Latest / Beyond the Sermon / The Means of Grace: Sermon

Transcript

The Means of Grace: Sermon · Beyond the Sermon

0:02
Thanks for joining us, on beyond the sermon, the podcast.
0:05
First Methodist Church in Collingswood New Jersey.
0:07
Our goal is not only to share our sermons, but to go beyond
0:10
the sermon in conversation about what we're learning and what God
0:14
is doing in our lives, and in our community, this sermon comes
0:17
from our first 2023 sermon series.
0:20
Speaking with a Wesleyan voice, rediscovering our Methodist
0:23
tradition for today. You can find out more
0:25
information about our church fum, see Collingswood dot-org.
0:30
Org. Thanks for listening.
0:35
All right, this morning as we get started, I want to remind us
0:39
of where we've been in this series so far, so we can know
0:44
where we are today. And so a couple weeks ago, we
0:47
started off talking about the key concept that we are saved by
0:51
grace through faith, right? Like Paul told us in Ephesians
0:55
chapter 2 and in that sermon we talked about how are our
1:01
understanding of Salvation includes.
1:03
Not just our Justification but also our sanctification and our
1:08
glorification. So we have been saved, and we
1:11
are being saved. We call that the, the way of
1:15
Salvation, then last week I spoke about what Wesley, called,
1:19
the Grand deposit mm of methodism, Christian Perfection
1:23
or entire sanctification, the call of God in scripture for us
1:28
to be holy as God is Holy and in that call to Holiness, God.
1:35
God isn't asking us just to try harder to keep the rules.
1:40
He's empowering Us by his grace, by the working of his spirit for
1:46
us to be conformed into the image of Christ.
1:51
So this morning I got to thinking if if the call of
1:56
Christ is for us to become holy, but it's not about trying harder
2:04
because it's all by God's grace. What do we do?
2:09
How do we live? How do we walk with God in the
2:14
light that he Shines on us? Because if our Salvation is
2:19
about our sanctification in addition, You are justification
2:22
focusing on the question. Am I saved?
2:26
Might not be the best question. A better question.
2:30
Might be, am I walking with God and the primary way that we walk
2:37
with God is participating? And what's been known all
2:40
through church history? As the means of Grace, the means
2:46
of Grace are in the words of John Wesley.
2:48
The outward signs words. Or actions ordained of God and
2:53
appointed for this end to be the ordinary channels whereby.
2:58
He might convey to men preventing justifying or
3:02
sanctifying Grace. That is, these are the normal
3:07
things that God uses in our normal lives, to pour His grace
3:13
into US, Transforming Our nature and forming us into the image of
3:20
Christ. The means of Grace are the
3:22
things that God has chosen to be the ways that we can cooperate
3:27
with God's grace, cooperate with God's.
3:30
We're not trying to earn God's grace.
3:33
I want to be very clear here. Are the means of Grace aren't
3:37
about. Trying to earn God's Grace, by
3:40
doing the right things. We can't do that.
3:43
Nothing in our own power, can make us good enough to deserve
3:47
God's grace. But these are the ways that God
3:52
has chosen for us to engage with them, to walk with him, to
3:56
receive his grace. Before we talk some more about
3:59
the means of Grace, what they are.
4:01
How they help us grow in Grace. I'll talk about just Grace again
4:08
for a few minutes. We touched on it in our first
4:11
sermon, when we talk about how we are saved by grace through
4:17
faith. But one sermon, could never
4:21
describe the depths of something as rich as the concept of Grace,
4:27
So we often talk about Grace as the unmerited favor of God.
4:34
If anyone ever heard that definition for Grace, is the
4:36
unmerited favor of God, or maybe you've heard Grace is getting
4:42
something we don't deserve, right?
4:45
You've heard that before. Well Karis the the Greek word
4:48
for Grace is defined by Lao and naida in their greek-english,
4:55
lexicon of the New Testament based on semantic.
4:57
Maine. Fascinating reading, right?
5:01
Don't you all want to be a pastor now?
