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I Thessalonians chapter 5 and verse 28. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen. Let's pray. Our Father, we do ask your blessings upon us as we come together this first Sunday, the first day of this new year. We pray that you would bless us to just revel in your grace. We thank you, Father, for it. We bless you. We ask, Lord, that you would encourage us, strengthen us. Most of all, we pray that you would bless us to glorify you. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. We've been preaching through 1 Thessalonians for quite a number of months. We finally reached the end. Brother Luke is not going to let me forget that I have skipped one verse, and we will go back, Lord willing, and touch on that at another time. But we want to look at this last verse of 1 Thessalonians chapter 5. This is a prayer that Paul has for the Thessalonians, for us, that grace might be with us. We celebrate the beginning of the year today. That, of course, implies that there's been an ending of another year. We need grace from beginning to end. And Paul is just overabounding in his desire that grace might belong and might be experienced by the church of God, by the saints of the living God. I believe, I did not do an extensive study of this, but I believe that every epistle that Paul wrote began with a prayer that grace would be given to the recipients And he ended every epistle the same way. OK, now I warned you before we started that I was going to call upon three of you and ask you just for a to list or name one of the epistles of Paul. And I hope I don't embarrass myself too much here, but I want you to just name one. And let's check that statement out that Paul, from beginning to end, is consumed with the desire that the recipients of his epistles experience the grace of God. so brother ryan you're my most risky one so i'm going to call on you first what epistle of paul were you thinking about all right let's look at the book of romans turn with me if you would to romans chapter one and verse six and we read these words we read that that Paul desires for them to have grace. Now, Brother Ryan, you were the risky one, so let me... Verse 7. Yes. Thank you. To all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called to be saints, grace to you and peace from God, our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ. OK? Turn with me, and I hope I've got this reference right, to Romans chapter 16. In verse 24, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen. With a little help from my friends, I survived that one. All right. Brother Luke, what did you think of? Colossians. All right. Let's turn to the book of Colossians and see if Paul was consistent with his desire for them to experience grace. And what do you know? We find that Paul and Colossians chapter one, the first chapter, Praise in verse 2, that grace would be unto them and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And then if you would turn with me to chapter 4, the last chapter of Colossians in verse 18, the salutation of the hand of me, Paul. Remember my bonds. Grace be with you. All right, Sister Amanda, what did you think of? Ephesians. Well now you know Ephesians has got grace all in it. So you didn't challenge me very hard there. So let's turn to Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 2. Paul says, Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. In chapter 6 verse 24, the ending, Grace be with all them that love our Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity. Amen. Grace is the literal ending of the book of God. Turn with me to Revelation chapter 22 and verse 21. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. God takes tremendous pain in the New Testament to make sure that we know that our salvation is totally by grace and not of our own works. In the book of Romans chapter 4 and verse 16, Paul says that it is a faith that it might be by grace. To the end, the promise might be sure to all the seed, not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all." There are two dispensations in view here. The dispensation of the law and the dispensation of grace. And the reason that it's by faith is so that it might be by grace. God wants us to know that our salvation from beginning to end is of grace. Now, for our purposes this morning, we can think of grace in very simple terms. We're not going to try to get technical and enter into some of the nuances of the Greek language or things like that. Grace is simply God's unmerited favor to us. Now we ought to praise the Lord just by hearing that. God has been favorable to us in the Lord Jesus Christ, and we do not merit the least of those favors. Grace is at the heart of our relationship with God. It's at the heart of our relationship with one another as well. But I want us to think this morning about this wish for grace, this prayer for grace, that Paul puts at the end of every one of his epistles and at the beginning too. