Open your Bibles with me tonight to Exodus chapter 22. Exodus, the 22nd chapter. Let's just read a few verses from this portion of the gospel of Exodus, starting at verse 21. Exodus 22, 21. Thou shalt neither vex a stranger nor oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child. If thou afflict them in any wise and they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry, And my wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword. And your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless. If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer. That is somebody who earns interest. Neither shalt thou lay upon him usury. If thou at all take thy neighbor's raiment to pledge, thou shalt deliver it unto him by that the sun goeth down. For that is his covering only. It is his raiment for his skin. Wherein shall he sleep? And it shall come to pass when he crieth unto me, I will hear. For I am gracious. Mark those last four words of verse 27. God says, for I am gracious. Read the words as they stand in their context and understand that this is the reason God gives for all the law that he has just described beginning back in the 20th chapter with the giving of the Ten Commandments. This is the reason he gives for all the judgments that come upon those who break his law. This is the reason he gives for everything he does for us. And this is the reason he gives for everything he requires of us. I am gracious. God gives us this as the reason why we should not vex the stranger, Why we should not oppress the fatherless and the widow or our neighbor. Why even if you just borrow a man's coat, you should be careful to return it lest he be cold at night. Why I am gracious. God commends us to be gracious because he is gracious. This is the character of our God. I am gracious. Nehemiah put it in these words. Thou art a God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness. Thou art a gracious and merciful God. The fact that God is gracious is used throughout the Psalms. I read them a number of times the last few days, where the psalmist sings praise to God, saying the Lord is long-suffering, the Lord is merciful, the Lord is gracious. Oh, how we ought to praise him who is God, describing himself as gracious. The Lord God intends for us to know and always remember that he's gracious. The character of God in his grace is that which inspires hope in poor, helpless sinners such as we are. It is that which inspires confident faith in believing hearts, those who are saved by his grace. And it is that which inspires and motivates us in how we live in this world. The Lord God says, now you do this, you behave this way, for I am gracious. Oh God, inspire my heart continually with the constant remembrance that you're gracious. Longing to be like Him. Gracious, gracious, gracious. That's so contrary to my nature and yours. So contrary to our flesh. But the Lord God says, you be gracious, you be favorable, you be kind, you be charitable, for I am gracious. The Lord's gracious character is used by the prophet to inspire us in just this way. Turn over to Isaiah 38. I'm sorry, Isaiah 30 and verse 18. Isaiah 30 and verse 18. And therefore will the Lord wait that he may be gracious unto you. I looked a lot today, I can't find anywhere else in this book that ever talks about God waiting to do anything. He's swift in judgment. He accomplishes his will mightily and suddenly upon the earth. But he waits that he may be gracious unto you. That word wait, It implies God pants and longs and groans that he may be gracious to you. His heart moves within him, anxious for you that he may be gracious unto you. What a description of God. He waits that he may be gracious unto you. And therefore will he be exalted. That's enough reason. That he may have mercy upon you. For the Lord is a God of judgment. Blessed are all they that wait for him. For the people shall dwell in Zion and Jerusalem. Thou shalt weep no more. He will be very gracious unto thee. When? As soon as you call on him. At the voice of thy cry. at the voice of thy cry. What a word by which God describes prayer. We hardly know how to speak to God in prayer. None of us knows what to pray for as we ought, but we cry unto God and the spirit makes intercession with our spirits, with groanings, with sighs that baffle words. He makes groans and intercession for us as we cry to him. And he will be gracious to you when he hears your cry. When he shall hear it, he will answer thee. Look in chapter 33, verse two of Isaiah. Oh Lord, be gracious unto us. We have waited for thee. Be thou their arm every morning. Our salvation also in time of trouble. The prophet Joel says, turn unto the Lord your God, for he's gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great compassion, of great kindness. The Lord our God, the triune Jehovah, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, here speaks to us and says, I am gracious. I am gracious. That's the motive he gives us by which he inspires us. That's the rule he gives us by which he rules us. That's the inspiration he gives us by which he moves our hearts toward him and toward one another. The reason for all that he requires of us is I am gracious. Now understand this, the source of all grace is our God. All grace comes from God. If any grace is found in you or found in me, if any grace works in us, it is the gift of God's grace. It is the operation of God's grace. As we exercise love, really as we exercise love as God describes it, we exercise it only as God works in us. If ever we exercise faith, really exercise faith, if ever we believe