5:04
The greek-english Lexicon of the New Testament based on semantic
5:07
domain. That means they look at all the
5:09
words in the New Testament and they say here, the groupings of
5:13
meanings that each of those words can relate to.
5:16
So they Define it as kindness as a gift, as thanks and good will.
5:26
So there's certainly a sense in which we can talk about Grace as
5:31
a gift that's freely given To us that we don't deserve.
5:38
But I don't know that. It really helps us understand
5:42
how Grace helps us in our spiritual lives.
5:47
After we receive that new life that God gives us a
5:50
justification. Or, in regeneration, like,
5:53
right, we can make an easy connection.
5:55
Well, salvation justification, that's a gift.
5:58
Its Grace. What about after that?
6:01
Right? God's grace doesn't stop working
6:03
in our lives. I want to suggest another way.
6:08
That we can think about Grace this morning, alongside it being
6:11
a gift that we don't deserve and can turn.
6:15
I want to suggest that we think of Grace as the power of the
6:20
spirit at work, right? So where we see the spirit
6:25
working, there's Grace and where we see grace at work.
6:30
It's because the spirit is there applying the victory that Jesus
6:35
won in his death and Resurrection?
6:37
To our lives as to think this morning about Grace as the power
6:43
of the spirit at work. So in that quote that we heard
6:49
from John Wesley, earlier about the means of Grace, being the
6:51
outward signs word actions. He said that it could be the way
6:57
that God conveys preventing justifying or sanctifying Grace.
7:02
You see, Wesley recognized that at different points, along our
7:06
spiritual journey with God along this way of Salvation that were
7:11
walking, we see God's grace working in hearts and lives at
7:17
Different ways at different times.
7:19
And while this is all Grace and we can use that umbrella term to
7:24
cover it all. We can also speak about the
7:27
different aspects of that Grace, and a couple different ways,
7:31
which correspond to what God is working to accomplish in our
7:36
hearts at a certain point. So in this scheme, we can talk
7:40
about Grace in five ways. I'm just going to go through
7:44
these quickly just so we can kind of have them in our Our
7:47
minds, as we, as we go on in the sermon this morning.
7:51
So, the first way that God's grace Works in our lives is
7:54
called preventing or provenience Grace.
7:59
Maybe you've never heard that term.
8:00
That's okay. But preventing Grace, is this
8:03
grace that goes before us the grace, that allows us to respond
8:09
to God, even in the deadness of our sin, right?
8:13
We talked to a few weeks ago, what can dead people do?
8:18
Nothing dead people can't do anything, but God gives us this
8:22
grace. Even before we come to him, that
8:26
enables us to respond to his grace, right?
8:29
It's kind of a both and thing. He gives us Grace so we can
8:33
respond to his grace. This is the grace of God, that's
8:38
pursuing us. Drawing us to God while we're
8:41
still far off. And as Methodist, we believe
8:45
that this grace is given To us. All right, it's not just for a
8:50
specific group of people. It's for everyone even though
8:54
not everyone responds to this grace.
9:00
After preventing Grace, we experienced convicting Grace.
9:05
This is the work of the spirit showing us where we've fallen
9:09
short of what God's called us to and where we've broken the laws
9:13
that we know God has given to us.
9:15
It shows us why we need a savior to save us.
9:19
This is the grace that leads us to Godly sorrow that leads us to
9:25
repentance. Preventing Grace, convicting
9:31
Grace and when we were pain because we've experienced that
9:35
convicting grace, that leads us to justifying Grace when we
9:39
repent, and we turn away from our sin and we turn toward God,
9:44
we're Justified and we're born again, we're forgiven and were
9:48
given New Life. And this is the work that God is
9:52
doing our hearts when we call justifying Grace.
9:56
But afterward Justified, that doesn't mean the work of the
10:00
spirit in our lives. Just stops, right?
10:04
How many of you when you were saved your?
10:05
You're perfect. You're ready to go.
10:07
Everything. God wanted you to be right from
10:09
that minute. Not me, not me.
