Sermon 2 on Discipleship; living in the Grace of God

Second Sunday after Pentecost 6/10/12 Text: Galatians 5:16-17 Title: Discipleship; Living In The Grace of God (sermon 2) This morning I am continuing the sermon series that I started last week on what it means to be a disciple of Jesus living in the grace of God. The reason that I am doing this series is because I firmly believe that way too many Christians do not understand what it means to live as a disciple of Jesus in the grace of God. They don’t understand it because to them it is a teaching that they are to believe in so they can go to heaven, but that has very little, if anything to do with their daily lives. Others don’t understand what it means to be a disciple of Jesus because they believe that since Jesus died for their sins they are now free to live their lives as they want to. There is, for them no commitment to follow Jesus. Just believe and everything is good even if they are living their lives in purposeful unrepentant sin. Neither group understands what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. Both of those beliefs will get you in trouble for they have taken the costly grace of God and made it into cheap grace which turns out to be no grace at all. This is what I mean. God’s grace is not cheap for us or for God. It was not cheap for God because Jesus suffered and died that we might live in his grace. It is not cheap for us because we cannot continue to live the lives we have been living. We are told in God’s Word that discipleship is a dying to the old sinful self and being reborn; a painful process, for the old sinful self does not want to die. It wants to live, as those of the world live in “sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” Colossians 3:5 just to name a few. It is costly to be a disciple of Jesus, not that it earns us favor or salvation with God, but that in being a disciple of God we are to follow Jesus doing what he tells us to do, “flee from sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.” Colossians 3:5 and “For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.” Romans 8:13-14 As disciples we are told to love our neighbor and pray for our enemies, turn the other cheek and walk the extra mile, feed the poor and provide clothing for those without clothing, visit those in prison, give of our financial blessings for the work of the Lord; and last, but certainly not least tell others of God’s love for them. The list could go on and on. Wow! That is a big list and I have not even come close to listing all the things disciples of God are to do. Being a disciple of God is costly, especially if you believe you, as a disciple have the right to decide who you are to love and help. It is costly, but, the strange thing about it, is that for the most part those who are true disciples of Jesus do not feel it is a burden to be a disciple of Jesus, for they are yoked to Christ and not to the things of the world or their own desires. Does that mean we do not sin once we become a disciple of Jesus? Of course not! We are still living in our sinful bodies, that is why Paul wrote down for us his struggle with sin in Romans 7:19, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” Paul knows the struggles of life, but he does not despair, for he also put down for us in Romans 6:14,15 that once you are a disciple of Jesus, “sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. 15 What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!” Paul while knowing his sinfulness also knew the costliness of discipleship. Battling with sin was a daily thing. But in God’s grace he knew he would win. Now some take those words and say, “I can do what I want and live my life in sin because after all Jesus died for my sins. That is not living in the grace of God, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ. That is living outside of the grace of God, for we are told in Galatians 5:16-17, “But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. 17 For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh”, Unrepentant sin and the Holy Spirit cannot exist together. God created humans in his own image; that is to be in fulltime relationship with him. He set them over his world to care for it as he enriched them with a never ending abundance of all kinds of blessings. God did not give them, his human creation difficult commandments. He gave them a single very brief and easy to obey command. We read of it in Genesis 2:16 and 17, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." Pretty straightforward I would say. But, our ancestors Adam and Eve in their wisdom, at some time in their lives, we don’t know when, began to despise this command of God. They wanted to be free from the rule of God, because, just as we today, they wanted to control their own destiny. Just as God still does today, God in his wisdom let them just as he does us turn away from him. But that freedom from God comes with a price. They who thought they had gained so much lost everything. No longer did God’s wonderful earth that he created for them give them everything they needed. No longer was there life without death. And even more importantly no longer was God’s human creation that he made to be in relationship with him want to be near God. And so here we are today broken people, living in a broken world among other broken people trying to scratch out a living and survive, as we struggle in our relationships with each other and God. That is us, but God offers something different. He wants the relationship with him restored because he knows that being in a disciple relationship is good for us spiritually, emotionally, relationally, for in that discipleship relationship we are restored, albeit imperfectly, back into all that is good, as God created it. God offers us an amazing thing; the free gift of forgiveness, not because we in any way deserve his forgiveness, for we are told in Isaiah that our best deeds are the filthiest of rags, before God. He offered us this free gift of forgiveness because Jesus, God himself stood in our place when he died, as he cried out “My God, my God, why have you deserted me?” Can you imagine what it must to have felt like to be completely innocent and yet know you have been deserted by God, for something you did not do? That is what Jesus did for each one of you. It is truly amazing grace. God’s grace is an amazing grace, as we will sing a little later. It is amazing because by human standards God’s grace toward his human creation does not make any sense, unless you believe that there is something good in you that God takes into account when he forgives you. Which belief by the way completely contradicts God’s grace, for it puts what we do directly into conflict with God’s grace, as God’s Word tells us in Romans 11:6,. “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.” Grace, while being a completely free gift from God is costly just as I mentioned earlier. It is costly first of all because Jesus suffered and died in the worst agony imaginable, so that God’s grace could be given to you. It is also costly for those who have received his grace, for once you have become his disciple you are not the same as you were before. Your relationship with God has changed. You are his. I will talk more on this next week as we continue to look at what it means to live as a disciple in the grace of God. Amen. Let us now rejoice in God’s amazing gift of forgiveness, as we sing “Amazing Grace”.