God, we believe God only as God works faith in us. If ever we're gracious, forgiving, kind, charitable, as this book describes those things, it is only as God works in us by His grace. Grace comes from God our Father, who in His sovereign, infinite mercy, love, and grace, chose a people to whom He would be gracious before the world was. For us, he made a sovereign covenant of free grace with his darling son. And in that covenant of grace, accepted us and blessed us in the beloved. His salvation is altogether a work of his free grace in Jesus Christ, his darling son. This grace of God is found only in Christ. It is grace by one man, Jesus Christ. All grace is found in Christ. All grace is given in Christ, with Christ, and by Christ. And those to whom God gives his Son, he gives all his grace. And all the blessings of his grace, for time and for eternity, and he sustains them with his grace. The Lord God describes this to us in the scriptures. The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. That does not imply in any way that before the incarnation and birth and obedience of the Lord Jesus as our substitute in this world, God saved sinners in some other way. He never did. Salvation's always been by grace. It's always been by grace in Jesus Christ the Lord. And that grace, however, that was always there in the Old Testament, experienced by Adam in the garden, experienced by Noah who found grace in the eyes of the Lord, experienced by Enoch who walked with God and received testimony from God that he pleased God, it was because of God's grace. Only his grace in Jesus Christ the Lord. But this wondrous grace, the prophets of old looked into it. They looked into it, desiring to see it, though it's clearly revealed to them in all the types and pictures and commandments of the law, yet they couldn't see it clearly as it is now revealed to us in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. God's grace and God's glory are revealed in the face of His darling Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. The glory of God is wrapped up with the grace of God. The grace of God is wrapped up with the glory of God, and the glory and grace of God are in His Son. In the accomplishments of His Son, in the doing and dying of His Son, in the redemption performed by His Son, in the righteousness of His Son, in the salvation found in His Son. Grace is God's gift to us in Christ. And it is that which we enjoy and are made partakers of only by the power of God, the Holy Ghost, who comes in the appointed time of love, which God appointed before the world was, as he waits to be gracious to us. And he effectually, irresistibly, mysteriously, without announcement applies grace to the heart. so that the dead sinner suddenly lives. The unbelieving suddenly believes. But we have to make a choice to believe. If God waits on you to make a choice to believe, you'll go to hell like you are. But you must make a choice to believe. If God waits on you to turn to him, you'll never turn to him, but turn to him you must or you'll perish in your sins. Well, how can that be? When God the Holy Ghost comes in the saving operations of his grace, suddenly you who could not believe find that you can not believe any longer. You must believe on him because God calls you by his grace. You must live because God gives you life. and being born of his spirit, you find yourself doing something you didn't dream you could do. Believing God, trusting his son, coming to Christ, crying to him for mercy, seeking his face, bowing before his throne. The only giver of grace is God. The only source of grace is God. The only mediator of grace is God. It's all found in God the Son, our blessed Savior. You won't find grace at the front of a church. Now hang on to your seat. I want to tell you something. Nobody ever did. All you find at the front of a church building, badness or otherwise, is the same thing you find in a confessional booth talking to a priest about your sins. You just find a delusion. You won't find grace in the waters of baptism. Nobody ever did. You won't find grace by responding to an invitation at a big revival rally in a stadium somewhere. You won't find grace at the end of the sinner's prayer. You find grace in Jesus Christ the Lord, and you'll only find it when grace has found you. That's the only way God saves sinners, is by his free grace in Christ the Lord. The gospel of God is a message of grace. It is called in Acts 20 and 24, the gospel of the grace of God. To the self-righteous religionist, grace is a stumbling block. To the learned philosophical worldling, it's foolishness. Why? Because there's nothing in the gospel, nothing about the gospel, nothing in the grace of God, nothing about the grace of God that has any appeal to fallen natural man. There's nothing about it to make man feel good about himself. Nothing about it to make a man think highly of himself. Nothing to gratify your pride. The gospel of God declares that man can never be saved but by the grace of God. You can never be saved apart from Christ, the unspeakable gift of God's grace. There's no salvation for any man and the state of all human beings is desperate, hopeless, and irreversible without God's free grace. Except God intervene. The gospel declares men and women are depraved, guilty, condemned, perishing, justly condemned, justly perishing, justly under the wrath of God. It puts us all on the same level. And that level's as low as it gets. The gospel declares that the purest moralist is in exactly the same condition as the most vile, profligate reprobate. The gospel declares