This sermon addresses the concept of hyper grace, emphasizing that while grace is essential, it does not absolve us of responsibility. Hyper grace teachings can distort the grace of God by neglecting repentance, confession of sin, and the importance of obedience to God's commands. It highlights the need to understand that grace involves more than just forgiveness, leading us to live in a way that pleases God and acknowledges the role of obedience in our faith.

The reason I want to bring this up is when I talk about some of these things about everything we just talked about for the last 20 minutes, somebody might say, well, what about grace, Shane? What about the grace of God? And that's true. But grace doesn't relieve us of responsibility. We now live under a higher standard when grace governs our decisions. And the grace of God does not mean we can just go live however we want. Because of the grace of God, I want to live as Christ calls me to live. They work together. And there's something out there now you'll see if you go on a lot of different websites, I think the Christian Post had it this week, and Christianity Today, Charisma Magazine, or a website. It's something called hyper grace. Hyper grace. And this term, and I think some Christians are following into this, I want to talk about from it, the term hyper grace has been used to describe a new wave of teaching that emphasizes the grace of God to the exclusion of other vital teachings such as repentance and confession of sin. Hyper grace teachers maintain that all sin, past, present, and future has already been forgiven, which is true, right? But so there's no need for a believer to ever confess it or repent. The conclusion of hyper grace teaching is that we are not bound by Jesus's teaching, even as we are not under the law that believers are not responsible for their sin, and that anyone who disagrees with them is legalistic. In short, hyper grace teachers pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality. So if it's all about grace, all about grace, don't talk about all those other things, Shane. It's all about grace. It's hyper grace. And one of the articles was written by Dr. Brown, and he titled his article, Some Honest Questions for Joseph Prince. And I'm not here putting down people or not, I'm just saying what the article said. I think Joseph Prince would fall under teaching something like this, doesn't mean they're false teachers necessarily, but they embrace something that they're not going to talk about the difficult things. It's all about God's grace. So he asks these questions to Joseph Prince, and he hasn't got an answer back yet, but it fits him perfectly. He asks this question, are there spiritual benefits that come through obeying God's commands, and then spiritual losses that come from ignoring them? Yes. Yes, but they say no. We're all on equal playing field. The New Testament writers often exhort us to live in ways that please the Lord. Does that mean that it's possible for us to displease the Lord? Yes. They say no. Because it's hyper grace. It's all about grace and forgiveness. We don't have to worry about all this other stuff. We agree that God relates to us as beloved children, but is he always pleased with us? And since Paul urges us not to grieve the Spirit, does that mean that we can't in fact, grieve the Spirit? Yes, we can. They say no, we can't. We agree that the Holy Spirit never condemns us for our sins as believers. But does he ever make us uncomfortable when we sin? Oh, yes, he does. Personal witness on that one. To me, this is a very strong loving act of the Father not wanting us to get comfortable doing things that could destroy our lives. Isn't that something to be embraced? And doesn't that drive us to the cross rather than away from it? But the reason not to, you know, excuse the hyper grace camp, but the reason they do it is they want to avoid the extreme, where people constantly feel guilty and beat up and condemned. There are churches that do that. There are people you just guilt, you never live, you just guilty, guilty. And they forget about grace and forgiveness. But as with many other issues, they often go the polar opposite. And in an attempt to correct that they should have just stopped here, instead of going all the way here. And then now we don't need to talk about obedience to God. We don't need to talk about repentance, we don't need to talk because it's already been done. It's all about grace now. Well, there's a lot of scriptures and you'll have to throw out. And I look, I thought of this, look at it this way. There's a man who has two sons. One son gets up in the morning, takes the trash out on his way to work, even does the dishes. Can you believe that? You know, he's got a good job, doesn't make a lot of money, but he works hard. The other son gets up around 11 o'clock, doing Lord knows what since three in the morning, makes a mess out of the whole kitchen, his mom's upset, doesn't do anything, just a deadbeat, lazy son. Okay, both of the sons are the father. The father says, I love you both, son. But what's the difference? I'm not pleased with how you're conducting yourself. This one says, Dad, can I have the keys to the car? Sure, here you go. This one says, no, you're going to go buy a six pack. You're going to destroy it. You see, there's consequences. So the hyper grace would say, nope, it's all the same. But there's a distinction there. The Word of God says, listen, we've got to do some things, not quench the spirit, not grieve the spirit, not continue in sin. So on the area, just be very careful, because you don't want to get caught up on it's all about grace, without understanding what grace really involves. To me, grace is unmerited favor. Because of the grace of God, we are saved. He sent his only son to die on a cross. That is that is sheer mercy and grace. And because of that relationship, now I want to live to please my father. And how do we please the father? By obeying his word. But if you say don't obey his word, that's legalistic, then where are you going with this? I think the real reason is it upsets people. Did you know that? Difficult truths upset people. The things that they really need to hear are the things they don't want to hear. That's why we have to share the whole counsel of God's word.