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen. First of all, I want us to look at the need that we have for grace. Paul is praying for us to have grace. We are sinners before God and we need this grace. We have all sinned and come short of the glory of God, Paul tells us in this book of Romans. But I want us to see that something else comes to us from grace instead of a condemnation that our sins deserve. And that's something else. It's justification. Look at chapter three and verse 24. Paul says that we are justified freely by his grace. through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Justification is a courtroom term. An accused person is brought into the courtroom. The evidence is presented. The judge makes a verdict based upon the evidence. If the evidence indicates the person is guilty, the judge issues a verdict of condemnation. Of damnation is the word that's often used in the scriptures. If the judge finds the person to not be guilty of the crimes of which he's accused, or she, the judge will pronounce the person to be innocent and will justify that person, declare that that person is not guilty in the sight of the law. Now, dearly beloved, I want us to just think about this grace that has come to us. We need grace because we are guilty in the sight of the law. And when we come into God's courtroom and He is standing there as judge, sitting on the bench judging us, and He opens the law books, if He just opened the law book, He would look at the first breath I ever took And he would say, you've already sinned enough to go to hell forever. That's all it would take. In fact, before I ever took a breath, my father Adam, in active disobedience to God, broke the law of God. And every one of us, when Adam sinned, we sinned as well. His sin was ours. I know we weren't there. We had nothing to do with it. We didn't contribute to Adam's decision. But God sees us as being in Adam. And when he sinned, I sinned. And so did you. And if it were possible that any of us might live a lifetime without sinning after, like the Scripture says, Paul uses these long words, if we could live a life without sinning after the similitude of Adam's sin. You know what? We would still go to hell. We would still be guilty in the sight of God. Why? Because we sin when Adam sinned and his sin is imputed to those that are just in Adam. Paul talks about this justification that comes to us by grace. And the way this justification comes is this. There is another Adam. There is a second Adam. There is a last Adam. And his name is the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Lord Jesus Christ also represents a people. And these people that are represented by the Lord Jesus Christ were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world. And they are seen by God. And I'll get ahead of myself here, but that's OK. Because this people that were in the second Adam were there before the foundation of the world. And guess what? They were given grace in our Lord Jesus Christ before the world was ever formed. And that grace placed them, us, if we're true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, placed us in Christ and God saw us as being in Christ. When Christ came, He acted on our behalf just like the first Adam had acted on behalf of all of the human race. When Jesus kept the law, God saw us keeping the law. When Jesus died on the cross, He bore all of our sins. He paid the debts. He paid the ransom. All of the iniquity of all of God's people for all eternity, from the beginning of your life to the end of your life, all of your sins were placed on the Lord Jesus Christ. And when God's wrath poured out upon Jesus, hanging upon the cross, the heavens became dark, the earth shook, the graves opened, and Jesus cried out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? We need to have a great sure answer to that question. God the Father forsook God the Son because He was giving us grace in the Lord Jesus Christ, and He was placing our sins, our stinking, rotten sins, damnable sins, upon Jesus, and He was punishing the Lord Jesus. God is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity. He could not continue to look upon the Lord Jesus Christ while our iniquities were placed upon Him. The transaction is even better than that, though, because not only are our sins taken from us and placed upon the Lord Jesus Christ by grace, But also, as Paul goes on here in Romans chapter 3, to talk about the righteousness of Christ. In verse 26, he says, I'm here to declare at this time his righteousness, that he might be just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. You know what? God would not be just to declare us not guilty and to justify us in his courtroom. Did we not possess a perfect righteousness? And so we not only have to get rid of our sins that we've committed, but we also have to receive a righteousness that is perfect in the sight of God. We have to be clothed upon with the righteousness of Christ that's pure and white and spotless. There cannot be found one spot of sin upon those that God justifies. There has to be a righteousness that is ours, that is total and perfect and complete in every way. It has to be a righteousness that can be examined throughout eternity and never found to be faulty or defective in any way. And so Paul glories that we're justified by the righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ. Do you believe Jesus ever sinned? Did he ever sin and thought word or deed? No, he did not. He kept the law. He made it honorable. They could not find a sin in our Lord Jesus Christ. You know that the sacrificial lamb in the