then to wrap this whole thing up
just so that there is no misunderstanding,
I want to conclude
by taking the message of legalism
and the message of grace
and setting them side-by-side.
First of all, the Law.
1. God reveals His moral law.
2. God promises to bless us if we keep it.
3. God vows to curse us if we break it.
4. Our standing with God
and our security with Him at any given time
is directly based upon our performance
as measured by that moral law.
And the crucial thing I want us to see
abut this whole law-based union with God
is that the entire thing is based upon our
attempting to bring about changes in our lives
in response to external threats and
promises.
You know my favorite statement in Scripture
concerning this:
Col. 2:20 ¶ If you have died with Christ to
the elementary principles of the world,
why, as if you were living in the world, do
you submit yourself to decrees, such as,
Col. 2:21 "Do not handle, do not taste, do
not touch!"
Col. 2:22 (which all refer to things destined
to perish with use) in accordance with the
commandments and teachings of men?
Col. 2:23 These are matters which have, to
be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self
made religion and self-abasement and
severe treatment of the body, but are of no
value against fleshly indulgence.
It looks great from the outside.
But it cannot change the human heart.
And the message of Grace?
1. God's Spirit brings us to the point
where we recognize
there is nothing we can do in ourselves
to create a life pleasing to our God.
Rom. 3:20 because by the works of the Law
no flesh will be justified in His sight; for
through the Law comes the knowledge of
sin.
That is where we have just been
in our study of the book of Romans.
2. Our God then offers us the Person of Jesus Christ
and through Him three things
that revolutionize our lives.
a. He gives us complete, total, eternal forgiveness
for all our sins.
b. He creates within us a new heart,
a new inner spirit that loves our God
and longs to please and follow Him.
c. He frees us from a law-based relationship with
Him
so that now, rather than living in continued
fear of the wrath of God,
for the first time we begin hearing
the His voice of love,
and find our spirits responding to that love.
Rom. 7:6 But now we have been released
from the Law, having died to that by
which we were bound, so that we serve in
newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of
the letter.
So, that's a fast-paced overview of where we are,
and where we'll be going in this study of the book
of Romans.