that the most zealous religionist is no better in character than the most profane infidel. None whatever. All of us alike sinful. All of us alike, indecent. All of us alike, immoral. All of us alike, filthy. All of us alike, fallen. All of us alike, helpless. All of us alike, justly condemned. Without hope, separated from Christ. Without God, separated from Christ. Lost, separated from Christ. Undone, separated from Christ. Without Christ, We're without grace and lost. The gospel you see addresses us and only addresses us, the descendants of Adam, as fallen, polluted, hell-bent, hell-deserving sinners. Sinners utterly incapable of changing our ruined condition. When we talk about what we are by nature, And let's always talk about what we are, not what we were. We talk about what we are by nature. Remember, remember, never forget, this is our condition indeed by nature. Sin, sinners, transgressors, workers of iniquity. black, vile, base, corrupt, deceitful, cunning, crafty, nothing good, nothing righteous, nothing pure, nothing worth recommending to anybody, nothing. Hear what God says to you who are sinners. If you're yet without Christ, the wrath of God is upon you. The very wrath of God that fuels the fires of hell is upon you right now. Did you hear that? The very wrath of God that fuels the fires of hell is upon you right now. It's not waiting to be upon you. It's not that someday you're going to be condemned. You're condemned already. That's the language of scripture. Our Lord Jesus says, he that believeth not on him is condemned. He that believeth on him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. He that believeth on the Son, John said, hath everlasting life, and he that believeth not the Son of God shall not see life. but the wrath of God is upon him. God, teach me, teach me, teach me to look upon every object of my love and care and influence who is yet without Christ with the sword of glittering justice swinging over his head now. Not tomorrow, now. The wrath of God abideth on him. And if God will teach me that, nothing else will much matter concerning them. Nothing else. Nothing else. Nothing else. Oh, but I want this, my children. Every mama and daddy does. Every mother and father does. All of them! God teach us to understand. Those who are dearest to us, who know him not, the wrath of God abides, hold on, now. They're but a breath from hell. Did you hear me? You who believe not, you are but a breath from hell. But a breath from hell. But a breath from hell, the wrath of God abides upon you. But our text declares that this God, whose wrath abides on you, by which you are condemned already, this God says, I am. This God, who in the previous chapters threatens law, and judgment, and sword, and famine, and foe, one after another, with death consummating eternally in hell. He says, I tell you this, for I am gracious, the God of all grace. It is he who gives the law. The God of all grace, it is he who exercises judgment. The God of all grace, it is he who will send you to hell. But he declares, I am gracious. All the religious world talks about grace and salvation by grace. But few understand the character of God's grace as it's revealed in this book, very few. So let me look at that with you for just a little bit. When the Lord God declares I am gracious, he's declaring his great glorious attribute of grace. Grace, like love, is exercised only toward God's elect. Nowhere in the Bible, nowhere in this book will you find any indication of what being called common grace or general grace or universal grace. Common, general, universal things are useless, common, general, universal things. If everybody's got it, it's of no benefit to anybody and no value to anybody. No, no. Grace is not a common thing. Grace is not a universal thing. Grace is not a general thing. It's very particular. There is a sense I know in which God's mercy is over all his works. And so I suppose it is right to say that anything this side of hell is mercy. Mercy in the experience of it. But, uh, mercy. It's not what we're talking about here. That is God just letting you live on this earth while you gather for yourself greater condemnation. No, no, no. We're talking about grace. God says, I am gracious. It's solitary source being from him. It is completely unmerited, unsought favor. In fact, this very word, when God says I am gracious, means I am favorable. I am favorable. Grace is something that is unattracted by us. It can't be bought, it can't be earned, it can't be merited by anything in us or anything done by us. If it could, it would cease to be grace. If you slip works in, you push grace out. The two won't mix at any point. So there's no part of salvation to be attributed to your will, your worth, or your works. No part of salvation in any way depending on you, determined by you. No part of salvation that hinges upon man. It is altogether the work of God's free grace. Let me tell you five things about it that characterize it. I'll be very brief. These five things always characterize grace. If you think of grace in any way contrary to any of these, you think of works. You just call it grace. That's all. Grace is eternal. Grace is eternal. It has no beginning and it has no end. It's eternal. It's not just everlasting, it's eternal. Something may be everlasting that we have life, given us life that was ours with Christ before the world was, so it's eternal life in that sense, but it is everlasting life as we experience it. We come to possess it and it's ours from now on forever, but eternity, I've been trying to find a way to talk about eternity