Old Testament had to be kept up for a period of time and examined. It had to be a perfect sacrifice, not blemished in any way. It couldn't have any kind of mark from being scarred by a barbed wire. I guess they didn't have barbed wire in the Old Testament, but any kind of spear or anything Fight with another animal. It could not have any defect. And our Lord Jesus Christ asked the Pharisees, what sin do you convince me of? And they couldn't name one. And so Jesus was without sin. And yet God gives us that righteousness and we receive it by faith. Now, when the Apostle Paul says, I'm praying that you may have the grace of God, that the grace of God might be yours. I want to tell you something. You've got all the grace that God has. You've got all the righteousness that Jesus has. But what Paul is praying for is that by faith we may lay hold on that and that we may appropriate that because, beloved, we sin and we fall and we come short of the glory of God. And Satan stands there and accuses us. And our own conscience accuses us. And we have got to have an answer to the devil and the answer to our own conscience that will stand up before Almighty God for all eternity. And all I can do is plead what my Lord has done. In my hand no price I bring. Simply to thy cross I cling. Jesus Christ has been made unto me my wisdom and righteousness and sanctification. He is my all in all. He is everything to me. Grace has been poured on me in Him. It's been poured into the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, I in the church am made glorious. I'm dressed in the gold of Ophir. My beauty is desired by God. God loves me. Because of Jesus. Because of Jesus, not because of me. God free us from looking at our own selves and see this justification that's ours in our Lord Jesus Christ. Well, some people say, well, you've got to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved. And you know something? That's exactly right. We must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. But do you know something? As many as are ordained to eternal life will believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And you know how that belief comes in the Lord Jesus Christ? Us believing. And one time, my thoughts get so tangled up I get ahead of myself and get tongue tied. One time I remember my wife talking about when she came to see the doctrines of grace and she made a change in where she was going to church. Some people in her family misunderstood what she was trying to say, and they started believing that Betty was saying that you did not have to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's not what we believe. We believe that he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved. We believe that those that are saved are those that call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. But we also believe and assert and want to emphasize that the faith that comes to us is given to us by our Lord Jesus Christ, by our Heavenly Father. It's the gift of God. It's not of works. It's not a decision of your free will. It's not something you do while you're in a state of alienation from God in order to be saved. What it is, is the gift of God's grace. And God gives faith to his elect. So we read in places and we've got many standard texts that we often quote about, like I just did, Ephesians 2.8, faith being a gift of God and so forth. But there are many texts that tell us the same thing. If you want to turn to one of them, turn to Acts 18 and verse 27. And when he was disposed to pass into Achaia, the brethren wrote, exhorting the disciples to receive him, who when he was come helped them much which had believed through grace." Do you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? Praise God. Oftentimes, I believe, we question. Is God dealing with me? Has God forsaken me? If I was God's child, wouldn't I feel a different way? Wouldn't there be more evidence? Wouldn't I be on the mountaintops more often? Why am I down in the valley so much? Well, here is something we can lay hold on. Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the promised Messiah of God? Do you believe that He is the one that the prophet said would come? As we have read this morning, is He the one that grace has been poured into His lips? As we heard read, is He the branch that was to come? Do you believe that Jesus Christ is this Messiah? And I'll say to you this, If you do, in truth, believe those things, it's because God has directly given grace into your heart so that you can believe those things are true. Those things are hidden to the natural man, Paul says. The natural man, the carnal man, cannot see them because they are spiritually discerned. So we have grace that allows us to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ to begin with. But there's more to this life in grace. Paul is not saying, well, I want you to have grace so you can believe all together. He said, I want you to acknowledge that your belief is through grace. But he's asking us and praying for God to give us grace that we can be built up and edified and grow. Turn with me, if you would. To Acts chapter 20, Acts chapter 20, this is Paul's last meeting with the Ephesian elders. He tells them in this chapter that he will not see them anymore. So he's got some words that he wants to say