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You know, we said and we think about the things and the struggles of our lives. You lose a roof. You have a something that you need to go have surgery for. You have some things that are written down in a bulletin that aren't right. You have a light that's acting up. Pestering everybody that's back that far because it's blinking. I knew what they were doing what you were doing my But that man that wrote that song He had lost everything He had lost everything that was dear to him let's put it that way I And as he sailed that ocean, and as the captain informed him that this was the very place that the majority, at least, of his family had perished at sea, he penned those words. Makes the roof not seem like a whole lot, doesn't it? Amen? and something that we need to get taken care of for day surgery or whatever the case might be. And I understand we all have different degrees of things that are troubling. That really brings us to what I want to talk to you about this morning, and that is God's liberating grace. And really what I want to talk to you about is the second great enemy of God's grace. And I have them listed there for you. Really the two enemies of grace are legalism and perfectionism. Legalism basically just says we try to earn our way, earn God's approval through the keeping of rules. You see, The church at Galatia would have been very familiar with that process. Paul writes to them and tells them, you began your life in Christ by the Spirit. They would have understood that. They would have understood he was talking about it. It's through grace, by faith that you've been saved. But they also had been taught and they had come to fall victim to legalism that says, well, you do this and you do that and you maintain this and that gets you to the right level and the place, then you are right with God. And Paul is just screaming up and down and jumping up and down, screaming, saying, no. That's not how you got saved. That's not how you live either. But the other great enemy of grace is perfectionism. Now, you may have a little bit different idea and what perfectionism means. So that's why I wanted to give you where I was coming from. And that is this idea of us trying to prove our worth by being perfect. I want to tell you all, I learned a long time ago, as human beings, we've never been able to bat 1,000, have we? As a matter of fact, we're doing good if we can bat 500, and we usually don't do that. Perfectionism is this idea that says when everything gets just right, When everything gets just right, we'll have it in our bulletin. It'll be just right. And we'll have bulletin. It doesn't work that way, does it? I know. I'm not picking on that. I'm just saying it. It just amazed me how many mistakes this week. But I know what it was, and I've already said it. I've been running, and Donna's been running. Both of us have not been at the opposite at the same time to look at it and say, yep, that's right. No, that's not. But it makes for a great illustration for what I'm trying to tell you, and that is that none of us are perfect. And that's what Paul was trying to say as well. He said, you began your life in Christ by the Spirit. Now you're trying to make it complete by your own power, by being perfect. I love what he said. That's why I like this particular New Century version. It says, this is foolish. I can't remember which one it was, but I decided not to print it. But it said, that's stupid, is what it said. It's crazy for us to think that through our own power, we can make everything just right. I want to tell you this morning in just a few moments that we have, I want to share with you how you can relax in God's grace. We're going to use the acrostic relax. But before I do that, I want to tell you, why do we need to relax? Why do we need to let go of perfectionism? And I shared with you three, four things. It's how perfectionism harms our spiritual life, our lives. Number one, it defeats our initiative. Is there anything that you said, boy, I would really like to get this done, but gotta wait till I have enough money, till I have enough time, till I have enough people, till we have enough Perfectionism defeats our initiative, doesn't it? Instead of just stepping out in faith and saying, well, we're going to do this and it'll come together, we tend to want to place all the pieces in order. And I know I'm the same way. I really don't like to start a project until I can see all the pieces. Now the pieces can be scattered. I'm okay with that. But I want to at least be able to see the pieces. Perfectionism causes us to procrastinate. Perfectionism causes us to become paralyzed to where we can't move and we can't do. So we need to get over it. We need to relax. from perfectionist, we need to relax in God's grace. It also, number two, it also damages our relationships. Now, what do you mean by, what do I mean by that? Well, how many of you enjoy hanging around people that are always correcting and pointing out the faults that you have and say, you know, if you would only do this, you know, you would really be a pretty good person. None of us enjoy that, do we? Perfectionism always causes and damages relationships. Third thing it does is it destroys our happiness. This is an interesting verse. I want to read it to you. Ecclesiastes 7.16. Don't be excessively righteous. and do not be overly wise. Why should you ruin yourself? It really doesn't sound like that verse ought to be in the Bible, does it? Amen? Are y'all, y'all hear me? It seems like that ought to be something from Confucius or something. It doesn't sound like it ought to be from the Bible. But when you realize what he's talking about, he is not talking about genuine righteousness. In other words, Christ-likeness. He's not talking about that. He's not even talking about real wisdom here. What he's talking about is perfectionism. He's talking about that when you try to make sure you go over and you make sure everything is perfect before anything happens. And he said, Well, actually, God's Word's