for 50 years. I hadn't figured it out yet. Eternity, how does a finite man who can only think about beginning and end, past, present, and future, even think about eternity? Eternity has no beginning. And when God speaks to us about eternal things as if they are things that started back yonder, he's just accommodating our puny brains because we're just men. And so he speaks about eternal things in what, I'll get ridiculed for this, but I'll use it anyhow, in what we might call the eternal past. Something that took place and was finished in eternity. Well, Brother Don, that never happened. Oh, I beg to differ. Let's look at it in the book of Romans, Romans chapter eight, Romans chapter eight. Grace doesn't originate in time. It can't be controlled by time. It can't be directed by time. It's eternal. Romans 8, 28. We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are thee called, and this is how they work together for good to them that love God, to them who are they called, according to his And then he tells us, in verse 28, he's talking to us about what God's doing. Like you, I spent a lot of time calling the names of friends in Texas and Louisiana last week. Spent a lot of time calling them, writing to them, calling their name for the throne of grace. And I said to our God, on more than one occasion, I shall be and I'd bow for prayer. God, I don't know. I don't know what you're doing. I don't see how you're working your will here. I can't see his way in the floodwaters, can you? Can you? I can't see his path in the whirlwind, can you? But I know he walks upon the floods. He rides upon the storm, and he has his way in the whirlwind. And I know it's all exactly according to his purpose. And I know that that which he's doing in time, he does because of something he did before the world was in eternity. He saved us and called us with a holy calling. And the works were finished from the foundation of the world. Let's see what it says. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, that his son might be the firstborn among many brethren, That's what God's gonna do. He's gonna fix it so we're just like his son. In the blessed reality of life, in our knowledge and experience of it. Oh, Frank, I don't feel like him at all. I mean, I don't feel like I'm like him in the least, do you? Not in the least. Do you? I know nothing about it, but I know the reality of it because God stated it. And when he's done with me, I'm going to experience the reality of it and know it. Bowing before him, just like his son, holy. and without blame, unflammable, perfect, righteous, loving God with all my being. And what God is going to do is what he already did for the next life. Moreover, whom he did predestinate, they be also called. And whom he called, they be also justified. and who be justified, then be also glorified. Oh, before the world was, the Lord God, the triune Jehovah accepted us in his Son, called us his sons, justified us and glorified us in his Son, one with Christ our Lord. The grace of God's eternal. And the grace of God is free. Free. We're justified freely by his grace. Isn't that wonderful? Free, free. I'm reluctant to say it because I know folks get upset with it, but I'll say it just for that reason. Grace is the cheapest thing in the world. It's the cheapest thing in the world. If you pay anything for it, you can't have it. It's free! Without cause. without cost, without condition, absolutely free. Well, Brother Don, you can't tell folks that. Well, let me try it another way. Grace is the cheapest thing in the world. If you pay a tear for it, you can't have it. You can't have it. It's free. It's without cause. It's without cost. It's without condition. It's absolutely free. But what if it made sense? Grace is the cheapest thing in the world. You can't buy it. It's without cause. It's without cost. It's without condition. Grace is free. The grace of God, the third thing, is sovereign. Grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. We don't know much about sovereignty in our nation. Really, we don't know much about sovereignty in our world around us. There are still some monarchs, but not in the sense that David was. He who reigns is sovereign. And grace reigns. reigns through Jesus Christ, through righteousness. The throne of God, our Savior, is called the throne of grace. He's sovereign. That means he has mercy on whom he will have mercy. He has compassion on whom he will have compassion, and whom he will he hardens. Grace is sovereign. Not only is grace sovereign, but this sovereign grace is always discriminated. It's always discriminating. How many times do you hear somebody say, that's just not fair. I've got news for you that nothing fair in this world. Nobody fair in this world except God. Except God. He's absolutely sovereign and he fairly gives grace to whom he will. He separated came from Abel. He distinguished Abraham from all the rest of his family. He separated Jacob from Esau. He made a difference between Ishmael and Isaac. He and he alone is he who says, I put a difference between Egypt and Israel that you may know that I am God. It is he who separates the human race into two groups, elect and reprobate, wheat and tares, sheep and goats. And the elect will never become reprobate and the reprobate will never become the elect. Sheep will never become goats and goats will never become sheep. God is sovereign in his grace. He says, Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated. Well, I don't understand that. Yes, you do. That's the reason you don't like it. You most certainly do understand it. You