Much Needed Grace, Part 3

If you have your Bible, turn with me to Hebrews chapter 4, Hebrews chapter 4 verses 11 to 16, much-needed grace And that grace is based on a couple of things First thing it's based on is the promise of eternal rest Right in the middle of a warning passage in Hebrews 4, which begins in Hebrews 3 verse 7 all the way to the end of chapter 4, God is giving another warning to these Jewish people, to compel them to understand the urgency of coming to know the Messiah, to coming to embrace saving grace

And so he begins chapter 4 by saying, therefore let us fear if while a promise remains of entering his rest, any one of you may seem to have come short of it The promise that remains because they would be thinking if God is sworn in his wrath that they shall not enter my rest, then maybe the promise is gone, but the promise still remains The promise is still available to those Jewish people that they might embrace Jesus Christ as their Messiah

He says in verse number 2, for indeed we have had good news preached to us, just as they also but the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard Therefore he's compelling them to listen to what God says and to believe him, to embrace him Remember the book of Hebrews is about the sufficiency and the supremacy of Jesus Christ as the Messiah And so as he concludes this warning passage in Hebrews chapter 4 verse 11, he says, therefore let us be diligent to enter that rest so that no one will fall through following the same example of disobedience

You must be diligent You must eagerly seek him You must earnestly strive to be with him You must effectually submit to all that he says Remember way back in the book of Jeremiah, God said in Jeremiah 29 verse number 13, you will seek me, and when you seek me with all your heart, you will find me He says that to the Babylonian, the Jewish people in Babylonian exile It talks to them about seeking him, but the Bible also says that no one seeks after God

So how is it that those Jewish people in Babylonian exile would seek after God if no man ever seeks him? Well, that's why you need to know what the Bible says in Jeremiah 24 verse number 7 For in Jeremiah 24 verse number 7, God says these words, I will give them a heart to know me for I am the Lord and they will be my people and I will be their God for they will return to me with their whole heart So God says I'm gonna give them a new heart So he says later in chapter 29 that when you seek me, you will find me when you seek for me with all your heart

Why would they seek him? Because God has given them a new heart That's why when the write of Hebrews, who is a Jewish author, would encourage these Jewish people to diligently seek after him, to diligently enter this rest, he has in mind the eagerness in seeking the Messiah. I mean after all he is presenting the Messiah to them He is showing them all that he is and all that he has done He's going to continue to do that throughout the book of Hebrews But they need to eagerly seek him and earnestly strive to enter, as the Lord said, strive to enter by the narrow way

For many who seek me will not enter It's imperative that that you strive to enter That's why the Lord said in Luke chapter 14, you need to count the cost You need to count the cost You just don't come into God's kingdom without sitting down and realizing the cost that's involved When Jesus said those famous words in Luke chapter 13 about striving to enter, he says, because I tell you that you will, many will seek to enter and will not be able to enter For once the head of the house gets up and shuts the door and you begin to stand outside and knock on the door saying, Lord, open up to us

He will answer and say to you, I do not know where you are from Then you will begin to say, we ate and drank in your presence and you taught in our streets We had fellowship with you We had meals with you We sat down and communed with you How is it you don't let us in? And he will say, I tell you, I do not know where you are from Depart from me all you evil doers Wow What a statement

Tremendous of what he said in in Matthew 7 when he says that many will say unto me that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many marvelous deeds in your name? He will say, depart from me. I never knew you You workers or you practice lawlessness And so when Christ says in in Luke chapter 14, if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters and yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple

For which one of you when he wants to build a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him saying, this man began to build and was not able to finish Or what king when he sets out to meet another king in battle will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with 10,000 men to encounter the one coming against him with 20,000? Or else while the other is still far away, he said the delegation and asked for terms of peace

So then none of you can be my disciple who does not give up all his possessions Christ says you need to count the cost Why? Because when you come to me, you come to me on my terms But you see if God gives you a new heart, it doesn't make any difference what the terms are Because salvation is a free gift of the eternal God And once he grants you the opportunity to believe and to seek, that's what you do So the writer of Hebrews believing in the sovereignty of God tells these Jewish people, be diligent to enter that rest

Are you eagerly seeking the Messiah? Are you earnestly striving to be with the Messiah? Are you effectually submitting to all that the Messiah says? For Christ says, if any man come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me And you see when you think of salvation in those terms, people always have the question They say, well if you say that to people, who's gonna believe? Let me give you an illustration. I was 17 years old, junior in high school, and one of my best friends lived down the street