translation says, you make yourself miserable. That's true, isn't it? So we need to understand these three things that perfectionism defeats my initiative, it damages my relationships, and it destroys my happiness. So how do we relax in God's Word? Well, we use, I'm gonna use that word relax. Give you five things that how we can relax in God's grace and then we're gonna be done for this morning Psalms 119 96 says nothing is perfect except God's Word The R means we need to realize Nobody is perfect You need to realize that nobody is perfect Now I understand There was one that was perfect. And I'm going to get to that. But I'm talking about those of us in this room this morning. There's none of us that are perfect. Amen. We need to build our life on something that is perfect. And that is God's word. We can't build it on what society tells us because that's not perfect, or what popular opinion is, what the opinion polls say, because that's not perfect. But God's word is perfect. Ecclesiastes 7.20, the Good News Bible says, there is no one on the earth who does what is right all the time and never makes a mistake. This is very important. I want you to understand. When we accept God's grace. When we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior. That grace says it's OK not to be perfect. Now listen to me. Does that mean that we just send all we want? No. That does not mean that God's not interested in us growing. That's not the case. He wants us to grow. He wants us to become more like him. Does that mean that we don't have to repent? No. When we do wrong, that's the first thing that triggers. That's the first thing we do is we come back to God and we say, oh Father, I've sinned. just like the prodigal son. And we turn from that and we come back. This verse is not saying that we just sin all we want. Does this mean that God doesn't want me to change or work on areas in my life? No. It's not an excuse just to do whatever we want to do and act however we want to act. What it is is it's saying that, listen, God says you're okay. because it's my grace that makes you okay. He says, listen, it's never been based on your performance. It's always been based on mine. God's saying that. It's always been about what he has done. And he says, listen, when you're not perfect, I understand. I sent the perfect one to satisfy that requirement. Aren't you glad? Amen. Aren't you glad we don't have to be perfect? Can you imagine? They pay guys, I don't know, somebody's going to have to help me. I had this in mind and then I got busy and I didn't, I was going to look it up. Some of the people I want to go with, probably Jay is going to be able to help me the most with this, but maybe Ray. Who is the highest paid baseball player that we have right now? Anybody know? Any guess? They're probably $20, $30 million a year. Who would you say that is? Pick somebody that's really, really good that makes a lot of money playing baseball. OK, I wonder what his batting average is. I guarantee I bet you it's somewhere in the two to 300 range. It means 700. Percent if you want to say it that way He's not gonna hit the ball But yeah, he gets paid so much y'all see my point We quit being perfect a long time matter of fact when you took your first breath From being born is about the time somewhere along in there is about the time you quit being perfect But God said it's okay not It's okay to do whatever, it's okay to sin, it's okay. No, but he said, listen, it's okay because I sent the perfect one to fulfill that requirement. And that's God's grace, amen? We need to relax and realize that nobody's perfect. Number two, we need to, that brings us really to the E, and we need to enjoy God's unconditional love. 1 John 3.1, see how very much your heavenly father loves us or he allows us to be called his children. Think of it, and we really are children. When you become a believer, become a follower of Christ, You're no longer a servant of God. Now, I understand we serve him, yes, but now we have a new title, don't we? We are children of God rather than just servants of God. Now, what's the difference? Well, I got thinking about this. There's a great deal of difference between a servant and a child. Let me give you some of them. First of all, a servant is accepted and appreciated on the basis of what he does. A child is accepted and appreciated on the basis of who he is. A servant starts the day anxious and worried about that his work will please the master. A child rests in the secure love that he's a family member. A servant is accepted because of his workmanship. A child is accepted because of his relationship. A servant is accepted because of his productivity and his performance. A child is accepted because of his position in the family. A servant has a peace of mind only if he's proven his worth by his work. But the next morning, the anxiety begins again. A child can be secure all day long, knowing that tomorrow won't change his status. If he was a child yesterday, he's gonna be a child tomorrow, right? When a servant fails, his whole position is at stake. In fact, you know, he might lose his job. But when a child fails, he is grieved because he's hurt his parents. And he got grieved because he'll be corrected and disciplined, but he's not afraid of not being a part of the family anymore or being thrown out of the family, right? You see, God wants us to enjoy his unconditional love. Now, I thought about this and I thought, what is the best way to illustrate this? What is the best way to drive this point home? And it dawned on me, most everybody that's in this building this morning, if not all of us, have been parents. Some of our kids are growing up, some of the kids are already grown. But we've all experienced, I think, that idea of parenthood. So let me ask a question. If any of us, are any of your kids perfect? Would anybody be willing to raise their hands and say, my child, children, now some of them are here and they're looking like, go ahead, raise your hand. Sorry. There's not a parent here that's going to raise their hand and