10:13
I needed God to continue to work in my life and he does by his
10:18
grace. We call that Grace sanctifying
10:20
Grace. Ace this work of the spirit that
10:23
begins at our justification, and through which we are over time.
10:29
We're made. Holy, we're transformed, were
10:32
come formed into the image of Christ.
10:35
It's the process through which God's nature, and his character
10:40
are imparted to us, not in the sense of his divinity, but in
10:46
the sense of his, holy and self, giving love that Marx, who God
10:51
is preventing Grace, convicting Grace justifying Grace,
10:56
sanctifying Grace, and ultimately will experience
10:59
glorifying Grace, right? When we reach the end of our
11:05
journey. When God calls us home, when in
11:08
Christ, we die physically. And we're made fully like God
11:15
intended for us to be the Holiness.
11:16
We've known in part in this life is completed and we are fit for
11:21
heaven. So those five five types of
11:25
Grace, we can they all fall under this umbrella?
11:28
We call Grace. so if this is what God is doing in saving us,
11:40
all these kinds of Grace, we've talked all along the journey
11:42
that we're walking. What can we do to cooperate with
11:49
that Grace that God is working to grow in the grace and
11:52
knowledge of Jesus Christ. As Peter said in his second
11:56
letter to the church, Well, we participate in the means of
12:03
Grace. All right, so what are they in
12:06
this? Sermon on the means of Grace,
12:08
Wesley identified, three essential practices among other
12:13
means of Grace. But three that he said, are the
12:15
foundation for our growth in Grace and Holiness, prayer,
12:22
scripture. And the Lord's Supper, Each of,
12:25
which we see the early church practicing in that A passage
12:29
that Jeremy read for us, from Acts chapter 2, right?
12:35
It says that they devoted themselves the church, those who
12:38
came to Faith because of Peters teaching they devoted themselves
12:42
to the apostles teaching and what were they teaching on?
12:47
Scripture right there, explaining how God had spoken to
12:51
his people. So they devoted themselves to
12:54
the apostles teaching and to Fellowship to the breaking of
12:58
bread, which was a phrase they used for communion.
13:02
Right? Because on the last night in
13:04
which Jesus was betrayed, he took the bread, he broke it, and
13:10
he gave it to his disciples, right?
13:12
So they they broke bread together.
13:15
They celebrated the Lord's Supper devoted themselves to the
13:18
apostles, teaching and fellowship to the breaking of
13:20
bread and to prayer. These aren't some new invention.
13:26
These aren't something that we're coming up with today is
13:29
not something John. Wesley came up with this is what
13:30
the church has always been about.
13:32
These are the foundational practices that we need in our
13:36
lives to continue to grow in Grace.
13:39
I want to take a minute and just look at each of those things and
13:45
help us to undersea understand what God is calling us to in
13:49
this invitation to the means of Grace.
13:52
The first scripture is a key means.
13:57
Of Grace. Because this is God's
14:03
self-revelation of himself to us, right?
14:06
We can only know who God is. We can only know God's character
14:10
and God's nature God's desire for creation and how he has
14:14
worked from the beginning to redeem us.
14:18
We can only know, all of that because God has chosen to share
14:23
it with us. And at every turn, every book of
14:28
this library of Scripture it points us to Jesus.
14:33
It was God's ultimate self Revelation because it was God
14:39
himself who came and showed us what's possible even in a human
14:44
body. For Wesley there was no question
14:48
in his mind about the importance and authority of scripture in
14:52
the preface to one of the additions of his sermons.
14:55
He said I want to know one thing the way to heaven.
15:00
How to land safely on that happy Shore.
15:03
God himself has condescended to teach me the way for this very
15:08
reason he came from Heaven. He's written it down in a book.
15:13
Oh, give me that book at any price.
15:17
Give me the book of God. I have it here here is knowledge
15:23
enough for me. Let me be homo, Lunas libri.
15:31
How's your Latin this morning? Homo looniest libri.
