Welcome to Bible Insights with Wayne Conrad. Your word is a lamp for my feet and a light on my path, thus said the psalmist. Today's topic, understanding something of God's grace. I wanted to say understanding God's grace. But you know, that means I would have to plummet the depths and I'm not so sure that in today's podcast I'll be able to plummet the depths. I do want us to have her at least swim a little bit in the shallow waters of God's amazing grace. Now you've heard that word, right? Amazing grace. And I'm sure you have either heard that song, more than likely if you live in the West, you've heard it at a funeral, Tragically, that's not the only time we should be hearing it, because that's not necessarily when it's being displayed. It could be, but Amazing Grace is talking about an attribute, but that's not really the correct word. An attribute is like a characteristic, but actually grace is not so much a characteristic as it is an action of God. that is directly related to his character. Well, what character am I talking about? I'm talking about the character that he displayed in his glory that he let pass by Moses on the mountain when Moses had asked to see his glory. This is after the giving of the Ten Commandments and after Moses had been up for 40 days with the Lord. He had come down and found the people had already transgressed the commandments. He broke the tablets of stone, but then he had to go back up the mountain for God to renew it. At which point, you know, this is where Moses had asked God to show him his glory. Well, God said, you know, I can't really show you my glory. If I show you my glory, you're gonna die because no man can see my glory and live. But I will let my goodness pass before you. And I will protect you with my hand in the rock. And I will pronounce my name as I go past you." So here is what happened. I'm reading from Exodus 34. Yahweh came down in a cloud and stood within there and proclaimed His name, Yahweh. Yahweh passed in front of him and proclaimed, Yahweh, Yahweh is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin. So God proclaimed himself as being a compassionate and gracious God who is one who has faithful love, faithful love and truth. So the first thing we should understand about grace is that grace is directly related to God's goodness. to his kindness, expressed in his compassion, and demonstrated first in his mercy and then abundantly in his grace. So all of these terms are related to one another, but grace is the ultimate. It's the one that leads all the way to the fullness, And we should note this, that grace is never used in reference to those who do not believe. It's only really used with reference to those who are the objects of God's special love of his electing favor. So grace is related to God's goodness. It's because God is a good God. that out of his compassionate love and kindness, he exercises mercy. And more than that, to some upon whom he shows his mercy, he also bestows his grace, his undeserved favor, his undeserved kindness in granting them a gift that they could never earn on their own, but which they desperately need. The first time the word grace is used in the Bible is found in the book of Genesis chapter six and verse eight. Now, if you're familiar with the opening chapters of the Bible, they can be rather devastating. We read about God's good creation and the perfect world and the perfect humans. And then we read tragically how they transgress God's simple command not to eat of the forbidden fruit. And yet they ate of it and were therefore cast out of the garden and they were condemned. They were declared to be under the wrath and the judgment of God. and all those that descended from them are also involved in their guilt. But then as we read in Genesis chapter six, the wickedness of mankind rapidly multiplied in the earth. So much so that in just a few generations, God is ready to destroy the whole earth. to wipe out humankind and all the animals that he had created to be with man. But then we read these wonderful words, Genesis 6a, but Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. In what way did he find grace? We're not told that Noah did anything that resulted in God bestowing his favor upon him. We are told that because of his faith in God, he's going to be called a righteous man. But Noah found favor. In the eyes of the Lord, God chose him and elected him and his immediate family, that his wife, his sons, and their wives, to be the eight humans that would survive the worldwide flood, and they would be the second beginning of the human race on planet Earth. God would renew his favor. God would renew his covenant, a covenant. He entered into covenant with Noah and with the earth that had survived the flood. That's the first use of the word grace. It means favor. It means God granting something to one who did not necessarily deserve it, to one who was less than God. You see, grace comes out of his condescending favor to sinful people. It comes out of this abundant and eternal love of God for the objects of his favor. So this is the first thing we need to understand about God's grace. Now, there are many other things that we need to understand about God's grace, and they're found in the book of Ephesians and the book of Romans, and in many of the books of the New Testament. It's very interesting, you don't come across the word grace, even in its Hebrew form, many times in the Old Testament, but you find it a multitude of times in the New Testament, especially in the letters of Paul. He was definitely an apostle of the grace of God. But what can we understand about God's grace from what he wrote in his epistle? Well, if we look at Ephesians chapter two, we can begin to give some hints. So let me just open that up a little bit for us today. Note a parallel, if you please, between the state of Mankind in Noah's day and our state as a member of the human race in our relationship to God in the natural realm. That is that all of us are born under the condemnation that was passed on to Adam and his descendants. And the result of that is spiritual death. and depravity, that is a nature that's turned against God, not for God. So Paul writes in Ephesians chapter two, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously lived according to the ways of this world. In other words, that is man's natural state, dead in trespasses and sins, dead to God, not having a desire for him, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts. For we were by nature children of wrath, as the others were under the wrath of God. But God, This is one of those great statements of scripture. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love he had for us, made us alive with Christ, even though we were dead in trespasses. That's what God did. We were spiritually dead, but God made us alive. He brought us to spiritual life. And why did he do this? How did he do this? Well, he did it by his grace. He says, you are saved by grace. We're saved by God's unnarrated favor. He gives us the gift. a gift that has been earned not by us, the ones who don't deserve it, but by his beloved son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who took our place and bore our judgment under the wrath of God so that God's justice is satisfied and he can then bestow upon us his great favor. And God has done this because of the great love he has had for us. He made us alive with Christ, even though we were dead in trespasses. You were saved by grace, Paul writes. Yes, we're saved by the undeserved grace of God. He gives us the great gift of eternal life. He gives us the great gift of the forgiveness of sins. He gives us the great gift of reconciliation with Him so that we can live with Him eternally and we can live as His children now on this earth by the enablement of His Holy Spirit who's come to take up residence in our lives. For God has done a great work in saving a people for His name's sake. This is just a beginning of a little peek into what it means to understand something about the grace of God. It means God has, out of his great goodness and love, shown us such mercy that we've been delivered from the punishment that we deserve. But more than that, he's bestowed upon us his gracious gift. His gracious gift of salvation, of deliverance from judgment and condemnation, from wrath and hell, and brought us into the great favor of being His children who have been adopted in His Son, Jesus Christ, who has earned for us the salvation that God has bestowed. This has been Wayne Conrad with Bible Insights, extolling the grace of God.