His father was in the Air Force, my dad had retired from the Air Force, and we went to the same school together, played football together, played baseball together We were good friends But he was getting ready to move So one spring afternoon, we sat on my front porch and I went through the gospel with him. I presented Christ in all of his glory and all of his splendor And I told him on that day, and I read to him from Luke 13 and Luke 14, and the cost involved in coming to Christ

And I said, is this what you want to do? He said, you know what? That's not what I want. I don't want to pay that price And I said, you know, I'm sorry to hear that But I will continue to pray that God will do a work in your heart This young man would go to youth events with me at my church and do things, but he was not willing to give, ready to give his life to Christ But when I presented him the gospel, I wanted to make sure he understood the cost involved in coming to Christ It was several years later

It was in 1980. I'd graduated from college. I was home for 10 days before I was going to travel to Central America with sports ambassadors. I was home for 10 days and the phone rang and my mother answered the phone. I said, yes, yes, Lance is here She gave the phone to me And on the other end of that phone was the same young man who years earlier, five years earlier, had rejected the gospel And he said, Lance, this is Kenny Now, he had no idea I was going to be home He had no idea even where I was, but he had my home phone number We didn't have cell phones in those days

You couldn't text people and talk to people like we do today. I mean, if you were at home and missed a phone call, you missed it That's just the way it was But I happened to be home that day And he said, I want to let you know that everything you said to me when we were juniors in high school never left me And I needed to call somebody today because last night, both me and my sister understood what it meant to count the cost We gave our life to Christ And I'm now a born again believer in Jesus Christ And I said the same thing. I praised the Lord. I prayed with him

And I hadn't talked to him since he left And his dad had moved to another part of the country He had moved to Florida But you know what? When you present the gospel in all of its glory and all of its splendor, God does the work But unfortunately, we live in a day and age where we really don't believe that We really live in a day and age where somehow we have to change our approach to the presentation of the gospel. I'm reminded of the music minister who decided to leave his position in his church to do something along the lines of show business He said these words, I've learned one thing

You can't just get up there and give people the gospel You have to have a platform You've got to have people's respect If I can become famous and use my status as a star to give people the gospel, just imagine how powerful the message would be Are you telling me that the message of the gospel is more powerful because of who you are? But you know, we think that

We think that somehow if this great athlete or this great musician or this great prominent person comes to faith and they begin to share the gospel, how many people will come to Christ? We think that because we really believe down deep that there's something that we can do in our presentation of the gospel to make it more powerful than it already is When the Bible says that the gospel is the power of God unto salvation to the Jew first and also to the Greek It's the gospel that has all the power

How is it that in Acts 17, the Bible says that the early church turned the world upside down with no music program? How the early church turned the world upside down with no mass media presentation? No modern technology How is it the early church affected the entire Roman world with just a simple preaching of the gospel? How can that possibly be? But they did because they truly believed in the power of the gospel. J.I

Packer wrote years ago, the outside observer sees us, the church, as staggering on from gimmick to gimmick and stunt to stunt like so many drunks in a fog, not knowing at all where we are or which way we should be going Preaching is hazy Heads are muddled Hearts fret Doubts drain strength Uncertainty paralyzes action Unlike the first Christians, who in three centuries won the Roman world, and those later Christians who pioneered the Reformation and the Puritan awakening and the evangelical revival in the great missionary movement of the last century, we lack certainty

In what? The authority of the Bible, the credibility of the Bible, the believability of the Bible We just lack certainty We don't believe that this book is as powerful as God says it is And so we have to come up with some kind of newfangled idea. A new way of presenting the gospel as if somehow that is going to affect change in people's hearts The church does lack certainty in terms of its improper view of scripture So sad

The late Robert Schuller, who built the glass house in Garden Grove, said these words, for the church to address the unchurched with a theocentric or a God-centered attitude is to invite failure in mission The non-churched who have no vital belief in a relationship with God will spur and reject or simply ignore the theologian, church spokesperson, preacher or missionary who approaches with Bible in hand, theology on the brain and the lips and expects non-religious persons to suspend their doubts and swallow the theocentric assertions as fact

The unconverted will, I submit, take notice when I demonstrate genuine concern about their needs and honestly care about their human hurts He goes on to say for decades now, we have watched the church in Western Europe and in America decline in power, membership and influence And I believe that this decline is the result of our placing theocentric communications above the meeting of the deeper emotional and spiritual needs of humanity In other words, in other words, this is an overt appeal for the church to proclaim a man-centered message versus a God-centered message