15:37
A man of one book even though Wesley read widely and broadly
15:46
he had even read as he was traveling by horseback from
15:49
place to place as he was traveling around to preach in
15:52
the different towns and Villages of England but no matter how
15:55
many other books he read Wesley wanted to be known as a man of
16:02
one book. the only book that shows us the way to heaven, the
16:08
way to God himself, and we would do well to learn from Wesley in
16:16
this matter. But the way we approach
16:18
scripture matters as well, right?
16:21
When we come to the Bible, we're not coming.
16:23
Merely to receive information, it's not a textbook, but it's
16:28
also not a technical manual, right?
16:31
That gives us operating procedures or troubleshooting
16:34
tips. It's not a collection of pithy
16:37
wisdom from which we can kind of just pick and choose some
16:41
principles to guide Our Lives by.
16:43
Oh, I like that one. And I like this one, these are
16:47
going to guide my life. The Bible is a picture of who
16:52
God is and of what we are to become.
16:58
So, rather than reading, the Bible for information, we need
17:01
to read for formation. Allowing scripture to read us to
17:09
shine light on us even as we read it.
17:14
So that it can shape us and form Us in what it means to live in
17:18
the kingdom of God, even as we live our lives in the midst of
17:24
the kingdom of this world, We need to be a people of one book.
17:33
But we also need to be a people of prayer, because it's in
17:36
prayer that we come before God, we lay bare our souls before
17:42
him. We bring our petitions and our
17:45
request to him, we seek his very presence.
17:51
Maybe you've tried to pray in the past.
17:55
And you feel like your words are just bouncing off the ceiling.
17:59
Anyone ever had that experience? I know I have What are we
18:04
supposed to do then? How do we learn to pray in a
18:08
more effective way? A Methodist leader in the early
18:14
1900's by the name of Samuel Chadwick wrote a book called The
18:20
Path of prayer. And in that book, he says this,
18:26
he says our Methodist fathers were Mighty in prayer, they
18:30
saved England by prayer, they shook the Gates of Hell by
18:35
prayer. They opened the windows of
18:37
Heaven by prayer. How did they learn to pray?
18:42
They learn to Pray by being much in prayer.
18:49
They learned to Pray by being much in prayer.
18:55
Because prayer is not some super spiritual thing where we have to
19:00
get it just right. And we have to learn how to do
19:03
say. Just the right words, it's kind
19:05
of like anything that we do, right?
19:08
Tim, can I talk about you for a minute?
19:11
All right, I didn't ask him about this ahead of time, so
19:13
I'll probably be in trouble later.
19:15
But Tim has started wrestling this year.
19:18
His first year, you never wrestled before his wrestling
19:20
for the high school on the JV team.
19:23
And he came to me one day early on in his right before the match
19:27
has started, he said, dad my goal for this season is to have
19:32
a match where I don't get pinned.
19:34
That's a good goal, it's a good goal and he worked and he's
19:39
practice, and he's put in the hard work and, and five matches
19:43
in. He not only didn't get pinned,
19:46
but he won a match way exceeding.
19:48
What he thought he'd be capable of this first season But it's
19:54
because of the hours and hours. He spent running and running the
19:59
stairs and doing weightlifting and practicing on the mat.
20:04
He didn't learn how to win a wrestling match by just going
20:07
out there and wrestling a match. One day, he put in the time, you
20:11
put in the practice over and over again.
20:15
He learned to wrestle by wrestling much.
20:21
And we're called To Learn To Pray by being much and prayer.
20:25
Like any practice, any habit, any activity we want to do, we
20:30
actually have to do it. If we want to learn how to do,
20:34
if we want to get better, how we do.
20:36
And if we don't have the faith to believe that our prayers are
20:39
being heard, we need to ask God, to give us that gift of faith.
20:47
Faith that he hears faith that he can do something in those
20:52
situations because it's in prayer that we connect our heart
20:56
with the heart of God. So, we need to be a people of
21:01
one book. We need to be a people of
21:05
prayer. The third thing, Wesley, listen.
21:08
A sermon is participating in the Lord's Supper.
21:12
See there's a Grace that's poured into our hearts in a
21:15
particular way when we receive the bread and the wine as Christ
21:21
himself, commanded us, receiving the sacrifice of his very life
21:27
and body into our own. Embodies.