say, my child was perfect, right? But did you still, do you still love them? Did you love them and do you still love them no matter if they were perfect or not perfect? Yes. We love them in spite of their imperfections. When your child's two or three years old and they bring you a picture that they have drawn and you have to wait until they tell you what it is, to figure out what it is. And they tell you it's a cow. And you say, oh, that's beautiful. Never quite seen a cow look like that. What we meant was for their stage that they were at in life and in artistic ability, it was pretty good. We didn't mean, hey, it's a Picasso, right? But we still recognize that there was a certain amount of level that they have to get to. Same thing when they are learning how to walk. I mean, really, did anybody, when your kids were two, or, you know, between one and two, whatever, between whatever months it was, they started walking, trying to learn how to walk, when they fell down, did you go and pick them up and say, I can't believe there are 30 million people in the world that walk better than you do? You didn't tell them that, did you? You didn't look at them and say, why can't you walk? No, we understand. There is a level of maturity that has to happen before they can walk, amen? We just pick them up and stand them up and kiss them and say, come on, try again, because I love you. You see we love our children at every stage of their growth, right? We're not waiting for them to get mature we're not waiting for them to Become valedictorian and walk across the stage and all of a sudden we love them. We love them in the process Well, guess what so does God You see I talked to far too many people that have the idea they think God is waiting for them to grow up before he'll love them. And the result of that is legalism and perfectionism and criticism and all those other things. You know, God doesn't wait until you're mature and then says, okay, I love you now. He loved you at the very beginning of your birth before you were even born, actually. And he's never quit loving you. He's never quit loving me. We don't have to obtain perfection for God to love us. Amen. Aren't you glad? Romans 8 31 for God is for us who can be against us That's a pretty cool verse I need to move on the L of relax we need to let God handle things You want to you want to relax in God's grace you need to let God handle some things and You see, one of the biggest problems we have, the root of perfectionism is really the desire to control things, to control the way things happen, to control the way things move and operate. Some of the biggest problems we have is we try to control our spouse, we try to control our kids, our careers, and the people around us. Have you figured it out? You can't control all those things? I need to move on, but I wrote down here, if you're waiting for everything to become perfect, you're not going to do anything, because there's no perfect vacation, no perfect marriage, no perfect kids, no perfect body, no perfect church, no perfect job. But I did put a big star. Grandkids get pretty close to it, though. Amen. They get close to being perfect. They're not, but they get close in our eyes at least. We need to just relax and let God handle some things, don't we? The A of relax, we need to act in faith and not fear. We need to just step out in faith. Sometimes, you know, Ephesians tells us, Ephesians 2, 8, 4, it is by grace that you've been saved, through faith. The same way that we got saved is the way God intends for us to live, by faith. You step out. And then the X of relax. Probably the best thing I had to tell you this morning, that is you need to exchange your perfectionism for God's peace. Exchange perfectionism for God's peace. Matthew 11, 28, 29, the message Bible said you were tired, worn out, burnout on religion. Y'all know anybody like that? Worn out, you're tired, worn out, and burnout on religion. That sounds like our entire world, amen? Come to me and get away with me and you'll recover your life and I will show you how to take a real rest. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. That's really the whole reason I wanted that message, that verse for you. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. That is such a cool phrase. God is perfect. He has provided a perfect substitute or perfect payment for our sins. When you read the Bible, I think sometimes we look at that and we say, oh my goodness, how in the world could I ever live up to that? And the truth of the matter is, you and I can't live up to that. But with God's grace, we can. With his power, we can. See, living our life, our Christian life, is based on God's grace, not on guilt. Hebrews 12, 15, I'm gonna end with this. Be careful that no one fails to receive God's grace. Can you imagine? Of all of the failures that's possible in our life, of all the mistakes that we make in our lives. I've already pointed out many of them this morning in our bulletin. And even when I printed out our light system and our world and everything, all the things, you know, there's only one failure that is life-threatening, I guess, if you want to say it that way spiritually. And that is the failure to accept God's grace. I get asked an awful lot, Brother Mark, what's the unpardonable sin? And that's usually a code word for we wanna have a really deep theological discussion about things. But if you really want the honest answer, what is the unpardonable sin? The unpardonable sin is to not accept God's grace. Because if you don't accept his grace, then you don't get all the rest of the package, do you? Don't leave here this morning failing to receive God's grace. And don't leave here this morning without failing to recognize how you can relax in God's grace too. Amen? Let's go to the Lord in prayer as Brian comes. Heavenly Father,
God's Liberating Grace
Series God's Grace
Sermon ID | 615161024515 |
Duration | 27:36 |
Date | |
Category | Sunday - AM |
Bible Text | Galatians 3:3 |
Language | English |
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