And that's exactly what's happened The message is meant for man and his glory rather than God and his glory Walter Chantry wrote his book, Today's Gospel, Is It Authentic or Synthetic? Said much of modern preaching is anemic with the lifeblood of God's nature absent from the message Evangelists center their message upon man Man has sinned and missed a great blessing If a man wants to retrieve his eminent loss, he must act thus and so But the gospel of Christ is very different It begins with God and his glory It tells men that they have offended a holy God who will by no means pass by sin

It reminds sinners that the only hope of salvation is to be found in the grace and power of his name Christ's gospel sends men to beg pardon for the holy one There is a wide difference between the two messages The one seeks to blaze a trail to heaven for man while ignoring the Lord in his glory The other labors to magnify the God of all grace in the salvation of men So true We live in a day and age where we don't compel people to diligently enter God's rest To understand that there is an eagerness about seeking after God

If you present Christ as he's led last week, if you understand the identity of the Messiah, the centrality of his mission, you understand the veracity of his message The person and work of the Messiah is everything Because who he is and what he does makes the gospel compelling in and of itself Having understood the gospel, having understood who Christ is and what he's done as the parable of Matthew 13 tells us makes us see the gospel as that great pearl of great price That treasure that's been lost that now has been found and the opportunity to embrace the glorious nature of salvation

There's nothing you won't give up to obtain it That's the point of the parable of the great pearl and the lost treasure And so that's why the writer of Hebrews says, the promise of rest still remains Make sure you're diligent to enter that rest Because if not, there is a danger of not believing, of not being persuaded, of disbelieving As your forefathers did, there is a great and incredible danger Danger And yet they would not be persuaded Can you imagine that? When you go back and look at Israel's history, how could they not be persuaded? I was thinking about that

And later on, we get to Hebrews 11 We're going to talk about the people in the hall of faith We're going to take them one at a time Boom, boom, boom And go through each and every one of them to explain to you how it is these people in the Old Testament had the faith to believe in God And one of the remarkable people in the hall of faith is a prostitute by the name of Rahab The Bible says in Hebrews 11, these words Verse number 30, By faith, the walls of Jericho fell down after they had been encircled for seven days

By faith, Rahab the harlot did not perish along with those who were disobedient after she had welcomed the spies in peace And those two verses open up to us a whole, a whole beautiful picture of the saving grace of God, of the promise of rest that still remains And you think about all those people in Israel who were able to see the power of God at work, to hear about the truth of God, yet not believe How is it Rahab, a Gentile harlot in Jericho, believed when the nation of Israel did not believe? The Bible tells you

In Joshua chapter two, it says in verse number eight, Now, before they lay down, she came up to them on the roof and said to the men, I know that the Lord has given you the land How did Rahab know that? How did Rahab know that the Lord had given the promised land, the land that she was in to the Jews since she lived on the walls of Jericho? How did she know that? And that the terror of you has fallen on us and that all the inhabitants of the land have melted away before you

How did she know that? How did she know that people were afraid of what was happening with Israel and that God had given them the land? How did she know? She didn't have the first five books of the Old Testament She didn't have the law of Moses So how did she know? Then it says, For we have heard, Oh, you heard something What did you hear? How the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea Didn't Israel hear and see that? Yes Before you when you came out of Egypt and what you did to the two kings of the Amorites who were beyond the Jordan in Sihon and Og whom you utterly destroyed

Didn't Israel know and see that? Yes When we heard it, our hearts melted and no courage remained in any man any longer because of you For the Lord your God, He is God in heaven above and on earth beneath When you come to saving faith, you must understand the identity of the Messiah You must know who God is She had heard And she believed And James will use her Rahab the prostitute And Abraham the prophet Two people on either end of the spectrum One on the lowest of the social spectrum, which would be Rahab the prostitute And Abraham the father of a nation, the prophet on the other end

And compare them and show them how these two people had faith in God and believed And the works that they produced were because of that faith in God proving the fact that they truly believed in the Lord God of Israel And the writer of Hebrews will use Rahab in the great hall of faith Because she believed in what she heard And she believed with no praise band She believed with no emotional music being played in the background She believed with no altar call She believed with no drama presentation She believed with no mass media production

But she believed because she heard the truth and embraced it That is the grace of Almighty God And many more would hear as a result of that And by the way, Rahab that prostitute who heard and believed, lo and behold in the line of the Messiah, Matthew chapter 1 God is so great and so marvelous about what he does Because this book, the Bible, the Word of God is powerful And so he talks about the diligence of entering this promise rest that's still available And the danger of not believing because he uses a word that talks about persuasion Israel wasn't persuaded

