Grace

I'm sure everybody here would agree that the emphasis among us over the years has been that once people experience salvation, that it's most important to bring them on to maturity. We see this in Scripture, the ministry of Paul, the ministry of our Lord himself. He brings them to salvation, but then he helps people get on to the place where they can take that salvation they've received and work it out in daily living, in great power.

So we have, for instance, the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7, which are a description of the life that now can be lived because we've been saved. Or we can take Romans 12 or 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 14. Really, all of Scripture teaching us how to take the mercy of God and translate it into specific, mighty, wonderful, holy living.

Not everyone who says, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father which is in heaven. Now, while that has been our emphasis, it's so important at the same time that we never forget that the power by which we live such a life still remains God's grace. And we have to keep coming back to the simple fountainhead of it all.

If we don't, pretty soon we'll be trying to live the life of holiness, trying to walk in the footsteps of Jesus by our own flesh and in our own strength, and then we really mess up. And so, as we've been doing over the last number of weeks, today again, to get down to something very, very simple, as the root and as the source of all the life that we're able to translate into daily living, and that root and that source is still and only and always what we call grace. Reading from one verse in Isaiah 61, verse 10, I will greatly rejoice in the Lord.

My soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me in the garments of salvation. He has covered me with a robe of righteousness as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. Now, this one verse in Isaiah 61, verse 10, is one of the clearest descriptions of the life of the kingdom of God that we can find anywhere in the Bible.

He has clothed me in the garments of salvation, meaning that God himself has restored me to a right relationship with himself, something which I could never do. In a thousand years, a million years, I could never atone for my sin. I could never make myself worthy of this holy God.

Couldn't do it. And so, he clothes me in this garment of salvation. Moreover, he covers me with a robe of righteousness, meaning that he restores me also to a right relationship with other people, which is, again, something which I could never do.

In my flesh, I'm far too self-centered to ever enter into a relationship with another person which could ever be described as righteous. So, he does it. Covers me with this robe of righteousness.

He clothes me in the garments of salvation. Covers me with the robe of righteousness. And all I have to do, as it says in this passage, is rejoice in the Lord to whom I've now been restored and show forbearance to the people to whom I've now been restored.

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me in the garments of salvation. He has covered me with the robe of righteousness as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

So, all we have to do, all we have to do is receive that salvation and that righteousness by faith, rejoice in the Lord who gave them to us and show forbearance toward each other and toward all people. And this theme runs all through scripture. We see it again very clearly in Philippians 4.4. Rejoice in the Lord always and again I will say rejoice.

Let all people know your forbearance. And so, when things start getting rough, a whole string of bad things happen to us and we're tempted to think that God has turned his back against us. We go back again to the cross and we see Jesus hanging on that cross and we remember that this is God clothing us with the garments of salvation.

We come and we receive his body and drink his blood, the bread and the wine, and as we take this food, we remember that this is God clothing us with the garments of salvation. And when we're tempted to think thoughts and speak words and perform deeds which we know are evil, instead of becoming bummed out and all depressed and throwing the towel and giving up because we should think such thoughts, we again go to Calvary and we look at the Lord, the Lamb of God, hanging there. And remember that this is God now covering us with the robe of righteousness, his blood, his spirit, a robe of righteousness which enables us then to get on top of these temptations and to conquer this evil and to live a new life.

Now as long as we remain under the garments of salvation and under that robe of righteousness, we can do the will of God. We can do the will of God with joyful praises toward heaven and abundant forbearance toward the earth. We can conquer temptation.

We can break the chains of Satan. We can kick down the doors of death, the gates of death. We can go forth and bring good news to the poor, deliverance to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind.

We can do all these things. But what happens so often is that instead of trusting that garment of salvation which God gave me and that robe of righteousness which the Lord put on me, we begin to rely instead on our own strength. Now what happens, temptations now begin to come.

You know, we hit a string of rough circumstances, see, and instead of turning to that cross and seeing God clothing me in that garment of salvation, I get panicky. And I begin to think, I don't know if I can trust God in this. I mean, it seems like he's forgotten about me.

I'm going to have to take things into my own hands. Sorry, but I'm going to go out and make things happen my way. And as soon as I begin to do this, it's a subtle drift from light into darkness.

And often this is so subtle that we don't even realize what we're doing for a long, long time. You know, and then come the temptations. You know, to hold a cynical attitude or a negative spirit toward people or to become covetous or terribly vain.

And, you know, instead of, again, stopping and looking at this robe of righteousness which God gave me and which is able to hold me, I take things into my own hands. I say, well, this time I'm going to do it my way. And then we begin to drift.

Picture a high, high mountain just going way up, almost touching the stars. At the top of this mountain is the throne of God and is surrounded with glory and peace. Moving up the side of the mountain from the shadows of the valley to the very throne is an escalator.

And the escalator is called grace. Now, all you have to do to get on the escalator is trust. Step on that escalator and you're moving up.

And the people who ride the escalator are only doing two things. All they have to do is rejoice in God and show forbearance toward each other and toward all people. So simple.

And it's wonderful. But as you ride the escalator up toward the throne, sometimes it looks as if it's not quite going in the right direction. It seems to be cockeyed.

I don't know if I'm going to get there if I stay on this thing. And then you look up and you see this gorgeous, grassy path that looks like it's going straight to the throne. And you see fruit trees and raspberry bushes and all kinds of good things.