21:31
I'm not going to take a whole lot of time to talk about
21:34
communion in this service though because in a couple weeks I'm
21:37
going to preach a whole sermon on it.
21:39
So now you know where we're headed in a couple weeks.
21:43
But these are the three major practices.
21:46
That Wesley says our chief among the means of Grace.
21:51
The means of Grace that God uses us, the normal ways of pouring
21:54
Grace into our lives. But it's important that we
21:59
remember that the word Birds and the bread, the cup.
22:04
They're not the source of any of the power that can change us.
22:10
Again, in Wesley's word, we know that there is no inherent power.
22:15
In the words that are spoken in prayer, in the letters of
22:18
scripture, read the sound thereof heard or the bread and
22:22
the wine received in the Lord's Supper.
22:24
But that is God alone. Who is The Giver of every good
22:29
gift, the author of all Grace that the whole power is in him
22:34
whereby through any of these, there's any blessing conveyed to
22:39
our soil. The Source of Grace is God and
22:43
God Alone. He is the end to which each of
22:49
these means of Grace points us. Our goal in participating in the
22:53
means of Grace, isn't to get better at the means of Grace.
22:58
The goal is God himself. This isn't Magic.
23:05
We're not trying to manipulate God through spells and rituals
23:08
saying, just the right things. So we can convince God, to give
23:12
us more of what we could never earn in the first place.
23:17
It's Grace. I want to mention one other
23:23
means of Grace that we saw in Acts chapter 2.
23:27
It mentioned that they devoted themselves to Fellowship.
23:35
One of the other means of Grace that only gets a passing mention
23:39
and Wesley's. Sermon on the means of Grace,
23:41
but that became one of the most distinguishing marks of the
23:45
Methodist movement. Is a countable discipleship or
23:50
what we would think of as small group discipleship you see
23:55
everywhere that Wesley and the Methodist went and they preached
23:59
everywhere. People were awakened to the
24:01
grace of God and the good news of the Kingdom.
24:05
Those people were organized into groups to watch over one another
24:10
in love to encourage one another, to hold each other
24:15
accountable. These groups were set up and
24:18
kind of three nesting tears. Right.
24:20
There's the first and largest that was called a society and
24:23
this was a group that would eventually become the
24:25
congregation in the area. After the Methodist separated
24:29
from the Anglican denomination because people are still going
24:32
to the Anglican Church, this group would meet some other time
24:35
often during the week. We had societies, but in
24:39
addition to these societies, there were class meetings, and
24:42
these class meetings were the basic unit of the Methodist
24:46
movement to be a Methodist meant that you were part of a class.
24:52
And if you were part of a class that meant you were a Methodist,
24:56
these classes were groups of 10 to 12 people men and women
25:00
together, who would meet together on a weekly basis for
25:04
the purpose of answering one primary question.
25:08
How is it with your soul? Or if we're going to put it in a
25:12
little more, modern of phrasing. How is your life with God?
25:17
How are you walking with God? The primary purpose wasn't study
25:23
together and it wasn't praying together.
25:25
It was assumed that you were reading scripture on your own.
25:28
You were praying all through the week.
25:31
Instead of us to give each person the opportunity to report
25:35
on what God was doing in their life, what they were learning
25:39
where they were growing and where they needed prayer for the
25:43
week ahead. And there's one other smaller
25:47
group of people smaller than a class.
25:49
It was called a Band 3 or 4 people men with men, women would
25:56
women. And rather than asking a general
25:58
question of, how is your life with God?
26:01
The purpose of the band was that they can meet weekly with the
26:04
express purpose of confessing their sins.
26:08
To one another sharing where they'd been tempted what
26:12
successes and failures they had Reinstate that week and
26:17
receiving forgiveness in the name of Jesus so that they could
26:22
grow together in holiness. These different levels of groups
26:29
were key to the growth of the Methodist movement because we
26:32
were never meant to be solo. Christians Christianity is
26:37
essentially a social religion and to turn it into a solitary
26:41
one. An individual one, an isolated
26:44
one is to destroy what it was meant to be.