So how is it man is persuaded? So the grace of God is based on the promise of eternal rest And number two, the persuasion of the Word of God And that's where verse 12 comes in of Hebrews chapter 4 This is what it says For the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit of both joints and marrow and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart And there is no creature hidden from his sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do

So the writer of Hebrews is going to draw them back to the power and authority of the Word of God Because that's the only way they're ever going to be persuaded God's Word in conjunction with his spirit is going to reveal to you the truth Israel of old would not be persuaded Even though they saw the Red Sea depart, walk through on dry land Even though they receive food from heaven Even though God did miraculous things with them by leading them out of Egypt through those 10 plagues

Through all of his power and protection of his people, they still do not believe the things that he said he would do The writer of Hebrews is compelling his Jewish audience to enter into that rest To don't follow the example of their forefathers And so he tells them about the power of the Word of God And he gives different descriptive words to explain that to them The Word of God is living It's living It's alive And that's why Stephen in Acts 7 calls them the living oracles God gave living oracles to the Jewish people And that's why the Bible says that the Word of God is inspired

It's the inspired Word of God It's a God-breathed Word That's why when Peter said in Matthew 16, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God You are equal in nature to the living God Why? Because you are alive and your words are alive And later in John 6, when Christ says, will you go away too? Peter says, you have the words of eternal life Where else are we going to go? You have the life-giving words, see? So the writer of Hebrew takes them back to help them understand that God's Word is living It's not a dead word It's a productive word It's a purposeful word because it's alive

This book, unlike anything else, is a living book And that's why we told you that when you come to the living God through the living Word, you obtain life, right? And we talked to you about the character of that life, that zoe, that quality of life And remember, we went through A to Z This is back in November

From A to Z about the different kind of life, how it was the abundant life, how it was the blessed life, how it was the cleansed life, how it was the directed life, A, B, C, D, all the way down to the last letter of the alphabet. 26 different characteristics of the life-giving Word as described in the Bible Because it's living But then he says this Not only is it living, it's active It's filled with energy It's powerful This is so precious because it speaks to the energizing work of the Word of God We sit here today and we hold in our hands a Bible

But most people holding a Bible in their hands do not understand the energy that it contains, the power that it contains And that truly is unfortunate We know what the Bible says in the book of Isaiah, the 55th chapter, the 11th verse So my Word which goes forth from my mouth will not return empty or void or meaningless without accomplishing what I desire and without succeeding in the matter for which I sent it So God sends forth His Word, His life-giving Word, His living Word And when He sends it forth, it goes forth with a purpose To accomplish whatever it is God wants to have accomplished

And that's why Paul would say in 1 Thessalonians 2, 13, that the Word of God effectually works in those who believe The Word of God is so powerful that it actually does a supernatural kind of work in people who believe And we need to understand the power and the purpose of the Word of God And while the writer of Hebrews doesn't go off into the different descriptive ways in which God's Word is powerful, he just lets you know that it's living and it's active It's living and powerful, some of your translations say Others say it's living and filled with energy because it is

It's the life-giving Word of God How powerful is the Word of God? Do you believe in the power of God's Word? When you present the gospel to someone, can you leave it at the door and say, here's the gospel It's up to you Without ever trying to coerce them or convince them that this is what they need to do You don't have to do that It's not your job to save somebody It's your job to present them the truth of who the Messiah is, what his mission was, and the message he gave you to give to other men and other women

When you do that, you are trusting the sovereignty of God to do a great and mighty work in the life of people Because if God's going to give them a new heart, he will call them to himself They will believe the gospel They will embrace the gospel with joy and excitement because they will eagerly seek and earnestly strive and affectionately submit to all that God says Do you know that the Word of God is powerful enough to crush the hard heart? Jeremiah 29 verse number 23 says, Is not my word like a fire? Is not my word like a hammer? It is It crushes the soul

It breaks up the stony ground. I don't have to throw the Bible at you to break up your hard heart All I have to do is read the Bible to you, show you what it says in the Word of God Because God's Word is powerful enough to crush the hardness of man's heart. I can't convince you you're a sinner, but God's Word can convince you that Convince you of that. I can't convince you that you are separated from God. I can't do that. I can't even convince you that God's Word is what it says it is. I can't do that. I can't even convince you of the deity of Christ. I can go through the verses and show you