can't misunderstand it. You can't misunderstand it. You can either bow to it or buck it, but you can't misunderstand it. Jacob have I loved, Esau have I hated. Grace is the sovereign prerogative of God Almighty, and he has mercy on whom he will. I'll tell you one more thing about this characteristic of grace. The grace of God is like everything else about God. It's immutable. God's grace is immutable. In fact, in the one place where he declares his absolute immutability, what's he talking about? He's talking about grace. He said, I am the Lord. I change not. And that's the only reason you sons of Jacob aren't in hell. I change not. Therefore, you sons of Jacob are not consumed. By the grace of God, I am what I am. That's my creed. That's my confession. That's my constant experience. By the grace of God, I am what I am. And that's my message. I've been preaching this message for 50 years. And nobody has ever heard this man speak as a preacher who didn't hear that message. I don't mean it's occasionally my message, I mean all the time. All the time. We were down in Asheville one year, one time several years ago, and some fellas came around kinda dabblin' and toyin' with us, and one of them said to me, he said, he said, how often do you preach these things? I said, what things? He said, well, the doctrines of grace. I said, you mean how often did I preach total depravity and unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace, preservation of the saints? He said, yeah. I said, every time I preach. How often did you preach them last year? all the time. I am gracious is God's declaration. The Lord God almighty in all his works involving salvation works by grace, just by grace. Election, adoption, redemption, forgiveness, sanctification, preservation, holiness, righteousness, justification is all by grace. Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God has made unto us wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. Well, why does the Bible say that so much? that according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. That's why. Because you see, we want something to trust other than God. I've known that preacher sitting right there for a long time. Been a friend a long time. Loved the free grace of God for as long as I've known him. And you're looking for something to trust. And you are, and you are, and I am. That's the nature of our flesh. We want something to lean on. Some experience, some knowledge, some sensational feeling, some deep remorse, some great act of repentance, some self-sacrifice, some self-denial, some great act of love. We will, if we can, find something else to trust. Oh, God, knock every prop out from under me, every second of every day, and teach me to glory only in the Lord, in his grace, his free grace. Now, let me give you some examples, some trophies of grace. There was a king by the name of Manasseh. You can read about him in 2 Chronicles. I suppose of all the kings of Judah, all the kings of Israel, he was the most vile, the most base, the most propagate, the most corrupt, the most self-serving of all their kings. No king like Manasseh. He sacrificed his own sons in the fires to Moloch. What does that mean? It means exactly what you think it means. He laid them on a burning altar and burned them up for God. But Manasseh was conquered by grace. God resets, crowned with glory, in white robes, perfectly righteous, exactly like his Redeemer. We read in the book of God of a fellow named Saul of Tarsus. Saul of Tarsus was a bloodthirsty religious zealot. He would make Osama bin, what's the name of Osama bin Laden? He'd make him look like a choir boy. He wanted to rid the world of the name of Jesus Christ in Christianity. He stood by and held the clothes of folks while they stoned Stephen to death. And grace caught him because God said, I'm waiting to be gracious. And at the appointed time of love, grace broke out on him and conquered him. And yonder sits, right beside Stephen, worshiping the lamb on his throne. We read in the book of first and second Corinthians about a group of people who lived in a place called Corinth. And I guess that was about the most corrupt church you could ever read about in history. Galatia might have been worse. They were legalists. At least the Corinthians didn't have that against them. But base, vile, corrupt, infected with every corruptible thing imaginable. And Paul lists them off in chapter six and he says, such were some of you. I wonder why he said such were some of you. He could have said such were all of you. That's what you are, you know. Our Lord said so. That's what's in your heart. There's nothing in the heart of any man outside of hell that's not in your heart. Nothing. Nothing. Or mine. But you're washed. But you're sanctified. But you're justified in the name of the Lord Jesus by the Spirit of our God. But of all the trophies of grace, there are none, none so much a trophy of grace as a man talking to you. You see, I am Gomer. I am Onesimus. I am the prodigal son. You may have never met me before, my name is Jacob. A supplater, a deceiver, a liar, a cheat, a thief, a blasphemer. A man conquered by grace. In whom Christ has revealed himself. who thankfully, thankfully, thankfully can tell you that while I live in this world, I hobble through this world on a broken thigh. A man broken by grace. And thank God, Brother Todd, a man being broken by grace. This grace is free. It's free. Come here, come here. It's yours for the taking. As soon as you cry, God hears, and the grace is yours. If free, why not for me? If free, why not for you? Amen.