to them that are very important. I want to read just a portion of what he says to them. Acts chapter 20 and verse 31. Therefore watch and remember that by the space of three years I cease not to warn everyone night and day with tears. And now brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of His grace which is able to build you up and to give you an inheritance among all them which are sanctified. The Word of God's grace is able to build us up and bless us to inherit what God has for us. And so Paul is praying and desiring that the Ephesian elders will have that grace and how much we need it today. We need individually to know the grace of God and to be built up in it. There's an inheritance that's ours. There's a glory that we have just barely scratched the surface of it. There's a wonderful life. Jesus says, I came that you might have life and have it more abundantly. But I'm afraid that we have not fully inherited that life. And Paul is saying, I want to commend you to the word of grace. Not turning the grace of God into lasciviousness, but using the knowledge of what grace has done for us as a building platform for us to build our lives upon. Let's look at what grace does in our times of fear and anxiety and failure, and even in times of success. Sometimes success is more dangerous than failure. You know what I do a lot of times when I fail, God, It's painful. It just slays my heart. And I am brought to my knees and sometimes I hesitate in going to God and asking for forgiveness and seeking forgiveness. But sometimes I just cry out, God, how could I have done such a thing? How could I have done this or that? So oftentimes, the sin, the failure drives me to God, to ask for grace. But you know what's even more dangerous sometimes is when I do pretty well. At least I think I'm doing well. I'm not really doing well in the sight of God. But I have some sins that I can stay away from, and I have some good things that I might do, and I feel pretty good about myself. You know what? That's when we really need grace. to humble ourselves in the sight of God and to give Him glory. Well, that's what grace is for. In Hebrews chapter 4, Hebrews chapter 4, I begin reading with verse 14. Seeing then that we have a great high priest that is passed into the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession. For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities. but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin. So what are we to do when we sin? What are we to do? If things are going pretty well, just rock along, try to do better if we sin? No. Here's what we're to do. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace. I'm afraid that a lot of times we feel like it's a throne of law. We feel like that we're still in God's court of whether we're going to be saved or justified or not. But that's not what the Scriptures depict God's presence as. It's a presence of grace. The judgment's already passed. You've been declared not guilty. And now you have access to come before the throne of grace. And so if you're down, if you're discouraged, if you're guilty, or if you're successful, we all need to come in whatever state we're in before the throne of God to receive grace. The exhortation is for us to come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. We need a grace that will help us when we're down, when we're guilty, or even when we're prosperous. Turn with me, if you would, to 2 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 16. Paul again. I'm sorry, let me get to the right book of Timothy. I went to 1 Timothy. 2 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 16. And that's not it either. So let me just say this. Paul stresses our need for grace in every area of our life, in every situation, and He invites us to come and exhorts us to come to God in order to receive grace. Now, I want to say some things that I've already said, but I want us to really emphasize this morning as we conclude the message that this grace is not found anywhere else other than in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why Paul says the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen. I was trying to think of an analogy for what it is to try to preach a sermon, what it's like to try to preach a sermon on grace. The picture that came to my mind is preaching on grace is like trying to go wading in a tsunami. Grace is so abundant. In the Old Testament, there is mention of grace. There are instances when individuals found grace in the sight of the Lord. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord and was preserved from the destruction that came. Other people, individuals in certain situations found grace in the eyes of God. So there's that mention of grace in the Old Testament. And, as we have heard already this morning, there are prophecies, as in Zechariah chapter 4, of the coming of grace and what this mysterious person called Zerubbabel would do. I want to submit to you that Zerubbabel is a picture of our Lord Jesus Christ and we should understand that the Lord Jesus Christ is the One. who builds the temple. Now, did Zerubbabel rebuild the temple after the Babylonian captivity? Yes. But there is this prophecy that goes beyond that, looking to the time, as we heard read in chapter 6, when the branch would come. The planting of the Lord. He would grow up. He would build the temple. Now, beloved, if you know anything about the New Testament, You know, the temple that's under consideration there is the temple where you and I are brought as living stones, according to 1 Peter chapter 2, and are built up in that temple a holy habitation of God. And so we want to emphasize in closing that this grace that we're speaking about is grace that's given to us in the Lord Jesus Christ. When I think about that prophecy in Zechariah about the headstone, the topstone being brought forth and there being shoutings of grace, grace unto it. You know what the headstone is. And we're not talking about the cornerstone. We're not talking about the foundation. That is the Lord Jesus Christ. But we're talking about now the headstone. I used to work in an office building that had a lot of glass. In fact, it's just solid glass windows all the way around it. And there was a building being constructed across the street. And it went on for months and months, this construction project did. And finally, the building was pretty much finished. The structure was raised. And one day, I was up on the floor, and we could kind of look out over the top of this building. And one day, we looked over there, and there were these people dressed in nice suits and dresses, and they were gathering, obviously not construction workers. But there was a crane that lifted a tree up to the top of that building and there was a ceremony to celebrate the completion of that building. I believe that that's what is under in mind here in Zachariah. Zerubbabel, the true Zerubbabel, the true branch, would come one day and build the house of God. And the building would continue and continue and continue, and people would be brought into it, living stones placed upon living stones, and ultimately there would be the completion of that temple. And when that last one, that last headstone, if you will, was put in place, there was going to be this great celebration of the construction project. And when they celebrated the construction and the completion of the building, they were going to be shouting, Grace! Grace! As the building was finished, God is in the process of, through the Lord Jesus Christ, building us as the temple of God. The news goes out of what God is doing. This gospel of the grace of God is sent forth into the world. The announcement is made that God is in the process of building the church, His temple, through the Lord Jesus Christ. This gospel is even called the gospel of grace. In Acts 20 again, in verse 24, Paul says, None of these things move me, neither can I my life dear unto myself. so that I might finish my course with joy and the ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus to testify the gospel of the grace of God." There are many, many of our brothers and sisters in the Lord that don't understand the doctrines of grace like we do. We pray that we could all have clearer views of grace. But I want us to understand that it's important for us to understand clearly the grace of God that brings salvation and how it appears to all men, teaching us that we should deny ungodliness and worldly lusts. The grace of God that's in our Lord Jesus does not allow us to continue in our sin. But the way that it gets us out of our sin is not by beating us over the head with our guilt and with our shame. The way the gospel of grace gets us out of our sin is to constrain us by the love of God. The love of God, Paul says, constrains me. And when I hear the announcement, and this is why it's so important that we preach the truth about grace, When I hear the announcement that God has justified me by grace through faith and that all of my sins have been paid for, I am free to go to the throne of grace to find help in time of need so that I can live in freedom. Now, does God chasten us? Yes, He chastens us. But I understand that chastening now. And I understand that He chastens me for my good. And He is not punishing me. God is not angry with me. God loves me and has poured grace upon me. And Paul is praying that we might revel in that grace. We could just swim in it. We could enjoy it. It's everywhere in the New Testament. It's from the beginning of the New Testament to the very end. It's the beginning of every epistle of Paul and it's the ending of every epistle of Paul. And it's in between. The grace of God. So the prayer is that may you, may you, this morning, the beginning of a new year, the first day of a new year, May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you this year and forever. Praise God for His goodness. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank You for the abundant grace that You have given us in the Lord Jesus Christ. Certainly it is undeserved by us. Our behavior and our sins deserve the opposite. Father, we just ask that you bless us to understand more about what your grace is and glory in it. And may it bless us to grow and be built up and strengthened and edified as your people. Father, we're not praying just for our own ability to feel better. Have our tensions relieved. But Father, we're asking You that You would bless us to be full of grace and purity and love and holiness and live out who we actually are in the Lord Jesus Christ. For Your name's sake, we pray in Jesus' name, Amen.