Only God can do that That's why when Christ said to Peter that flesh and blood did not reveal this to you that I am the Son of the Living God, but my Father in Heaven revealed it to you Because man can't reveal to you the deity of Christ Only my Father in Heaven could do that So I present to you the truth and I can show you the verses, but unless the Spirit of God works in your heart, I can't convince you My job is to present it to you because there's one thing that crushes the soul of man That's the Word of God You know someone with a hard heart, a stony soul? Bring them to church

Let them sit under the preaching of the Word of God and see what that does to their heart As you read the Word of God to them, it's like your hand is on a piece of paper It's like you're hammering on their soul You can't convince them So just read to them the truth of God's Word because it crushes the soul If it crushes the soul, it will ultimately convict the soul It will convict the soul

Over in 1 Corinthians chapter 14, Paul says this, If all prophesied, if all speak forth the truth, He's comparing prophecy with tongues and the ability to speak forth the truth of God's Holy Word and the gift of prophecy And yet people have a prophetic gift to speak forth the truth, not to foretell the future, but to speak the truth If all prophesied, and an unbeliever and an ungifted man enters your assembly, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are disclosed, so you will fall on his face and worship God, declaring that God is certainly among you

How will the unbeliever know that God is among us? How does the unbeliever know that when he walks into the assembly, that God is among his people? Is it because we have a beautiful auditorium? No Is it because we sing beautiful music? No How will he know that God is among us? Because we speak forth the truth of God's Holy Word And when God's Word is spoken and preached and communicated, it discloses the heart of man It lays bare the soul of a man

That's why the writer of Hebrews, if you go back to Hebrews for a moment, he says these words in Hebrews 4, he says, there is no creature hidden from his sight All things are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom he hath to do And God does this surgical procedure in the heart of a man, in the heart of a woman when the Word of God is preached We told you before that the assembly of the righteous is like a quarry, right? It breaks up the stony ground

The assembly of the righteous, we gather together is like an ER, a surgical room where God's Word is like that knife that penetrates deep into the heart and soul of a man So when you preach the Word of God, it deals with the hard heart It crushes the soul It therefore then convicts the soul What brings conviction upon the heart of a man? The preaching and teaching of the Word of God That's what does it Nothing else does And God's Spirit works in conjunction with the power of his Word And once that soul is crushed and once that soul is convicted, that soul then can be converted

The power of God's Word crushes the soul It convicts the soul It converts the soul Psalm 19 verse number 7, The law of the Lord is perfect It's complete Converting the soul The psalmist said that the law of the Lord is so complete, you don't need anything else to convert a soul Because the law of the Lord is perfect enough to do that That's why faith cometh by hearing, hearing by word about the Christ, Romans 10, 17 James 1, 18 says the same thing You're born again by the word of truth First Peter 1, 21 to 23 says the living and Word of God is that which brings forth the seed to eternal life

So that's how Rahab believed She heard the truth about the Lord God of Israel and embraced him The power of the Word of God to save a prostitute in Jericho and that she would then become in the line of the Messiah Is a testimony to the wonder-working power of the Word of God And the question for us is, who do we know that doesn't know the Lord? Who needs to hear the truth of God's Word? To present the facts of all that God says and let the Word rest on its own authority, on its own power Let God do His work through His Word So God's Word comes and it crushes the soul It convicts the soul

It converts the soul It cleanses the soul, right? John 15, verse number three, you have been cleansed through the Word that I have spoken unto you God's Word cleanses the soul God's Word is that which, which takes the dirtiness of our hearts and lives and washes it clean It's called, as Paul says in Ephesians 5, the washing of water by the Word The cleansing agent of the Word of God Wow, what a powerful thing that is And all of us have the same question we must answer

Do I believe that God's Word, the gospel, is the power of God unto salvation? Do I really believe that? Am I sold on that? Am I convicted about that? Do I believe that God's Word is powerful enough to do exactly what it says it will do? That's what the right of Hebrews believed And that's why he would tell them, you're in danger of not believing if you don't enter into God's rest and following the example of your forefathers So remember this, God's Word is living It's active, filled with energy and powerful to do everything that God says it's going to do

He knew that the only way these Jewish audience would come to saving faith is through the power of God's Word He couldn't convince them, but he would give them the power of the Word of God Let me pray with you Father, we thank you, Lord, for today Truly, Lord, you are a magnificent God And I pray that as a church, we would truly adhere to the authority of Scripture Believe in its power Read it, teach it, preach it, memorize it Knowing of its powerful work in the soul of a man We know that it effectually works in those who believe You've made that very clear

The Scriptures are a testimony to that Our lives become a living testimony to that May we continue to live, believing in all that you have said In Jesus' name we pray, amen.