26:49
And so, this Focus, this discipleship focus on formation
26:53
rather than information, Led to the transformation of the people
26:58
and ultimately the church and the nation.
27:03
These groups are so important that George Whitefield who
27:08
started out in the the great Evangelical Awakening in England
27:12
with the Wesley's and was considered a better preacher
27:16
than either. One of them said that the
27:19
organization of these small groups was the biggest
27:22
difference between Wesley's and his ministry.
27:25
He said, my brother Wesley is acted wisely, the souls that
27:29
were awakened under his ministry, he joined into
27:32
societies. And he thus preserved the fruit
27:35
of his labor. This, I neglected and my people
27:38
are like a rope of sand. Friends, I don't want to see us
27:45
become ropes of sand. So, my invitation for you, this
27:51
morning is to join a class meeting during the season of
27:56
Lent. This year.
27:58
We often think of Lent as giving up something a season of giving
28:02
up something denying ourselves. But this year, I want you to
28:06
think about adding For your Lenten season.
28:10
Adding a class meeting or maybe you're already involved in a
28:14
small group. I want you to consider
28:16
suspending, your normal structure for those six or seven
28:20
weeks to try organizing your time together around.
28:24
The question, how is your life with God meeting together to
28:30
watch over one? Another in love is a powerful
28:33
thing. It will force you to pay
28:35
attention to what God is doing in your life.
28:38
Where he's working. What he's saying, it'll whole
28:41
new way. And it'll open your eyes to the
28:45
work of the spirit in your life. It is truly, a means of Grace.
28:53
So starting next week on those connect cards that I asked you
28:56
to fill out each week, you'll be able to mark on there if you
29:00
want to be part of a small group, this Lent a class meeting
29:04
and I hope you will. I hope you will because after
29:09
our car accident in Uganda, I carried around a weighty burden
29:17
of guilt and shame of wondering, what if, what could I have done
29:22
different? What could have turned out
29:24
differently? And I thought that that burden
29:28
was just going to be a burden that I carried for the rest of
29:32
my life. Is the cross that I had to bear
29:37
that I just had to kind of buck up and Soldier on for Jesus.
29:44
Part of what I learned in the process of healing through that
29:49
time, is that living in the new life that Christ offers to us
29:54
the new life? That's made possible by his life
29:57
death and Resurrection. Is that learning to die to
30:02
ourselves so that we can be raised to the to that new life
30:06
in Christ? Has to mean letting go Because
30:14
just like, with the means of Grace, I think the Temptation is
30:17
to make dying to ourselves denying ourselves about
30:22
something that we do something. We need to try harder to
30:27
accomplish something, we need to Buck Up and Soldier through. but
30:33
if you think about it, Dying's. Never about trying harder.
30:40
It's about letting go instead of clawing and striving to deny
30:45
ourselves instead of pressing on under the weight of the burden,
30:50
we carry instead of trying to bury alive, the guilt and shame
30:55
that we feel when we miss the mark, instead of doing all that
31:00
the call is to deny is to die to ourselves.
31:06
It's a call to let all of that go and Trust ourselves to the
31:13
grace that God offers us in Christ by the power of His Holy
31:19
Spirit. It's a call to place ourselves
31:23
in the midst of these means of Grace.
31:28
Scripture prayer can Union accountability.
31:35
To place ourselves in the midst of these means of Grace and
31:39
trust that God will meet us there.
31:45
Two brothers and sisters. As we close.
31:51
How are you cooperating with God's grace in your life this
31:55
morning? What practices do you need to
31:59
engage or maybe re-engage to grow in Grace and holiness?
32:08
Maybe there's some area somewhere in your life.
32:11
You've been trying to earn God's grace.
32:15
You need to give up. And let go of.
32:21
You can place yourself in the means of Grace and trust that
32:28
God will meet you there. And in meeting you there he will
32:32
pour His grace into your life and shape you into who he's
32:36
always longed for you to be. This is the call this morning.