And you say, well, I'm sure I'll get there far more directly if I go there myself. So you step off the escalator, start walking on this lovely, grassy path, and you look down your nose at the dummies who stay on the escalator and munch on apples and eat raspberries and it's just going great. And it's a long, long time before you realize that this path isn't going up at all.

It's going down. And perhaps weeks and sometimes years later, you wake up in the foggy valley down at the bottom, all confused and all exhausted, until in his mercy God allows you to find the escalator again. So you get on the escalator and up you start moving again.

This time, you know, after a while you begin to say, man, this thing is so slow. I'll be dead before I get to the top. So just as you're thinking those thoughts, you notice this golden stairway.

There it is, straight up to the throne. It's beautiful. Can't you see some other fine-looking people on the stairway? So you say to yourself, the heck with the escalator.

I'm going to take the stairs. And you start going up the golden stairs and it just seems great for a while. Then after a while, the stairs dip to the right and then dip to the left and then they go up and then they go down.

Before you know it, you're down in the fire. How many excursions in our flesh do we have to take before we realize that there's only one way up to the throne? And that's the way of grace, not our own fleshly efforts, God's grace. Moreover, you know, when you're on the escalator, you're already in the presence of the throne because when you're on the escalator, you're clothed in the garments of salvation, you're covered with the robe of righteousness, which is God.

It doesn't matter how long it takes to get to the throne because the throne is with you all the way up. I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall exult in my God, for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation.

He has covered me with a robe of righteousness as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. The way of the kingdom, the life of the kingdom is grace, grace, grace. It's all a gift, it's all mercy, it's all something which God does.

And really, you know, you can read Matthew 5, 6, and 7, Romans 12, any part of Scripture, take any of the commandments of our Lord and it all boils down to two very simple things. Only two things that we need to do. One, trust that garment of salvation rejoicing in the Lord, and two, trust that robe of righteousness which you've been given and start showing forbearance.

Everything boils down to those two simple things. First, to trust that garment of salvation and just rejoice in the Lord, which means that we take our eyes off our feelings and our circumstances and everything else that's going on and fix our eyes on the garments of salvation. Reading from Habakkuk 3, verse 17.

Habakkuk only has three chapters, and you remember Habakkuk is really confused about the fact that God allows such terrible things to happen to his people. And he allows them to be mauled by people who are far less righteous. And he says, I'm going to take my stand on the watchtower and wait to see what God says.

And the Lord says, you know, if the vision seems slow, wait for it. You know, the righteous shall live by his faith. And finally, in the end, Habakkuk, though the fig tree do not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the stall, and there be no herds in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will joy in the God of my salvation.

See, everything's going wrong, there's no food, you know, the animals are all dead, nothing's working out, and so what we do is we take our eyes and we fix them on Calvary. And looking at Jesus on that cross, there's no way we can fathom what this is costing God to restore us to himself. And as today we eat his flesh and drink his blood, there's no way we can fathom what it's costing our Lord to restore him, us, to himself.

But the best way we can show our appreciation is to receive that garment of salvation again by faith and thank him and rejoice in him. I will greatly rejoice in my Lord, my soul shall exult in my God, for he has clothed me in the garments of salvation. Today, right now, he's wrapped us up in his peace, he's flooded us with his life.

God help us to just let go of ourselves and rejoice in him. And there's only one more thing we need to do. We take that robe of righteousness by faith and start showing forbearance toward the people around us.

And again, we go back to Habakkuk. The final verse of the entire book reads like this. God the Lord is my strength.

He makes my feet like hind feet. He makes me tread upon my high places. God the Lord is my strength.

Strength for what? Strength to show mercy. Strength to show forbearance. Strength to allow the healing life of God to flow out from us and touch these other people and bring them encouragement and lift them up.

I can do all that because I've been given this robe of righteousness. And this robe of righteousness is the Holy Spirit. It's God's light.

And by the power of the Spirit, this robe of righteousness, I can tread upon the high places and overcome evil and bring good news to the poor and deliverance to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind. Let's lay aside our self-consciousness, our pride, our fear of man, and get on the escalator again. Let's receive that garment of salvation.

Let's greatly rejoice in Him as we do this and exult in our God who has given us this garment of salvation and this robe of righteousness so that we can go out from here and show mercy and forbearance to every life we touch. Now, if there's anybody among us who's never worn that robe of righteousness or that garment of salvation, you can have it today. You know what? I know as soon as I do this, we divide into two camps here.

But the doorway to Calvary, let somebody pray with His Spirit and clothe you with salvation and righteousness. And for the rest of us, let's just give thanks for what we've received and go back and draw our life from that well of salvation. Now, normally, we've been taking a period of silence right after the message, but today, let's just, let's stand up and worship God and thank Him and praise Him and just go write the prayer.

Let's rise and wait on God, shall we? Anybody who wants to use the altar rail, come on down, and somebody will pray with you. We just want to thank you and praise you, Lord God, for the source of it all, for your goodness to us. Where would we be if you hadn't taken hold of us? What would we possibly be able to do if you hadn't breathed upon us your life? Where would any of us be if the Lord had in common? And we just pray that you'd show us afresh in our hearts and minds today and in the days to follow what this means and how it applies to us where we are right now, Lord God.